Darkness Descending (76 page)

“I don’t know,” Uto repeated in tones like a silver bell.

“You’ve been climbing again,” Leino said. “You knew what would happen if you went climbing again.”

Of course, Uto knew. Of course, he’d never thought it would matter. He’d no doubt managed to convince himself he’d never get caught no matter how often he did what he wasn’t supposed to do.
Amazing how much like grownups children are some ways,
Pekka thought.

And, now that he had been caught, Uto reacted just as an adult would have. “Don’t do it, Father!” he wailed, recalling all too well the promised punishment. “I’ll be good. I promise I will.”

“You’ve already promised,” Leino told him. “You broke your promise after you made it. That’s not something Kuusamans should ever do. And so your stuffed leviathan will go up on the mantel for a week.” He started for his son’s bedchamber.

“No!” Uto howled, and burst into tears. “It’s not fair!”

“Aye, it is,” Pekka said. “You didn’t keep your word. How can we trust you if you don’t keep your word?”

Uto was paying no attention to her or to anything but his catastrophic loss. “I can’t sleep without my tiny leviathan under my chin!” he cried. “How can I go to sleep without my leviathan?” He stamped his foot.

“You’ll have to find out, won’t you?” Pekka said evenly. She dreaded putting him to bed without his special toy, too, but she didn’t want him to see that. “Maybe next time you’ll think a little more before you do something we’ve told you not to.”

“I’ll be good!” Uto sounded as desperate as a bureaucrat caught with his hand in the till. Leino’s footsteps coming up the hall announced the imminence of the tragedy ahead. Uto ran off to try to tackle him. “My leviathan!”

Following her son, Pekka wished her sister’s husband had never bought Uto the stuffed toy. But if Olavin hadn’t given him that one, he would have grown attached to some other stuffed animal: he had a good many. “It’s over. It’s done,” Leino told him. “Go back to your room till you can go around without snot and tears dribbling down your face.”

“I won’t ever stop crying! Not ever!” Uto shouted, but off he went. A silence, as of a battlefield after the fighting has moved on, filled the front room.

“Whew!” Leino said, and made as if to wipe sweat from his forehead. “I’m going to get myself a thimble of brandy. I’ve earned it. That could have been him crashing down as easily as the shelf, you know.”

“I certainly do,” Pekka said. “As long as you’re heading back toward the kitchen, pour me one, too, will you? Sooner or later, I’ll think about putting the pantry to rights, but not just yet.”

Noisy grief still came from Uto’s room. Some of it was real, some sent forth at the top of the little boy’s lungs to make his parents as unhappy as he was. Leino and Pekka both ignored him. Her sister and brother-in-law lived next door; if they heard Uto making a horrible racket, they would figure he had it coming, not that his parents were thrashing him to within an inch of his life.

Leino came back with two shots of pear brandy. He handed one to Pekka, then raised the other high. “Here’s to all of us living through another one.”

“I’ll gladly drink to that,” Pekka said. The pear brandy ran down her throat like sweet fire. She glanced over toward the stuffed leviathan, now lying dejected above the hearth, and started to laugh. But the laughter didn’t want to come: she was thinking not only of Uto’s outburst but also of the disaster the Algarvians had visited upon Yliharma. She’d come through that, and so had her sorcerous colleagues, but far too many in the capital hadn’t.

Something of what was going through her mind must have shown on her face, for Leino said, “I’m glad you lived through that one,” and gave her a hug.

“You’re not the only one,” she said fervently. She held Leino for a moment, just doing that, not thinking about anything else. But then, even with his arms around her, she shook her head. “So much work wasted. If only they’d chosen to wait another day. But they didn’t, and so ...” She shrugged.

Leino squeezed her again, then let her go. He still didn’t know exactly what she was working on but had no trouble figuring out that it was something important. He did his best to reassure her, saying, “I still don’t believe the Algarvians know or care what you’re about.”

“Why?” she demanded. “How can you know, any more than I can?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he admitted, “but I still don’t believe it. And I’ll tell you why: look how many talented mages they must be using to forge the spells that use the life energy they release when they kill Kaunians. And their very best mages must be busy devising those spells. How could they have anything much left to try to travel along other ley lines?”

Pekka pondered that. Slowly, she nodded. “It makes sense,” she said, but then checked herself. “It makes sense to me. Whether it makes sense in Trapani, I couldn’t begin to say.”

