Through the Darkness

Had he been in his study when the Algarvians attacked, he surely would have died, buried by the books he loved so well. Bookshelves climbed the wall from floor to ceiling; there were even two shelves above the door, and two more above each window. A ladder helped Siuntio get to books he couldn’t have reached without it.

“Can we all sit down?” Fernao asked. “Is there room enough around that table?”

“I think so. I hope so.” Siuntio sounded anxious. “I cleared it off as best I could. It’s where I work.” He’d piled the books and papers that had been on the table onto the desk, or so Pekka guessed--some of the piles on the desk looked newer and neater than others. She wondered how many years (or was it how many decades?) it had been since Siuntio could work at that desk.

“Here,” she said, doing her best to be brisk and practical. “We shall take these three seats, and leave Master Fernao the one closest to the door.” No one disagreed with her. She didn’t think Fernao could have squeezed his way between the bookshelves and the table to get to any of the other chairs. She had trouble herself, and she was both smaller than the Lagoan mage and unburdened by crutches.

“Plenty of paper. Plenty of pens. Plenty of ink,” Siuntio said. Like any theoretical sorcerer, he disliked all the jokes about absent-minded mages, and did his best to show they shouldn’t stick to him.

“Plenty of brandy,” Ilmarinen added, “and plenty of tea. If the one won’t get your wits working, maybe the other will.”

“Plenty of references, too, in case we need to check anything,” Fernao said. As he had in the front room, he looked around the study with covetous awe.

But Siuntio shook his head. “Few references for where we are going. What we do here will become the reference work for those who follow us. We are the trailblazers in this work.”

“We are references for one another, too,” Pekka added. “Master Siuntio and Master Ilmarinen and I have all used one another’s work to advance our own research.”

“And you have pulled a long way ahead of everyone else because of it,” Fernao said. “I have been studying hard since I came to Yliharma, but I know I am still a long way behind.”

“You were useful in the laboratory,” Pekka said, which was true, “and you have more practical experience than any of us.” Thinking of mages with practical experience reminded her of how much she missed her husband. But Leino was liable to get practical experience of a much nastier sort. Pekka pulled her thoughts back to the business at hand, adding, “And that makes you likely to see things we may have missed.”

Ilmarinen sniffed; he was the one who saw what others missed, and took pride in doing so. Pulling a sheet of foolscap off the pile Siuntio had set in the center of the table, he inked a pen and got to work. After a couple of ostentatious calculations, he looked up and said, “I aim to nail down the possibilities that spring from the divergent series: the ones having to do with the younger subjects, I mean.”

Siuntio coughed. “Be practical instead, if you possibly can. As Mistress Pekka implied, we need as much practicality as we can muster.”

“That is practical, if only you would see it.” Ilmarinen started calculating again, more ostentatiously than ever. Pekka wondered if he was right. Fernao seemed to think so, or at least that there was some chance of it. Lamplight glittered from the gold frames of Ilmarinen’s reading glasses as he scribbled; they were almost the only concession he made to age.

Pekka quickly lost herself in her own work. She was used to being alone when she calculated, but the presence of her colleagues didn’t disturb her. She asked Siuntio a couple of questions. He knew everything that was in the reference books. Why not? He’d written a good many of them.

She started when Fernao shoved his paper across the table to her. “Your pardon,” he said. She blinked and smiled, suddenly recalled to the real world. Fernao pointed to the last four or five lines he’d written. “I want to find out if you think this expression forbidden in the context in which I am using it.”

“Let me see.” Pekka had to go back up the page to get her bearings. As she worked her way down again, her eyebrows rose. “My compliments,” she said, passing the leaf of paper back to Fernao. “I never would have thought of attacking the problem from this angle. And aye, I think the expression is permitted here. If you expand it, see what you have.” She wrote two quick lines under his work.

He leaned forward to see what she’d done. His face lit up. “Oh, that is pretty,” he said. “I would have done it with parallels instead, and would have missed what the expansion shows. This is better--and you will be able to test it in the laboratory.”