Out of the Darkness

“If things didn’t happen here, I never would have started working with the Kuusamans in the first place,” Fernao pointed out. Grandmaster Pinhiero scowled at him. I don’t have to take his orders any more, or even listen to his complaints, Fernao thought. He turned away from Pinhiero just in time to see Pekka drop to one knee before a Kuusaman younger than she was. But her folk only do that for. . Fernao needed no more than half the thought before leaning on his cane to bow very low himself. “Your Highness,” he murmured.

“As you were, both of you,” Prince Juhainen said. Pekka rose; Fernao straightened. The prince went on, “Powers above grant that you spend many happy years together.”

“Thank you very much, your Highness,” Fernao and Pekka said together. They smiled at each other. Juhainen smiled, too, and moved on toward the reception inside Elimaki’s house. In a low voice, Fernao said, “Well, sweetheart, if you have any kin who haven’t been giving you enough respect, one of the Seven Princes at your wedding ought to do the job.”

“I don’t know,” Pekka said. “People like that would complain because I didn’t have two or three of the Seven down here.”

Eventually, the last cousins, friends, and colleagues went inside, which meant Fernao and Pekka could, too. The caterer came up to Pekka with something like panic on his face. “The smoked salmon-” he began.

She cut him off. “If anything’s gone wrong with that delivery-especially after all your promises-I won’t just take it out of your fee. I’ll blacken your name all over town. But don’t bother me about it now, not on my wedding day.” His face a mask of misery, the caterer fled.

“How much will it matter if you blacken his name?” Fernao asked.

His new bride looked surprised. “Quite a bit,” she answered, and then must have realized why he’d asked the question, for she went on, “This isn’t Setubal. There won’t be thousands and thousands of people here who’ve never heard of him. When folks here find out about a fiasco, it’ll hurt his business. And it should.”

It’s a small town, Fernao thought. That would take getting used to. As far as he could see, the caterer had set out a very respectable spread. Everything he ate was good, from prawns to slices of raw reindeer meat dipped in a fiery sauce. He didn’t particularly miss the smoked salmon. But if it was supposed to be on the menu and wasn’t there, the caterer deserved at least some of the trouble in which he’d landed.

A Valmieran wine washed down the delicacies. Fernao would have expected one from Jelgava, tangy with lemon and orange juice. Then he remembered that Pekka and Leino had gone on holiday to Jelgava. If Pekka didn’t want to remind herself of days gone forever, he understood that.

Someone not far away let out a startled squawk. Someone else exclaimed, “How in blazes did a hedgehog get loose here?” People shooed the little animal out the door.

Voice even grimmer than when she’d dealt with the caterer, Pekka said, “Where’s Uto?” Her son, once found, loudly protested his innocence-too loudly to convince Fernao. Pekka didn’t look convinced, either, but a wedding reception was no place for a thorough interrogation. Uto escaped with a warning just this side of a threat.

And then the carriage that would take Fernao and Pekka to a hostel for their wedding night pulled up in front of Elimaki’s house. Guests pelted them with little acorns and dried berries-symbols of fertility. “Careful,” Pekka warned Fernao as they went down the walk to the carriage. “Don’t slip.”

With his bad leg, that was advice to take seriously. “I won’t,” he said. Pekka protectively took his arm to make sure he didn’t.

At the hostel, another bottle of wine waited in a bed of snow. Pekka poured some for each of them. She raised hers in salute. “We’re married. We’re here. We’re by ourselves. It’s all right, or as all right as it can be.”

“I love you,” Fernao said. They both drank to that. He added, “What I’d bet you really feel like doing about now is collapsing.”

“That’s one of the things I feel like doing, aye,” Pekka nodded. “But there’s something else to attend to, too.”

“Is there?” Fernao said, as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

Before long, they were attending to it. It was nothing they hadn’t attended to a good many times before, but no less enjoyable on account of that-more enjoyable, if anything, because they knew each other better now, and each knew what the other enjoyed. And the first time after the ceremony made things official, as it were.

“I love you,” Fernao said again, lazy in the afterglow.

“A good thing, too, after we just got married,” Pekka replied.

“A good thing?” He stroked her. “You’re right. It is.”