Out of the Darkness

The crystallomancer on duty at the hostel said not a word. Of course she’d heard everything that passed between Pekka and Juhainen, but the secrecy inherent in her craft kept her silent, as it should have done.

When Pekka went upstairs, she went to Fernao’s room, not to her own. “Well?” the Lagoan mage asked.

“Pretty well,” Pekka told him. “Prince Juhainen says he’ll see what he can do.”

“Good,” Fernao said. “If Donalitu and his flunkies will listen to anybody, they’ll listen to one of the Seven Princes of Kuusamo.” His smile, though, had the same wry edge as Juhainen’s had. “Of course, they’re Jelgavans. There’s no guarantee they will listen to anybody.”

“Ordinary Jelgavans aren’t bad. They’re just-people,” Pekka said. “I was up on the beaches of the north there once, on … on holiday.” The holiday had been her honeymoon with Leino. She felt an odd constraint-or maybe it wasn’t so odd-about talking too much with Fernao about her life with her husband.

“Their nobles, though …” Fernao’s chuckle held little mirth. “Most hidebound people in the world, bar none. They make Valmieran nobles look like levelers, and that’s not easy.”

“I hope Prince Juhainen can do something for that poor fellow,” Pekka said. “How terrible, to help his kingdom and end up in a dungeon anyhow.”

“Donalitu and his bully boys root out treason wherever they think they see it,” Fernao replied. “My guess is, they root it out whether it’s really there or not. Sooner or later, they’ll end up breeding real treason that way, whether it would have sprung up without them or not.”

“That makes more sense than what Donalitu’s doing,” Pekka said. “Leino wrote that some Jelgavans were fighting on King Mezentio’s side in spite of what Mezentio’s men were doing to Kaunians. Now that I hear what happened to this Talsu, that makes a little more sense to me.”

“Donalitu is a bad bargain, and nobody could possibly make him better,” Fernao said. “The only thing I would give him is that he’s better than Mezentio.” He sighed. “I’m not altogether sure I’d give King Swemmel even that much. He’s a son of a whore, no doubt about it-but he’s a son of a whore who’s on our side.”

“Any war that puts us on the same side as the Unkerlanters. .” Pekka shook her head. “But the Algarvians really have done worse.”

“So they have.” Fernao didn’t sound any happier about it than Pekka had. “Worse than the Unkerlanters-if that’s not bad, I don’t know what is.” He changed the subject: “Are we going to go ahead with the demonstration out in the Bothnian Ocean?”

“We certainly are,” Pekka said, also relieved to talk about something else. “That needs doing, wouldn’t you say?”

“If it works, certainly. If it doesn’t. .” Fernao shrugged. “Well, it’s certainly worth trying, the same as getting this what’s-his-name-”

“Talsu,” Pekka said.

“Talsu,” the Lagoan mage echoed. “Getting him out of the dungeon. The demonstration’s a little more important, though.”

“I should hope so,” Pekka exclaimed. “If the demonstration does what we want it to, it might even end this war.” The very words tasted strange to her. The Derlavaian War had gone on for almost six years (though Kuusamo had been in the fight for only a little more than half that time): long enough for death and devastation and disaster to seem normal, and everything else an aberration. It had cost Pekka as much as she’d feared in her worst nightmares, and, a couple of times, all but cost her life.

“When the war is over. .” Fernao didn’t sound as if he really believed in the possibility, either. “May it be soon, that’s all-and may we never have another one.”

“Powers above, make that so!” Pekka said. “Another war, starting from the beginning with everything we’ve learned during this one? With whatever else we learn afterwards, too? I don’t think there’d be anything left of the world once we got through.”

“You’re probably right,” Fernao said. “And do you know what else? If we’re stupid enough to fight another war after everything we’ve seen these past few years, we don’t deserve to live: the whole human race, I mean.”

“I don’t know that I’d go quite so far.” But then Pekka thought about it for a little while. Deliberately inflict these horrors again, with the example of the Derlavaian War still green in memory? She sighed. “On the other hand, I don’t know that I wouldn’t, either.”

Hajjaj stepped into the crystallomancers’ chamber down the hall from the foreign ministry offices in the royal palace. The crystallomancer on duty sprang to his feet and bowed. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said.

“Good day, Kawar,” Hajjaj replied. The crystallomancer beamed. Hajjaj had long since learned how important knowing and recalling the names of underlings could be. He went on, “What is the latest word from the south?”

“That depends on whose emanations you’re listening to, your Excellency,” Kawar said.

“I wouldn’t have expected anything else,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “Give me both sides, if you’d be so kind, and I expect I’ll be able to sort them out for myself.”