“Aye, sir,” the driver said respectfully. Pekka didn’t think he knew who Siuntio was, but anyone who wanted to go to the fancy hostel had to be a person of more than a little consequence.
The hostel lay only a few blocks from the depot. That was true of most newer hostels, which were sensibly close to the greatest source of travelers. Older ones stood near the hill on which the palace stood and along the road west to Lagoas.
Almost as if they were so many Algarvians, the servitors at the Principality bowed and scraped and fussed over Pekka when she came into the lobby. It wasn’t because she had Siuntio walking by her side, either. To her mind, that would have been reason enough to bow and scrape and fuss. But the folk who worked at the hostel neither knew nor cared who Siuntio was. They fussed over Pekka for no better reason than that she had money. Had she been a trollop rich enough to afford the Principality, they would have treated her the same way. The idea made Pekka angry.
“Money shouldn’t count for more than quality,” she said to Siuntio.
He took her ire in stride. As best she could tell, he took everything-except occasionally Ilmarinen-in stride. “Money is easier to measure,” he replied- and what else was a working theoretical sorcerer likely to say?
Pekka stuck out her chin and looked stubborn. “Sometimes the easy measurement isn’t the important one.” She was a working theoretical sorcerer, too.
Instead of answering right away, Siuntio leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She spluttered in surprise. The old mage’s smile was saucy. “Go on upstairs. Order yourself a fancy supper the Seven Princes are paying for. Enjoy the steam room and then sluice yourself down with cold water. Some people used to think being a sorcerer meant depriving yourself of everything that made life worth living. Do you still?”
“You know better,” she answered.
“Aye, I do, for I’ve seen your home,” Siuntio said. “You have no home in Yliharma, so you’re doomed to enjoy yourself here. I’ll see you in the morning.” He turned and went out to the waiting cab. Pekka stared after him with mingled exasperation and affection. Then, seeing no other good choice, she went on upstairs and did exactly what Siuntio had suggested.
The mattress in her little suite was wider and sorter and altogether more inviting than the one she used at home. Even so, she didn’t sleep well. For one thing, she didn’t have Leino lying there beside her stealing the coverlets and doing his best to make sure she froze. For another, no matter how inviting the bed was, it was also unfamiliar. Pekka tossed and turned and laughed at herself.
After an extravagant breakfast of smoked salmon and delicate onions on rye bread, she went downstairs. Siuntio and Ilmarinen waited for her in the lobby. Siuntio looked not much different from the way he had the night before. When she saw Ilmarinen, though, her first thought was that he’d had too much to drink and was suffering on account of it.
“So you’re here to join the vultures’ feast, eh?” he said, and she realized it was fury, not a hangover, that reddened his eyes and made the wrinkles in his cheeks and on his forehead seem deeper and more eroded-looking than she’d ever seen them.
“I’m here, aye,” she said. “As for feasts, I don’t know about any except the one I just finished in my room.”
Ilmarinen rounded on Siuntio. “Powers above, you quack, didn’t you tell her?”
Siuntio shook his head. “No. I wanted her to approach the question with an open mind-which she will do now.” But, despite plainly doing his best to sound assured, he also sounded a little embarrassed.
“What didn’t you tell me, Master Siuntio?” Pekka asked sharply. “Whatever it was, I wish I’d known about it.”
Ilmarinen started to answer. Siuntio held up a hand. For a wonder, that made Ilmarinen hesitate. To Pekka, Siuntio said, “Nothing you won’t find out now: that I promise you. If you come along with this excitable fellow and me, you’ll see as much for yourself.”
He led her toward one of the meeting chambers off the main lobby. Quietly, she said, “Don’t ever keep things from me again, if you please.”
“I did what I judged best,” Siuntio answered.
“And she’s worth three of you because of it, you old fraud,” Ilmarinen growled. He wasn’t enjoying Siuntio’s discomfiture, as he would have most of the time. He was too angry for that. Pekka wondered what could have caused the rift between them, and how she’d somehow landed in the middle of it.
Siuntio opened an ornately carven door. When Pekka saw people already at the table, she expected they’d been Raahe and Alkio and Piilis, the other theoretical sorcerers on the track of the relationship between the laws of similarity and contagion. She and Siuntio and Ilmarinen had outdistanced them, but they weren’t far behind.
Instead, though, two tall men rose from their chairs and bowed to her.
Siuntio said, “Mistress Pekka, I present to you Grandmaster Pinhiero of the Lagoan Guild of Mages and his secretary, Brinco.”
“Good day, Mistress,” Pinhiero said in good, almost unaccented Kuusaman. He was in his late middle years, his hair more gray than red. Brinco, younger and plumper, contented himself with bowing again.
“Good day,” Pekka replied, automatically polite. But then she began to wonder why she and her colleagues were meeting with two of Lagoas’ leading mages. She didn’t wonder for long; the answer seemed only too obvious. Nodding to Pinhiero and Brinco, she said, “I hope you gentlemen will excuse us for a moment. We have something that wants discussing.” She stepped out of the meeting chamber. Ilmarinen seemed glad to go with her, Siuntio rather less so.
“You see?” Ilmarinen said-to Siuntio, not to her, for he went on, “She wants no part of this, either. Letting the Lagoans share what we’ve found. . It’s madness, nothing but madness.”
“Is it?” Siuntio shrugged and then shook his head. “They’re at war with Algarve no less than we are. They have skilled mages, too, and-”
Ilmarinen’s snort cut him off. “Those two? I know their work, such as it is. They’re skilled politicos, but that’s about all. And aye, Lagoas is at war with Algarve-now. What happens when Lagoas is at war with us again, as it’s liable to be one day? The Guild of Mages will use what we teach ‘em and beat us over the head with it.”
“If we do this,” Siuntio said patiently, “we shall do it with precautions. Just as we show the Lagoans what we’ve learned, so shall they be bound to share with us whatever they may discover.”
Ilmarinen threw back his head and laughed so loud, a waiter carrying a tray of smoked whitefish into another chamber stopped and stared. “Did you ever stop to think the Lagoans might cheat? If I were in their boots, I would.”
Pekka wondered if that thought had crossed Siuntio’s mind. He was such a good man himself, he might well reckon others better than they really were. But no, not this time, for he replied, “Aye, they may cheat. So may we. They may be dangerous to us in time to come. The Algarvians are dangerous to us now. Which of these carries the greater weight?”
“You know my answer,” Ilmarinen said. “Were it up to me, I’d tell Pinhiero and Brinco to go chase themselves. Remember that other mage they sent to spy on us, that Fernao? He went away with a flea in his ear, thanks to me.”
“I remember Fernao,” Pekka said. “He wrote to me, trying to find out what I was up to. I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Well, then, let’s send these buggers home, too,” Ilmarinen said. “It’s two to one against you, Siuntio. You can’t go on dickering with them by yourself- or you’d bloody well better not, anyhow.”
“I would not,” Siuntio said. “The choice of whether or not we proceed lies with Mistress Pekka, as you say. But she has not yet stated it, so you may be speaking too soon. I also note that you have not answered the question I set you: which is more important, more dangerous-what Algarve is doing now or what Lagoas may do later?”
He looked toward Pekka. So did Ilmarinen. To Siuntio, she said, “You would have had a better chance of getting me to do what you wanted if you’d talked with me about it first.”
“I suppose so,” he answered. “But then Ilmarinen would be screaming I’d seduced you. However pleasing that prospect may be, it’s not what I had in mind. Do what you think is right. You have an instinct for it. I rely on that.”
An instinct for rightness? Pekka wanted to laugh in the senior theoretical sorcerer’s face. If she had such a
