Through the Darkness

“From your mouth to their ears,” Leino said. Like everyone else, he surely knew the abstract powers had no ears. That didn’t keep him--or a lot of other people--from talking as if they did.

Uto came out onto the front porch in time to hear what was going on. He had a gift for that. One day, he might make a fine spy. “Papa’s going to go off and kill a bunch of stinking Gongs?” he exclaimed. “Hurray!”

He capered about. Above his head, his mother and father and aunt exchanged wry looks. “If only it were so simple,” Pekka said sadly. “If only anything were so simple.”

Leino ruffled Uto’s coarse black hair. “Come on, you bloodthirsty little savage,” he said, his tone belying the harsh words. “Let’s go home and have some supper.”

“What’s supper going to be?” Uto’s tone implied that, if he didn’t care for what was offered, he might not feel like going home.

But when Pekka said, “I’ve got some nice crabs in the rest crate,” her son started capering again. He liked the soft, sweet flesh that lurked inside crabs’ shells. He liked cracking the shells to get at the meat even better.

As usual with crabs, he made a hideous mess of himself during supper. Odds were he liked that best of all. Afterwards, Pekka heated water on the stove to add to the cold she ran into a basin. Uto didn’t particularly like getting a bath, not least because Pekka spanked his bare wet bottom if he splashed too outrageously.

He played for a while after the bath. Then Leino read him a hunting story. After that, with only a token protest, he tucked his stuffed leviathan under his chin and went to sleep.

Pekka walked into the kitchen and came back with an old bottle of Jelga-van brandy and a couple of glasses. She poured drinks for herself and Leino. “What I’d really like to do is get so drunk I won’t be worth anything for the next two days,” she said. “Ilmarinen would do it--and then on the third day he’d come up with something nobody else would think of in the next hundred years.”

“He’s something, all right,” Leino agreed. “But I don’t want to talk about him, not tonight.”

Pekka cocked her head to one side and looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Oh?” she said, her voice arch. “What do you want to do tonight?”

“This,” he said, and took her in his arms. After they’d kissed and caressed each other for a while, Pekka thought he would lead her back to the bedchamber. Instead, he pulled her tunic off over her head and lowered his lips to her breasts.

“Oh,” she said softly, and pressed his head against her. But caution reasserted itself. “What if Uto walks in and catches us?”

“Then he does, that’s all,” Leino answered. “We’ll send him back to bed again with a warm backside, and then we’ll get back to what we were doing.”

Most nights, Pekka would have kept on arguing a good deal longer. Not tonight. She usually had a good healthy yen for her husband. Tonight, the way she stroked him, the way she took him in her mouth, the way she lay down in front of the fireplace and arched her hips so he could go into her felt as much like desperation as like passion. The mewling noises she made deep in her throat as her own pleasure overflowed came far louder and wilder than usual.

Sweat slicked Leino’s hair. It had very little to do with the fire only a few feet away. He grinned down at her. “I ought to get called into the service of the Seven Princes more often.”

She poked him in the ribs, which made him grunt and twist away and pull out of her. She felt him go with a stab of regret. How many more chances would they have before the war swept them apart? Would they ever have more chances after the war swept them apart?

To her dismay, tears dripped from the corners of her eyes and spilled down onto the rug. Leino brushed them away. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Everything will be all right.”

“It had better be,” Pekka said fiercely. She clutched him to her. Presently, she felt him stir against her flank. That was what she’d been waiting for. She rolled him onto his back and rode astride him--she knew that was easier for his second round, and knew how much she wanted one. It wouldn’t solve anything--she knew as much, even while she threw back her head and gasped as if she’d run a long way. For now, though, she didn’t have to think about all the things that might happen later. And that wasn’t so bad.

The distant mutter ahead was the surf rolling up onto the rocky beaches of southern Valmiera. Cornelu glanced at the Lagoans his leviathan had borne across the Strait of Valmiera from Setubal. He spoke two words in their tongue: “Good luck.”

One of them said, “Thanks.” The other just nodded. They both let go of the leviathan’s harness and struck out for the shore a few hundred yards away. Cornelu wondered if he’d ever see either one again. He doubted it. The Lagoans were brave, but they weren’t showing much in the way of sense, not here.