Out of the Darkness d-6 Read online

She jerked again, harder than she had before. He wondered if some other Algarvian had given her a hard time, who could guess when? You‘ve got to be careful with Hilde’s Helpers, he reminded himself. Treat ‘em like noblewomen, even if they are just shopgirls. This one, though, hesitated only a moment. She nodded and leaned toward him. He did a good, thorough job of kissing her. “Now,” she said, “you to eat.”

  Eat he did. “It is good,” he said in some small surprise after the first mouthful, and wolfed down the rest of the bowl. The Forthwegian girl was right; except for the flavor they added, he hardly knew the mushrooms were there. He’d dreaded biting into some big, fleshy chunk, but that didn’t happen at all. When he’d eaten every bit of the stew, he got to his feet, bowed, and made a production of returning bowl and spoon. “Another kiss?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Go to make more. For others.” She hurried off.

  A crystallomancer shouted, “Hey, Colonel, I’ve just picked up some emanations from the fornicating Unkerlanters. Sounds like somebody just bumped off General Gurmun. I bet that was our pal last night.”

  “I bet you’re right,” Spinello breathed. “And I bet they’d trade a couple of brigades of ordinary men for that Gurmun whoreson, too. He was far and away the best they had with behemoths.”

  The confusion on the other side of the Twegen continued the whole day long. The Unkerlanters hardly bothered harassing Eoforwic. Spinello didn’t take that for granted. His guess was, they would start pummeling the city hard when they began to recover. But he enjoyed the respite while he had it.

  His own respite didn’t last so long as Eoforwic’s. He woke in the middle of the night with belly pains and an urgent need to squat. “A pox!” he grumbled. “I’ve come down with a flux.” But squatting didn’t help, and the pain only got worse.

  When morning came, his men exclaimed in horror. “Powers above, Colonel, get to a healer,” one of them said. “You’re yellow as a lemon!”

  “Yellow?” Spinello stared down at himself. “What’s wrong with me?” He scratched his head. He didn’t argue about going to a healer; he felt as bad as he looked, maybe worse. “I wonder if it was those mushrooms. Plenty of reasons we don’t eat them, I bet.”

  He got a powerful emetic from the healers. That just gave him one more misery, and did nothing to make him feel better. Nothing the healers did could make him feel better, or even ease his torment. It ended for good three days later, with him still wondering about those mushrooms.

  Vanai splashed hot water, very hot water, water as hot as she could stand it, onto her face again and again, especially around her mouth. Then she rubbed and rubbed and rubbed at her lips with the roughest, scratchiest towel she had. Finally, when she’d rubbed her mouth bloody, she gave up. She could still feel Spinello’s lips on hers even after all that.

  But then she snatched Saxburh out of her cradle and danced around the flat with the baby in her arms. Saxburh liked that; she squealed with glee. “It was worth it. By the powers above, it was worth it!” Her little daughter wouldn’t have argued for the world. She was having the time of her life. She squealed again.

  “Do you know what I did?” Vanai said. “Do you have any idea what I did?” Saxburh had no idea. She chortled anyhow. Still dancing, ignoring the sandpapered state of her lips, Vanai went on, “I put four death caps in his stew. Not one, not two, not three. Four. Four death caps could kill a troop of behemoths, let alone one fornicating Algarvian.” She kept right on dancing. Saxburh kept right on laughing.

  Fornicating Algarvian is right, Vanai thought savagely. Her mouth was sore, but she didn’t care. I’d’ve put my lips on his prong to get him to take that bowl of stew. Powers below eat him, why not? It’s not as if he didn’t make me do it before. Teach me tricks, will you? See how you ‘II like the one I just taught you!

  Spinello, without a doubt, felt fine right now. That was one of the things that made death caps and their close cousins, the destroying powers, so deadly. People who ate them didn’t feel anything wrong for several hours, sometimes even for a couple of days. By then it was far too late for them to puke up what they’d eaten. The poison stayed inside them, working, and no healer or mage had ever found a cure for it. Soon enough, Spinello would know what she’d done.

  “Isn’t that fine?” Vanai asked Saxburh. “Isn’t that just the most splendid thing you ever heard in all your days?” The baby didn’t have many days, but, by the way she gurgled and wriggled with glee, it might have been.

