Out of the Darkness

do, her little brother or sister won’t.

She carried her daughter away to clean up the mess. “Come on, you little stinker,” she said. Saxburh thought that was funny. So did Vanai-but only after she’d washed her hands.

After Saxburh went to bed, Vanai soon followed. In this pregnancy as in the one before, she found herself sleepy all the time. “Another baby,” Ealstan said in wondering tones. “I had thought you might be expecting again-your courses hadn’t come.”

“No, they hadn’t,” Vanai replied around a yawn. “They won’t, not for a while now.” She laughed a little. “I miss nine months of cramps, and then I get to make up for it all at once, and then some.”

“If it’s a boy, I’d like to name him Leofsig, for my brother,” Ealstan said.

Vanai didn’t see how she could quarrel with that, especially not when Leof-sig, from all she’d heard, had got on with Kaunians as well as the rest of this remarkable Forthwegian family did-and when Sidroc, who’d gone into Pleg-mund’s Brigade, had killed him. Nodding, she said, “I would like to give him- or her, if it’s a girl-a Kaunian name, too.”

“Of course,” Ealstan said.

He hadn’t quarreled. He hadn’t even hesitated. He’d just said, Of course. Vanai gave him a hug. “I love you,” she told him.

“I love you, too,” he answered seriously. “That’s what makes it all worthwhile. By the powers above, I do hope I’ll be able to keep feeding everybody.”

“I think you will,” Vanai said. Ealstan still looked worried. She added, “Your father thinks you will, too. He’s a very sharp man. If he thinks you can manage, he’s likely right.”

Ealstan kissed her. “You’re the one who always knows the right thing to say.”

She yawned again. “What I’m going to say now is, ‘Good night.’“ She rolled over onto her side and felt sleep coming down on her like a soft, dark blanket. She yawned one more time. Tomorrow, life would go on. It was an utterly ordinary thought-for anyone who hadn’t been through what Vanai had. To her, the ordinary would never seem so again, not when she compared it to the years just past. Being able to have an ordinary life. . Who, really, could want much more than that? Not me, she thought, and slept.

Pekka had run the largest, most complex sorcerous project the land of the Seven Princes had ever known. Over in the Naantali district, mages by the dozen had leaped to obey her. Thanks to the project, the Gyongyosians had surrendered and the Derlavaian War was over.

“Aye? And so?” Elimaki said when Pekka went over her accomplishments.

“And so? And so?” Pekka threw her hands in the air and scowled at her sister. “And so you’d think I’d be able to put together a simple wedding. That’s and so. Wouldn’t you?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Elimaki said soothingly. “You’re doing fine. Everything will be wonderful. You’re only getting upset because it’s three days away.”

“And because the caterer and the florist haven’t got a clue-not even a hint-about what they’re supposed to be doing,” Pekka added. “They’re both idiots. How do they stay in business when they’re such idiots?”

“They’ve both been in business as long as we’ve been alive,” her sister pointed out. “Come the day, everything will be perfect.” Her mouth tightened. “A few years later, though, who knows?” Barristers and solicitors were still gnawing over the remains of her marriage, a marriage as much a wartime casualty as any wounded soldier.

Pekka wished Elimaki hadn’t said that. “I’m nervous enough as things are,” she said.

“If you don’t want to go through with it-” Elimaki began.

“It’s not that,” Pekka broke in, shaking her head. “It’s not that at all.” She hoped she wasn’t trying to convince herself as well as Elimaki. “But how can I help worrying about it? I worry about everything. I have to.”

“I hope you’re as happy ten years from now as you will be when you say your vows,” Elimaki told her. “Uto thinks the world of Fernao, if that means anything to you.”

“It means a lot,” Pekka said. “The only question I have is whether it should make me happy or scare me.”

Elimaki laughed. She knew Pekka’s son as well as Pekka did herself. She might know Uto better than I do, Pekka thought. The past few years, she’s seen a lot more of him than I have. “A little of both,” she said. “You don’t want him not to like Fernao. …”

“I certainly don’t,” Pekka said.

“But you wonder what he’s liking if he likes him too much,” her sister went on. “How much of a mischievous little boy can your fiance be?”

“Some, I expect,” Pekka answered. “Most men can, from everything I’ve seen.” She thought of Ilmarinen, who still had a wide streak of mischievous little boy in him at more than twice her age. He and Uto had recognized each other as two of a kind. That was another frightening thought.

“If Uto’s content with Fernao, that’s good,” Elimaki said. “A boy should have a man around, I think.” She hesitated, then nodded to herself and went on, “And you don’t have to tell him anything, either.”

“No,” Pekka said. “That crossed my mind, too.” As far as she was concerned, it was far better that Uto never find out she and Fernao had been lovers before Leino died. Her son would have a much easier time accepting Fernao as a stepfather this way than as someone who might have displaced his real father even if Leino hadn’t died.

“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. .