Rulers of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “Aye, Father.” Tears ran down Talsu’s face, too. “I’m home.”

  Traku all but squeezed the breath out of Talsu. Then Talsu’s father hurried to the stairway and called, “Laitsina! Ausra! Come quick!”

  “What on earth?” Talsu’s mother said. But she and his sister Ausra both hurried downstairs. They both squealed—shrieked, actually—when they saw Talsu standing there, and then smothered him in hugs and kisses. After a couple of minutes, coherent speech and coherent thought returned. Laitsina asked, “Does Gailisa know you’re free?”

  “No, Mother.” Talsu shook his head. “I came here first.”

  “All right.” Laitsina took charge, as she had a way of doing. “Ausra, go to the grocer’s and bring her back. Don’t name any names, not but loud.” She rounded on her husband. “Don’t just stand there, Traku. Run upstairs and bring down the wine.”

  “Aye.” Ausra and Traku said the same thing at the same time, as if to their commander. Ausra dashed out the door. Traku dashed up the stairs. In his army days, Talsu had had only one officer who’d got that instant obedience from his men. Poor Colonel Adomu hadn’t lasted long; the Algarvians had killed him.

  Traku came down with the wine. He poured cups for himself, his wife, and Talsu, and set the jar on the counter to wait for Ausra and Gailisa. Then he raised his own cup high. “To freedom!” he said, and drank.

  “To freedom!” Talsu echoed. But when he sipped, the red wine—made tangy in the usual Jelgavan style with the juices of limes and oranges and lemons—put him in mind of the prison and of the Jelgavan constabulary captain who’d given him all the wine he wanted to get him to denounce his friends and neighbors.

  “What finally made them let you go, son?” Traku asked.

  “You must know how they took Gailisa away,” Talsu said, and his father and mother both nodded. He went on, “They brought her to my prison and made her write out a list of names. Then they told me she’d done it, and that my names had better match hers. I knew she’d never denounce anyone who really hated Algarvians, so I wrote down people who liked them but weren’t real showy about it—you know the kind I mean. And I must have been thinking along with her, because they turned me loose.”

  “Clever lad!” Traku burst out, and hit him in the shoulder. “You can say a lot of things about my line, but we don’t raise fools.” Laitsina contented herself with kissing Talsu, which probably amounted to the same thing.

  His parents were pleased with him. They thought him a clever fellow. But what would other people in Skrunda think of him? He’d already had a taste of the answer: they’d think he’d sold himself to the redheads. Would they have anything to do with him now that he’d been released? The only ones likely to were men and women of the sort he’d named as anti-Algarvian activists. That was funny, if you looked at it the right way. It would have been even funnier if he’d wanted to have anything to do with those people.

  The problem seemed urgent … for a moment. Then the bell rang as the door opened again. There was Ausra, with Gailisa right behind her. Talsu’s wife gaped at him, then let out exactly the squeal a seven-year-old might have used at getting a new doll. She threw herself into Traku’s arms. “I don’t believe it,” she said, over and over again. “I can’t believe it.”

  Talsu had trouble believing the feel of a woman pressed against him. He’d thought his imagination and memory had held onto what that feeling was like, but he’d been wrong, wrong. “I saw you once,” he said, in between kisses.

  “Did you?” Gailisa answered. “When they took me to that horrible prison? I wondered if you would, if that was why. I didn’t see you.”

  “No, they wouldn’t let you,” Talsu said. “But I was looking out through a peephole when they took you down the hallway. And when they told me you’d written a denunciation, I had to figure out what kind of names you’d put in it so mine would match. I guess I did it right, on account of they let me go.”

  “I named all the fat, smug whoresons I could think of, is what I did,” Gailisa said.

  “Me, too,” Talsu said. “And it worked.”

  Somebody—he didn’t notice who—had brought down and filled another pair of cups. His mother gave one to Ausra; his father gave the other to Gailisa. They both drank. Gailisa turned an accusing stare on his sister. “You didn’t tell me why I had to come back here,” she said. “You just told me it was important.”

