Out of the Darkness

“Well, no.” Valnu wagged a finger at her. “You’re almost as radical as an Unkerknter, aren’t you? When Swemmel’s nobles turned out not to like him, he just went and killed most of them.”

“And the Unkerlanters threw Algarve back,” Merkela replied. “What do you suppose that says, your Excellency?” She used the title with sardonic relish. Valnu, for once, had no comeback ready.

Five

When people spoke of walking on eggs, they commonly meant the kind hens or ducks or geese laid. These days, Fernao felt as if he were walking on the sort egg-tossers flung and dragons dropped. Anything he said, anything he did, might lead to spectacular disaster with the woman he loved.

And even if I don’t do anything, I can be in trouble, he thought. If he left Pekka alone, she was liable to decide he was cold and standoffish. If he pursued her, she might decide he didn’t care about anything but getting between her legs. When word first came back that Leino had died, he’d wondered if he really ought to be sorry. After all, her husband, his own rival, was gone now. Didn’t that leave Pekka all to him?

Maybe it did. On the other hand, maybe it didn’t. He hadn’t realized how guilty she would feel because she’d been in his chamber, because they’d just finished making love, when she got summoned to learn of Leino’s death. If she’d been somewhere else, if she’d never touched him at all, that wouldn’t have changed a thing up in Jelgava. Rationally, logically, anyone could see as much. But how much had logic ever had to do with what went on in people’s hearts? Not much, and Fernao knew it.

In the cramped hostel, he couldn’t have avoided Pekka even had he wanted to. Everyone gathered in the refectory. He felt eyes on him whenever he went in there. Powers above be praised that Ilmarinen’s in Jelgava, went through his mind once-actually, rather more than once. If anybody could be relied upon to start bursting the eggs under one’s metaphorical feet, Umarinen was the man.

Pekka didn’t automatically come sit by him, as she had before the Algarvians killed Leino. But she didn’t go out of her way to avoid him, either, which was some solace, if not much. One evening about a month after the news got back to the Naantali district, she did sit down next to him.

“Hello,” he said carefully. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” Pekka answered, to which he could only nod. When a serving girl came up and asked her what she wanted, she ordered a reindeer cutlet, parsnips in a reindeer-milk cheese sauce, and a lingonberry tart. The girl nodded and briskly walked away toward the kitchen as if the request were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Fernao couldn’t take it in stride. To a Lagoan, especially to a Lagoan from sophisticated Setubal, it seemed a cliche come to life. He didn’t smile the way he wanted to, but he did say, “How. . very Kuusaman.”

“So it is,” Pekka answered. “So I am.” The implication was, What are you going to do about it?

“I know,” Fernao said gently. “I like what you are. I have for quite a while now, you know.”

Pekka tossed her head like a unicorn bedeviled by gnats. “This isn’t the best time, you know,” she said.

“I’m not going to push myself on you,” he said, and paused while his serving girl set his supper before him: mutton and peas and carrots, a meal he could easily have eaten back in Lagoas. He sipped from the mug of ale that went with it, then added, “I think we do need to talk, though.”

“Do you?” Pekka said bleakly.

Fernao nodded. His ponytail brushed the back of his neck. “We ought to think about where we’re going.”

“Or if we’re going anywhere,” Pekka said.

“Or if we’re going anywhere,” Fernao agreed, doing his best to keep his voice steady. “We probably won’t decide anything, not so it stays decided, but we should talk. Come back to my room with me after supper. Please.”

The glance she turned on him was half alarm, half rueful amusement. “Every time you ask me to go to your room with you, something dreadful happens.”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Fernao said. The first time he’d asked her to his chamber, it had been to put rumors to rest. He hadn’t intended to make love with her, or, he was sure, she with him. They’d surprised each other; Pekka had dismayed herself, and spent months afterwards doing her best to pretend it hadn’t happened or, at most, to make it into a one-time accident.

“I know you wouldn’t,” she said now. “That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right.”

“It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong, either,” Fernao answered. “Please.” He didn’t want to sound as if he were begging. That didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t, though.

Before Pekka said anything, her supper arrived. Then she sent the serving girl back for a mug of ale like his. Only after she’d drunk from it did she nod. “All right, Fernao. You’re right, I suppose: we should talk. But I don’t know how much there is for us to say to each other.”