Harry Turtledove: Out of the Darkness

“Five goldpieces say I do, and better than anything you’ve come up with,” Ilmarinen said.

Grandmaster Pinhiero thrust out his hand. “You’re on, by the powers above.” Ilmarinen clasped Pinhiero’s hand and then took his wrist in an Algarvic-style grip. Pinhiero gave him a seated bow. “All right, your Magnificence. We’ve made the bet. Now talk.”

“I will,” Ilmarinen said. “The first thing you need to do is, you need to get Swemmel thinking the Algarvians he’s hired to do his dirty work for him are going to pass whatever they find out to their own mages and not to him. If anything will give Swemmel nightmares, it’s the idea of Algarve getting strong again. Am I right or am I wrong?”

He knew perfectly well he was right. King Swemmel saw plotters everywhere, and he had plenty of reason to dread Algarve. Even Pinhiero didn’t deny it. All he said was, “You may be right.”

“What I may be is on the way to winning my bet,” Ilmarinen said, laughing. “Are you doing any of that now?”

“None of your business,” the grandmaster said.

“Ha! That means you’re not. I know you,” Ilmarinen said, and Pinhiero didn’t deny that, either. Ilmarinen went on, “The other thing you need to do is, you need to make some false results and put them where a spy who does a little work will come upon them. They can’t be out in the open, or he won’t trust them. But if he digs and digs and then finds them, he’s bound to think they’re real. And he’ll send them back to Swemmel, and the Unkerlanter mages will try to use them, and either they won’t work at all or they’ll be a disaster, depending on how much effort you put into dreaming them up. Either way, the Unkerlanters will stop trusting what their snoops are feeding them. You’re not doing that, either, are you?”

Grandmaster Pinhiero didn’t answer right away. He shifted his weight so he could get at his beltpouch, then took out five gold coins and passed them to Ilmarinen. “Here,” he said. “If I were wearing a hat, I’d take it off to you. You’re twistier than an eel dancing with an octopus.”

“Thank you very much,” Ilmarinen said smugly.

“How in blazes do you come up with these things?” Pinhiero asked. “With a little luck, they’ll tie the Unkerlanters in knots for months, maybe even years.”

“You’re supposed to think of them for yourself,” Ilmarinen said. “Why are you grandmaster, if not to think of things like that? It can’t be because you’re such a brilliant wizard. We both know you’re not. As far as magecraft goes, Fernao is worth ten of you.”

“He’s a clever fellow,” Pinhiero admitted. “I thought he would sit in my seat one of these years, and then you Kuusamans went and kidnapped him. Grabbed him by the prong, by the powers above.” He leaned forward and stared suspiciously at Ilmarinen. “Was that your idea, too?”

Ilmarinen shook his head. “Not a bit of it. I always thought he’d cause Pekka more trouble than he was worth. I hope I’m wrong, but I may be right yet.”

“A likely story,” Pinhiero said. “I don’t know whether you’re lying or not. You’ll never admit it if you are.”

“Who, me?” Ilmarinen did his best to look innocent. He hadn’t had much practice at it, and didn’t bring it off well. Pinhiero laughed raucously.

Ilmarinen muttered something under his breath. Here he’d told the unvarnished truth, and the Lagoan grandmaster hadn’t believed him. As far as he was concerned, that was just like Lagoans. As did their Algarvian cousins, they often thought they knew everything there was to know. They couldn’t get it through their heads that he and a lot of other Kuusamans trusted them no further than the Lagoans trusted folk from the land of the Seven Princes.

Of course, that cut both ways, as Pinhiero proved when he said, “Do you have any notion how much it galls us to follow your lead?”

“Some, maybe,” Ilmarinen said. “We’ve been stronger than you for a while now. You just didn’t notice, because most of what we did was out in the Bothnian Ocean and on islands in the Great Northern Sea where you don’t have an interest. And besides, we’re only Kuusamans-we don’t make a big racket about what we do, the way Algarvic folk enjoy so much. We just go on about our business.”

Grandmaster Pinhiero turned a dull red. He had to know Ilmarinen was right, however little he cared to admit it. He said, “The world is changing.” By the way he said it, he wished the world weren’t.

“Back in the days when the Kaunian Empire was tottering to a fall, a lot of nobles there would have said the same thing,” Ilmarinen observed. “They would have said it in the same language we’re using, as a matter of fact, so not everything changes.”

“Easy for you to say such things, Ilmarinen-you’re on the rising side,” Pinhiero replied. “Me, I have to look at my kingdom shrinking.”

“Not in size. Only in influence,” Ilmarinen said. “Things would have looked a lot worse for you had Mezentio won the war. For that matter, the Algarvians didn’t even manage a full sorcerous attack against Setubal. They did against Yliharma. I was there.”

“You’re always in the way of trouble,” Pinhiero said.

The grandmaster subsided into gloomy silence as the ley-line caravan went through over the Vaattojarvi Hills. The weather was milder and the land fairer on the north side of the hills, but Pinhiero seemed no happier. At last, not too long before the caravan got into Yliharma, he burst out, “Is this what we fought so hard for? Is this why we spent so many men and so much treasure? To hand leadership in the world over to you?”

“Well, if you hadn’t fought, you’d have handed it over to Algarve,” Ilmarinen answered. “And you may not have handed it to us. You may have handed it to Unkerlant instead.”

“You do so relieve my mind,” the Lagoan grandmaster said, and Ilmarinen threw back his head and laughed. Pinhiero glared at him. “If the world does turn out to be Unkerlant’s, you’ll laugh out of the other side of your mouth, by the powers above.”

“No doubt,” Ilmarinen said. “No doubt at all. But I, at least, won’t be wearing that foolish expression on my face, for it’ll come as no surprise. And, I assure you, Kuusamo will work as hard against the rise of Unkerlant as we did against Algarve, and for most of the same reasons. Can you Lagoans say as much, when you can’t even keep spies out of your guild of mages?”

“You cannot hold me responsible for the fact that Algarvians and Lagoans look much alike,” Grandmaster Pinhiero ground out.

“No, but I can hold you responsible for forgetting that that fact has consequences,” Ilmarinen said. “This is why, during the war, we were so reluctant to train Lagoans in the new sorcery. We weren’t sure they would all be Lagoans, if you take my meaning.”

Pinhiero’s glower grew darker than ever. Before he could say anything more, a conductor came through the caravan cars, calling, “Yliharma! Everybody out for Yliharma!” Ilmarinen laughed and clapped his hands. He’d managed to annoy the Lagoan grandmaster all the way up from Kajaani, and he’d got the last word. As the ley-line caravan slowed to a stop, he grabbed his carpetbag and hurried for the door.

The fields around Skarnu’s castle were golden with ripening grain. Some of the leaves on the trees were going golden, too, with others fiery orange, still others red as blood. From the battlements, he could see a long way. A mild breeze stirred his hair. Turning to Merkela, he said, “It’s beautiful.”

His wife nodded. “Aye, it is.” Her nails clicked as she drummed her fingers on the gray stone. “It’s harvest time. I ought to be working, not standing around here like somebody who doesn’t know a sickle from a scythe.”