  “Well, was I right or was I wrong?” Ausra asked.

  “You were wrong, because you didn’t come close to saying enough,” Gailisa answered. “You didn’t come close.” She seized Talsu’s arm and stared up into his face in such a marked manner that at any other time he would have been embarrassed. Not now. Now he drank in the warmth of her affection like a plant long in darkness drinking in the sun.

  Not very much later, still holding him by the arm, she took him upstairs. Ausra started to follow them. Traku contrived to get in her way. In a low voice—but not quite low enough to keep Talsu from overhearing—he said, “No. Wait. Whatever you want up there, it will keep for a while.”

  Talsu’s ears got hot. His parents and his sister had to know what he and Gailisa would be doing in the little bedchamber that had been his alone before he got married. Then he shrugged. If it didn’t bother them—and it didn’t seem to—he wasn’t about to let it bother him, either.

  Gailisa closed and barred the door to the bedchamber. Then she undid the toggles on Talsu’s tunic. “How skinny you’ve got!” she said, running the palm of her hand along his ribs. “Didn’t they feed you anything?”

  “Not much,” Talsu answered. The ease with which his trousers came down proved that.

  “Don’t you worry,” Gailisa said. “I’ll take care of things. Aye, I will.” She let her hand linger for a moment, then planted it in the middle of his chest. He went over on his back onto the bed. “Stay there,” she told him, busy with the fastenings of her own clothes. Once she was out of them, Talsu stared and stared. No, memory and imagination were only shadows when set beside reality.

  She lay down beside him. Their lips met. Their hands wandered. Before long, Gailisa straddled him and impaled herself upon him. “Ohhh,” he said—one long exhalation. How could he have misremembered so much?

  “You hush,” Gailisa said. “Just let me …” And she did, slowly, carefully, lovingly. Having gone without so long, Talsu didn’t think he’d be able to last now, but she took care of that, too. When he finally did groan and shudder, it was as if he were making up for all the lost time at once. Gailisa leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers. “There,” she murmured, almost as if to a child. “Is that better?”

  “Better, aye,” he said. But he was still a young man, even if poorly fed, and his spear retained its temper. This time, he began to move, slowly at first but then with more insistence. Gailisa threw her head back. Her breath came short. So did his. She clenched him, as with a hand. He groaned again. This time, so did she.

  Sweat made their skins slide against each other as they separated. Talsu hoped for a third round, but not urgently. He caressed Gailisa, marveling all over again at how soft she was.

  A heavily laden wagon rattled by outside, turning his mind away from lovemaking and toward less delightful things. “People are going to think I sold out to the redheads,” he said.

  “They already think I did,” Gailisa answered. “Powers below eat them.”

  “Aye.” Talsu’s hand closed on her bare left breast. Somehow, talking of such things while they sprawled naked and sated was an exorcism of sorts, even if modern thaumaturgy had proved precious few demons really existed. He went on, “Do you know who betrayed me?” He waited for her to shake her head, then spoke three more words: “Kugu the silversmith.”

  “The classical Kaunian master?” Gailisa exclaimed in horror.

  “The very same fellow,” Talsu said.

  “Something ought to happen to him.” His wife spoke with great conviction.

  “Maybe something
will,” Talsu said. “But if anything does, it won’t be something anybody can blame me for.” Gailisa accepted that as naturally as if he’d said the sun rose in the east.

  Pekka lay beside Leino in the big bed where they’d spent so much happy time together. He’d be ready again pretty soon, she judged, and then they would start another round of what they’d both been too long without. “So good to be here,” her husband murmured.

  “So good to be here with you,” Pekka said.

  Leino laughed. “So good to be here at all. Compared to the land of the Ice People …” His voice trailed off. “I’ve said too much.”

  “Habakkuk,” Pekka said.

  Her husband nodded. “Aye, Habakkuk. I never should have said anything about that, either. And if I did say something about it, the censor never should have passed it But I did and he did, and now we’ve got to live with it.”

