No sooner had that thought crossed Skarnu’s mind than Valnu said, “You know, it’s possible you’re being too hard on your poor sister.”
“And it’s possible we’re not, too,” Merkela snapped before Skarnu could answer. “That cursed redhead was hard whenever he was alone with her, wasn’t he?”
“Lurcanio? No doubt he was,” Valnu replied. The bow he gave Merkela was distinctly mocking. “And you’re learning cattiness fast. You’ll make a splendid noblewoman, no doubt about it.” He grinned. She spluttered. He went on, “But I still mean what I said. Krasta held my life in the hollow of her hand. She knew what I was, knew without the tiniest fragment of doubt after the late, unlamented Count Amatu met his untimely demise after dining at her mansion. Yet even if she did know, neither Lurcanio nor any of the other redheads learned of it from her. More: she helped make them believe I was harmless. So I beg both of you, do have such patience with her as you can.”
He sounded unwontedly serious. Merkela’s eyes blazed. Getting her to change her mind once she’d made it up was always hard. Skarnu said, “We have a while to think about it. Her baby’s not due for another couple of months. If it looks like you--”
“It will be the handsomest--or loveliest, depending--child ever born,” Valnu broke in.
“If it’s a little sandy-haired bastard, though ...” Merkela’s voice was as cold as the winter winds that blew up from the land of the Ice People.
“Even then,” Valnu said. “There’s a difference between going to bed with someone for love and doing it from . . . expediency, shall we say?” By his tone, he was intimately acquainted with every inch of that debatable ground.
But he didn’t persuade Merkela. “I know how far I will go,” she said. “I know how far everybody else will go, too.” She didn’t quite turn her back on Valnu, but she might as well have.
And Skarnu thought she was likely to be right. In a newly freed Valmiera where everyone was doing his best to pretend no one had ever collaborated with Mezentio’s men, bearing a half-Algarvian child would not be tolerated. The only reason Bauska had had as little trouble over Brindza as she’d had was that her bastard daughter seldom left the mansion. A servant and her child could hope to remain obscure. A marchioness? Skarnu doubted it.
“A pity,” Valnu murmured.
“How much pity did the Algarvians ever show us?” Merkela said. “How much did they show anyone of Kaunian blood? Did you ever meet any of the Kaunians from Forthweg who got away from them? You wouldn’t talk of pity if you had.”
Valnu sighed. “There is some truth in what you say, milady. Some, I have never denied it. Whether there is quite so much as you think.. .”
Merkela took a deep, angry breath. Skarnu didn’t want to see a quarrel--no, more likely a brawl--erupt. Maybe that was the disease of responsibility, as Valnu had said. Whatever it was, he had to move quickly--and delicately. Calming Merkela when her temper was high had the same potential for disaster as trying to keep an egg from bursting after its first spell somehow failed. Mistakes could have spectacularly disastrous consequences.
Here, though, he thought he had the answer. He said, “Shall we set our wedding day for about the time when Krasta’s baby is due? Whatever happens then, we’ll upstage her.”
That distracted Merkela, as he’d hoped. She nodded and said, “Aye, why not?” But she wasn’t completely distracted, for she added, “It will also help quiet the scandal if she does have a little redheaded bastard.”
“Maybe some,” said Skarnu, who’d hoped she wouldn’t think of that.
Merkela’s frown was thoughtful now, not angry--or not so angry. “As far as Krasta’s concerned, we shouldn’t muffle the scandal. We should shout it. As far as you’re concerned, though--”
“As far as the whole family is concerned,” Skarnu broke in. “Whoever that baby’s father is, it’s first cousin to little Gedominu, you know.”
His fiancée plainly hadn’t thought of that. Neither had Skarnu, till this moment. “They’ll have to live with it all their lives, won’t they?” Merkela murmured. Skarnu nodded. A bit later, and more than a bit reluctantly, so did she. “All right. Let it be as you say.”
“Do invite me,” Valnu cooed. “After all, I may be an uncle.”
