He wondered if Vanai would try to talk him out of it, but she didn’t. “Aye, maybe we’d better,” she said. They didn’t flee; that might have drawn Ethel-helm’s notice. But, after they’d drifted into the oak grove once more, she stopped and looked at Ealstan. “Thelberge, eh?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. To his relief, she shrugged. He went on, “I didn’t think anything like that would happen. Powers above be praised, we got away with it.”
Vanai nodded. They walked on for a few steps. Then she said, “He thinks you’ve got rid of the Kaunian girl you used to know.” Ealstan could only nod. Vanai’s mouth tightened. “I don’t like what he’ll think of you on account of that.”
“He’ll think I’m giving in, the same way he is,” Ealstan answered.
“That’s what I meant,” Vanai said sharply. She took another few strides and shrugged again. “Maybe it’s for the best. Now he won’t think he has a hold on you because you’re with a blonde.” Ealstan had to nod again. He hated thinking in those terms, but anyone who didn’t only endangered himself.
Not long after they left the park, he bought a news sheet, as much to distract them both from the alarm they’d had as for any other reason. The news sheet, of course, printed what the Algarvians wanted the Forthwegians to read. An address by King Mezentio topped the headlines. “I wanted to reach the Wolter, and so I have,” Ealstan read aloud. “We’re in Sulingen because it’s a vitally important city. It has a huge ironworks, and it’s a cinnabar shipping port. That was why I wanted to capture it and, you know, modest as we are- we’ve got it. There are only a few more tiny pockets left, and we’ll get those, too. Time doesn’t matter. Not a single ship comes up the Wolter anymore, and that’s the main thing.”
“Is he right?” Now Vanai sounded worried.
Ealstan was worried, too. “I hope not,” he said, and wished he hadn’t bought the news sheet.
Pekka wished she hadn’t had to come up to Yliharma for her latest set of experiments. But she could hardly have asked Siuntio and Ilmarinen to come down to Kajaani, not when they were frail old men and she young and strong and healthy. The capital had far better libraries than Kajaani City College, too, and laboratories with fancier sorcerous apparatus. The trip made good logical sense.
She still wished she could have stayed home. Now Elimaki had to watch Uto all day long; she couldn’t give him back to Leino in the evening, for Leino was learning the art of front-line magecraft. Pekka knew how much she was asking of her sister. Ihave to find a way to make it up to her, she thought, not for the first time, as her ley-line caravan pulled into the depot in the center of Yliharma.
Ilmarinen stood waiting on the platform when she got off. “Welcome, welcome,” he said, reaching for her carpetbag. “With any luck at all, we’ll blast the whole world to a cinder this time-and then we’ll teach the Lagoans how to do it, too.” His smile was wide and bright and full of vitriol.
“Would you rather have the Algarvians learn first?” Pekka replied. Her wave encompassed Yliharma. “Look what they did with the old magic. If the new is what we think it is, and if they learn it-”
Ilmarinen interrupted her: “We don’t know how close they are. We don’t know if they’re working on it at all. We do know the Lagoans will find some way to diddle us if they learn what we know.”
“No, we don’t know that,” Pekka replied in some exasperation. “We’ve been down this ley line before. And we don’t know enough to make the new magic work for us, not yet. Maybe the Lagoans will help us find the rest of what we need.”
“More likely they’ll steal it from us,” Ilmarinen said.
Instead of arguing any more, Pekka strode past him off the platform and toward the gateways leading out of the depot. That made him hurry after her and kept him too busy to complain. When he leaped into the street to wave down a cab, she smiled sweetly and said, “Thank you very much.”
“You’d have taken a whole bloody week before you got one,” Ilmarinen said-grumbling about one thing seemed to suit him as well as grumbling about another. He raised his voice to give the hackman an order: “The Principality.”
“Aye, sir,” the fellow said, and flicked the reins to get his horse going.
Workmen on scaffolds and in trenches still labored to repair the damage Yliharma had suffered in the sorcerous attack the winter before, but there were fewer of them than there had been on her latest visit. More and more Kuusamans went into the service of the Seven Princes every day. Pekka knew that all too well; every night she slept alone reminded her of it.
She slept alone in the Principality that night, in more luxury than she would have enjoyed back home. It failed to delight her. She would have traded all of it for Leino beside her, but knew she would have had to make the trip to Yliharma even if her husband had stayed at his Kajaani City College post.
In the morning, she ate smoked salmon and rings of red onion on a hard roll in the hotel dining room. Hot herb tea went well with the delicate fish. It also helped fortify her against the chilly drizzle that had started falling during the night.
As she was eating, Master Siuntio came into the dining room, accompanied by a tall, redheaded man who used a pair of crutches and one good leg to move himself along. The elderly theoretical sorcerer waved to Pekka. “Hello, my dear,” he said, hurrying toward her table. Then he switched from Kuusaman to classical Kaunian: “Mistress, I have the honor to introduce to you the first-rank mage, Fernao of Lagoas.”
“I am honored to meet you, Mistress Pekka.” As any first-rank mage would, Fernao spoke the universal tongue of scholarship well. He went on, “I know several languages, but I fear Kuusaman is not among them. I apologize for my ignorance.”
Pekka rose and extended her hand. A little awkwardly, Fernao shifted his crutch to free his own hand and clasp hers. He towered over her, but his injuries, his courteous speech, and his narrow, slanted eyes made him seem safer than he might have otherwise. She said, “No apologies needed. Everyone is ignorant of a great many things.”
He inclined his head. “You are kind. I should not be ignorant of the language of a kingdom I am visiting. Corresponding with you in classical Kaunian is well enough, but I ought to be able to use your tongue face-to-face.”
With a shrug, Pekka answered, “I read Lagoan well enough, but I would not care to try to speak it. And”-she smiled-”when we corresponded, we had little to say, no matter how long we took to say it. Will you both sit down and take breakfast with me?” Another thought occurred to her; she asked Fernao, “Can you sit down?”
“Carefully,” he answered. “Slowly. Otherwise I end up on the floor, without even the pleasure of getting drunk first.” Siuntio pulled out a chair for him. He sat exactly as he’d said he would, too. A waiter hurried over. The fellow proved to know Lagoan, which didn’t greatly surprise Pekka-travelers from many lands stayed at the Principality, and the hostel staff had to be able to meet their needs.
Siuntio said, “Fernao has already offered several suggestions I think good; our experiments will go forward better and faster because he is here.” He spoke classical Kaunian as if he were big and blond and snatched by sorcery from the heyday of the Empire. Pekka was sure he spoke fluent Lagoan, too, but he didn’t use it here.
“You are too generous,” Fernao said. The waited brought him salmon then, and a roll and butter for Siuntio. The Lagoan mage waited till the man had gone, then continued, “You folk here have a two years’ head start on the rest of the world. I hurry along as best I can, but I know I am still behind you.”
“You have done very well,” Siuntio said. “Even Master Ilmarinen has told me as much.”
“He has not told me as much,” Fernao said after a bite of smoked salmon. When he chose to show it, he had a wry grin. “Of course, I am only a Lagoan.” He ate some more of the salmon and onion. “You have no idea how much better than roasted-half charred, really-camel hump that is.”