  All Forthwegians hunted mushrooms whenever they got the chance. In that, if in few other things, the Kaunians in Forthweg agreed with their neighbors. No one-not even Algarvian soldiers, not any more-paid much attention to people walking with their heads down, eyes on the ground. And who was likely to notice what sort of mushrooms went into a basket? One thing Vanai’s grandfather had taught her was how to tell the poisonous from the safe. Everyone in Forthweg learned those lessons. This once, Vanai had chosen to stand them on their head.

  “And so you too have some measure of revenge, my grandfather,” she whispered in classical Kaunian. Brivibas would never have approved of her saying any such thing to him in mere Forthwegian.

  Saxburh’s eyes-they would be dark like Ealstan’s, for they were already darkening from the blue of almost all newborns’ eyes-widened. She could hear that the sounds of this language were different from those of the Forthwegian Vanai and Ealstan usually spoke.

  “I will teach you this tongue, too,” Vanai told her daughter, still in classical Kaunian. “I do not know if you will thank me for it. This is a tongue whose speakers have more than their share of trouble, more than their share of woe. But it is as much yours as Forthwegian, and you should learn it. What do you think of that?”

  “Dada!” Saxburh said.

  Vanai laughed. “No, you silly thing, I’m your mama,” she said, falling back into Forthwegian without noticing she’d done it till after the words passed her lips. Saxburh babbled more cheerful nonsense, none of which sounded like either Forthwegian or classical Kaunian. Then she screwed up her face and grunted.

  Knowing what that meant even before she caught the smell, Vanai squatted down, laid Saxburh on the floor, and cleaned her bottom. Saxburh even thought that was funny, where she often fussed over it. Vanai laughed, too, but she had to work to keep the corners of her mouth turned up. She wouldn’t have used Forthwegian so much before she started disguising herself. It really was as if Thelberge, the Forthwegian semblance she had to wear, were gaining at the expense of Vanai, the Kaunian reality within.

  Even if the Algarvians lose the war, even if the Unkerlanters drive them out of Forthweg, what will it be like for the blonds left alive here? Will they-will we-go on wearing sorcerous disguises and speaking Forthwegian because it’s easier, because the Forthwegians-the real Forthwegians-won’t hate us so much then? If we do, what happens to the Kaunianity, the sense of ourselves as something special and apart, that we’ve kept alive ever since the Empire fell?

  She cursed softly. She had no answer for that. She wondered if anyone else did, if anyone else could. If not, even if the Algarvians lost the Derlavaian War, wouldn’t they have won a great battle in their endless struggle against the Kaunians who’d been civilized while they still painted themselves strange colors and ran naked through their native forests throwing spears?

  The familiar coded knock Ealstan used interrupted her gloomy reverie. She snatched up Saxburh and hurried to unbar the door. Ealstan gave her a kiss. Then he wrinkled his nose. “I know what you’ve been doing,” he said. He kissed Saxburh. “And I know what you’ve been doing, too.” He took her from Vanai and rocked her in his arms. “Aye, I do. You can’t fool me. I know just what you’ve been doing.”

  “She can’t help it,” Vanai said. “And it’s something everybody else does, too.”

  “I should hope so,” Ealstan answered. “Otherwise, we’d all burst like eggs, and who would clean up after us then?” Vanai hadn’t thought of it like that. Wh
en she did, she giggled. Ealstan went on, “And what did you do with your morning?”

  Before Vanai realized she would, she answered, “While Saxburh was taking a nap, I put on a blue-and-white armband and went out and pretended I was one of Hilde’s Helpers.”

  “Powers above, you’re joking!” Ealstan exclaimed. “Don’t say things like that, or you’ll make me drop the baby.” He mimed doing just that, which made Vanai start and made Saxburh laugh.

  Vanai said, “I really did. And do you want to know why?”

  Ealstan studied her to make sure she wasn’t kidding him. What he saw on her face must have satisfied him, for he replied, “I’d love to know why. The only reason that occurs to me right now is that you’ve gone crazy, and I don’t think that’s right.”

  “No.” Vanai said that in Forthwegian, but then switched to classical Kaunian. “I wore the armband because I wanted to give a certain officer of the redheaded barbarians a special dish-and I did it.”

