the rock-gray uniform tunic in which Garivald had always seen him in the woods. He glanced Garivald and Obilot’s way, but gave no sign of knowing who they were. After a moment, Garivald realized the two of them were silhouetted against the flames in the fireplace. He stayed where he was. Tantris bought a beaker of ale and stood at the bar drinking it.
Obilot kept her voice very low. “Is it true,” she said, “that now there are irregulars-Grelzer irregulars, I mean-fighting for the Algarvians in the lands our armies have taken back from them?”
“I’ve heard it, the same as you have,” Garivald answered. “I don’t know whether it’s true… but I’ve heard it.”
“Till that cursed Tantris walked thought the door, I wouldn’t’ve believed it,” Obilot said. “But now, do you know, I almost begin to understand.” Considering how she felt about the redheads, that was no small statement.
“A good many peasants fled east when Mezentio’s men had to retreat,” Garivald said. “I used to think they were the ones in bed with the Algarvians. I guess a lot of them were, but maybe not all.” If he hadn’t got in trouble with the redheads for his songs, his life in Zossen wouldn’t have been too very different under them from what it had been before the war. That was a judgment on Algarve and Unkerlant both, he supposed.
Obilot turned her head ever so slightly toward Tantris. “What are we going to do about him?”
“Hopehe goes away,” Garivald answered. Tantris drank his ale. He bought a chunk of chewy bread and dipped it into the bowl of coarse salt the tapman kept on the bar. Bite by bite, the bread disappeared. He washed down each bite with another swig of ale. Garivald might have done the same. He had done the same, many times.
The tavern door opened again. This newcomer, unlike Tantris, did not try to disguise what he was: a military mage. Two troopers tramped in behind him. He strode up to the tapman and snapped, “Let me see your cashbox, fellow.”
“Why should I?” the tapman asked. “Are you robbing me?”
“Why?” the mage echoed. “I’ll tell you why. Treason toKingSwemmel , that’s why.” He dropped a silver coin on the bar. It rang sweetly. “This is money of Raniero, the false king, the king of traitors. By the law of similarity, like calls to like. This foul coin calls to one in your box. Whoever harbors money of Raniero is a traitor to His Majesty.”
Garivald’s blood ran cold. The fellow behind the bar had to say no more than, I got it from him, and point, and he would find himself in more trouble than Tantris could give him. What the tapman did say was, “It’s here, under the bar.” He reached down. But what he came out with wasn’t the cashbox, but a stout bludgeon he doubtless used to break up tavern brawls. He didn’t break one up this time. With a shout, he brought the bludgeon down on the military mage’s head.
With another shout, somebody else threw his mug at one of the Unker-lanter troopers behind the mage. It shattered against the back of the soldier’s skull. He went down with a groan. Somebody shouted, “KingSwemmel!” and punched the man who’d thrown the mug. Somebody else shouted, “Powers below eatKingSwemmel!”-a shout nobody would have dared to raise before the Algarvian invasion-and kicked the fellow who’d yelled the king’s name.
In the blink of an eye, the desperate struggle between the Grelzers who’d fought for Swemmel and those who hated him broke out anew in the tavern. The weapons weren’t so fancy as those of the great war still wracking Unkerlant, but that made the battle no less ferocious. People kicked and punched and grappled and bit. Knives flashed in the firelight.
And Garivald and Obilot made their way through the chaos toward the door as best they could. He punched whoever got in his way, regardless of which side the fellow was on. “Let’s see Tantris track us throughthis” he told Obilot, who’d just kicked a man where it did the most good. A savage grin on her face, she nodded.
A jar full of potent spirits flew into the fireplace and smashed. The spirits caught fire as they splashed out. Flames clung to an overturned chair close by. “Fire!” somebody shrieked. Then everybody was fleeing-everybody who could.
Garivald and Obilot weren’t the only ones who ran not just out of the tavern but away from it as fast as they could. “We got away,” she panted. “This time,” he answered, and ran harder.