“If the Algarvians cared about what makes sense, they never would have started slaughtering Kaunians in the first place,” her husband said. Pekka nodded again. But Leino, like a lot of Kuusamans, had the knack of seeing the other fellow’s point of view. “I suppose they thought they’d only have to do it a couple of times, and then the war would be as good as won. But it didn’t work out that way.”

“No. Things too often don’t work out the way you think they will.” Pekka pointed down the hall. “That’s what Uto found out just now.”

“He’s quieted down some,” Leino said in no small relief.

“He couldn’t stay that loud for very long, not even for his leviathan,” Pekka said. “A good thing, too, or he’d drive us all mad.” She cocked her head to one side, listening. “He’s
very
quiet. I wonder if he’s fallen asleep in there.”

“Either that or he’s getting ready to burn the house down and doesn’t want us bothering him till after the fire starts.” Leino sounded as if he were joking, but also as if he wouldn’t necessarily put it past his son.

Pekka found herself sniffing. When she realized what she was doing, she made a face at her husband. “Uto!” she called. “What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing,” he answered, as sweetly as he always did when he didn’t feel like admitting what he was up to. He wasn’t asleep, anyhow. And he couldn’t get into too much mischief in his own room, or Pekka hoped not. She sniffed again. No, she didn’t smell smoke.

Someone knocked on the door. As she wouldn’t have done if she and Leino hadn’t been talking about the Algarvians, Pekka looked out the window before she worked the latch. No redheaded assassins stood out there on the snowy walk: only her sister Elimaki and Olavin, the giver of the stuffed leviathan. They went back and forth with Pekka and Leino all the time. Elimaki took care of Uto when the two mages worked, too.

Olavin had sharp eyes. He spotted the leviathan on the mantel and said, “Oh, dear. What’s my nephew gone and done now?”

“Tried to destroy the pantry,” Leino answered. “He almost did it, too.”

“Can’t have that,” Olavin agreed. “You’d need to borrow from me to put things right if he really did do the job.” He was one of Kajaani’s leading bankers.

“Maybe we could put Uto up as collateral,” Leino said. Pekka gave him a severe look. That was going too far—and Pekka happened to know he’d been a terror when he was a little boy, too.

“Anyhow,” Olavin said, “can you turn him loose long enough to let me say good-bye?”

“Good-bye?” Pekka and Leino exclaimed in the same breath. “Where are you going?” Pekka added.

“Into the service of the Seven Princes,” her brother-in-law answered. “They’re going to put a uniform on me, fools that they are.” He shrugged. “I’d just get men killed if I tried to lead them in the field, but I ought to make a decent paymaster. I hope so, anyhow.”

“Don’t listen to him when he goes on like that,” Elimaki said. “He’s so proud, it’s a wonder his tunics still fit him.” She sounded proud, too, proud and worried at the same time.

“A lot of people are serving the Seven these days,” Pekka said. “Algarve might have done better to leave Yliharma alone. We would have got ready to fight slower than we are now.”

Leino set a hand on her shoulder. “The two of us have been in the service of the Seven for a while now.” She nodded. Leino raised his voice: “Uto! Come out and say good-bye to Uncle Olavin.”

Out Uto came, as sunny as if he’d never been in trouble. “Where are you going, Uncle?” he asked.

“Into the army,” Olavin answered.

“Wow!” Uto’s eyes glowed. “You have to kill lots of Algarvians for me, because I’m still too little.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Olavin said solemnly. Elimaki squeezed his hand and didn’t seem to want to let go. Pekka sighed. She wished war—she wished everything—were as simple as it looked through the eyes of a six-year-old child.

Krasta was in a vile temper this morning. Krasta was in a vile temper a good many mornings. Had she tried to justify herself—unlikely, since she was convinced she had a perfect right to her moods—the Valmieran noblewoman would have denied the peevish fury with which she faced the world was her fault. Other people’s failings inflamed her. Had those around her done better—which is to say, done exactly what she wanted—she was convinced she would have been mild as milk. She’d always been good at fooling herself.

At the moment, the failings exercising her were her maidservant’s. The woman had had the presumption not to appear the instant Krasta called. “Bauska!” she shouted again, louder and more sharply this time. “Confound it, where are you hiding? Get in here this instant, or you’ll be sorry.”