  “A special dish?” Ealstan echoed in his own slow, thoughtful classical Kaunian. “What kind of-? Oh!” He didn’t need long to figure out what she meant. His eyes glowed. “How special was it?”

  “Four death caps,” she answered proudly.

  “Four?” He blinked. “That would kill anybody ten times over.”

  “Aye. I know.” Vanai wished she could have killed Spinello ten times over. “I hope he enjoyed them, too. People who eat them say they’re supposed to be tasty.”

  “I’ve heard the same thing,” Ealstan answered, falling back into Forthwegian. “Not something I ever wanted to find out for myself.” He carefully set Saxburh in her little seat, then came back and took Vanai in his arms. “You told me not to take chances, and then you went and did this? I ought to beat you, the way Forthwegian husbands are supposed to.”

  “It wasn’t so risky for me as it would have been for you,” she answered. “I just gave him the food, took back the bowl, and went on my way. He still feels fine-I’m sure of it-but pretty soon he won’t. What was I to him? Just another Forthwegian.” Just another wench, she thought, remembering the feel of his lips on hers. But the last wench, the very last.

  “It’s a good thing you did get the bowl-and the spoon, too, I hope,” Ealstan said. Vanai nodded. He went on, “If you hadn’t, the Algarvian mages could have used the law of contagion to trace them back to you.”

  “I know. I thought of that. It’s the reason I waited for them.” Vanai didn’t tell Ealstan about the couple of quizzical looks Spinello had sent her while he ate her tasty dish of death. Had he half recognized, or wondered if he recognized, her voice? Back in Oyngestun, they’d always spoken classical Kaunian. Here, of course, Vanai had used what scraps of Algarvian she had. That, and the difference in her looks, had kept Spinello from figuring out who she was.

  “Well, the son of a whore is gone now, even if he hasn’t figured it out yet. Four death caps?” Ealstan whistled. “You could have killed off half the redheads in Eoforwic with four death caps. Pity you couldn’t have found some way to do it.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Vanai said. “But I got rid of the one I most wanted dead.” That was as much as she’d ever said since Ealstan found out about Spinello.

  Ealstan nodded now. “I believe that,” he said, and let it go. He’d never pushed her for details, for which she was grateful.

  Saxburh started to cry. Ealstan joggled her, but this time it didn’t restore her smile. “Give her to me. I think she’s getting fussy,” Vanai said. “She’s been up for a while now.” And I’ve been dancing with her, dancing because of what I just did to Spinello. And I still feel like dancing, by the powers above.

  She sat down on the couch and undid the toggles that held her tunic closed. Ealstan reached out and gently cupped her left breast as she bared it. “I know it’s not for me right now,” he said, “but maybe later?”

  “Maybe,” she said. By her tone, it probably meant aye. As Saxburh settled in and began to nurse, Vanai wondered why that should be so. Wouldn’t seeing Spinello have soured her on men and anything to do with men? Till she first gave herself to Ealstan, she’d thought the Algarvian had soured her on lovemaking forever. Now. . Now I just fed him four death caps, and I want to celebrate. “Come on, sweetheart,” she crooned to Saxburh. “You’re getting sleepy, aren’t you?”

  Ealstan, who’d gone into the kitchen, heard that and laughed. He came back with a couple of mugs of something that wasn’t water. He gave Vanai one. “Here. Shall we drink to … to freedom!”

  “To freedom!” Vanai echoed, and raised the cup to her lips. Plum brandy slid hot down her throat. She glanced toward Saxburh. Sometimes the baby was interested in what her mother ate and drank. Not now, though. Saxburh’s eyes started to slide shut. Vanai’s nipple slid out of the baby’s mouth. Hoisting her daughter to her shoulder, Vanai got a sleepy burp from her, then rocked her till she fell asleep. Saxburh didn’t wake up when she set her in the cradle, either.

  Her tunic still hanging open, Vanai turned back to Ealstan. “What were you saying about later?”

  He raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t usually so bold. I don’t kill a man I hated every day, either, she thought. Back in the bedchamber, she straddled Ealstan and rode herself-and him with her-to joy with short, hard, quick strokes, then sprawled down on his chest to kiss him. I wish I did, if only it would make me feel like this every time. Even the afterglow seemed hotter than usual. Laughing, she kissed him again.

