"Here y'are, gents," the hackman, reining in in front of the great neoclassical hall that housed the Lagoan Guild of Mages. Still looking unhappy, Brinco paid the fare; Fernao had wondered if he'd be stuck with it. But Brinco carried his carpetbag up the white marble steps to the colonnaded entranceway, and seemed in good spirits as he led Fernao back toward Grandmaster Pinhiero's office.
The trip took longer than it might have. Fernao kept greeting and getting greetings from colleagues he knew. Once past greetings, though, conversations flagged. Fernao wasn't the only one who said, "I wish I could tell you what I'm working on these days." He'd heard half a dozen variations on the theme by the time Brinco ushered him in to see Pinhiero.
"Welcome home," the Grandmaster said, rising and coming out from behind his desk to clasp Fernao's wrist. Pinhiero was in his sixties, his once-red hair and mustache mostly gray now. He wasn't a great mage; his name would never go into the reference books, as Siuntio's already had. But he had gifts of his own, not least among them political astuteness. After he poured wine for Fernao and helped him ease down into a chair, he asked, "Well, is it what we thought it was?"
"No," Fernao answered, which made Pinhiero blink. Fernao sipped the wine, enjoying the Grandmaster's discomfiture. Then he said, "It's more- or it can be more, if we ever learn to control it."
Pinhiero leaned forward, as a falcon might on catching sight of a mouse. "I thought so," he breathed. "If it were less, they would have said more." He blazed out a question as if it were the beam from a stick: "Will it match Mezentio's foul magics?"
"In force, aye," Fernao said. "Again, though, the question is control. That will take time. I don't know how long, but it won't happen tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, either."
"And meanwhile, of course, the war grinds on," Pinhiero said. "Sooner or later, Lagoas and Kuusamo will be fighting on the mainland of Derlavai. Will these spells be ready when that day comes?"
"Grandmaster, I haven't the faintest idea," Fernao answered. "For one thing, I don't know when that day will come. Maybe you know more about that than I do. I hope so- you could hardly know less."
"I know what I know," Pinhiero said. "If you don't know, I daresay there are reasons why you don't."
Arrogant old thornbush, Fernao thought. But he'd already known that. Aloud, he said, "No doubt you're right, sir. The other trouble, of course, is that no one has any sure knowledge of when the cantrips will be ready to use in war and not as an exercise in theoretical sorcery."
"You had better hurry up," the Grandmaster warned, as if it were Fernao's fault and no one else's that the project wasn't advancing fast enough to suit him. "While you play with your acorns and rats and rabbits, the world around you moves on- aye, and at an ever faster clip, too."
Fernao did his best to look wise and innocent at the same time. "That's what Habakkuk is all about, eh?"
"One of the things," Pinhiero said, and then, too late, "And how do you happen to know of Habakkuk?"
"I would have trouble telling you that, sir," Fernao answered, more innocently than ever. "The world has moved on so fast since I heard about it that I've forgotten."
Pinhiero's green eyes flashed. He wasn't used to being on the receiving end of sarcasm, and didn't seem to like it much. His lips drew back from his teeth in what was as much snarl as smile. "You would have done better to forget the thing itself. But I don't suppose we could expect that of you."
"Not likely," Fernao agreed. "Will Habakkuk be ready when we need to go back to the mainland?"
"Oh, sooner than that," Pinhiero said. "Or it had better be- if not, some fancy sorcerous talent will find itself shorter by a head." He hadn't told Fernao anything about what Habakkuk actually was, merely that it was important, which the mage already knew. And now he continued, "Whether it is or it isn't, though, it's got nothing to do with you. This project you are working on is rather different, wouldn't you say? You do have some idea of what you're doing there? You'd bloody well better."
"I think I may," Fernao said tightly.
"Good," the Grandmaster told him. "Here's what we'll do: we'll put you up in a room in the guild hall here- with a cot and everything, mind- and you can draft a report for us, let us know what the Kuusamans are doing and how they're doing it. Start at the beginning and don't leave anything out."
"That isn't why I came back to Setubal," Fernao said in something approaching horror. "It's not the only reason I came back, anyhow."
Grandmaster Pinhiero was implacable. "Your kingdom needs you."
It came close to a kidnapping. Pinhiero didn't actually have four burly mages drag Fernao off to the room, but he made it plain that he would unless Fernao went there on his own. When Fernao stuck his head out a little later, he discovered one of those burly mages standing in the hallway. He nodded to the fellow and withdrew again. He couldn't sneak away, then. And he couldn't very well magic his way free, either, not with so much of the sorcerous talent in the world right here. Master Ilmarinen might have tried- and, being Master Ilmarinen, might have succeeded. Fernao knew his own talents weren't up to such sorcery. Having no other choice, he settled down and wrote.
As long as he was doing what Pinhiero wanted, the Grandmaster took care of him. Whatever he wanted in the way of food and drink came up from the kitchens in the blink of an eye. Mages fetched sorcerous tomes from the guildhall library whenever he needed to check a point. If he felt like soaking for an hour in a tub full of steaming water, he could. And once, even though he hadn't made any such request, a very friendly young woman visited the room.
She shook her head when he tried to give her something. "It's all arranged," she said. "The Grandmaster told me he'd turn me into a vole if I took even a copper from you." By the melodramatic way she shivered as she put her kilt back on, she believed Pinhiero would do just as he'd said.
"Pinhiero would never waste an important natural resource like that," Fernao said, which made the girl smile as she left. Fernao went to sleep that night with a smile on his face, too. But in the morning, after breakfast, he had to go back to writing. He started to look forward to returning to the Naantali district. He hadn't had to work nearly so hard there.
Sooner or later, Talsu knew, he would run into Kugu the silversmith again. Skrunda wasn't a big city, where they might easily have avoided each other. And, sure enough, one day in the market square Talsu came face-to-face with the man who'd betrayed him to the Algarvians.
Talsu was haggling with a farmer selling salted olives, and paid little attention to the man buying raisins at the next stall till the fellow turned around. He and Kugu recognized each other at the same instant.
Kugu might have been a treacherous whoreson and an Algarvian puppet, but he had his share of nerve and more. "Good morning," he said to Talsu, as coolly as if he hadn't had him flung into a dungeon. "It's good to see you here again."
"It's good to be here again," Talsu answered, all the while thinking, I can't wring his neck here in the middle of the market square. People would talk. He couldn't even glare so fiercely as he wanted to. If he roused Kugu's suspicions, the Algarvians would seize him again.
"I'm glad you've seen the light of day in the metaphorical as well as the literal sense of the words," Kugu said.
Before studying classical Kaunian with Kugu, Talsu would have had no idea what a metaphor was. But he'd learned more than metaphors from the small, precise silversmith. He just nodded now. If Kugu wanted to think him a traitor to Jelgava, too- well, so what? A lot of people thought that. What difference could one more make?