Merkela hadn’t thought of that, either. Skarnu said, “We wouldn’t think of doing anything else. We’ll need someone to pinch the bridesmaids--and maybe the groomsmen, too.”
“You flatter me outrageously,” Valnu said. And then, pouring oil on the fire, he asked, “And will you invite the aunt, too?”
Skarnu wanted to hit him with something. But Merkela merely sounded matter-of-fact as she answered, “She wouldn’t come anyhow. I’m only a peasant. I don’t belong. I could be a traitor, so long as I had blue blood. That wouldn’t matter. But a farm girl in the family ...”
“Is the best thing that ever happened to me.” Skarnu slipped his arm around her waist.
Valnu said, “Nobles wouldn’t be nobles if we didn’t fret about such things. It could be worse, though. It could be Jelgava. Jelgavan nobles make ours look like shopkeepers, the way they go on about the glory and purity of their blood.”
With a certain venomous satisfaction, Merkela said, “It didn’t keep their noblewomen from lying down for the redheads, did it?”
“Well, no.” Valnu wagged a finger at her. “You’re almost as radical as an Unkerknter, aren’t you? When Swemmel’s nobles turned out not to like him, he just went and killed most of them.”
“And the Unkerlanters threw Algarve back,” Merkela replied. “What do you suppose that says, your Excellency?” She used the title with sardonic relish. Valnu, for once, had no comeback ready.
Five
When people spoke of walking on eggs, they commonly meant the kind hens or ducks or geese laid. These days, Fernao felt as if he were walking on the sort egg-tossers flung and dragons dropped. Anything he said, anything he did, might lead to spectacular disaster with the woman he loved.
And even if I don’t do anything, I can be in trouble, he thought. If he left Pekka alone, she was liable to decide he was cold and standoffish. If he pursued her, she might decide he didn’t care about anything but getting between her legs. When word first came back that Leino had died, he’d wondered if he really ought to be sorry. After all, her husband, his own rival, was gone now. Didn’t that leave Pekka all to him?
Maybe it did. On the other hand, maybe it didn’t. He hadn’t realized how guilty she would feel because she’d been in his chamber, because they’d just finished making love, when she got summoned to learn of Leino’s death. If she’d been somewhere else, if she’d never touched him at all, that wouldn’t have changed a thing up in Jelgava. Rationally, logically, anyone could see as much. But how much had logic ever had to do with what went on in people’s hearts? Not much, and Fernao knew it.
In the cramped hostel, he couldn’t have avoided Pekka even had he wanted to. Everyone gathered in the refectory. He felt eyes on him whenever he went in there. Powers above be praised that Ilmarinen’s in Jelgava, went through his mind once--actually, rather more than once. If anybody could be relied upon to start bursting the eggs under one’s metaphorical feet, Umarinen was the man.
Pekka didn’t automatically come sit by him, as she had before the Algarvians killed Leino. But she didn’t go out of her way to avoid him, either, which was some solace, if not much. One evening about a month after the news got back to the Naantali district, she did sit down next to him.
“Hello,” he said carefully. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” Pekka answered, to which he could only nod. When a serving girl came up and asked her what she wanted, she ordered a reindeer cutlet, parsnips in a reindeer-milk cheese sauce, and a lingonberry tart. The girl nodded and briskly walked away toward the kitchen as if the request were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Fernao couldn’t take it in stride. To a Lagoan, especially to a Lagoan from sophisticated Setubal, it
seemed a cliché come to life. He didn’t smile the way he wanted to, but he did say, “How . . . very Kuusaman.”
“So it is,” Pekka answered. “So I am.” The implication was, What are you going to do about it?
“I know,” Fernao said gently. “I like what you are. I have for quite a while now, you know.”
Pekka tossed her head like a unicorn bedeviled by gnats. “This isn’t the best time, you know,” she said.
