"I know," Pekka said. "I have had long talks with both of them-talks much more worried than this one." Maybe she found Kaunian distancing, too. But she added, "What if the Algarvians are also calculating-calculating and coming up with different answers?"
For effect, Fernao tried a few words of Kuusaman: "Then we're all in trouble." Pekka let out a startled laugh, then nodded. Fernao wished he could have gone on in her language, but had to drop back into classical Kaunian: "But most of their mages are busy with their murderous magic, and the rest really should get the same results we have."
"Powers above, I hope so!" Pekka exclaimed. "The energy release is dreadful enough as is, but the world could not stand having its past revised and edited."
Before Fernao could answer, someone else knocked on the door. Pekka sprang up and opened it before Fernao could start what was for him the long, slow, involved process of rising. "Oh, hello, my dear," Master Siuntio said in Kuusaman before courteously switching to classical Kaunian so Fernao could
follow: "I came to ask if our distinguished Lagoan colleague would care to join me for dinner. Now I ask you the same question as well."
"I would be delighted, sir," Fernao said, and did struggle to his feet.
"And I," Pekka agreed. "Things may look brighter once we have some food and drink inside us."
A buffet waited in the dining room. Fernao piled Kuusaman smoked salmon-as good as any in the world-on a chewy roll, and added slices of onion and of hard- cooked egg and pickled cucumber. Along with a mug of ale, that made a dinner to keep him going till suppertime. "Would you like me to carry those for you?" Pekka asked.
"If you would be so kind-the plate, anyhow," Fernao answered. "I can manage the mug. Now I have two hands, but I would need three." Till not too long before, he'd had an arm in a cast as well as a leg. Then he'd needed four hands and possessed only one.
Pekka had built a sandwich almost as formidable as his own. She did some substantial damage to it before asking Siuntio, "Master, do you think you will find any loopholes in the spells we are crafting?"
Siuntio gently shook his head. He looked more like a kindly grandfather than the leading theoretical sorcerer of his generation. "No," he said. "We have been over this ground before, you know. I see extravagant energy releases, aye, far more extravagant than we could get from any other source. But I see no way to achieve anything but that. We cannot sneak back through the holes we tear in time-and a good thing we can't, too."
"I agree," Fernao said, gulping down a large mouthful of salmon to make sure his words came clear. "On both counts, I agree."
"I don't believe even Ilmarinen will disagree on this," Siuntio said.
"Disagree on what?" Ilmarinen asked, striding into the dining hall as if naming him could conjure him up. With a wispy white chin beard, wild hair, and gleaming eyes, he might have been Siuntio's raffish brother. But he, too, was a formidable mage. "Disagree on what?" he repeated.
"On the possibility of manipulating time along with extracting energy from it," Siuntio told him.
"Well, that doesn't look like it's in the math," Ilmarinen said. "On the other hand, you never can tell." He poured himself a mug of ale and then, for good measure, another. "Now this is a proper dinner," he declared as he sat down by Fernao.
"Do you truly think the question remains unanswered?" Fernao asked him.
"You never can tell," Ilmarinen said again, probably as much to annoy Fernao as because he really believed it. "We haven't been looking all that long, and neither have the redheads-excuse me, the Algarvians." Fernao had red hair, too. Ilmarinen went on: "A good thing the Algarvians are too taken up with killing people to power their magic to look anywhere else. Aye, a very good thing." He emptied the mugs in quick succession, then went back and filled them again.
Two
A guard clattered his bludgeon against the iron bars of Talsu's cell. "Come on, you cursed traitor, get up!" the guard shouted at him. "You think this is a hostel, eh? Do you?"
"No, sir. I don't think that, sir," Talsu replied as he sprang off his cot and stood at attention beside it. He had to give a soft answer, or else the guard and maybe three or four of his comrades would swarm into the cell and use their bludgeons on him instead of on the bars. He'd got one beating for talking back. He didn't want another one.
"You'd cursed well better not," the guard snarled before stamping down the hall to waken the prisoner in the next cell after not enough sleep.
Talsu was glad when he couldn't see the ugly lout any more. The prison guard was as much a Jelgavan as he was: a blond man who wore trousers. But he served Mainardo, the younger brother King Mezentio of Algarve had installed on the Jelgavan throne, as readily as he'd ever served King Donalitu. Donalitu had fled when Jelgava fell. His dogs had stayed behind, and wagged their tails for their new masters.
Another Jelgavan came by a few minutes later. He shoved a bowl into Talsu's cell. The barley mush in the bowl smelled sour, almost nasty. Talsu spooned it up just the same. If he didn't eat what the gaolers fed him, he would have do make do on the cockroaches that swarmed across the floor of his cell or, if he was extraordinarily lucky, on the rats that got whatever the roaches missed-and got their share of roaches, too.
The cell didn't even boast a chamber pot. He pissed in a corner, hoping he was drowning some roaches as he did it. Then he went back and sat down on his cot. He had to be plainly visible when the guard collected his bowl and spoon. If he wasn't, the guard would assume he'd used the tin spoon to dig a hole through the stone floor and escape. Then he would suffer, and so would everyone else in this wing of the prison.