  “Fer … one of the other mages who’s working with me said the name sounded as if it came from the land of the Ice People.” Pekka didn’t want to—very strongly didn’t want to—mention Fernao’s name while she was in bed with her husband. She’d worry about what that meant, and if it meant anything, another time.

  “He was right.” If Leino noticed her hesitation, he didn’t make a big thing of it. Forbearance was one of the reasons she loved him. He sighed and went on, “I think you’ve got the more interesting job, working with people like Ilmarinen and Siuntio … . What’s the matter now?”

  “Siuntio’s dead.” Pekka knew she shouldn’t have been so startled, but she couldn’t help it. Her husband couldn’t have known. She hadn’t written about it to him; even if she had, one of the censors probably would have kept the news from getting out. The harder the time Mezentio’s men had of learning what they’d done, the better.

  “Is he?” Leino clicked his tongue between his teeth. “That’s a pity, but he wasn’t a young man to begin with.”

  “No, not dead like that.” Pekka would have staked her life that the redheads couldn’t possibly be listening to what went on in her bedchamber. “Dead in an Algarvian attack. If he hadn’t fought it off, or at least fought part of it off, the whole team might have died with him.”

  “By the powers above,” Leino said. “You never told me anything about this before. You couldn’t, could you?” Pekka shook her head. With a sigh, Leino went on, “I think I’m working on a sideshow. You’re doing what really matters.”

  “Am I? I hope so.” Pekka clung to him. She didn’t want to have to think about the work she’d finally escaped. She was more interested in thinking about the two of them, what they had been doing, and what they’d soon do again.

  But Leino couldn’t do it again quite yet. Had he been able to, he would have been stirring against her thigh. Because he couldn’t quite yet, he was interested in what Pekka had been up to. “The Algarvians must think so,” he said. “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have bothered attacking you. How did they do it? Dragons?”

  Pekka shook her head. She didn’t want to think about that, either, but the question gave her no choice. “No. Another Kaunian sacrifice. I don’t know whether they just grabbed the first however many Valmierans they saw, or if they brought Kaunians east out of Forthweg. Whichever, it was very bad.” She shuddered, recalling just how bad it had been.

  Leino held her and stroked her. She could tell he was bursting with curiosity. She’d known him a good many years now; if she couldn’t tell such things, who could? But he did his best not to let any of it show, because he knew that would bother her. And if a mage’s suppressing his curiosity wasn’t love, what was it? As much in gratitude as for any other reason, she slid down and took him in her mouth, trying to hurry things along. That wasn’t magic, but it worked as if it were. Before long, they both stopped worrying about what Habakkuk was or why Mezentio’s mages chose to assail Pekka and her colleagues.

  But lovemaking never resolved things; it only put them off for a while. After they’d gasped their way to completion, Pekka knew Leino wouldn’t be trying yet another round any time soon. That meant his thought would turn elsewhere. And sure enough, he said, “You must be working on something truly big, if the Algarvians used that spell against you.”

  “Something, aye.” Pekka still didn’t want to talk about it.

  Leino said, “They tried to use that same spell to drive us off the austral continent, you know.” Pekka nodded; she’d heard something about that. Her husband continued, “It went wrong. It went horribly wrong, and came down on their heads instead of ours and the Lagoans’. Magecraft that works fine here or on the mainland of Derlavai has a way of going wrong down in the land of the Ice People.”

  “That’s what they say.” Pekka nodded again, then laughed. “Whoever they are.” Because she found worrying about her husband’s problems easier than worrying about her own, she quickly found another question to ask: “Will that cause trouble for Habakkuk?”

  “It shouldn’t.” Leino used an extravagant gesture. “Habakkuk is … something else.” He chuckled ruefully. “I can’t talk about it, any more than you can say much about whatever it is you’re working on.”

  “I know. I understand.” Pekka wanted to tell him everything. Just for a moment, she wished Fernao were there so she could talk shop. Then she shook her hair, and had to brush hair out of her eyes. He was part of what she’d come here, come away from the project, to escape.

