Through the Darkness

He didn’t know she was a noblewoman. Plenty of Algarvians had brought commoners into the palace; with them, flesh counted for more than blood. But he took no chances, either. Krasta said, “Brandy with wormwood.”

“Aye, milady.” The barman gave her what she wanted. That was what he was for.

Lurcanio came up behind Krasta and asked for red wine. When he saw the greenish spirit in her glass, he said, “Try not to drink yourself into a stupor this evening, if you would be so kind. You do not show your loyalty to your king by imitating him.”

“I’ll do as I please,” Krasta said. Since she was a child, she’d done exactly that-till Lurcanio forced his way into her life.

“You may do as you please,” he said now, “so long as you also please me. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

She turned her back. “I shall do as I please,” she repeated. “If that doesn’t suit you, go away.”

She thought he would tell her to enjoy her walk home, or something of the sort. Instead, he spoke in tones so reasonable, they startled her: “Because your king has become a sorry sot, do you have to as well?”

“You made him into a sorry sot.” Krasta pointed at Lurcanio, as if to say he’d done it personally. “He wasn’t like that before the war.”

“Losing is harder than winning. I would be the last to deny it,” Lurcanio said. “But you can yield, or you can endure.”

Krasta thought of her brother again. He was doing more than enduring: he still resisted the Algarvians. And she. . she’d yielded. Every time she let Lurcanio into her bed-indeed, every time she let him take her to a reception like this one-she yielded again. But, having yielded once, she didn’t know what else she could do now. If she’d been wrong about Algarve when she yielded in the first place, how could she make amends now? Admit to herself she’d been selling herself and living a lie for the past two years? She couldn’t and wouldn’t imagine such a retreat.

“If I want to get drunk, I will get drunk,” she told Lurcanio. That measured the defiance she had in her: so much, but no more.

The Algarvian officer studied her, then shrugged one of his kingdom’s expressive shrugs. “Have it your way,” he said. “If you will not see you are behaving like a fool and a child, I cannot show you.” Krasta strode back to the bar and demanded a fresh glass of spiked brandy. She’d won her tiny victory, which was more than Valmiera could say against Algarve.

Pekka and Fernao rode a cab to Siuntio’s home together. One of Fernao’s crutches fell over and bumped her knee. She handed it back to him. “Here you are,” she said-her spoken classical Kaunian was getting better by the day, because she had to use it so much with the mage from Lagoas.

“My apologies,” he said: he also used the tongue more freely than he had when he first came to Yliharma. “I am a nuisance, a crowd all by myself.”

“You are a man who was badly hurt,” she said patiently. “You ought to thank the powers above that you have regained so much of your health.”

“I do,” he said, and then corrected himself: “Now I do. At the time, and for some time afterwards, I would have thanked them more had they let me die.”

“I can understand that,” Pekka said. “Your wounds were very painful.”

Fernao’s grin had a skeletal quality to it. “You might say so,” he replied. “In saying so, you would discover that words are not always adequate to describe the world around us.”

In classical Kaunian, the sentiment sounded noble and philosophic. Pekka wondered how much torment it concealed. A good deal, surely: Femao did not strike her as the sort of man who would exaggerate suffering for sympathy. If anything, he used a dry wit to hold sympathy at bay most of the time.

“That is true not only of things pertaining to the body,” Pekka observed. “It is also why we have the mathematics of magecraft.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Fernao said. “You are right, though-I was not thinking in mathematical terms.”

They might have gone on with the philosophical discussion, but the cab stopped then. The hackman said, “We’re here, folks. That’ll be three in silver.”

Hearing plain, ordinary Kuusaman startled Pekka. She paid the driver, collected a receipt so she’d be reimbursed, and helped Fernao out of the cab. He stared at the cottage in which Siuntio lived, at the ivy that was all but naked because of the fall chill, at the yellowing grass in front of the home. “The greatest theoretical sorcerer of the day deserves better,” he said.

“I thought the same the first time I came here,” Pekka answered. “I thought he deserved a palace grander than the Prince of Yliharma’s. But this place suits him, not least because it has room enough for all his books. As long as they are where he can get at them when he needs one or wants one in particular, he cares little about anything else.” Pekka understood that feeling; she had a large measure of it herself.

Fernao said, “I wish I could be that way. But I am too much a part of the world not to wish I had more of what it can give along with more books and more time to read them.” He smiled that dry smile once more. “What I want is more of everything, I suppose.”

Before Pekka could answer, the front door opened. Siuntio waved to Fernao and her. “Come in, come in. Welcome, welcome. Very glad you could drop by this morning,” he said, once more making classical Kaunian sound more like a living language than one maintained by scholars. “You had better hurry up. Ilmarinen got here half an hour ago, and I cannot promise how long the brandy will hold out.”

He smiled as he spoke, but Pekka wondered if he were joking. Ilmarinen liked his drink, no doubt about it. Like Fernao, he didn’t pull back from life. On the contrary-he grabbed with both hands. Pekka supposed she ought to count herself lucky that he hadn’t tried to grab her with both hands.

Fernao made his slow way toward the door. Pekka walked alongside him, ready to help if he stumbled. He didn’t; he’d had a good deal of practice on his crutches by now. Siuntio said, “Good to see the two of you, both for the work we can do together and”-he lowered his voice-”because the three of us together may have some chance of keeping Ilmarinen under control.” He stepped aside to let Pekka and Fernao move past him and into the house.

Fernao got to the end of the foyer and stopped. Pekka was behind him in the narrow entry hall, so she had to stop, too. He muttered something in Lagoan that she didn’t understand, then caught himself and went back to classical Kaunian: “Master Siuntio, you had better search me when I leave. Otherwise, I am liable to steal as much of your library as I can carry.”

Pekka giggled. “I said the same thing the first time I came here. I suspect every mage who comes here for the first time says the same thing.”

Ilmarinen walked in from the kitchen. Sure enough, he had a glass of brandy in his hand-and a raffish grin on his face. “Not me,” he said. “I kept quiet-and walked out with whatever I happened to need.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Siuntio said, which made all the mages laugh. Siuntio went on, “When I no longer have any use for these books, they will go to someone who can profit from them. Till then, I intend to hold on to them. On to all of them.” He gave Ilmarinen a severe look. Ilmarinen’s answering gaze was as serene as if he’d never named himself a thief.

“Shall we get to work?” Pekka said. “Who knows what they are doing right this minute in Algarve?”

“Murdering people.” Ilmarinen took a good-sized swig of brandy. “Same as they’re doing in Unkerlant. And do you know what’s worst?” He finished the brandy while the other sorcerers shook their heads. “What’s worst is, we don’t always wake up screaming any more when they do it. We’re getting used to it, and if that isn’t a judgment on us, curse me if I know what it is.” He stared from one mage to the next, daring them to disagree with him.

“I had not thought of it so,” Pekka said slowly, “but you may well be right. When something dreadful happens for the first time, it is a horror that lives in the memory forever. When it happens again and again, the mind grows numb. The mind has to, I think; if it did not grow numb, it would go mad.”

“We’re all mad.” Ilmarinen’s voice remained harsh.

“Mistress Pekka is right: we need to work,” Siuntio said. “If you will come with me to my study…”

The hallways were lined with books, too. Pekka asked, “Master, how hard was it to pick up everything after the Algarvians attacked Yliharma?”

“It was quite difficult and painful, my dear,” Siuntio answered. “Many volumes were damaged, and some