Through the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  When she told him, he blinked. He would have paid twice as much in Setubal. Everything was cheaper in Yliharma, but few things were so much cheaper. Seeing his surprise, she said, “My husband serves the Seven Princes. How can I enrich myself off someone who has already met the foe?”

  “I can think of plenty of people who would have no trouble whatever,” Fernao replied as he steadied himself on his crutches. “Honor is where you find it. I hope your husband stays safe.”

  He swung out to the street, pausing in the doorway to pull the hood on his tunic up over his head. A chilly drizzle was falling; on the other side of the Vaatojarvi Hills, from what Pekka said, it would be snow. As far as Fernao was concerned, rain was bad enough. Anything that made the sidewalks slippery was bad. He kept fearing he would fall. Just what I’d need: to break one leg when the other one’s finally healing.

  He planted his crutches and his good foot with great care. Kuusamans on the sidewalk gave way before him when they saw he had trouble getting around. That never would have happened in Setubal. There, anyone who couldn’t keep up with the bustling throngs was liable to get run down and trampled. He had no trouble flagging a cab. The driver helped him get inside, again more considerate than a Lagoan would have been. “Where to?” the fellow asked.

  That was another phrase Fernao had learned. “The Principality,” he replied. Grandmaster Pinhiero had grumbled about paying for his stay there, but yielded in the end. Fernao couldn’t very well impose on Ilmarinen (as far as he could tell, no one imposed on Ilmarinen) or Siuntio, and Pekka was staying at the Principality. The more he learned from the Kuusaman mages, the more he talked shop with them, the better off Lagoas would be. So he’d told the grandmaster, and he’d actually made Pinhiero believe it.

  Several hostels in Setubal might have matched the Principality, but Fernao wasn’t sure any could have beaten it. The room in which he dwelt was large and luxurious; the food, even in wartime, was outstanding; and he was convinced that at least half the people who worked in the Principality spoke better Lagoan than he did. The doorman was one of those. “Let me give you a hand, sir,” he said, and helped Fernao up the stairs to the entrance. Going along on flat ground, Fernao thought he managed pretty well. When he had to climb stairs, he was glad for any help he could get.

  Once he made it into the lobby, he flipped back the hood on his tunic and sighed with pleasure, enjoying the warmth that radiated from several coal stoves. He looked around, wondering whether any of his Kuusaman colleagues were around. He’d thought he might spot Siuntio or Ilmarinen, but didn’t—though he wouldn’t say they weren’t there till he made a trip to the bar.

  He’d taken a couple of hitching steps in that direction when someone called his name. He stopped and looked around—and there sat Pekka, not far from one of the stoves. She waved to him. “Come and join me, if you care to,” she said in classical Kaunian.

  “I would be very glad to,” he answered.

  She had a skein of dark green yarn in her lap and a length of finished green cloth into which were inserted a pair of crocheting hooks. “If I am not the worst crocheter in the world, I pity the poor woman who is,” Pekka said. “Would you care for a muffler, Master Fernao? You had better say aye, for I cannot make anything else.”

  “Aye, and thank you,” Fernao said. “If I asked you for something with sleeves, you would probably knit me to death with those things.”

  “Knitting needles are different,” Pekka said. “I knit even worse than I crochet, which is why I do not knit at all any more.” She pointed to his newly freed arm. “I leave knitting to you. And I am glad to see you are doing it well.”

  Reminded of the arm, he scratched it. “A very able lady physician named Juhani took off the cast. You Kuusamans worry less about the differences between men and women than my people do.”

  Pekka shook her head. “No, that is not so,” she answered. “We worry less about differences in what men and women do than most other folk. We know there are differences between men and women.” She smiled. “If there were not, the world would have ended a long time ago, or at least our place in it.”

  “That is true enough.” Fernao smiled, too.

  Pekka rolled her eyes. “I wonder what my son is doing now, down in Kajaani. Something to drive my sister mad, I have no doubt. And, speaking of the differences between men and women, I never behaved that way when I was seven years old.”

  “No?” Fernao’s chuckle threatened to become a belly laugh. “Would your mother and father say the same thing about you?”

