Harry Turtledove: Out of the Darkness

“Simpler,” Elimaki said.

“Aye.” Pekka nodded. “And the world usually isn’t simple, either.”

“Don’t I know it!” Elimaki exclaimed. “It’s never simple once the solicitors get their claws into it, believe me it isn’t. Powers below eat Olavin, why didn’t he just walk in front of a ley-line caravan?”

Pekka thought she understood why Olavin had taken up with his secretary.

He’d been away from his wife for a long time, so he’d found someone else. She’d done something not far removed from that herself. Since she saw no way to tell Elimaki anything of the sort without making her sister burst like an egg, she prudently kept her mouth shut.

Elimaki asked, “What sort of trouble is the caterer giving you?”

That made Pekka want to burst like an egg. “The moron! The idiot! The imbecile! He’s telling me he can’t get enough smoked salmon for the feast.”

“Why not?”

“Why? I’ll tell you why! Because his illiterate, crackbrained assistant who does his ordering didn’t order enough, that’s why,” Pekka said. “He knew how much I’d asked for. He just forgot to get it. Incompetent bungler. Powers above, I wish we still took heads, the way our ancestors did in the old days. But his would be empty.”

Elimaki went out to the kitchen. When she came back, she was carrying two mugs of brandy. “Here.” She handed one of them to Pekka. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”

“In the old days-”

“In the old days, this would have been fermented reindeer milk,” her sister said firmly. Pekka found herself nodding. She took a sip, and nodded again. Sure enough, civilization had made progress in the past thousand years. Elimaki went on, “Everything will be fine at the wedding. You’ll see. And I hope everything will be fine afterwards, but that’s up to you-you and Fernao, I mean.”

“We’ll do the best we can,” Pekka said. “That’s all anybody can do.”

By the time she’d finished the brandy, she did feel better. Her sister had poured her a hefty tot. She also felt sleepy, and let Elimaki put her to bed. She was sure she would be worried again in the morning, but she wasn’t-only frantic, which wasn’t quite the same thing. Frantic seemed to do the job. She approached the caterer with blood in her eye, and not only got a promise of all the smoked salmon she’d ordered, but got it at a reduced rate. “To make up for the problem our error caused you,” the fellow said. To get you out of the shop before you murder someone, was what he probably meant.

The day of the wedding dawned fair and mild. Pekka let out a long sigh of relief. With summer past and autumn beginning, weather in Kajaani was always a gamble. Aye, a canopy behind Elimaki’s house would have shielded the guests from the worst of it, but she didn’t want everyone to have to come swaddled in furs, and she especially didn’t want to bring the ceremony indoors. Old, old custom said weddings belonged outside, under the sun and the wind and the sky. If caught between old, old custom and an early snowstorm. .

I don’t know what I would have done, Pekka thought. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about it. We might almost be Gyongyosians talking about the stars.

She was just getting into her leggings and elaborately embroidered tunic, a good hour before people were supposed to start arriving, when somebody knocked on the front door. “If that’s Fernao, you can keep him,” she called to Elimaki. “Otherwise, hit him over the head and drag him off to one side.”

But it wasn’t Fernao, and Elimaki didn’t hit him over the head. “I need to speak to Pekka,” Ilmarinen declared.

Pekka threw her hands in the air, thinking, I might have known. Fastening the last couple of bone toggles, she went out to the front room. “What is it?” she snapped. “It had better be interesting.”

“Aren’t I always?” he asked, with one of his raffish smiles.

She folded her arms across her chest. “What you always are, without fail, is a nuisance. I haven’t got time for you to be a nuisance right now, Master Ilmarinen. Say your say and come back when you’re supposed to, or you’ll make me sorry I invited you.”

“Here. Let me show you.” He pulled a leaf of closely written calculations from his beltpouch and handed it to her. “It proves what I’ve been saying all along.”

“I really haven’t got time for this now.” But Pekka took the paper-it was either that or throw him out bodily. She glanced through it… and stopped after a moment. It went from straight sorcerous calculation to purporting to prove by the same kind of calculations that she and Fernao would have a happy marriage. Not a dozen people in the world could have followed all of it-and she could imagine only one who could have written it. She wondered how much labor and thought had gone into it. In spite of herself, she couldn’t stay annoyed. “Thank you very much,” she told him. “I’ll treasure it.”

“Do better than that,” Ilmarinen said. “Make it come true.” He ducked out of the house. Pekka hoped he’d remember to come back at the right time.

Fernao did show up a few minutes later, along with the burgomaster of Kajaani, who would recite the marriage vows. The burgomaster, who was a plump little man, only a couple of inches taller than Pekka, looked odd standing beside her tall, lean Lagoan fiance. “I hope you’ll be very happy,” the man kept saying.

“Oh, I expect we will,” Pekka answered. “In fact, I have proof.” She passed Fernao the paper Ilmarinen had given her.

He started looking through it, then did the same sort of double take she had. “Who gave you this?” he said, and held up a hand. “No, don’t tell me. I’m a Zuwayzi if it’s not Ilmarinen.” Pekka nodded. Fernao got down to the bottom and shook his head. “There’s nobody like him.”

“Nobody even close.” Pekka looked Fernao over. “How splendid you are!”

“Am I?” He didn’t sound convinced, where any Kuusaman man would have. His tunic, his jacket, his leggings were even fancier than hers. All the embroidery looked done by hand, though it had surely had sorcerous augmentation. “So your Jelgavan exile did a good job?”

“It’s-magnificent,” Pekka said.

“Good.” If anything, Fernao sounded amused. “It’s not what I’d wear back at home, but if it makes people here happy, that’s good enough for me.”

“You are. . most impressive,” said the burgomaster, looking up and up at Fernao. “You will make an imposing addition to our fair city.”

Someone else knocked on the door: an early arriving guest. There was always bound to be one. “Uto!” Pekka called. When her son appeared, she said, “Take the lady back out to the canopy.”

“All right,” Uto said, as docile as if he’d never got into trouble in his life. “Come with me, please, ma’am.”

“Aren’t you sweet?” said the woman, a distant cousin, which only proved how distant she was.

Before long, Pekka and Fernao walked up a lane through the seated guests and stood before the burgomaster. “As representative of the Seven Princes of Kuusamo, I am pleased to be acting in this capacity today,” the fellow said. “It is far more pleasant than most of the duties I am called upon to fulfill. …”

He went on and on. He was a burgomaster; part of his job, pleasant or not, was making speeches. Uto stood beside Pekka and a pace behind her. He soon started to fidget. A gleam came into his eyes. Pekka was keeping an eye on him, and spotted it. Ever so slightly, she shook her head. Her son looked disappointed, but, to her vast relief, nodded.

And then, at last, the burgomaster got to the part of his duties he couldn’t avoid no matter how much he talked: “Do you, Pekka, take this man, Fernao, to be your husband forevermore?”