Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“We have already begun work on countermeasures,”ArchmageAddanz said. “But these things do take a certain amount of time, and-” He blinked. “Powers above, what was that?”

Rathar didn’t answer him. That had been an egg bursting close by, close enough to startle him into biting his tongue. He tasted blood. He andGeneralGurmun dashed out of the crystallomancers’ headquarters, leaving it to the mages to break the etheric connection. Rathar needed only an instant to see what had happened: an egg had burst squarely on the building where he’d been living.

“Was that one of their steered eggs?” Gurmun asked.

“How should I know?” Rathar trotted toward his headquarters. “Let’s see if anyone’s left alive in there.

“They don’t wantyou left alive,” Gurmun said.

“That’s all right,” Rathar told him. “I don’t want them left alive, either- and I’m going to get my wish.”

Summer was fading fast in the Naantali district. Fernao had watched that happen before. Setubal, the capital of Lagoas and his home town, didn’t have the best weather in the world. Not even the most ardent Lagoan patriot could have claimed otherwise-not when, in peacetime, COME TO BALMY BALVl! broadsheets sprouted like mushrooms on walls and fences every autumn. But even Setubal looked subtropical when measured against the wastelands of southeastern Kuusamo.

Even before nights turned longer than days, the grass started going from green to yellow. Birds began flying north, first by ones and twos and then in enormous flocks. More and more clouds boiled up from the south, so that even when it was daylight, gloom held sway more often than not.

The worsening weather perfectly fit Fernao’s mood. The rattle and scrape and bang of hammers and saws and chisels and other tools as Kuusaman construction crews raced to repair the hostel after the Algarvians dropped their steerable egg on it did little to improve his spirits, either.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” Ilmarinen told him at supper one evening. “If they aren’t ready before the snow starts falling, I’m sure all of us Kuusaman mages know the ancient art of building snow houses. We’d be happy to teach it to you, so you can stay as warm and cheerful as we do.”

“Thank you so much.” Fernao cast about for a word in Kuusaman, didn’t find it, and switched to classical Kaunian: “Can you quantify exactly how warm and cheerful you will be?”

“Oh, of course,” Ilmarinen said. “Can you provide me with an appropriation to investigate it with all the latest sorcerous techniques?”

Fernao took a tiny copper bit from his belt pouch. “Here you are.”

“Excellent!” Ilmarinen scooped up the coin. “You may expect your answer in about ten thousand years.”

He laughed uproariously. Fernao laughed, too. Glum or not, he couldn’t help it. Ilmarinen worked hard at being outrageous, and was good at what he did.

“What’s funny?” Pekka asked as she sat down at the table with them. Fernao explained. Pekka gave Ilmarinen a severe look. “Snow houses, indeed,” she said. “When was the last time you made a snow house or herded reindeer like our ancestors?”

“Day before yesterday,” he answered, as seriously as if it were true.

Noise from down the hall covered Fernao’s snort and Pekka’s cough. She said, “I’ll tell you what worries me: all those carpenters. I’m sure the Algarvians will have tried to put spies among them.”

“Hard for an Algarvian to look like a Kuusaman,” Fernao said. That gave him an excuse to look at her and to admire the way she looked. When the steerable egg burst by the hostel, all he’d worried about was whether she was all right. The sorcery they were working on hadn’t mattered a bit.

But Pekka and Ilmarinen both shook their heads. “Plenty of masking sorceries,” Pekka said.

“A good many of them used against the Algarvians here and there,” Ilmarinen added, speaking with considerable authority. He had knowledge and sources for knowledge at which Fernao couldn’t begin to guess. “Wouldn’t be too surprising if they tried to get some of their own back.”

“There are ways to look behind such masks, I’m sure,” Fernao said.

“Oh, aye.” Ilmarinen spoke with authority again. “Anything one mage can figure out how to make, another mage can figure out how to break.”

Pekka gave her order to a serving girl even as she nodded. “That’s right. It leaves me with two worries on my mind: that Mezentio’s mages haven’t done something particularly clever that we don’t notice, and that we do our checks on all the workmen and don’t let any slip past unexamined.”

Fernao called for a mug of ale. When it came, he sipped slowly. The ale gave him an excuse to pick at his supper. Ilmarinen, on the other hand, ate as if he were stoking a roaring fire. Rising from his seat just as the girl brought Pekka’s food, he leered down at Fernao. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t enjoy,” he said, and went off whistling.

“He’s a nuisance,” Fernao said.

One of Pekka’s eyebrows quirked upward. “You just noticed?” she said, and applied herself to her chop.

Well, you got what you wanted, Fernao thought. You ‘re alone with her, or as alone as you can be inside the refectory with a lot of other people eating, too. Now what are you going to say?

He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything. He felt as callow and nervous as he had when a youth calling on a girl for the first time. He just sat there, still picking at his food, sipping the ale, and enjoying her company as much as he could. After a bit, she started talking shop. He had no trouble doing that, save for the occasional word that, likequantify, came out in classical Kaunian because he couldn’t come up with it in Kuusaman.

He called for more ale and for a mouth-puckeringly tart gooseberry pastry so he wouldn’t have to get up and leave as Ilmarinen had. Then he left the pastry half eaten when Pekka finished her supper faster than he’d expected. Getting to his feet in a hurry wasn’t easy or comfortable, but he did it anyway.

Pekka noticed, of course. “Are you following me?” she asked, sounding somewhere between amused and alarmed.

“I can’t very well leave the refectory without following you,” he answered, which had the twin advantages of being true and not requiring him to sayaye.

It also got a smile from Pekka, who said, “All right.”

But Fernao, suddenly bold, went on, “Will you come back to my chamber with me?”

“What? Why?” Now Pekka definitely sounded alarmed. “Are you planning on stopping more scandal? Remember what happened the last time. We just started some-and made our lives more… complicated.”

“I know,” Fernao said. By then, they were out in the hall, away from the crowd inside the eating chamber. “Come or not, however you like. I’m not going to try to molest you. I think you know that much. If you don’t, you’d better not come.”

He limped on toward his chamber. He still hadn’t got used to limping. He didn’t know why-he was going to limp for the rest of his life-but he hadn’t. He looked down at his feet and at the rubber tip to his cane. He didn’t want to look over his shoulder to see whether Pekka was following- part of him didn’t want to, anyhow. But he couldn’t keep his eyes from sliding toward where she would be if she was… and she was. He breathed a silent sigh of relief, then wondered if he should have. He was, he knew, liable to make things worse, not better.

After opening the door to the bare little room, he stood aside to let Pekka in before him. “Sit down,” he said, shutting the door behind them. “Make yourself comfortable.”