'No. There you are wrong,' the interrogator said. 'Give us the names of those who plotted with you and things will start looking better for you in short order. You may rest assured of that: I know whereof I speak.'
'I don't know any names,' Talsu said, as he had the first time they'd bothered questioning him. 'How could I know any names? Nobody did any plotting with me. I was all by myself- and your man got me.' He didn't try to hide the self-reproach in his voice.
'You assert, then, that your father knew nothing of your treason.'
It wasn't treason, not in Talsu's eyes. How could turning on the Algarvians be treason for a Jelgavan? It couldn't. He didn't think the constable felt that way, though, so all he said was, 'No, sir. You ask around in Skrunda. He's made more clothes for the Algarvians in town than anybody else there.'
The interrogator didn't pursue it, from which Talsu concluded he'd already asked around, and had got the same answers Talsu had given. Now he tried a new tack: 'You also assert your wife knew nothing of this.'
'Of course I do,' Talsu exclaimed in alarm he didn't try to hide. 'I never said anything about it to Gailisa. By the powers above, it's the truth.'
'And yet, she has plenty of reasons for disliking Algarvians- is that not so?' the interrogator went on. 'Is it not so that she saw an Algarvian soldier stab you before you were married?'
'Aye, that is so.' Talsu admitted what he could hardly deny. 'But I never told her about anything. If I had told her about anything, she probably would have wanted to come with me. I didn't want that to happen.'
'I see,' the Jelgavan in Algarvian service said in tones suggesting Talsu hadn't helped himself or Gailisa with that answer. 'You are not making this easy. You could, as I have said, if only you would name names.'
'I haven't got any names to give you,' Talsu said. 'The only name I know is Kugu the silversmith's, and he's been on your side all along. I can't very well get him into trouble, can I?' I would if I could, he thought.
'Perhaps we can refresh your memory,' his interrogator said. He rang a bell. A couple of more guards strode into the chamber. Without a word, they started working Talsu over. He tried to fight back, but had no luck. One against two was bad odds to begin with, and the fellows with the sticks would have intervened had he got anywhere. He didn't. The bruisers had learned their trade in a nastier school than he'd known even in the army, and learned it well. They had no trouble battering him into submission.
When the battering was done, he could hardly see out of one eye. He tasted blood, though no teeth seemed broken. One of his feet throbbed: a guard had stamped down hard on it. His ribs ached. So did his belly.
Calmly, the interrogator said, 'Now, then- who else knew that you were plotting treason against King Mainardo?'
'No one,' Talsu gasped. 'Do you want me to make up names? What good would that do you?'
'If you want to name some of your friends and neighbors, go ahead,' the interrogator said. 'We will haul them in and question them most thoroughly. Here is paper. Here is a pen. Go ahead and write.'
'But they wouldn't have done anything,' Talsu said. 'I'd just be making it up. You'd know I was just making it up.'
'Suppose you let us worry about that,' the interrogator said. 'Once you make the accusations, things will go much easier for you. We might even think about letting you go.'
'I don't understand,' Talsu said, and that was true: he had trouble understanding anything but his own pain. The Jelgavan constabulary captain didn't answer. He just steepled his fingertips and waited. So did the guards with sticks. So did the bully boys who'd beaten Talsu.
It would be so easy, Talsu thought. I could give them what they want, and then they wouldn't hurt me anymore. He started to ask the interrogator to hand him the pen and paper. What happened to the people he might name didn't seem very important. It would, after all, be happening to someone else.
But what would happen to him? Nothing? That didn't seem likely. All at once, he saw the answer with horrid clarity. If he gave the Algarvians- or rather, their watchdog here- a few names, they would want more. After he gave them a first batch, how could he refuse to give them a second, and then a third? How could he refuse them anything after that? He couldn't. Had Kugu the silversmith started by making up a few names, too? Talsu gathered himself. 'There wasn't anybody else,' he said.
