When she got down to the refectory, she saw Fernao sitting at a table with Raahe and Alkio, animatedly talking shop. The table had four chairs around it. Alkio saw her and waved her to the empty one, which was by Fernao’s. She didn’t see that she had any choice but to go sit there. She would have before the two of them made love: that was certain.
“Good morning,” Fernao said. Like her, he did his best to pretend in public that nothing too much out of the ordinary had happened.
“Good morning.” Pekka made a particular kind of sour face. “Fair morning, anyhow.” Fernao looked baffled. So did Alkio. Raahe softly chuckled into her cup of tea. She understood that-but then, she was a woman, too.
Linna came bustling up. “What can I get you?” she asked. Her eyes traveled speculatively from Pekka to Fernao and back again.
“Tea,” Pekka said, ignoring that glance. Going to Fernao’s room hadn’t stifled the gossip-no indeed. It just spawned more. “Oatmeal with berries and plenty of honey.” She didn’t feel like anything heavier. Linna nodded and went away.
Fernao returned to the conversation he’d been having with the husband-and-wife team of theoretical sorcerers: “I still say that instance we sensed yesterday felt… odd Is the only word I can find for it.”
Alkio shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s just that we’ve got too used to feeling those murderous sacrifices. They don’t jolt us the way they once did.”
Nodding, Pekka said, “I know for a fact that that’s true with me. And if it’s not a judgment on us all, and on this whole sorry world, powers below eat me if I know what would be.”
“A judgment? Aye, no doubt.” Fernao nodded, too, and so did Raahe and Alkio. But, stubbornly, the Lagoan mage went on, “It didn’t feel right, though, I tell you.”
“Of course not,” Alkio said. “If itwas wrong, how couldit feel right?”
Fernao exhaled through his nose in exasperation. “That is not what I meant,” he said, switching from Kuusaman to classical Kaunian so he could get across exactly what he did mean. “I meant it did not feel like Algarvian magecraft, and it did not feel like Unkerlanter sorcery.”
Alkio gestured dismissively. “Who else could it have been? No one but Mezentio’s mages and Swemmel’s uses those spells, and powers above be praised for that.”
Before Fernao could answer-and, for that matter, before he could get any angrier, for he was already irked-Piilis came into the refectory. As he paused in the doorway, Pekka waved to him. He waved back and walked toward the table where she was sitting. She hooked a chair from another table with her ankle and scooted over to give Piilis room to join her colleagues and her.
Only after she’d done it did she realize she’d scooted closer to Fernao. Was that wise? It’s what I would have done before… what happened, happened, she told herself. Whether that answered her question was a question in and of itself.
“Thank you, MistressPekka,” Piilis said. “I ran into one of the crystallomancers on my way over here, so I’ve got some news.”
“Well, tell us,” Pekka said. “If it weren’t for the crystallomancers, we wouldn’t know any of what was going on till it was already gone. It’s not as if they send us news sheets every day.”
“The miserable Gongs tried something new when we landed on that Bothnian island called Becsehely.” Piilis pronounced the foreign name with care. “They were going to trot out the murderous magic the Algarvians use, but we overran them so fast, they didn’t have the chance to kill many of their own soldiers, so the magic wasn’t so big or so strong as it might have been, and Becsehely’s ours.”
“Ha!” Fernao said, and then, “Ha!” again. Piilis looked confused. He looked even more confused when Fernao wagged a finger at Alkio and declared, “I told you so.”
“Well, so you did.” Alkio clicked his tongue between his teeth. “The Gyongyosians are using this sorcery, too? That is not good at all.”
“And killing their own soldiers to power it?” Pekka added. “That may be even worse than what the Algarvians and Unkerlanters do.”
“Not to hear the Gongs talk about it,” Piilis said. “By the reports we’re getting from the captives we’ve taken, they won’t slaughter anyone who didn’t volunteer ahead of time-and a lot of men did. They think it’s an honor to let themselves get killed for their kingdom. It makes the stars shine on them, or some such nonsense.”
With profound unoriginality, Pekka said, “Gyongyosians are very strange people.”
“They think the same of us,” Fernao said, using classical Kaunian again. “All the other strong kingdoms share-more or less, and sometimes at several removes-the culture that springs from the Kaunian Empire. But the Gyongyosians have their own. When we bumped up against them a hundred and fifty years ago, they borrowed-”
“Stole,” Alkio put in.
Fernao nodded, accepting the correction. “They stole some of our fancy magecraft, nailed it onto everything else they already had, and they went right on to make nuisances of themselves.”
“More than nuisances,” Alkio said, and all the other Kuusamans at the table spoke up to agree with him. He went on, “We’ve been squabbling with them over the islands in the Bothnian Ocean ever since. They want everything they can get their hands on, and a little more, besides.”
“And what do they say about Kuusamans?” Fernao asked innocently.
“Who cares what Gongs say?” Alkio answered, proving he’d missed the point.
Pekka hadn’t, but she had other things to worry about. “The next time we try to take an island the Gyongyosians hold, we may not be so lucky as we were at this Besce-whatever place,” she said. “PrinceJuhainenwas right-all the more reason for us to get our own spells to the point where practical mages can use them.”
All the more reason for us to get our own spells to the point when Leino can use them. Pekka wondered if her husband, wherever he was, was looking at other women, or even doing more than looking at them. Before she’d made love with Fernao, the idea would have horrified and infuriated her. It still horrified her, but in a way she almost hoped he was. Then, at least, they would both feel guilty when they finally got back together.
“Raahe and Alkio and I were talking about that before you got here,” Fernao said.
He didn’t sound as if he had any second thoughts about bedding her. Why should he? Pekka thought. It’s not as if he betrayed his wife
… At least, I don’t think it is. She suddenly realized just how much she didn’t know about the Lagoan mage’s past and background. What kind of fool was I, to go to bed with him? One corner of her mouth quirked upward. The answer to that was only too plain: a hot fool, a lickerish fool.
Again, she made herself think about what she had to do, not about what she’d already done. “What in particular were you talking about?” she asked.
“Ways to simplify the spell while keeping the energy level high,” Fernao replied. “Raahe has some good ideas, I think.”
Piilis said, “I’ve been doing some calculations of my own along those lines.” He took folded papers from his belt pouch and spread them out on the table-this just as Linna came out of the kitchen with his breakfast.
The serving girl gave him a severe look. “If you don’t eat, sorcerous sir, you won’t be strong enough to follow whatever it is you’ve written down there.”
“Sorry.” Piilis cleared some room in front of him. Linna set down his smoked salmon and eggs and went off. He promptly leaned over the plate of food so he could explain his line of thought. The other theoretical sorcerers leaned forward, too. The only heed Piilis gave the salmon and eggs was to keep from putting his elbow in the plate.
As Pekka and Fernao leaned toward his papers, their knees and thighs brushed under the table. Pekka was acutely aware of it. If Fernao was, he gave no sign. He didn’t press himself against her to remind her of what they’d done. She nodded to herself. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know.