“I’m not going to push myself on you,” he said, and paused while his serving girl set his supper before him: mutton and peas and carrots, a meal he could easily have eaten back in Lagoas. He sipped from the mug of ale that went with it, then added, “I think we do need to talk, though.”
“Do you?” Pekka said bleakly.
Fernao nodded. His ponytail brushed the back of his neck. “We ought to think about where we’re going.”
“Or if we’re going anywhere,” Pekka said.
“Or if we’re going anywhere,” Fernao agreed, doing his best to keep his voice steady. “We probably won’t decide anything, not so it stays decided, but we should talk. Come back to my room with me after supper. Please.”
The glance she turned on him was half alarm, half rueful amusement. “Every time you ask me to go to your room with you, something dreadful happens.”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Fernao said. The first time he’d asked her to his chamber, it had been to put rumors to rest. He hadn’t intended to make love with her, or, he was sure, she with him. They’d surprised each other; Pekka had dismayed herself, and spent months afterwards doing her best to pretend it hadn’t happened or, at most, to make it into a one-time accident.
“I know you wouldn’t,” she said now. “That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right.”
“It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong, either,” Fernao answered. “Please.” He didn’t want to sound as if he were begging. That didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t, though.
Before Pekka said anything, her supper arrived. Then she sent the serving girl back for a mug of ale like his. Only after she’d drunk from it did she nod. “All right, Fernao. You’re right, I suppose: we should talk. But I don’t know how much there is for us to say to each other.”
“We’d better find out, then,” he said, hoping neither his voice nor his face gave away the raw fear he felt. Pekka nodded as if she saw nothing wrong, so perhaps they didn’t.
Fernao wanted to shovel food into his mouth, to be able to leave the refectory as soon as he could. Pekka took her time. She seemed to Fernao to be deliberately dawdling, but he doubted she was. He was nervous enough to feel as if time were crawling on hands and knees--and that quite without sorcerous intervention. But at last Pekka set down her empty mug and got up. “Let’s go,” she said, as if they were heading into battle. Fernao hoped it wouldn’t be anything so grim, but had to admit to himself that he wasn’t sure.
He opened the door to his room, stood aside to let her go in ahead of him, then shut the door again and barred it. Pekka raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. She sat on the chamber’s one chair. Fernao limped over to the bed and eased himself down onto it. He leaned his cane against the mattress.
His face must have shown the pain he always felt going from standing to sitting or the other way round, for Pekka asked, “How’s your leg?”
“About the same as usual,” he answered. “The healers are a little surprised it’s done as well as it has, but they don’t expect it to get any better than this. I can use it, and it hurts.” He shrugged. Better than getting killed, he almost said, but thought better of that before the words passed his lips.
“I’m glad it’s no worse,” Pekka said. “You did look like it was bothering you.” She fidgeted, something he’d rarely seen her do. This isn’t easy for her, either, Fernao reminded himself. She took a deep breath. “Go on, then. Say your say.”
“Thank you.” Fernao found he needed a deep breath, too. “I don’t know what you would have done--what we would have done--if your husband had lived.”
Pekka nodded shakily. “I don’t, either,” she said. “But things are different now. You must see that.”
“I do,” Fernao agreed. “But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, and you need to know it. I still love you, and I’ll still do anything I can for you, and I still want us to stay together for as long as you can put up with me.” And Leino is dead, and that might make things easier. Before he died, I never thought it might make things harder.
“I do know that,” Pekka said, and then, “I’m not sure you understand everything that goes with it. You want us to stay together, aye. How do you feel about raising up another man’s son?”
In truth, Fernao hadn’t thought much about Uto. Up till now a confirmed bachelor, he had a way of thinking about children in the abstract when he thought about them at all--which wasn’t that often. But Uto was no abstraction, not to Pekka. He was flesh of her flesh, probably the most important thing in the world to her right now. More important than I am? Fernao asked himself. The answer formed in his mind almost as fast as the question. He’s much more important than you are, and you‘d better remember it.