As always, the guard came by with a list and a pen. He scooped up the bowl and the spoon, checked them off on the list, and glared through the bars at Talsu. "Don't look so bloody innocent," he growled. "You're not. If you were, you wouldn't be here. You hear me?"
"Aye, sir. I hear you, sir," Talsu answered. If he didn't sit there looking innocent, the guards would decide he was insolent. That rated a beating, too. As best he could tell, he couldn't win.
Of course you can't win, fool, he thought. If you could, you wouldn't be stuck here. He felt like kicking himself. But how could he have guessed that the silversmith who taught classical Kaunian to would-be patriots in Skrunda was in fact an Algarvian cat's-paw? As soon as Talsu wanted to do more than learn the old language, as soon as he wanted to strike a blow against the redheads who occupied his kingdom, he' d gone to Kugu. Who was more likely to know how to put one foe of the Algarvians in touch with others? The logic was perfect-or it would have been, if Mezentio's men hadn't stayed a jump ahead.
Algarvians had caught him. They'd said he was in their hands. But they must have decided he wasn't that important, because they'd given him to their Jelgavan henchmen for disposal. Thanks to the fears of Jelgava's kings, her dungeons had been notorious even before the redheads overran the kingdom; Talsu doubted they'd improved since.
After breakfast, the Jelgavan guards retreated to the ends of the corridors. Cautiously, captives began calling back and forth from one cell to another. They were cautious for a couple of good reasons. Talk was against the rules; the
gaolers could punish them for it no matter how innocuous their words were. And if their words weren't so innocuous but did get overheard... Talsu didn't like to think about what would happen then. For the most part, he kept quiet.
His corridor's exercise period came at midmorning. One by one, the guards unlocked the cells. "Come along," their sergeant said. "Don't dawdle. Don't give us any trouble." No one seemed inclined to give them trouble: they carried sticks now, not truncheons.
Along with his fellow unfortunates, Talsu shuffled down the corridor and out into the exercise yard. There, under the watchful eyes of the guards, he walked back and forth, back and forth, for an hour. The stone walls were so high, he got not a glimpse of the outside world. He had no idea in what part of Jelgava the prison was. But he could look up and see the sky. After spending the rest of the day locked away fr
om light and air, he found that precious beyond belief.
"All right, scum-back you go," the guard sergeant said when the exercise period was over. Now Talsu stared down at the stone paving blocks so the guards couldn't see his glare. The Algarvians hadn't built this prison, or the others much like it scattered over the face of Jelgava-Jelgavan kings had done that, to keep their own subjects in line. But the redheads were perfectly willing to use the prisons-and the guards, as long as they kept their jobs, didn't care whom they were guarding, or for whom, or why.
Talsu sat back down on his cot and waited for the bowl of mush that would be dinner. It might even have a couple of bits of salt pork floating in it. Something to look forward to, he thought. The worst part of that was noticing how seriously he meant it.
But a guard strode up to the cell before dinnertime. "Talsu son of Traku?" he demanded.
"Aye, sir," Talsu said.
The guard made a check on his list. He unlocked the door and pointed a stick at Talsu's chest. "You will come with me," he said. "Interrogation."
"What about my dinner?" Talsu yelped. He really had been looking forward to it. They wouldn't save it for him. He knew that all too well. Instead of answering, the guard jerked his stick, as if to say Talsu wouldn't need to worry about dinner ever again if he didn't get moving right now. Having no choice, he got moving.
Even his interrogator was a Jelgavan, a man who wore the uniform of a constabulary captain. He did not invite Talsu to sit down. Indeed, but for his stool and those on which two armed guards perched, the room had nowhere to sit. One of the guards rose and positioned a lamp so it shone straight into Talsu's face. It was bright enough to make him blink and try to look away.
"So," the constabulary officer said. "You are another one who betrayed his lawful sovereign. What have you got to say for yourself?"
"Nothing, sir," Talsu answered. "Nothing I could say would get me out of the trouble I'm in, anyhow."
"No. There you are wrong," the interrogator said. "Give us the names of those who plotted with you and things will start looking better for you in short order. You may rest assured of that: I know whereof I speak."
"I don't know any names," Talsu said, as he had the first time they'd bothered questioning him. "How could I know any names? Nobody did any plotting with me. I
was all by myself-and your man got me." He didn't try to hide the self-reproach in his voice.
"You assert, then, that your father knew nothing of your treason."
It wasn't treason, not in Talsu's eyes. How could turning on the Algarvians be treason for a Jelgavan? It couldn't. He didn't think the constable felt that way, though, so all he said was, "No, sir. You ask around in Skrunda. He's made more clothes for the Algarvians in town than anybody else there."
The interrogator didn't pursue it, from which Talsu concluded he'd already asked around, and had got the same answers Talsu had given. Now he tried a new tack: "You also assert your wife knew nothing of this."
"Of course I do," Talsu exclaimed in alarm he didn't try to hide. "I never said anything about it to Gailisa. By the powers above, it's the truth."
"And yet, she has plenty of reasons for disliking Algarvians-is that not so?" the interrogator went on. "Is it not so that she saw an Algarvian soldier stab you before you were married?"
