The splendor inside the Grand Hall proclaimed louder than words that the Guild of Mages had been very successful for a very long time. When Cornelu asked the first mage he saw in what he thought was Lagoan how to find Fernao, the fellow stared at him in incomprehension, then put a return question to him: “Sir, do you speak Kaunian?”
“Badly,” Cornelu answered. Scholars kept it alive to use among themselves, but he was a navy man and had forgotten most of what he’d learned. Frowning in concentration, he tried to ask the question in the classical tongue.
He was sure he’d made a hash of the grammar, but the mage didn’t criticize him. Instead, still speaking Kaunian, the Lagoan said, “I think you had better come with me.” Cornelu wasn’t sure he’d got that, but then the fellow turned and gestured, a language more universal even than Kaunian.
Instead of getting his question answered, Cornelu found himself conducted to a very impressive office with an even more impressive door, at the moment closed. Sitting in front of it, behind a desk wide as a ship’s desk, was a clever-looking man going through papers. He looked up and exchanged words in Lagoan with Cornelu’s guide. The Lagoan mage turned back and spoke in Kaunian: “Sir, this is Brinco, secretary to Grandmaster Pinhiero. He will help you.”
Cornelu bowed. “My thanks.”
He’d spoken only a couple of words, but Brinco looked alert. “Sibian?” he asked, and Cornelu nodded. Brinco switched languages, saying, “You will speak Algarvian, then,” and Cornelu nodded again. This time, so did the secretary. “Good. We can talk. I read your tongue, but can’t claim to speak it, and you have trouble with mine. What is it that you want with Fernao?”
“It does not have to be him, your Excellency--” Cornelu began.
“I am not an excellency,” Brinco said. “Grandmaster Pinhiero is an Excellency.”
“However you like,” Cornelu answered. “But Fernao and I have met each other, so I thought I could ask him how you Lagoans will keep Algarve from doing to Setubal what she did to Yliharma.”
“It is a good question,” Brinco agreed. “But Fernao is not here to answer it; he is with his Majesty’s forces on the austral continent.”
“Ah,” Cornelu said. “He was there, and came off, and now is back. I pity him. All right, sir, since I have been brought before you, I will ask you the question I would have asked him and hope to learn from your answer.”
“My answer is, we are doing everything we can, and we think it will help,” Brinco said. “And my further answer is that I have no further answer. I pray you will forgive me, sir, for pointing out that, until my distinguished colleague brought you hither, I had not had the honor of making your acquaintance, even if Fernao did mention you in the report he prepared on his return to Lagoas.”
“You do not trust me, you mean,” Cornelu said slowly.
Brinco inclined his head. “It grieves me to say that is exactly what I mean. I intend no disrespect, but I will not put my kingdoms secrets in the hands of those whose trustworthiness I know less well than I might like. Such is life in these troubled times, I fear.”
By his expression, he half expected Cornelu to take the matter further, perhaps through seconds. But the exiled Sibian officer gave back the same sort of seated bow he had received. “You make good sense, sir,” he said, to Brinco’s obvious relief. “Lagoans have a name among us for loose talk.” Lagoan women had a name for looseness, too--but, after Costache, Cornelu preferred not to dwell on that. He went on, “I am glad to see this name is not altogether deserved.”
“No, not altogether.” Brinco’s voice was dry. “We do the best we can.”
“May it be good enough,” Cornelu said. His best back home hadn’t been good enough. Now he was back in the war. For that, at least, he’d been trained.
Back in Kajaani, Pekka wished she’d never gone north to Yliharma. It wouldn’t have made any difference, of course: the Algarvians would have sorcerously assailed the capital of Kuusamo even if she hadn’t been there to try her experiment. When she thought logically, she understood that. But logic went only so far. She still had the prickles-on-the-back-of-the-neck feeling that King Mezentio’s mages had known what she was doing and timed their attack to foil her.
“That’s nonsense,” her husband said. “If they’d been after you then, they’d still be after you. They haven’t been, so they weren’t.”
Leino was calm and logical, excellent traits in a mage--and an excellent mage he was, too, of a far more practical bent than Pekka. Most of the time, his solid good sense would have reassured Pekka, as it was meant to do. Now, though, it irritated her. “I know that,” she snapped. “Up here, I know it.” She tapped her forehead. “Down here,
