stay neutral and hope for the best. Or you could pick one side or the other. If you choose the winner, you may not be devoured afterwards. If you pick the loser… well, with your landscape, you still may not be devoured afterwards. That is better luck than most kingdoms have.'
Hadadezer said, 'We have been at peace a long time. All we ask is to be let alone. But who will hear us when we ask it? No one. Not a soul. The world has become a cruel, hard place.'
'I wish I could say you were wrong, your Excellency,' Hajjaj answered sadly. 'But I fear- worse, I know- you are right. I also fear things will get worse before they get better, if they ever get better.'
'I fear the same,' the Ortaho minister said. 'You will give my king no advice?'
'I have set forth the courses he might take,' Hajjaj said. 'In propriety, I can do no more than that.'
With obvious reluctance, Hadadezer nodded. 'Very well. I understand how you might feel that way, though I would be lying if I said I did not wish you to go further. Thank you for your time and for your patience, your Excellency. I bid you good day.'
His image faded out of the crystal. Once more, though, it did not flare: the etheric connection remained intact. After a moment, Hajjaj saw Qutuz's face again. 'Were you able to listen to any of that?' the Zuwayzi foreign minister asked.
'Aye, your Excellency.' Qutuz suddenly looked anxious. 'Why? Would you rather I hadn't?'
'No, no. It doesn't matter. I doubt Marquis Balastro would kidnap you and torture you or offer you lickerish Algarvian lasses to find out what Hadadezer had to say. It's only that…' Hajjaj's voice trailed away. He was more than a little horrified to find himself on the edge of tears. 'Wasn't it the saddest thing you ever heard?'
'That it was,' his secretary said. 'Poor fellow hasn't a clue. By the way he made it sound, his king hasn't a clue, either. Not a clue in the whole kingdom, or his Excellency wouldn't have come crying to you.'
'No, none,' Hajjaj agreed. 'Ortah's been able to stay apart from the rest of Derlavai too long. Nobody there knows how to do anything else.' With seeming irrelevance, he added, 'I read an account once of an island the Valmierans- I think it was the Valmierans- found in the Great Northern Sea.'
Qutuz's eyebrows rose. 'Your Excellency?' he asked, obviously hoping Hajjaj would make himself clear.
The Zuwayzi foreign minister did his best: 'It was an uninhabited island- uninhabited by people, anyhow. It was full of birds that looked like big doves, doves the size of dogs, so big they couldn't fly. If I remember rightly, the Valmierans called them solitaires, or maybe it was Solitary Island. I haven't thought of it in years.'
'Why couldn't they fly?' Qutuz still sounded confused.
'They'd lost the need, you might say. They had no enemies there,' Hajjaj replied. 'The Ortahoin, who've lost the need to deal with their neighbors, put me in mind of them.'
'Ah.' Qutuz still didn't seem altogether clear about where his superior was going, but he found the right question to ask: 'What happened to these big birds, then?'
Hajjaj grimaced. 'They were good to eat. The Valmierans hunted them till none was left- they couldn't get away, after all. The island wasn't very big, and they couldn't fly to another one. All we know of them now, we know from a few skins and feathers in a museum in Priekule.' He paused. 'If I were you, I wouldn't tell this tale to Hadadezer.'
'I promise,' Qutuz said solemnly.
When Pekka walked into the refectory in the hostel in the Naantali district, she found Fernao fighting his way through a Kuusaman news sheet. What with the news sheet, a Kuusaman-Lagoan lexicon, and, almost incidentally, the grilled herring and scrambled eggs and hot tea in front of him, he was as busy a man with breakfast as Pekka had ever seen.
Somehow, he wasn't too busy to notice her come in. He smiled at her and waved the news sheet in the air, almost upsetting his teacup. 'Habakkuk!' he exclaimed.
'Aye, Habakkuk.' Pekka turned the word into a happy, three-syllable squeak.
'That is brilliant sorcery. Brilliant, I say.' Fernao spoke in classical Kaunian so he wouldn't have to pause and search for a word or two every sentence. 'Sawdust and ice for strengthening the landing surface the dragons use. More magecraft, drawing energy from the ley lines to keep the icebergs frozen in warm seas. Aye, brilliant. Sea fights will never be the same, now that so many dragons can be carried across the water so quickly.'