  Winter roared into the Naantali district of Kuusamo as if it were part of the land of the Ice People. The blizzard outside the hostel howled and shrieked, blowing snow parallel to the ground. Pekka’s home town of Kajaani didn’t usually get quite such wretched weather, even though it lay farther south: it also lay by the sea, which helped moderate its climate.

  Pekka had hoped to be able to experiment in the scant hours of daylight that came here, but scrubbed the idea when she saw what the weather was like. No matter how much Kuusamans took cold, nasty weather in stride, everything had its limits.

  And it’s not as if I’ve got nothing else to do, she thought, brushing a lock of coarse black hair back from her eyes as she waded through paperwork. The greatest drawback she’d found to running a large project was that it transformed her from a theoretical sorcerer, which was all she’d ever wanted to be, to a bureaucrat, a fate not quite worse than death but not enjoyable, either.

  Someone knocked on the door to her chamber. She sprang to her feet, a smile suddenly illuminating her broad, high-cheekboned face. Any excuse for getting away from that pile of papers was a good one. And it might be Fernao. That idea sang in her. She hadn’t expected to fall in love with the Lagoan mage, especially when she hadn’t fallen out of love with her own husband. But Leino was far away-in Jelgava now, battling against the Algarvians’ bloodthirsty magic-and had been for a long time, while Fernao was here, and working side by side with her, and had saved her life more than once, and. . She’d stopped worrying about reasons. She just knew what was, knew it and delighted in it.

  But when Pekka opened the door, no tall, redhaired Lagoan with narrow eyes bespeaking a touch of Kuusaman blood stood there. “Oh,” she said. “Master Ilmarinen. Good morning.”

  Ilmarinen laughed in her face. “Your lover’s off somewhere else,” he said, “so you’re stuck with me.” With Master Siuntio dead, Ilmarinen was without a doubt the greatest theoretical sorcerer in Kuusamo, probably in the world. That didn’t keep him from also being a first-class nuisance. He leered and laughed again at Pekka’s expression. The few wispy white hairs that sprouted from his chin-Kuusaman men were only lightly bearded-wagged up and down.

  Getting angry at him did no good. Pekka had long since learned that. Treating him as she did Uto, her little boy, worked better. “What can I do for you?” she asked, as sweetly as she could.

  Ilmarinen leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. That was going too far, even for him. Then he said, “I’ve come to say goodbye.”

  “Go
odbye?” Pekka echoed, as if she’d never heard the word before.

  “Goodbye,” Ilmarinen repeated. “To you, to this hostel, to the Naantali district. It took some wangling-I had to talk to more than one of the Seven Princes of Kuusamo-but I did it, and I’m free. Or I’m going to be free, anyhow, as soon as this ghastly weather lets me escape.”

  “You’re leaving!” Pekka said. Ilmarinen nodded. She wondered if her senses were failing her or if, more likely, he was playing one of his horrid practical jokes. “You can’t do that!” she blurted.

  “You’d better revise your hypothesis,” Ilmarinen said. “I’m going to falsify it with contradictory data. When you see that I’m gone, you will also see that you were mistaken. It happens to us all now and again.”

  He means it, she realized. “But why?” she asked. “Is it anything I’ve done? If it is, is there anything I can do to change your mind and make you stay?”

  “No and no,” the master mage answered. “I can tell you exactly what’s wrong here, at least the way I look at things. We’re not doing anything new and different any more. We’re just refining what we’ve already got. Any second-rank mage who can get to ten twice running when he counts on his fingers can do that work. Me, I’d sooner look for something a little more interesting, thank you kindly.”

  “What is there?” Pekka asked.

  “I’m going to the war,” Ilmarinen answered. “I’m going to Jelgava, if you want me to be properly precise, and I’m sure you do-you’re like that. If those fornicating Algarvian mages start killing Kaunians and aiming all that sorcerous energy at me, I aim to boot ‘em into the middle of next week. Time to really use all this sorcery we’ve dreamed up. Time to see what it can do, and what more we need to do to fancy it up even more.”

  “But. .” Pekka floundered. “How will we go on without you?”

  “You’ll do pretty well, I expect,” the master mage said. “And I’ll have a chance to play with my own ideas. Maybe I really will figure out a way to knock the Algarvians into the middle of next week. I still say the potential for that lies at the heart of the experimental work we’ve done.”