They beat him again before frog-marching him back to his cell. He'd expected they would. He'd hoped his armor of virtue would make the beating hurt less. It didn't. And he didn't get the bowl of mush he'd missed when they took him away. Even so, he slept well that night.
The blizzard screamed around the hostel in the barren wilderness of southeastern Kuusamo. It left Pekka feeling trapped, almost as if she were in prison. She and her fellow mages had come here so they could experiment without anyone else but a few reindeer noticing. That made good sense; some of the things they were doing would have wrecked good-sized chunks of Yliharma or Kajaani even if they went perfectly. And if some of those experiments escaped control… Pekka's shiver had nothing to do with the ghastly weather.
But, while the blizzards raged, Pekka and her colleagues couldn't experiment at all. If the rats and rabbits they were using froze to death the instant they went out of doors in spite of the best efforts of the secondary sorcerers, they were useless. That limited the amount of work the mages could do.
When Pekka said as much over supper one evening, Ilmarinen nodded soberly. 'We should use Kaunians instead,' he declared. 'No one cares whether they live or die, after all: the Algarvians have proved as much.'
Pekka winced. So did Siuntio and Fernao. That Ilmarinen spoke in classical Kaunian to include Fernao in the conversation only made his irony more savage. After a moment, Siuntio murmured, 'If we succeed here, we'll keep the Algarvians from slaughtering more Kaunians.'
'Will we? I doubt it.' But Ilmarinen checked himself. 'Well, maybe a few, and will we also keep Swemmel of Unkerlant from slaughtering his own folk to hold back the Algarvians? Maybe a few, again. What we will do, if we're lucky, is win the war this way. It's not the same thing, and we'd be fools to pretend it is.'
'Right now, winning the war will do,' Fernao said. 'If we do not do that, nothing else matters.'
Siuntio nodded in mournful agreement. He said, 'Even if we do win the war, though, the world will never again be what it was. Too many dreadful things have happened.'
'It will be worse if we lose,' Pekka said. 'Remember Yliharma.' A sorcerous Algarvian attack had destroyed much of the capital of Kuusamo, had slain two of the Seven Princes, and had come too close to killing her and Siuntio and Ilmarinen.
'Everyone remembers wars.' Siuntio still sounded sad. 'Remembering what happened in the last one gives an excuse for fighting the next one.'
Not even Ilmarinen felt like trying to top that gloomy bit of wisdom. The mages got up from the table and went off to their own chambers as if trying to escape it. But Pekka soon discovered, as she had before, that being alone in her room was anything but an escape.
Sometimes the mages would stay in the dining hall after supper, arguing about what they had done or what they wanted to do or simply chatting. Not tonight. They drifted apart and went upstairs to their chambers as if sick of one another's company. There were times when Pekka was sick of her comrades' company, most often of Ilmarinen's, then of Fernao's, and occasionally even of Siuntio's. Tonight wasn't one of those angry times. She just didn't want to talk to anyone.
Instead, she worked on two letters side by side. One was for her husband, the other for her son. Leino would be able to read his own, of course. Her sister Elimaki, who was taking care of Uto, would surely read aloud most of the one written to him, even though he was learning his letters.
The letter to Uto went well. Pekka had no trouble writing the things any mother should say to her son. Those were easy, and flowed from her pen as easily as they flowed from her heart. She loved him, she missed him, she hoped he was being a good little boy (with Uto, often a forlorn hope). The words, the thoughts, were simple and straightforward and true.
Writing to Leino was harder. She loved him and missed him, too, missed him with an ache that sometimes made her empty bed seem the loneliest place in the world. Those things were easy enough to say, even though she knew other eyes than his would also see them: functionaries serving the Seven Princes studied all outgoing correspondence to make sure no secrets were revealed.
But she wanted to tell her husband more. She couldn't even name the mages with whom she was working, for fear that knowledge would fall into the Algarvians' hands and give them clues they shouldn't have. She had to
