Out of the Darkness

“I know. But I wish I had the revenge myself, not at second hand,” Pekka said.

“You sound more like a Lagoan than a Kuusaman,” Fernao remarked. His people, like other Algarvic folk, took vengeance seriously. Kuusamans usually didn’t. They claimed they were too civilized for such things. But I can see how getting your husband killed would make you change your mind. Fernao didn’t say that. The less he said about Leino, he was convinced, the better off things between Pekka and him would be.

“Do I?” Pekka said. “Well, by the powers above, I’ve earned the right.” Her thoughts must have been going down the same ley line as his.

“I know,” he said. When she brought her past out into the open, he couldn’t very well ignore it. And that past had helped shape what she was now. Had it been different, she would have been different, too, perhaps so different that he wouldn’t have loved her. That thought by itself was plenty to make him nervous.

She turned the subject, at least to some degree, saying, “Uto likes you.”

“I’m glad.” Fernao meant it, which surprised him more than a little. He went on, “I like him, too,” which was also true. “He’ll be quite something when he grows up.”

“So he will, unless somebody strangles him sometime between now and then,” Pekka said. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been tempted a couple of times myself. Uto will be ... how should I put it? A long time learning discipline, that’s what he’ll be.”

Fernao could hardly disagree. But, since the talk had swung to Pekka’s family, he asked, “What about your sister? She didn’t say more than a few words to me while we were in Kajaani.”

“You know why Elimaki was wary of you, too. She wouldn’t have been, or not so much”--Fernao could have done without that little bit of honesty from Pekka, however characteristic of her it was--”if Olavin hadn’t started cavorting with his secretary or clerk or whoever she is. If we hadn’t done anything till after Leino got killed, Elimaki would have been easier in her mind. But I think it will turn out all right in the end.”

“Do you?” Fernao wasn’t so sure.

But Pekka nodded. “I really do. She didn’t like the idea of what we’d been up to, but she liked you better than she thought she would. She told me so when we were down there, and she hasn’t said anything different in her letters since. And Elimaki has always been one to speak her mind.”

I’m not surprised, not when she’s your sister, Fernao thought. He didn’t say that, not when he wasn’t quite sure how Pekka would take it. What he did say was, “What are we going to do when the war is done?”

“I want to go back to Kajaani City College,” Pekka said. “If I can keep dear Professor Heikki out of my hair, it’s a good place to do research.” She cocked her head to one side and studied him. “And I

thought you might be interested in coming down to Kajaani, too.”

“Oh, I am,” he said hastily--and truthfully. He didn’t want her getting the wrong idea about that. But he went on, “Not what I meant, not exactly. We’ve spent so much time working on this new sorcery. We’ll be out of our kingdoms’ service and ahead of everybody else in the world. Put those together and they likely add up to a good-sized pile of silver.”

“Ah.” Now Pekka nodded. “I see. Some might be nice, I suppose. But I think I’d sooner do what I want to do than do what someone else wants me to, no matter how much money I might make.”

“Theoretical sorcerers can use money just as much as anybody else can,” Fernao said.

“I know,” she answered. “The questions are, how much do I need? and, how much do I care to change to get it?”

By the way she spoke, the answers to those questions were not very much and not very much, respectively. To some degree, Fernao felt the same way--but only to some degree. He said, “If I can do work I’d enjoy anyhow, I wouldn’t mind being paid well for it.”

“Neither would I,” Pekka admitted. “If. If somebody wants to push me in directions I’d sooner not go, though, that’s a different story. And when you start trying to turn magecraft into money, that sort of thing happens a lot of the time.” She sent him a challenging glance. “Or will you tell me I’m wrong?”

If he tried to tell her she was wrong, she would have some sharp things to tell him. He could see that. And he didn’t think she was wrong. It was a question of ... Of degree, he thought. “We would have to be careful--no doubt about that,” he said, “But sorcery and business do mix, or they can. Otherwise, the world wouldn’t have changed the way it has the past hundred and fifty years. A lot of the people who were in the right place at the right time were mages. And if you want to know what I think, when there’s a choice between having money and not having it, having it is better.”