Pekka considered. “I hope they both lose,” she said at last. “Unkerlant is Unkerlant, and Algarve is bent on taking vengeance on everyone who ever wronged her. As best I can tell, that means the rest of the world.”
Leino laughed, then shook his head. “That’s one of those things that would be funny if only it were funny, if you know what I mean.” He stepped aside to let Pekka get into the caravan car ahead of him.
The sun still stood high in the southwest as they walked from the caravan stop up the hill toward their house and that of Pekka’s sister. In high summer, it dipped below the horizon only very late, and briefly. Even then, no more than the brightest stars came out, for twilight would linger till it rose again early the next morning. Kuusaman poets wrote verses about the pale nights of Kajauni.
High summer did not incline Pekka toward poetry. It inclined her toward tearing her hair. Her six-year-old son was never easy to get to bed at any season of the year. With the house light at almost all hours of the day and night, getting Uto to bed turned as near impossible as made no difference.
Elimaki handed him over to Pekka and Leino with every sign of relief. Leino’s laugh was rueful; he knew what his sister-in-law’s frazzled expression meant. “The house is still standing,” he remarked, as if that were some consolation.
Some, perhaps, but not enough, not by the way Elimaki rolled her eyes. “I didn’t stuff him in the rest crate,” she said, as if that proved her extraordinary virtue. “I was tempted to, but I didn’t.”
“And we thank you for that,” Pekka said, giving Uto a glare that bounced off him like a beam from a stick off a dragon’s silvered belly.
“I don’t thank her,” Uto said. “I want to see what it’s like in there.”
“Aunt Elimaki keeps her rest crate locked when she isn’t using it for the same reason we keep ours locked when we aren’t using it,” Leino said. “The magic in there is to keep food fresh. It isn’t to keep little boys fresh.”
“Aye--you’re fresh enough already,” Pekka told her son. As if to prove her right, Uto stuck out his tongue.
Leino swatted him on the bottom, more to gain his attention than to punish him. Elimaki rolled her eyes again. She said, “He’s been like that all day long.”
“We’ll take him home now,” Pekka declared. Uto hopped off the porch and down the walk like a frog. Pekka’s knees ached just watching him. With a sigh, she turned to Leino. “Some kinds of magic haven’t got anything to do with mage-craft.” Leino considered, then solemnly nodded.
In days gone by, Cornelu had strolled through the streets of the shore town of Tirgoviste in his uniform or in tunic and kilt of the latest style and the softest linen, always perfectly pressed and pleated. He’d been proud to put himself on display, to show off who and what he was: a commander in the island kingdom’s navy.
Coming into Algarvian-occupied Tirgoviste now, he still wore his best clothes, such as they were: a much-patched sheepskin jacket over a sleeveless undertunic, with a wool kilt that had long since lost whatever shape it might once have owned. He looked like a shepherd from the inland hills down on his luck. Three days of ruddy stubble on his cheeks and chin only added to the impression. The first Algarvian soldier who saw him tossed him a coin, saying, “Here, you poor beggar, buy yourself a mug of wine.”
By his accent, he came from the far north of Algarve; Algarvian and Sibian were closely related tongues, but a real shepherd from back in the hills probably wouldn’t have understood him. But the small silverpiece carried its own meaning. Cornelu bobbed his head and mumbled, “My thanks.” Laughing, nodding, King Mezentio’s soldier went on his way, for all the world as if Tirgoviste were his own town.
Cornelu hated him for that despite his causal kindness. Cornelu hated him all the more because of his casual kindness.
A broadsheet pasted on a brick wall drew Cornelu’s eye. It showed two bare-chested, sword-swinging warriors from ancient days. One was labeled ALGARVE; the other, younger and half a head shorter, SIBIU. Below them was the legend, SIBIANS ARE AN ALGARVIC FOLK, TOO! JOIN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST UNKERLANTER barbarism! Below that, a line of smaller type added,
Fury filled Cornelu. After a moment, it leaked away. A slow smile spread over his face instead. If Mezentio’s minions were trying to get Sibians to fight for them, how many men were they losing? More than they could afford, evidently.
But men hawking news sheets did their best to tell a different story. They shouted about one Algarvian victory in Unkerlant after another. By what they said, Herborn, the biggest city in the Duchy of Grelz, was on the point of falling. Even if that proved a lie, that
