Pekka had not told her about the assault on the relationship between the laws of similarity and contagion. No one without the most urgent need to know heard anything about that project. All the theoretical sorcerers working on it agreed that was too dangerous. And so, doing her best to look regretful, Pekka murmured, “I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“What?” Heikki leaned forward. Had the matter been less important, she might have succeeded in intimidating Pekka. As things were, Pekka had to fight hard not to giggle. The department chairman spoke in portentous tones: “When I ask a simple question, I expect an answer.”
You don’t know any other kind of question, Pekka thought. She smiled sweetly. No.
“What?” Heikki said again. “How dare you refuse?” Though her skin, like Pekka’s, was golden rather than pink, a flush darkened her cheeks. Pekka said nothing more, which seemed to disturb the chairman further. “If that is your attitude, your laboratory privileges are hereby revoked. And I shall bring your insubordination to the attention of the academic council.” She got to her feet and made a stately exit.
That vase sprang into Pekka’s mind again. But chasing Heikki down the hall and braining the department chairman would only get her talked about. A different revenge, more vicious if less bloody, occurred to her. A distant ancestor might have smiled that smile just before he sneaked into an enemy clan’s camp to slit a warrior’s throat. Pekka activated her crystal, spoke briefly, and then went back to work.
She had not been working long when another knock on the door made her set down her pen. The fellow waiting in the hall was Professor Heikki’s secretary. “And how may I help you today, Kuopio?” Pekka asked with another of those sweetly bloodthirsty smiles.
“The chairman would see you in her office right away,” he answered.
“Please tell her I’m busy,” Pekka said. “Perhaps day after tomorrow would do?”
Kuopio stared at her as if she’d suddenly started speaking one of the clicking, coughing languages of tropical Siaulia. She looked back without another word. Shaking his head, the secretary departed. Pekka returned to her sheet of numbers and abstruse symbols.
If she’d miscalculated--not on the problem of the two laws, but on the knottier one of the Kajaani City College bureaucracy--she’d be in hot water. When a third knock came, she jumped, then hurried to the door. There stood Professor Heikki. “Hello again,” Pekka said. She’d know in a moment.
Heikki licked her lips. She looked even more dyspeptic than she had earlier in the afternoon. From that, Pekka knew she’d won even before the department chairman said, “Why did you not tell me your experiments had Prince Joroinen’s patronage?”
“I could not tell you anything about them,” Pekka answered. “I cannot tell anyone anything about them. I tried to tell you that, but you would not hear me. I wish you did not know I was experimenting at all.”
“So do I,” Heikki said bitterly. “Such ignorance would have spared me a great deal of the abuse I suffered just now. I have been instructed to tell you”--she spat out each word as if it tasted bad--”that the department is to offer you every possible assistance in your work and--and to accept unchallenged any budgetary requisitions you submit.” Plainly, that hurt worse than anything else.
No one this side of the princely mints had such untrammeled access to money. For a heady moment, Pekka wished she were a woman of extravagant tastes. But Joroinen would not have given what he gave had he reckoned her likely to abuse it. She said, “What I want most is to be left alone to do what I need to do.”
“Then that is what you shall have.” Heikki backed away, as if from a dangerous animal. And Pekka was a dangerous animal. Had she not been, could she have caused one of the Seven Princes of Kuusamo to turn on the department chairman, who reckoned herself a princess within her realm?
Pekka stood in the doorway and watched Heikki retreat. That helped turn the retreat into a rout. By the time Heikki reached a corner, she was all but running--and was looking over her shoulder as she went, so she nearly slammed into the far wall.
After Heikki did successfully negotiate the corner, Pekka went back to her desk and got some of her calculations to an interesting point before yet another knock on the door, this one from her husband, ended the day’s work. When she opened the door, Leino looked at her with curiosity flashing in his dark eyes. “What did you do to our distinguished chairman?” he asked as he and Pekka walked across the campus to the caravan stop.
“Kept her out of my hair,” Pekka answered. “These are modern times. There are cures for head lice.”
Leino snorted. “I think your cure was to drop an egg on her. I saw Kuopio in the hall. He flinched as if he thought I’d hit him, too.”
“I didn’t hit him. I just told him no. He’s not used to that.” Pekka smiled again. “I did hit Heikki--with Prince Joroinen.”
“Ah, so you did drop an egg on her,” Leino said, and then he said no more. Pekka blessed him for having better sense than Heikki--not that that made much of a compliment. But Leino, himself a mage of a more practical bent than Pekka’s, could not help knowing she was working on an important project. Her trips to Yliharma proved it. Ilmarinen’s recent visit to Kajaani proved it. But he hadn’t asked questions. He knew her well enough to know she’d tell him what she could. If she didn’t tell him anything, she couldn’t tell him anything.
They bought a news sheet from a hawker at the caravan stop. Leino frowned at the lead story. “Curse the Gongs, they’ve sunk half a dozen of our ships off Obuda. We’ve thrown more into that fight than they have, but they keep hanging on.” With reluctant admiration, he added, “They are warriors.”
“They’re stubborn,” Pekka said, and then wondered if there was any difference between her words and her husband’s. She pointed to a smaller story about a bigger battle. “The Unkerlanters are counterattacking against Algarve.”
“They say they’re counterattacking, anyhow,” Leino answered. “They’ve said that before, too, but they keep getting driven back.” He turned the news sheet over to read the rest of the story. “The Algarvians say there’s heavy fighting, but they’re still going forward.” As the caravan came gliding up the ley line toward them, he asked, “Who do you hope wins that fight?”
Pekka considered. “I hope they both lose,” she said at last. “Unkerlant is Unkerlant, and Algarve is bent on taking vengeance on everyone who ever wronged her. As best I can tell, that means the rest of the world.”
Leino laughed, then shook his head. “That’s one of those things that would be funny if only it were funny, if you know what I mean.” He stepped aside to let Pekka get into the caravan car ahead of him.
The sun still stood high in the southwest as they walked from the caravan stop up the hill toward their house and that of Pekka’s sister. In high summer, it dipped below the horizon only very late, and briefly. Even then, no more than the brightest stars came out, for twilight would linger till it rose again early the next morning. Kuusaman poets wrote verses about the pale nights of Kajauni.
High summer did not incline Pekka toward poetry. It inclined her toward tearing her hair. Her six-year-old son was never easy to get to bed at any season of the year. With the house light at almost all hours of the day and night, getting Uto to bed turned as near impossible as made no difference.
Elimaki handed him over to Pekka and Leino with every sign of relief. Leino’s laugh was rueful; he knew what his sister-in-law’s frazzled expression meant. “The house is still standing,” he remarked, as if that were some consolation.
Some, perhaps, but not enough, not by the way Elimaki rolled her eyes. “I didn’t stuff him in the rest crate,” she said, as if that proved her extraordinary virtue. “I was tempted to, but I didn’t.”