  “I hope so!” Pekka exclaimed. “Their hair is still almost altogether dark. Mine, I think, will be white as snow by the time Uto grows to manhood.”

  Fernao ran a hand through his own coppery hair, which was just beginning to be frosted with gray. “I have no children,” he said. “If my hair turns white overnight, it may be on account of what you Kuusamans have come up with.”

  “That might do it to me, too.” Before saying anything more, Pekka looked around to see if anyone might be listening. So did Fernao. He spotted no one close by. Pekka couldn’t have, either, but she went on, “I mislike speaking of this in public. Shall we talk further in my rooms?”

  To a Lagoan, that might have been an invitation of one sort or an invitation of another sort altogether. Fernao asked, “What would your husband say if he heard you asking me there?”

  “He would say that he trusted me,” Pekka answered. “He would also say that he had reason to trust me. I presume you would not try to prove him wrong?”

  “Now that you have spoken so, of course not,” Fernao said. “But I did wonder. Customs differ from one kingdom to another.”

  “So they do. But I am telling you how things are here.”

  “I said all right once,” Fernao replied, not sure whether to be annoyed or amused. “If you do not believe me, take back the invitation.”

  “If I did not believe you, Master Fernao, I would do more than take back the invitation.” Pekka sounded sterner than he’d thought she could. “I would do everything I could to have you sent back to Setubal. And I think I could do it.” Her smile had iron in it—no, she wasn’t a woman of the sort Fernao was used to dealing with. She got up. “But now, if you will come with me, we can go up to my rooms—and talk of business.”

  Where Pinhiero grumbled about paying the price of a room at the Principality, the Seven Princes had installed Pekka in a suite far larger than the flat Fernao called his own back in Setubal. He said, “With all this, why did you bother coming down to the lobby at all?”

  “I get lonely, in here with nothing to look at but the walls,” Pekka answered. “I would rather see open country, as I do out behind my house down in Kajaani, but even the lobby and the street are better than . . . walls.”

  Fernao thought nothing of looking at the walls of his own flat for days on end. Hostel lobbies and city streets were his natural habitat, as was true of any native of Setubal. As for open country, he’d seen more than he’d ever wanted in the land of the Ice People. The only thing he could say about it was that he hadn’t quite died there.

  He didn’t want to say anything at all about the land of the Ice People. Instead, he did talk of business: “If the implications of your experiments are what they seem to be, as Ilmarinen says—”

  “Even if they are, I do not think we can exploit them,” Pekka said, and now she sounded even more angry than she had when she’d warned what she would do if she didn’t trust him. “I do not think memory can be conserved; I am not at all convinced physical existence can be conserved. The amount of energy released inclines me to doubt it.”

  “How could we make an experiment to test that?” Fernao asked.

  “Do we not have more obviously urgent things to do?” Pekka returned.

  “More obvious? Certainly,” Fernao said. “More urgent? I do not know. Do you?” After a bit of thought, Pekka shook her head. She was honest. Maybe that was why she insisted on honesty from him.

&n
bsp; Algarvian soldiers guarded King Gainibu’s palace these days, as they had for more than two years. Seeing redheads in kilts there still irked Krasta. Turning to Colonel Lurcanio in the carriage they shared, she said, “You should have left the king an honor guard of his own people.”

  “I?” Her Algarvian lover spread his hands. He had fine hands—an artist’s hands, or a surgeon’s, with long, slim fingers—and was vain of them. “My sweet, it was not my decision that put them there; it was Grand Duke Ivone’s, or perhaps King Mezentio’s. You may take your complaint to either one of them, and I wish you joy of it.”

  “You’re making fun of me!” Krasta said shrilly.

  “No, only of your silly idea,” Lurcanio answered. Most Algarvians were excitable. He was often excitable himself. Tonight, he stayed calm, probably because that annoyed Krasta more. He went on, “Do you not see that a Valmieran honor guard might easily decide its honor lay in rebellion? That would be a nuisance to us, and unfortunate for King Gainibu.”