  “I love you,” Leino said, and Pekka reminded herself he’d come a long way to escape hard, dangerous work, too. She clung to him as he clung to her. They didn’t make love again; Leino wasn’t so young that he could do it whenever he wanted. But the feel of him pressed against her was about as good as the real thing for Pekka, especially when they’d been apart so long. She hoped holding her was as good for him, but had her doubts. Men were different that way.

  The next morning, Uto woke both of them at an improbably early hour. With Kajaani so far south, spring days lengthened quickly: the sun rose early and set late. Even so, Pekka’s sleep-gummed eyelids told just how beastly early it was. “You don’t treat Aunt Elimaki this way, do you?” she asked, wishing either for tea, which she could get, or another couple of hours’ sleep, which she wouldn’t.

  “Of course not,” her son said virtuously.

  That, as Pekka knew, might mean anything or nothing. “You’d better not,” she warned. “Aunt Elimaki is going to have a baby of her own, and she needs all the sleep she can get.”

  “She won’t get it later, that’s for sure.” Leino sounded as sandbagged as Pekka.

  “All right, Mother. All right, Father.” Uto, by contrast, might have been the soul of virtue. He patted Pekka on the arm. “Are you going to have another baby, too, Mother?”

  “I don’t think so,” Pekka answered. She and Leino smiled at each other; if she wasn’t, it was in spite of last night’s exertions. She yawned and sat up in bed, somewhat resigned to being awake. “What would the two of you like for breakfast?”

  “Anything,” Leino said before his son could speak. “Almost anything at all. Down in the land of the Ice People, I counted for a good cook, if you can believe it.”

  “I’m so sorry for you,” Pekka exclaimed. The horror of that idea was plenty to rout her out of bed and into the kitchen. She got the teakettle going, then folded fat, fresh shrimp into an omelette. Along with fried mashed turnips and bread and butter (olive oil was an imported luxury in Kuusamo, not a staple), it made a fine breakfast.

  Uto inhaled everything. He wasn’t picky in what he ate; he chose other ways to make himself difficult. Leino ate hugely, too, and put down cup after cup of tea. “That’s so much better,” he said.

  “Will you be able to sleep at all tonight?” Pekka asked him. He nodded and opened his eyes very wide, which made Uto laugh. “Oh, aye,” he said. “I won’t have any trouble. I may have to eat seal every now and again down in the land of the Ice People, but there’s plenty of tea. The Lagoans drink even more of it than we do. They say it lubricates
the brain, and I can’t argue with them.”

  “Seal?” Uto sounded horrified, but looked interested. “What does it taste like?”

  “Greasy. Fishy,” his father answered. “We eat camel, too, sometimes. That’s better, at least for a while. It sort of tastes like beef, but it’s fatter meat. The Ice People live on camel and reindeer almost all the time.”

  “Are they as ugly as everybody says?” Uto asked.

  “No,” Leino said, which obviously disappointed his son. Then he added, “They’re uglier,” and everything was right with the world as far as Uto was concerned.

  “Hurry up and get ready for school,” Pekka told him. He greeted that with moans and groans. Now that his parents were back in Kajaani, he wanted to spend as much time as he could with them. Pekka was inflexible. “You’ll be back this afternoon, and you need to learn things. Besides, you’re the one who got us up early.” That produced as many more groans as she’d thought it would, but Uto, wearing a martyred expression, eventually went out the door and headed for school.

  “Privacy,” Leino said when he was gone. “I’d almost forgotten what it means. There in the little sorcerers’ colony east of Mizpah, everybody lives in everybody else’s belt pouch all the time.”

  “It’s not quite so bad over in the Naantali district.” Pekka started to laugh. “And now we’ve both said more than we should have.”

  Leino nodded. He took keeping secrets seriously. His voice was thoughtful, musing, as he said, “The Naantali district, eh? Nothing but empty space in those parts—I can’t think of anybody who’d want to go there or need to go there—which probably makes it perfect for whatever you’re doing.” He held up a hand. “I’m not asking any questions. And even if I did, I know you couldn’t give me any answers.”

  “That’s right.” Pekka sent him a challenging stare. “Well, now that we’ve got this privacy, what shall we do with it?”