“I don’t know that much about children,” Fernao said slowly, “but I’d do my best. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
She studied him, then nodded again, this time in measured approval. “One of the things you might have told me was that you didn’t want to have anything to do with my son. That’s what a lot of men tell women with children.”
Fernao shrugged, more than a little uncomfortably. He understood that point of view. He would have taken it himself with a lot of women. With Pekka ... If he wanted to stay with her, he had to take everything that was part of her. And ... In musing tones, he said, “If we had a baby, I wonder what it would look like.”
Pekka blinked. Her voice very low, she answered, “I’ve wondered the same thing a few times. I didn’t know you had. Sometimes a woman thinks a man only cares about getting her into bed, not about what might happen afterwards.”
“Sometimes that is all a man cares about.” Remembering some of the things that had happened in his own past, Fernao didn’t see how he could deny it. But he went on, “Sometimes, but not always.”
“I see that,” Pekka said. “Thank you. It’s... a compliment, I suppose. It gives me more to think about.”
“I love you. You’d better think about that, too,” Fernao said.
“I know. I do think about it,” Pekka answered. “I have to think about all the things it means. I have to think about all the things it might not mean, too. You’ve helped clear up some of that.”
“Good,” Fernao said. You don’t say you love me, he thought. I can see why you don’t, but oh, I wish you would.
What Pekka did say was, “You’re a brave man--powers above know that’s true. And you’re a solid mage. Better than a solid mage, in fact; I’ve seen that working with you. There are times I think I never should have gone to bed with you in the first place, but you always made me happy when I did.”
“We aim to please,” Fernao said with a crooked smile.
“You aim well,” Pekka said. “Does all that add up to love? It might. I thought it did before . . . before Leino died, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. But that’s turned everything upside down.”
“I know.” Fernao kept the smile on his face. It wasn’t easy.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Pekka smiled, too, ruefully. “Usually, the busier I am, the happier I am. When I’m doing things, I haven’t got time to think. And I don’t much want to think right now.”
“That makes sense,” Fernao agreed. He heaved himself to his feet without using the cane. That hurt, but he managed. He managed the couple of steps he needed to get over to the chair, too. Getting down beside it hurt more than standing up had, but he ignored the pain with the practice of a man who’d known much worse. “But there’s happy and then there’s happy, if you know what
I mean.” To make sure she knew what he meant, he kissed her.
It was, he knew, a gamble. If Pekka wasn’t ready, or if she thought he cared about nothing but bedding her, he wouldn’t do himself any good. At first, she just let the kiss happen, without really responding to it. But then, with what sounded like a small surprised noise down deep in her throat, she kissed him, too.
When their lips separated--Fernao didn’t push the kiss as far as he might have, as far as he wanted to--Pekka said, “You don’t make things easy, do you?”
“I try not to,” Fernao answered.
“You’ve succeeded. And I’d better go.” Pekka rose, then stooped to help Fernao up and gave him his cane. He wasn’t embarrassed for the aid; he needed it. Even as Pekka unbarred the door and left, Fernao nodded to himself with more hope than he’d known for some little while.
“What sort of delegation?” Hajjaj asked, thinking he’d misheard. His ears weren’t all they’d once been, and he was unhappily aware of it.
But Qutuz repeated himself: “A delegation from the Kaunian refugees from Forthweg who have settled around Najran, your Excellency. Three of them are out in the corridor. Will you receive them, or shall I send them away?”
“I’ll talk with them,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “I have no idea how much I’ll be able to do for them--I can’t do much for Zuwayzin these days--but I’ll talk with them.”
“Very well, your Excellency.” Qutuz made an excellent secretary. He gave no sign of his own approval or disapproval. He got his master’s instructions and acted on them--in this case by going out into the corridor and bringing the Kaunians back into the office with him.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Hajjaj said in classical Kaunian when they came in. He read the language of scholarship and sorcery as readily as Zuwayzi, but was less fluent speaking it.
Out of the Darkness Page 16