  As far as Krasta was concerned, Gainibu was already unfortunate: a prisoner in his own palace, with nothing better to do than drink till the fact of imprisonment blurred along with everything else. But, after a moment, she realized exactly what Lurcanio meant. “You’d kill him!”

  “I?” This time, Lurcanio shook his head. “My countrymen? It could be. Mezentio’s brother is King of Jelgava. His first cousin is King of Grelz. I am sure he has some other near kinsman who could do duty as King of Valmiera.”

  “Of all the nerve!” Krasta exclaimed. Lurcanio only smiled. He might not be so reliably excitable as some of his countrymen, but he had the full measure of Algarvian arrogance. Krasta wanted to slap him. But he would slap her back, and he wouldn’t care that he did it in public. She cursed quietly, but held still.

  One of the Algarvian guards approached the carriage and called a soft challenge in his own language. Lurcanio’s driver responded, also in Algarvian. Krasta heard Lurcanio’s name and her own, but understood nothing of what the driver said. The guard laughed and withdrew. Lurcanio also laughed under his breath. Krasta looked daggers at him, but to no avail.

  Agile despite his years, Lurcanio descended from the carriage and held out his hand to help Krasta down. “Step carefully, my dear,” he said. “You would not want to trip on the cobbles in the darkness and turn your pretty ankle.”

  “No, I certainly wouldn’t.” Krasta’s voice was testy. “If you’d beaten the Lagoans by now, I wouldn’t have to fumble around in the dark. You could let lights shine without drawing dragons.”

  “Once we settle Unkerlant, you may rest assured that Lagoas is next on the list,” Lurcanio said. The statement would have been more impressive had he not chosen that moment to stumble. He almost fell, but caught himself by flailing his arms.

  Krasta didn’t laugh. Colonel Lurcanio, she’d learned, was as touchy about his dignity as a cat. She did say, “I wish Lagoas didn’t have to wait.”

  “We had . . . plans for Setubal. They did not work out quite as we would have wished.” Lurcanio shrugged. “Such is life.”

  Something in his voice warned Krasta against asking questions about what sort of plans the Algarvians had had. Plans like the ones my brother wrote about? she wondered. She didn’t want to believe that. If what Skarnu had written was true, she walked arm in arm with a murderer, or at least with an acquiescing accomplice to his kingdom’s murders.

  One thing, at least: Lurcanio hadn’t asked her any questions lately about her brother. And, though he’d left the mansion two or three times in the past few weeks, he’d always come back on the grumpy side. That told her he hadn’t caught Skarnu—if he’d gone out hunting her brother. It also told him he hadn’t caught some young, pretty Valmieran commoner, which relieved her nearly as much.

  Once they’d passed into the palace through doors and curtains, Krasta paused and blinked till she got used to the explosion of light within. Beside her, Lurcanio was doing the same thing. With a wry chuckle, he said, “The lamps in this palace were made for happier, safer times, I fear.”

  “Well, then, Algarve should go on and win the war—I’ve told you that already,” Krasta said. “That would bring back the good times—some of them, anyhow.” Things wouldn’t be so good as they had been if the Algarvians kept on occupying Valmiera, but Krasta didn’t know what she could do about that.

  “Aye, you have told me that.” Lurcanio’s voice was sour. “What you have not told me is exactly how to gain the victory. That would be helpful, you know.”

  When the war was young, before Valmiera was overrun, Krasta had come to the palace to present her ideas on winning the war to King Gainibu’s soldiers. They hadn’t listened to her, and what had their failure to listen got them? Only defeat. She wasn’t shy about speaking her mind to Lurcanio now: “The first thing you ought to do is quit fighting over that stupid Sulingen place. Powers above, how long can a battle for one worthless Unkerlanter city go on, anyhow?”

  “Sulingen is not worthless. Sulingen is far from worthless,” Lurcanio answered. “And the battle shall go on until we have won the victory we deserve.”

  “Sounds like foolishness to me,” Krasta said with a sniff. Having delivered her pronouncement, she stalked down the hall with her nose in the air. Lurcanio had to hurry after her, and couldn’t give her any more of his cynical retorts. She didn’t miss them; she’d already heard too many of that sort.

