Through the Darkness

Indeed, we have done a good deal of interesting work since we stopped publishing in the learned journals, and a man of your abilities will help us go further. I cannot set down the details here, but I think we may be on the edge of something intriguing, as perhaps you may also be hearing from my colleagues. Again, I wish you well, and hope to hear from you again. Pekka, at Kajaani City College.

She put the letter into a prepaid envelope and copied out the address in Setubal Fernao had given her. Then she hesitated. Her letter didn’t say much, but neither had Fernao’s, and he’d sent his by courier. Could she risk hers in the maelstrom of the mailstream? For all she knew, half the postal workers in Kajaani were Algarvian spies.

But she hadn’t the faintest idea how to order up a special courier. Maybe she should have told the one who’d brought the letter to wait. Unfortunately, that would have required more forethought than she’d had in her. The head of whatever garrison Kajaani boasted could have told her, but she didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to talk to anyone who didn’t already know what she was involved with.

Then she smiled. Ilmarinen would know. Siuntio would, too, no doubt, but she still fought shy of bothering him. She didn’t so much with Ilmarinen; he lived both to bother and to be bothered.

When she attuned her crystal to his, she found his image looking out of the glass at her a moment later. “Well, what now?” he asked. “An assignation, because your husband’s not at home? I can be there in a few hours, if you like.”

“You are a filthy old man,” Pekka said, to which the senior theoretical sorcerer responded with an enormous grin and a big nod of agreement. Telling herself she should have expected as much, she asked, “How do I go about getting a courier to deliver a letter for me?”

Ilmarinen might have made more suggestive banter. Pekka watched him think about it and, to her relief, decide against it. He said, “You’d do best to talk to Prince Jauhainen’s men, I think. He’s not half the man his uncle was, but he can manage that for you--he’d cursed well better be able to, anyhow.”

“Expecting anyone to match up to Prince Joroinen is asking a lot,” Pekka replied. “But that’s still a good notion---his folk will know enough of what I’m doing that I won’t have to do any more explaining. Thank you. I’ll try it.”

“Who’s the letter to?” Ilmarinen asked.

“The Lagoan named Fernao,” Pekka said; she wouldn’t mention Fernao’s trade by crystal, not when emanations might be stolen. She did add, “You know him, don’t you?”

“Oh, aye--a most inquisitive fellow, Fernao is.” Ilmarinen set a finger by the side of his nose. “I see: you’re arranging an assignation with him, not with me. I must be too old and ugly for you.”

“And too crackbrained, to boot,” Pekka snapped. Ilmarinen crowed laughter, delighted at getting a rise out of her. She glared. “I’ll have you know he was wounded down in the land of the Ice People.”

“What a painful place to be hurt,” Ilmarinen exclaimed. Pekka refused to acknowledge that in any way, which wasn’t easy. Ilmarinen shrugged. “Anything else?” he asked. Pekka shook her head. “So long, then,” he told her, and vanished from the crystal. It glowed for a moment, then went back to being nothing but a glassy sphere.

Pekka activated her crystal again. Sure enough, Prince Jauhainen’s aide-- who’d served Prince Joroinen before he died in the Algarvians’ sorcerous assault on Yliharma--promised to send a man, and the fellow arrived not much later. Pekka gave him the letter and went back to work.

It went better than she’d thought it would. Maybe that was because she, like Fernao, had written in classical Kaunian: composing in a language not her own, especially one so different from Kuusaman, forced her to think clearly. Or maybe, though she hadn’t thought so, she’d just needed a break from what she was doing.

Pretty soon, I’ll be ready to go back into the laboratory again, she thought. If Siuntio or Ilmarinen comes up with something interesting, it’ll be sooner yet. Those were notions she’d had several times since she’d started probing the relationship at the heart of the laws of similarity and contagion. Now, though, she had a new one: I wonder what Fernao is making of this as he catches up to us. She hoped the Lagoan was well and truly impressed. If he wasn’t, he should have been.