Out of the Darkness

kingdoms’ service and ahead of everybody else in the world. Put those together and they likely add up to a good- sized pile of silver.”

“Ah.” Now Pekka nodded. “I see. Some might be nice, I suppose. But I think I’d sooner do what I want to do than do what someone else wants me to, no matter how much money I might make.”

“Theoretical sorcerers can use money just as much as anybody else can,” Fernao said.

“I know,” she answered. “The questions are, how much do I need? and, how much do I care to change to get it?”

By the way she spoke, the answers to those questions were not very much and not very much, respectively. To some degree, Fernao felt the same way-but only to some degree. He said, “If I can do work I’d enjoy anyhow, I wouldn’t mind being paid well for it.”

“Neither would I,” Pekka admitted. “If. If somebody wants to push me in directions I’d sooner not go, though, that’s a different story. And when you start trying to turn magecraft into money, that sort of thing happens a lot of the time.” She sent him a challenging glance. “Or will you tell me I’m wrong?”

If he tried to tell her she was wrong, she would have some sharp things to tell him. He could see that. And he didn’t think she was wrong. It was a question of … Of degree, he thought. “We would have to be careful-no doubt about that,” he said, “But sorcery and business do mix, or they can. Otherwise, the world wouldn’t have changed the way it has the past hundred and fifty years. A lot of the people who were in the right place at the right time were mages. And if you want to know what I think, when there’s a choice between having money and not having it, having it is better.”

“With everything else equal, aye,” Pekka agreed. “But things aren’t always equal, not when it comes to money. And you don’t always have money. Sometimes money ends up having you. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Fernao knew more than a few people who would do anything for money. He didn’t care to go down that ley line, either. He said, “You of all people wouldn’t have to worry, I don’t think.”

“For which I thank you,” Pekka said seriously. “Some of the things we’ve done here shouldn’t be turned into charms anyone could buy, if you want to know what I think.”

“Which ones do you have in mind?” Fernao asked.

“For starters, the ones that could let old people borrow years from their young descendants-or maybe, once the techniques are improved, from anybody young,” Pekka answered. “Can you imagine the chaos? Can you imagine the crimes?”

Fernao hadn’t tried to imagine such things. Now he did, and cringed. “That could be very bad,” he said. “I can’t argue with you. You’ve got a twistier mind than I do, to come up with such an idea.”

“I didn’t,” Pekka said. “Ilmarinen did, after one of our early experiments. That was before you joined us. He saw just how things might work.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Fernao said. “But nobody’s talked much about that kind of possibility since I’ve been here.”

“I don’t think anybody wants to talk about it,” Pekka said. “The more people who know about it, the more people who think about it, the likelier it is to happen, and to happen soon.”

“Soon.” Fernao tasted the word, and found he didn’t care for its flavor. “We aren’t ready to do anything like that.”

“No, and we won’t be, not for years and years-if we ever are,” Pekka said. “But whether we’re ready for it and whether it happens are two different questions, don’t you see? And that’s probably the biggest reason why I’m not very interested in getting rich quick.”

Fernao’s laugh was at least half rueful. He said, “Well, one thing: you make it easier for me to support you in the style to which you’ve been accustomed.”

“You don’t need to worry about supporting me-not with silver, anyhow,” Pekka said. “I’ve always been able to do that. It’s the other things we need to worry about: getting along with each other, bringing up Uto the best we can.”

“Seeing about a child or two of our own, too,” Fernao added.

“Aye, and that, too,” Pekka agreed. Fernao fought down bemusement. For his whole life, his interest in children had been theoretical at best. At worst. . He’d had one lady friend who’d thought he made her pregnant. He hadn’t; an illness had thrown her monthly courses out of kilter. What he’d felt then was alarm bordering on panic. Now. . Now he smiled as Pekka went on, “I’ve spent some time wondering what our children would look like. Haven’t you?”

“Now that you mention it, aye,” Fernao answered, adding, “If we have a little girl, I hope she’s lucky enough to look like you.”

That flustered Pekka. He’d seen that a lot of his compliments did. Partly, he supposed, it was because she was so stubbornly independent. The rest came from a fundamental difference between his folk and hers. Among Lagoans, as with Algarvians, flowery compliments were part of the small change of conversation. Nobody took them too seriously. Kuusamans were more literal-minded. They rarely said things unless they meant them-and they assumed everyone else behaved the same way. His pleasantries gained a weight, a force, here that they wouldn’t have had back in Setubal.

“You’re sweet,” Pekka said at last, and Fernao was confident she meant it. He was also very glad she meant it.

“What I am,” he said, “is happy. I love you, you know.”

“I do know that,” she agreed. “I love you, too. And. .” She sighed and let it rest there. When Fernao didn’t ask her to go on, she looked relieved.

He didn’t ask her because he already had a good notion of what she wasn’t saying: something like, And now it’s all right. With Leino still living, she’d been torn. Fernao knew that; he could hardly help knowing it.

If Leino had lived, she would have chosen him, he thought. He was familiar. He was a Kuusaman. And he was the father of her son, and that counted for a lot with her.

Pekka looked at him and turned his thoughts away from such reflections, which was just as well. Otherwise, he would have come back to remembering that he owed his happiness to another man’s death, and to the despised Algarvians. He hated himself whenever such ideas scurried over the ley lines of his mind, but he could hardly drive them away once for all. They held too much truth, and so kept coming back.

“We’ll do the best we can,” she said. “I don’t know what else we can do. If we work hard, it should be good enough.”

“I hope so,” Fernao said. “I think so, too.” He knew little more about getting along with one special person for years and years than he did about raising a child. But Pekka knew both those things well. As long as I’ve got a good teacher, Fernao thought, I can learn anything.

Twelve

All the regular news sheets in Trapani were dead. But the Algarvians still turned out something they called The Armored Wolf. Printed on small leaves of cheap, sour-smelling paper, it kept right on screaming shrill defiance at all of King Mezentio’s enemies and declaring that victory lay just around the corner.

Crouched behind a barricade only a couple of hundred yards in front of the royal palace, with Unkerlanter eggs bursting all around him, Sidroc was certain the only thing lying around the next corner was a swarm of Unkerlanter footsoldiers and behemoths. He folded his copy of The Armored Wolf and. stuffed it into his belt pouch.

Ceorl asked, “Why are you wasting time with that horrible rag? Seeing it once is bad enough. Nobody’d want to look at it twice.”

“I’m not going to look at it twice,” Sidroc said. “I’m almost out of arsewipes, though, and it’ll do well enough for that.”