The sun rose earlier and set later these days. Before long, the equinox would come to the Naantali district. In much of the world, that would mean spring, and so it would here-formally. Pekka was from Kajaani, which lay even farther south. She knew the snow and ice wouldn’t start melting for quite a while after that.
If anything, the weather here was worse than in Kajaani, a port city that had the ocean to soften its climate. In most circumstances, Pekka would have complained about that. Not now. As she rode in the sleigh from the hostel to the blockhouse, she turned to Fernao and said, “I dread the spring thaw.”
She’d spoken Kuusaman. The Lagoan mage nodded and answered in classical Kaunian: “I understand why-all this will turn to mud, and we shall have a demon of a time moving from where we stay to where we need to go to keep on with our experiments.”
“Exactly,” Pekka said. “And we have to go on with the experiments.” That blazed in her. Next to it, nothing else mattered.
The track to the hostel curved. As the horse rounded the bend, the sleigh tilted a little. Under the fur robes that warded them against the weather, Pekka slid toward Fernao. She was very much aware of her body pressed against his for a moment, and wished she hadn’t been quite so aware of it.
It’s harmless, she told herself, not for the first time. Nothing can come of it. That wasn’t quite the same thing, even if it sounded as if it were.
After the sleigh straightened again, Pekka took an extra moment to move away from Fernao. The Lagoan mage raised an eyebrow when she finally did. His eyes were shaped like hers, but green, not dark brown. Was it the combination of strange and familiar that drew her? Or was it just that she worked closely with Fernao every day, while she’d seen Leino for one brief leave since she came to the Naantali district and her husband went off to work on Habakkuk? Whatever it was, it disconcerted her.
She almost wished Fernao would do something overt. Then she could tell him no, as forcefully as necessary, and they could readjust as needed and go on. Of course, he’d saved her life two or three times, from Algarvian sorcerous assault and from her own botched spellcasting-and, this last time, he’d hurled strong sorcery back against Mezentio’s mages. Do I really want to tell him no?
But Fernao hadn’t done anything overt, and didn’t seem likely to. Ambiguity remained. Pekka laughed. It might as well be life, she thought.
“What’s funny?” Fernao asked.
“Nothing, really,” she answered, at which he raised that eyebrow again. Ignoring it, she took her mittened hand out from under the robes to point ahead. “We are almost there,” she said in classical Kaunian.
“So we are,” Fernao agreed. He didn’t expose any part of himself but his eyes to the frigid air. “I wonder how the driver stands it up there, out in the open.”
“We of Kuusamo do not let the cold trouble us quite so much as you do,” Pekka said, which was true-but only to a degree.
When the sleigh stopped, as it did a couple of minutes later, Fernao had no choice but to come forth. The furs he wore were of Kuusaman make; he hadn’t had anything in his own wardrobe to contend against winter in the Naantali district. That wasn’t to say he hadn’t known it’s like before. He remarked, “The only difference between this place and the land of the Ice People is that the sun does come up for a little while here, even in the middle of winter.”
“Er-aye,” Pekka said. The idea that winter could get worse than it did here was horrifying all by itself.
As soon as she got inside the blockhouse, she started to sweat, and started shedding her outdoor clothes one layer at a time. Braziers and, soon, the press of bodies heated the cramped chamber in which she’d incant.
Ilmarinen and Piilis came into the blockhouse together. Ilmarinen had always shared a sleigh withMasterSiuntio, but Siuntio was dead, slain by murderous Algarvian magecraft. Now Ilmarinen rode with the younger theoretical sorcerer. Pekka didn’t know when she would stop missing Siuntio, or if she ever would. Without him, this project would never have begun, would never had gained the backing of the Seven Princes.
Alkio and Raahe came in right behind Ilmarinen and Piilis. The married couple-both solid theoretical sorcerers-were about halfway between Pekka and Ilmarinen in age. Solid, Pekka thought. Aye, they ‘re very solid. So is Piilis. Nothing wrong with their work at all. Were the three of them together a match for Siuntio? Pekka shook her
