Out of the Darkness

Disbelief was easier. Here, for once, she would have been happier not knowing the truth.

Ilmarinen would not approve, she thought dizzily. She knew her wits weren’t working the way they were supposed to: she knew, but she couldn’t do anything about it. People in accidents often behaved so; she’d heard as much, anyway. She wished she weren’t experiencing it for herself.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Mistress Pekka?” Juhainen asked.

“No,” Pekka said, and then remembered herself enough to add, “No, thank you.”

“If ever there is, you know you have only to ask,” the prince said.

“Thank you, your Highness,” Pekka said. Prince Juhainen’s image vanished from the crystal as his crystallomancer cut the etheric connection. Pekka got to her feet, vaguely surprised her legs obeyed her will.

“Are you all right, Mistress Pekka?” asked the crystallomancer who’d brought her to this chamber.

“No,” Pekka answered, and walked past her. She would have walked through her if the crystallomancer hadn’t scurried out of her way.

The next thing Pekka knew, she was standing in from of the door to her own room. She went inside and barred the door behind her. She hadn’t run into anyone on the way-or if she had, she didn’t remember it. She threw herself down on the bed and started to weep. All the tears she’d held back or been too numb to shed came flooding out.

Fernao will wonder where I am, wonder what’s happened, she thought. That only brought on a fresh torrent of tears-these, tears of shame. Powers above, if the knock on the door had come a few minutes earlier, we’d have been making love. Wouldn‘t that have been a perfect way to find out Leino was dead?

“It was only because you weren’t here,” she said aloud, as if her husband stood beside her listening. But Leino didn’t. He wouldn’t, not ever again. That finally started to strike home. Pekka wept harder than ever.

After a while, she got up and splashed cold water on her face. It did no good at all; looking at herself in the mirror above the sink, she saw how puffy and red her eyes were, and how much she looked like someone who’d just staggered out of a ley-line caravan car after some horrible mishap. Even as she dried her face, tears started streaming down her cheeks once more. She threw herself down on the bed again and gave way to them.

She never knew how long the knocking on the door went on before she noticed it. Quite a while, she suspected: by the time she did realize it was there, it had a slow, patient rhythm to it that suggested whoever stood out there in the hallway would keep on till she gave heed.

Another splash of cold water did even less than the first one had. Grimly, Pekka unbarred and opened the door anyhow. It might be something important, something she had to deal with. Dealing with anything but herself and her own pain right now would be a relief. Or, she thought, it might be Fernao.

And it was. The smile melted off his face when he saw her. “Powers above,” he whispered. “What happened, sweetheart?”

“Don’t call me that,” Pekka snapped, and he recoiled as if she’d struck him. “What happened?” she repeated. “Leino. In Jelgava. The Algarvians.” She tried to gather herself, but had no great luck. The tears came whether she wanted them or not.

“Oh,” Fernao said softly. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”

Are you? she wondered. Or are you just as well pleased? Why shouldn’t you be? Your rival is out of the way. How convenient. Nothing she’d ever seen from Fernao, nothing he’d ever said, made her believe he would think, did think, like that. But she wasn’t thinking very clearly herself right then. Sometimes, she did think clearly enough to understand that.

Fernao started to come into the room. Pekka stood in the doorway, blocking his path. He nodded jerkily, then bowed, almost as if he were an Algarvian. “All right,” he said, though she hadn’t said anything aloud. “I’ll do anything you want me to do. You know that. Tell me what it is, and I’ll do it. Only. . don’t shut me away. Please.”

“I don’t want to have to think about that right now,” Pekka said. “I don’t want to have to think about anything right now.” But she couldn’t help it; what ran through her mind was, Oh, powers above- I’m going to have to let Uto know his father isn‘t coming home from the war. That was another jolt, almost as bad as hearing the dreadful news from Juhainen. “For now, can you just. . leave me be?”

“All right,” he said, but the look in his eyes-so like a Kuusaman’s eyes in shape, set in an otherwise purely Lagoan face-showed she’d hurt him. “Whatever you want me to do, or don’t want me to do, tell me. You know I’ll do it… or not do it.”

“Thank you,” Pekka said raggedly. “I don’t know what the etiquette is for the wife’s lover when the husband dies.” Spoken in a different tone of voice, that might have been a joke. She meant it as a statement of fact, no more.

Fortunately, Fernao took it that way. “Neither do I,” he admitted, “at least not when-” Several words too late, he broke off. At least not when the lover has nothing to do with the husband’s demise, he’d been about to say: that or something like it. Lagoans weren’t quite so touchy or so much in the habit of taking other men’s wives for lovers as Algarvians, but some of the romances Pekka had read suggested they did have their rules for such situations.

She didn’t want to think about that now, either. In the romances, the wife was often glad when her husband met his end. She wasn’t glad. She felt as if a ley-line caravan had just appeared out of nowhere, run her down, and then vanished. Leino had been one of the anchors of her world. Now she was adrift, lost, at sea.. .

Had Fernao chosen that moment to try to embrace her, in sympathy either real or something less than real, she would have hit him. Maybe he sensed as much, for he only nodded, said, “I’ll be here when you need me,” and went down the hall, the rubber tip of his cane tapping softly on the carpet at every stride.

Pekka had never imagined she would have to compare a dead husband and a live lover. She found she couldn’t do it, not now. She dissolved in tears again. Tomorrow-perhaps even later today-she would start doing everything that needed doing. For the time being, grief had its way with her.

Colonel Sabrino had been at war more than five years. In all that time, he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of leaves he’d got. The ley-line caravan glided to a stop. “Trapani!” the conductor called as he came through the cars. “All out for Trapani!”

Grabbing his duffel bag and slinging it over his shoulder, Sabrino left the caravan car. No one waited for him on the platform: no one here knew he was coming. I’ll surprise Gismonda, he thought, and hoped he wouldn’t surprise his wife in the arms of another man. That would prove embarrassing and complicated for all concerned. One thing-he wouldn’t surprise his mistress in the arms of another man. That would have proved even more embarrassing and complicated, but Fronesia had left him for an officer of footsoldiers who she’d thought would prove more generous. Absently, Sabrino wondered if he had.

The depot had seen its share of war. Planks stretched across sawhorses warned people away from a hole in the platform. Boards patched holes in the roof, too, and kept most of the cold rain off the debarking passengers and the people waiting for them.. The sight saddened Sabrino without surprising him. All the way back from eastern Yanina, he’d seen wreckage. Some of it came from Unkerlanter eggs; more, by what people said, from those dropped by Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons. Now that the islanders were flying off the much closer islands of Sibiu, they could pound southern Algarve almost at will.

Our dragonfliers are as good as theirs, Sabrino thought bitterly. A lot of our dragonfliers are better than any of theirs. Anyone who s stayed alive since the beginning has more experience than a Kuusaman or a Lagoon could hope to match. But we haven’t got enough dragons, and we haven’t got enough dragonfliers.

Stretched too thin. The words tolled like a mournful bell inside Sabrino’s mind. Algarvian dragons had to be divided among the west-where King Swemmel’s men swarmed forward yet again- Valmiera, Jelgava, and the defense of the south against the air pirates flying out of Sibiu. How was one kingdom supposed to do all those jobs at the same time? It was impossible.

If we don’t do all those jobs, we’ll lose the war.

That was another painfully obvious truth. It had been obvious to soldiers since the battles of the Durrwangen bulge, perhaps since the fall of Sulingen. Any civilian with eyes to see would surely have noted the same thing after