The door to her bedchamber opened. In came the serving woman, moving as fast as she could with a bulging belly that warned she would be having the baby inside before long. “Here I am, milady,” she said with an ungainly curtsy. “How may I serve you?”

“Took you long enough,” Krasta grumbled. Bauska’s belly cut no ice with her, not when a half-Algarvian bastard was growing in there. Said bastard’s father was Captain Mosco, Colonel Lurcanio’s aide. That left Krasta half scornful, half jealous: Bauskas Algarvian lover was younger and handsomer than her own, even if of lower rank.

“I
am
sorry, milady.” Bauska dipped her head. She’d suffered through a great many of her mistress’ moods. “I was on the pot, you see.” She put her hands on her swollen abdomen; her smile had a wry edge to it. “Seems like I’m on the pot all the time these days.”

“It certainly does,” Krasta snapped. She suspected Bauska of camping on the pot so she wouldn’t have to work. She knew all about servants’ tricks. Well, the wench was here now, so Krasta could get some use out of her. “I’m going to wear these dark green trousers today. Pick out a tunic that goes with them for me.”

“Aye, milady,” Bauska said, and waddled to the closet where Krasta kept her tunics (she had another one for trousers). After pawing through them, she held out two. “Would you rather have the cinnamon or the gold?”

Left to her own devices, Krasta would have dithered for an hour, maybe more, fuming all the while. Faced with a simple, clearcut choice, though, she was all decision. “The gold,” she said at once. “It plays up my hair.” She stepped out of the thin silk tunic and trousers in which she’d slept—leaving them on the carpet for Bauska to pick up—and got into the more substantial daywear. That done, she let her maidservant brush out her shining blond locks. After studying her reflection in a gilt-edged mirror, she nodded. She was ready to face the morning.

Bauska hurried downstairs ahead of her to let the cook know she would want a cheese-and-mushroom omelette with which to break her fast. She wasn’t wild about mushrooms. She wanted them as much to annoy Lurcanio as for any other reason; like most Algarvians, he had no use for them at all. She intended to dwell lovingly on them when she saw him, almost as if she were a mushroom-mad Forthwegian.

After the omelette and a slice of sweet roll stuffed with apples and a cup of tea, she went into the west wing of the mansion. She might as well have entered another world. Kilted Algarvians dominated—messengers bringing word of doings all over Priekule, clerks making sure those words went to the right official or file, and soldiers and military police who turned words into action.

The redheads eyed her as she went by—she would have been disappointed, or more likely insulted, if they hadn’t—but kept their hands to themselves. Unlike those Algarvian louts on the Avenue of Horsemen, they knew without having to be told whose woman she was.

But when she got to the antechamber in front of Colonel Lurcanio s office, the officer there was not Captain Mosco but a stranger. “You are the marchioness, is it not so?” he said in slow, careful classical Kaunian, and rose from his seat to bow. “I do not speak Valmieran, I am sorry to say. Do you understand me?”

“Aye,” Krasta answered, though her own command of the classical tongue was considerably worse than this redhead’s. “Where are, uh,
is
Mosco?”

The Algarvian bowed again. “He is not here.” Krasta could see that for herself; her temper kindled. Before she could say anything, though, the officer added, “I am replacing him. He is not returning.”

“What?” Krasta exclaimed—in Valmieran, for she was startled out of classical Kaunian.

With yet another bow, the Algarvian said, “Colonel Lurcanio will be making it plain to you. I am to tell you you are to go in to him.” He waved her through the antechamber, bowing one last time as he did so.

Even before Lurcanio looked up from the memorandum he was drafting, Krasta demanded, “Where’s Captain Mosco?”

Lurcanio set down his pen. As the stranger in Mosco’s place had before him, he got to his feet and bowed. “Come in, my dear, and sit down. You are here, and I am here, and that is more than we can say for the unfortunate captain.”

“What do you mean?” Krasta asked as she sat in the chair in front of his desk. “Has something happened to him? Is he dead? Is that what that fellow out there meant?”

“Ah, good—you made some sense of Captain Gradasso’s Kaunian,” Lurcanio said. “I wasn’t sure how much you would be able to follow. No, Mosco is not dead, but aye, something has happened to him. He won’t be here again, I fear, not unless he is luckier than seems likely.”