Out of the Darkness

Pinhiero nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, my dear young fellow. A chap like Brinco does the work that needs doing, but that you don’t care to do. That gives me time to go out and chat with people, keep myself abreast of what’s on their minds. If you’d sooner spend your odd moments in the laboratory, no one would hold it against you.”

“Very kind of you.” Fernao meant it. He knew a grandmaster should be a man like Pinhiero, a man who enjoyed backslapping and politicking. Pinhiero had to know it, too. If he was willing to bend the unwritten rules for a theoretical sorcerer like Fernao, he badly wanted him back. Fernao sighed. “You do tempt me, sir. But the point is, I’d sooner spend my odd moments-just about all my moments-in Kajaani.”

“I’m going to be blunt with you,” Pinhiero said. “Your kingdom needs what you know. It needs every scrap of what you know, for you know more about this business than any other Lagoan mage.” He paused, frowning. “You do still reckon yourself a Lagoan, I trust?”

That hurt. Fernao didn’t try to pretend otherwise. He said, “You’d better know that I do, or I’d break this etheric connection and walk away from you. . sir. I’ve already told you, if you want to send a man to me, I will tell him and write down for him everything I know. Lagoas and Kuusamo are allies; I don’t see how the Seven could possibly object to that, and King Vitor would have every right to scream if they did.”

Pinhiero still looked unhappy. “Better than nothing,” he admitted, “but still less than I’d like. You surely know how the cleanest-seeming written instructions for a spell don’t help a mage as much as having another mage, a knowledgeable fellow, take him through the conjuration.”

“I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can.” What Fernao didn’t say was that he feared he wouldn’t be allowed to come back to Kuusamo if he went to Lagoas. As Grandmaster Pinhiero had pointed out, he knew too much.

“When the time comes, then, I will make the necessary arrangements with you,” Pinhiero said sourly. “I suppose I should congratulate you on finding love. I must say, though, that your timing and your target could have been better.”

“As for timing, you may possibly be right,” Fernao admitted. “As for whom I fell in love with-for one thing, that’s none of your business, and, for another, you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried for a year. And now I think we’ve said about everything we have to say to each other.”

Grandmaster Pinhiero bridled. He wasn’t used to having Fernao-he wasn’t used to having anybody-speak to him that way. But he wasn’t King Swemmel. He couldn’t punish Fernao for speaking his mind, especially if Fernao no longer cared about advancing through the Lagoan sorcerous hierarchy. All he could do was glare as he said, “Good day,” and cut the etheric connection.

The crystal flared, then became no more than a sphere of glass. Fernao let out another sigh, a long, heartfelt one, as he rose from the chair in front of it. Nervous sweat ran from his armpits and made the back of his tunic stick to his skin. Defying the grandmaster-essentially, declaring he was abandoning allegiance to his kingdom-didn’t, couldn’t, come easy.

When he left the chamber, he found the Kuusaman crystallomancer outside, her nose in a romance. “I’m finished,” he told her in his own language, and then wondered how he’d meant that.

He walked up to his room. A couple of mosquitoes whined in the stairwell. Outside the hostel, they swarmed in millions, so that going out for long was asking to be eaten alive. When all the ice and snow melted, they made puddles uncountable, as they did in spring and summer on the austral continent. And oh, how the mosquitoes and gnats and flies reveled in those spawning grounds!

Fernao swatted one of the buzzing bugs when it lit on the back of his wrist. The other-if there was only one other-didn’t land on him, which meant it survived. He heard more buzzes in the hall. Something there bit him. He slapped at it, but didn’t think he got it.

He was muttering to himself when he went into his chamber. Pekka sat studying a grimoire there, as engrossed as the crystallomancer had been in her book. She looked up from it with a smile, which faded when she saw how grim Fernao looked. “You didn’t have a happy time with your grandmaster, did you?” she said.

“Worse than I thought I would,” Fernao answered. “I told him he could send someone to learn what I know once I get settled in Kajaani. I think I would be foolish to go back to Setubal any time soon. For all practical purposes, I’ve walked away from my kingdom.”

Pekka put down the sorcerous text without bothering to mark her page. “You had better be quite sure you want to do that.”

He limped over to her and let his free hand, the one without the cane, rest on her shoulder. She set her hand on top of his. “I’m sure,” he answered. “It follows everything else that’s been on this ley line we’ve traveled.”

“Will it be all right? Truly?” she asked. “Can you live in Kajaani after Setubal?”