Harry Turtledove: Out of the Darkness

Eventually, the last cousins, friends, and colleagues went inside, which meant Fernao and Pekka could, too. The caterer came up to Pekka with something like panic on his face. “The smoked salmon-” he began.

She cut him off. “If anything’s gone wrong with that delivery-especially after all your promises-I won’t just take it out of your fee. I’ll blacken your name all over town. But don’t bother me about it now, not on my wedding day.” His face a mask of misery, the caterer fled.

“How much will it matter if you blacken his name?” Fernao asked.

His new bride looked surprised. “Quite a bit,” she answered, and then must have realized why he’d asked the question, for she went on, “This isn’t Setubal. There won’t be thousands and thousands of people here who’ve never heard of him. When folks here find out about a fiasco, it’ll hurt his business. And it should.”

It’s a small town, Fernao thought. That would take getting used to. As far as he could see, the caterer had set out a very respectable spread. Everything he ate was good, from prawns to slices of raw reindeer meat dipped in a fiery sauce. He didn’t particularly miss the smoked salmon. But if it was supposed to be on the menu and wasn’t there, the caterer deserved at least some of the trouble in which he’d landed.

A Valmieran wine washed down the delicacies. Fernao would have expected one from Jelgava, tangy with lemon and orange juice. Then he remembered that Pekka and Leino had gone on holiday to Jelgava. If Pekka didn’t want to remind herself of days gone forever, he understood that.

Someone not far away let out a startled squawk. Someone else exclaimed, “How in blazes did a hedgehog get loose here?” People shooed the little animal out the door.

Voice even grimmer than when she’d dealt with the caterer, Pekka said, “Where’s Uto?” Her son, once found, loudly protested his innocence-too loudly to convince Fernao. Pekka didn’t look convinced, either, but a wedding reception was no place for a thorough interrogation. Uto escaped with a warning just this side of a threat.

And then the carriage that would take Fernao and Pekka to a hostel for their wedding night pulled up in front of Elimaki’s house. Guests pelted them with little acorns and dried berries-symbols of fertility. “Careful,” Pekka warned Fernao as they went down the walk to the carriage. “Don’t slip.”

With his bad leg, that was advice to take seriously. “I won’t,” he said. Pekka protectively took his arm to make sure he didn’t.

At the hostel, another bottle of wine waited in a bed of snow. Pekka poured some for each of them. She raised hers in salute. “We’re married. We’re here. We’re by ourselves. It’s all right, or as all right as it can be.”

“I love you,” Fernao said. They both drank to that. He added, “What I’d bet you really feel like doing about now is collapsing.”

“That’s one of the things I feel like doing, aye,” Pekka nodded. “But there’s something else to attend to, too.”

“Is there?” Fernao said, as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

Before long, they were attending to it. It was nothing they hadn’t attended to a good many times before, but no less enjoyable on account of that-more enjoyable, if anything, because they knew each other better now, and each knew what the other enjoyed. And the first time after the ceremony made things official, as it were.

“I love you,” Fernao said again, lazy in the afterglow.

“A good thing, too, after we just got married,” Pekka replied.

“A good thing?” He stroked her. “You’re right. It is.”

A carpetbag by his feet, Ilmarinen stood on the platform at the ley-line caravan depot in Kajaani, waiting for the caravan that would take him back up to Yliharma. He was not very surprised when a tall Lagoan, his once-red hair now gray, walked up onto the same platform. “Hello, Pinhiero, you shifty old son of a whore,” he said in fluent classical Kaunian. “Come on over here and keep me company.”

“I don’t know that I ought to,” the Grandmaster of the Lagoan Guild of Mages replied in the same tongue. “You’d probably try to slit my beltpouch.”

“That’s what you deserve for wearing such a silly thing,” Ilmarinen said.

Unperturbed, Pinhiero set his carpetbag down next to Ilmarinen’s. “Besides, whom are you calling old? You were cheating people before I was even a gleam in my papa’s eye.”

“Don’t worry-you’ve made up for it since,” Ilmarinen said. “And you’re the one who needs to steal from me more than I need to steal from you.”

“A year ago, I would have,” the grandmaster said. “Not now. Now I have what I need. You boys did play fair on that one, and I thank you for it.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Pekka and the Seven Princes,” Ilmarinen told him. “If I’d had my way, you’d still be out on the street corner begging for coppers. I wouldn’t even have told you my name, let alone anything else.”

He waited for Pinhiero to fly into a temper. Instead, the Lagoan mage said, “Well, maybe that’s not so foolish as you usually are. Did you hear what I was telling Fernao at the wedding last night?”

“Can’t say that I did,” Ilmarinen answered. Pinhiero spoke of the Algarvian in Swemmel’s pay whom the Lagoan Guild of Mages had unmasked. Ilmarinen scowled. “Oh, that’s just what we need, isn’t it? Might have known the Unkerlanters would try to steal what we’ve done. It’s a lot faster and a lot cheaper than sitting down and doing the work themselves.”

“I expected they would try to spy,” Pinhiero said. “I didn’t expect them to be so good at it. Who knows if this one whoreson is the only mage they planted on us? We’ll have to do some more digging, but this bastard’s credentials were good, and he speaks Lagoan as well as I do.”

“That’s not saying much,” Ilmarinen remarked.

Pinhiero glared at him. “To the crows with you, my friend,” he said, trotting out the curse as if he were a Kaunian from imperial days.

“Thank you so much.” Ilmarinen gave the grandmaster a little half bow, which made Pinhiero no happier.

“If you’re so confounded smart, what would you do about these fornicating Algarvians in Swemmel’s pay?” the Lagoan demanded.

“Oh, I can think of a couple of things,” Ilmarinen said lightly.

Pinhiero wagged a ringer at him. “And those are? Talk is cheap, Ilmarinen, especially when you don’t have to back it up.”

Ilmarinen bristled. “Why should I tell you anything, you old fraud? All you do is insult me. As far as I can see, you deserve spies.”

“Fine,” Pinhiero said. “My first guess is, you haven’t got any answers. My second guess is, you’d be happy to see Swemmel able to match our spells.”

Those both struck home. Nettled, Ilmarinen snapped, “It’d be just like you Lagoan bunglers to let him have the secrets to them.”

Before the grandmaster could answer, the ley-line caravan came into the depot from the north. Passengers got off. Along with the others waiting on the platform, Ilmarinen and Pinhiero got on. They went into an empty four-person compartment and glared so fiercely at the other people who stuck in their noses that they still had it to themselves when the caravan started back towards Yliharma. As soon as it began to move, they began to argue again.

“I’m tired of your hot air, Ilmarinen,” Pinhiero said.

“If you weren’t such a stupid clot, you’d be able to see these things for yourself,” Ilmarinen retorted.

“See what things?” the Lagoan mage said. “All I see is a fraud who talks fancy and doesn’t back it up. You say you have these magical answers”-he used the word with malice aforethought-”and then you don’t say what they are. And the reason you don’t say is that you haven’t really got them.”