"Aye, that is so." Talsu admitted what he could hardly deny. "But I never told her about anything. If I had told her about anything, she probably would have wanted to come with me. I didn't want that to happen."
"I see," the Jelgavan in Algarvian service said in tones suggesting Talsu hadn't helped himself or Gailisa with that answer. "You are not making this easy. You could, as I have said, if only you would name names."
"I haven't got any names to give you," Talsu said. "The only name I know is Kugu the silversmith's, and he's been on your side all along. I can't very well get him into trouble, can I?" I would if I could, he thought.
"Perhaps we can refresh your memory," his interrogator said. He rang a bell. A couple of more guards strode into the chamber. Without a word, they started working Talsu over. He tried to fight back, but had no luck. One against two was bad odds to begin with, and the fellows with the sticks would have intervened had he got anywhere. He didn't. The bruisers had learned their trade in a nastier school than he'd known even in the army, and learned it well. They had no trouble battering him into submission.
When the battering was done, he could hardly see out of one eye. He tasted blood, though no teeth seemed broken. One of his feet throbbed: a guard had stamped down hard on it. His ribs ached. So did his belly.
Calmly, the interrogator said, "Now, then-who else knew that you were plotting treason against King Mainardo?"
"No one," Talsu gasped. "Do you want me to make up names? What good would that do you?"
"If you want to name some of your friends and neighbors, go ahead," the interrogator said. "We will haul them in and question them most thoroughly. Here is paper. Here is a pen. Go ahead and write."
"But they wouldn't have done anything," Talsu said. "I'd just be making it up. You'd know I was just making it up."
"Suppose you let us worry about that," the interrogator said. "Once you make the accusations, things will go much easier for you. We might even think about letting you go."
"I don't understand," Talsu said, and that was true: he had trouble understanding anything but his own pain. The Jelgavan constabulary captain didn't answer. He just steepled his fingertips and waited. So did the guards with sticks. So did the bully boys who'd beaten Talsu.
It would be so easy, Talsu thought. I could give them what they want, and then they wouldn't hurt me anymore. He started to ask the interrogator to hand him the pen and paper. What happened to the people he might name didn't seem very important. It would, after all, be happening to someone else.
But what would happen to him? Nothing? That didn't seem likely. All at once, he saw the answer with horrid clarity. If he gave the Algarvians-or rather, their watchdog here-a few names, they would want more. After he gave them a first batch, how could he refuse to give them a second, and then a third? How could he refuse them anything after that? He couldn't. Had Kugu the silversmith started by making up a few names, too? Talsu gathered himself. "There wasn't anybody else," he said.
They beat him again before frog-marching him back to his cell. He'd expected they would. He'd hoped his armor of virtue would make the beating hurt less. It didn't. And he didn't get the bowl of mush he'd missed when they took him away. Even so, he slept well that night.
***
The blizzard screamed around the hostel in the barren wilderness of southeastern Kuusamo. It left Pekka feeling trapped, almost as if she were in prison. She and her fellow mages had come here so they could experiment without anyone else but a few reindeer noticing. That made good sense; some of the things they were doing would have wrecked good-sized chunks of Yliharma or Kajaani even if they went perfectly. And if some of those experiments escaped control... Pekka's shiver had nothing to do with the ghastly weather.
But, while the blizzards raged, Pekka and her colleagues couldn't experiment at all. If the rats and rabbits they were using froze to death the instant they went out of doors in spite of the best efforts of the secondary sorcerers, they were useless. That limited the amount of work the mages could do.
When Pekka said as much over supper one evening, Ilmarinen nodded soberly. "We should use Kaunians instead," he declared. "No one cares whether they live or die, after all: the Algarvians have proved as much."
Pekka winced. So did Siuntio and Fernao. That Ilmarinen spoke in classical Kaunian to include Fernao in the conversation only made his irony more savage. After a moment, Siuntio murmured, "If we su cceed here, we'll keep the Algarvians from slaughtering more Kaunians."
"Will we? I doubt it." But Ilmarinen checked himself. "Well, maybe a few, and will we also keep Swemmel of Unkerlant from slaughtering his own folk to hold back the Algarvians? Maybe a few, again. What we wil
l do, if we're lucky, is win the war this way. It's not the same thing, and we'd be fools to pretend it is."
"Right now, winning the war will do," Fernao said. "If we do not do that, nothing else matters."
Siuntio nodded in mournful agreement. He said, "Even if we do win the war, though, the world will never again be what it was. Too many dreadful things have happened."
"It will be worse if we lose," Pekka said. "Remember Yliharma." A sorcerous Algarvian attack had destroyed much of the capital of Kuusamo, had slain two of the Seven Princes, and had come too close to killing her and Siuntio and Ilmarinen.
"Everyone remembers wars." Siuntio still sounded sad. "Remembering what happened in the last one gives an excuse for fighting the next one."
Not even Ilmarinen felt like trying to top that gloomy bit of wisdom. The mages got up from the table and went off to their own chambers as if trying to escape it. But Pekka soon discovered, as she had before, that being alone in her room was anything but an escape.
Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness Page 5