'You talk like an admiral,' Pekka said. The term literally meant general on the ocean; the ancient Kaunian Empire had been far stronger on land than at sea.
Fernao waved the news sheet again. 'I do not need to be an admiral to see what splendid magecraft went into this.' He read from the sheet: ' 'Not least because of their dominance in the air, Kuusaman and Lagoan forces had little trouble overwhelming the relatively weak Algarvian garrisons on the five main islands of Sibiu.' '
'You read that very well,' Pekka said. 'Your accent is much better than it used to be. How much did you understand?'
'Almost all- now.' Fernao tapped the lexicon. 'Not so much before I worked my way through it.'
'All right.' Pekka nodded. 'If you stay here too much longer, though, we will make a Kuusaman of you in spite of yourself.'
'Though I would have to clip my ponytail, there are probably worse fates. And I already have some of the seeming.' Fernao rested his index finger by one narrow, slanted eye to show what he meant. Those eyes argued powerfully that he did have some Kuusaman blood. Then he waved to the seat across from his at the table. 'Will you join me? You must have come here to eat, not to talk shop.'
'Nothing wrong with talking shop,' Pekka said as she did sit down. 'But you will have to move that news sheet if I am to have enough room for my breakfast.' When a serving girl came up to her, she ordered smoked salmon scrambled with eggs and her own mug of tea.
The tea arrived very quickly. She had to wait a little longer for the rest of her breakfast. As she sat chatting with Fernao, she noticed that neither of them said a word about Leino, though they both knew her husband had had a lot to do with the icebergs-turned-dragon-carriers that went by the name of Habakkuk. Fernao had praised the magecraft without praising the mages who worked it. As for her, she was proud as could be of Leino. But she didn't have much to say about him to Fernao, any more than she'd had much to say about Fernao when she went home to Leino.
But those shouldn't be inverses of each other, she thought. Before she had much chance to wonder why she'd acted as if they were, Ilmarinen came in and started raising a fuss. 'Why are we here?' he said loudly. 'What are we doing wasting our time in the middle of nowhere?'
'I do not know about you,' Fernao said, buttering a slice of dark brown bread. 'As for me, I am eating breakfast, and enjoying it, too.'
'So am I.' Pekka looked up over the rim of her mug of tea at Ilmarinen. 'Do you have anything in particular in mind that we should be doing but are not, Master? Or are you just angry at the world this morning?'
He glared at her. 'You're not my mother. You're not going to pat me on the head and tell me everything's all right and get me to go back to work like a good little boy.'
'No?' In fact, Pekka was in the habit of treating him rather as if he were Uto, but she'd never told him that. She was tempted now, just to see the look on his face. 'What would you have me do, then?'
'Leave me alone!' Ilmarinen shouted, loud enough to make everyone in the refectory, mages and servants alike, stare at him.
Fernao surged to his feet. Pekka noted that he put only a little weight on his cane. Not so long before, he couldn't have done anything without it. 'Now see here,' he began, looming over Ilmarinen.
'Sit down,' Pekka told him, her voice not sharp but flat. He looked astonished. Of course he's astonished, Pekka thought. He thinks he's helping me. She didn't look at him. She didn't repeat herself. She just waited. The Lagoan mage sank back into his seat. Pekka's gaze swung back to Ilmarinen. 'I suggest you also sit down. Have breakfast. Whatever you are upset about will still be here when you have finished. Standing around and screaming at one another is a game for mountain apes or Algarvians, not for civilized men.' She spoke in classical Kaunian, partly for Fernao's benefit, partly because it helped her sound dispassionate.
Like Fernao before him, Ilmarinen sat down before he quite seemed to realize he'd done it. Pekka waved for a serving girl. She wasn't sorry the one she got was Linna, for whom Ilmarinen still yearned. She hoped the master mage wouldn't want to make a bigger fool of himself in front of the girl. And he didn't; he ordered breakfast, much
