the old days, too,” Ilmarinen added. “They don’t have to go up to each captive and smite him with a sword or an axe. They can beam the victims down one after another with sticks. Ah, the modern age we live in!” His glee was savage and sardonic.
Prince Joroinen asked, “How does the power of this magic the Algarvians are using compare to the force of the new magecraft the three of you and your colleagues are investigating?”
To Pekka’s surprise, both Siuntio and Ilmarinen looked toward her. She said, “Your highness, no wood fire can burn hotter than a coal fire. We are looking at coal, or at something hotter than coal. But a large wood fire will do more harm than a small coal fire. The Algarvians have kindled the largest wood fire the world has ever seen, and the one with the foulest smoke.”
“A good figure,” Siuntio murmured. Pekka smiled her thanks.
“We summoned the Algarvian minister to Kuusamo before us yesterday,” Rustolainen said, and the rest of the princes nodded. “He denied that his kingdom has done any such thing--says it’s a lie put about by King Mezentio’s enemies. How say you?”
“Your Highness, I say Algarve has a bad conscience,” Siuntio replied. “The thing was done. They could not hide it, not from those with the senses and training to feel it. They can only pretend to innocence they no longer have.”
“They say that if anyone worked such a magic, it was the Unkerlanters, trying to hold them back,” Rustolainen said.
Pekka, Ilmarinen, and Siuntio all laughed bitter laughs. “Oh, indeed,” Ilmarinen said. “That’s why Swemmel’s troops go back in triumphant retreat, while the Algarvians advance in fear and chaos and disorder.”
“Results speak louder--and truer--than words,” Pekka agreed.
Joroinen asked, “How soon will you have your hotter fire ready to burn?”
That was more Pekka’s to answer than either of her colleagues. She said, “Your Highness, I was almost ready to make the experiment to see how the new fire would burn--or it if would burn at all--when the Algarvians . . . did what they did. We will know more after I finally do make it. How long we will need to control it, if there is anything to control, I can’t say, not yet. I’m sorry.” She looked down at the carpet. It was woven in a pattern of rushes, to imitate the rushes Kuusaman chieftains had strewn on their floors before they knew of carpets.
“The Algarvian minister may talk prettier than we do. He may talk fancier than we do,” Ilmarinen said. “But there’s one other difference you had better remember, you Seven of Kuusamo: we tell you the truth.”
As usual, Prince Rustolainen spoke for the group: “And what would you have us do?”
Siuntio took a step forward. “It must be war, your Highness,” he said. “If we let them do this without punishing them, the world will suffer because of it. Men must know they may not do such things. I say it sadly, but say it I must.”
“What of our war with Gyongyos?” Prince Parainen exclaimed. That war concerned him more intimately than any of the other princes, for his ports looked out toward the islands on which it was fought.
“Your Highness, the war with Gyongyos is a war for Kuusamo’s advantage,” Siuntio said. “The war against Algarve will be a war for the world’s advantage.”
“With Unkerlant for our partner?” Parainen raised an eyebrow, for which Pekka had trouble blaming him. He put his objections into words: “King Swemmel, I think, would sooner wreck the world than save it.”
“Doubtless he would,” Ilmarinen agreed. “But what Swemmel would do, Mezentio is doing. What has the greater weight?”
Swemmel might have taken the mage’s head for such lese majesty. Parainen bit his lips and, ever so reluctantly, nodded. Rustolainen said, “If we war against Algarve, we war without the new magic, is it not so?”
“It is so, your Highness, at least for now,” Pekka said. “It may come. I don’t know how soon it will, and I don’t know how much good it will do when it does.”
“A leap in the dark,” Parainen muttered.
“No, your Highness--a leap into the light,” Siuntio said.
“Is it?” Parainen remained unconvinced. “Swemmel will start slaughtering his own as soon as he thinks of it. Tell me I am wrong.”