  With her nose in the air, she got the chance to appreciate the ornate paintings on the ceiling of the hallway. Some looked back to the time of the Kaunian Empire; others showed Kings of Valmiera and their courts from the days when her kingdom was strong and the Algarvians to the west weak and disunited. Those days were gone now, worse luck. The paintings, though, were only to be properly seen with one’s nose in the air. To Krasta, that in itself justified the aristocratic attitude.

  A Valmieran functionary checked her name and Lurcanio’s off the list of guests for King Gainibu’s reception. That cheered Krasta; at her previous visit, a redhead had done the job. But, before she could twit Lurcanio about this tiny sign of Valmieran autonomy, an Algarvian came up to check what her countryman had done. Again, she kept quiet.

  She’d been in this hall many times, including the evening when Gainibu, along with representatives from Jelgava and Sibiu and Forthweg, declared war on King Mezentio. And now the Algarvians occupied all those kingdoms, and only lands that had stayed neutral then still carried on the fight. A lesson lurked there somewhere, but Krasta could not find it.

  She and Lurcanio got into the receiving line that snaked toward King Gainibu—and toward the Algarvian soldiers and pen-pushers who really ran Valmiera these days. Lurcanio said, “We must be early—his Majesty is hardly even weaving yet.”

  That was cruel, which didn’t make it wrong. From even a little distance, Gainibu looked every inch a king: tall, erect, handsome, the chest of his tunic glittering with decorations—most of which were earned in the Six Years’ War, not honorary. Only when Krasta got closer did she note the glass of brandy in his left hand and the broken veins in his nose and eyes that said it was not the first such glass, nor the hundred and first, either. She’d seen the king far deeper into the bottle than this. Here, now, he still showed traces of the man he’d once been. That wouldn’t last through too many more brandies.

  “Marchioness Krasta,” the king said. Aye, he was better than usual—he didn’t always remember who she was. Gainibu turned his watery—or spirituous—gaze on Lurcanio. “And the marchioness’ friend.”

  “Your Majesty,” Krasta and Lurcanio murmured together. Krasta sounded respectful, as a subject should. Lurcanio sounded aggrieved: the king hadn’t bothered remembering his name.

  He got some of his own back by chatting in Algarvian with the redheads who really ran Valmiera. Since he was ignoring her, Krasta ignored him, too. She turned back to Gainibu and said, “There will be better days, your Majesty.”

  “Will there?” The king—the king who didn’t
even rule in his own palace any more—knocked back his brandy and signaled for another one. It arrived almost at once. He knocked it back, too. For a moment, his features went blank and slack, as if he’d forgotten everything but the sweet fire in his throat. But then he came at least partway back to himself. “The powers above grant that you be right, milady. But I would not hold my breath waiting for them.” As he had a moment before, he waved for a fresh glass.

  Krasta left Lurcanio and made a beeline for the bar. Tears stung her eyes. She tossed her head so no one would see them. The servitor asked, “How may I serve you, milady?”

  He didn’t know she was a noblewoman. Plenty of Algarvians had brought commoners into the palace; with them, flesh counted for more than blood. But he took no chances, either. Krasta said, “Brandy with wormwood.”

  “Aye, milady.” The barman gave her what she wanted. That was what he was for.

  Lurcanio came up behind Krasta and asked for red wine. When he saw the greenish spirit in her glass, he said, “Try not to drink yourself into a stupor this evening, if you would be so kind. You do not show your loyalty to your king by imitating him.”

  “I’ll do as I please,” Krasta said. Since she was a child, she’d done exactly that—till Lurcanio forced his way into her life.

  “You may do as you please,” he said now, “so long as you also please me. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

  She turned her back. “I shall do as I please,” she repeated. “If that doesn’t suit you, go away.”

  She thought he would tell her to enjoy her walk home, or something of the sort. Instead, he spoke in tones so reasonable, they startled her: “Because your king has become a sorry sot, do you have to as well?”

  “You made him into a sorry sot.” Krasta pointed at Lurcanio, as if to say he’d done it personally. “He wasn’t like that before the war.”