“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
“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
“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.”
“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
