“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.”
“And I still say you’re out of your mind,” Pekka answered automatically.
“Of course you do,” Ilmarinen said. “You’re the one who opened this hole in the ice, and now you don’t want to fish in it for fear a leviathan will take hold of your line and pull you under.”
“Those are the kinds of forces you’re talking about,” Pekka said. “Even if you were right-and you’re not, curse it; you almost killed yourself and took half of Kuusamo with you because you’d miscalculated, if you recall-even if you were right, I tell you, you’d never be able to come up with a usable sorcery. Paradoxes would prevent it.”
“Whenever a mage says a spell is possible, he’s likely right,” Ilmarinen replied. “Whenever he says a spell is impossible, he’s likely wrong. That’s an old rule I just made up, but it covers the history of pure and applied sorcery over the past hundred and fifty years pretty well, I think.”
He had a point, though Pekka didn’t intend to admit it. She said, “I think you’re being very foolish. You were talking about second-rank mages, Master. What will you be able to do in Jelgava that any second-rank mage can’t?”
“I don’t know,” he answered cheerfully. “That’s why I’m going there: to find out. I know everything I can do here and”-he yawned with almost as much theatrical flair as an Algarvian might have-”I’m bored.”
“That shouldn’t be reason enough to abandon something of which you’re such an important part,” Pekka insisted.
“Maybe it shouldn’t, but for me it is.” Ilmarinen’s foxy features donned that leer once more. “If I happen to run into your husband while I’m in Jelgava, what shall I tell him?”
Not a thing! Not a fornicating thing! Pekka wanted to shout. Just before she did, she realized that was the worst thing she could possibly say. With studied indifference, she answered, “Tell him whatever you please. You will anyway.”
That took the leer off his face. It got her what might have been a respectful glance. “You’re cooler about the whole business than I thought,” Ilmarinen said.
Pekka, just then, felt anything but cool. Letting him know that, though, didn’t strike her as a good idea. She said, “If you’re bound and determined to do this, powers above keep you safe.”
“For which I thank you,” Ilmarinen said. “I will miss you, curse me if I won’t. Your heart’s in the right place, I think, even if I can’t imagine what you see in that overgrown Lagoan mage.”
“He’s not overgrown!” Indignation crackled in Pekka’s voice. “And you’re a fine one to talk. What do you see in Linna the serving girl?”
“A pretty face and a tight twat,” he answered at once. “I’m a man. Men aren’t supposed to need any more than that, are they? But women, now, women should have better sense, don’t you think?”
Actually, Pekka did think that, or something like that, anyway. But Ilmarinen was the last person with whom she wanted to talk about it. Instead of talking, she hugged him hard enough to make him wheeze as the air came out of him. Then, for good measure, she kissed him, too. “I still think you’re being a fool, but you’re a fool I’m fond of.”
“You’re stuck with me a while longer,” he said, “till this accursed weather eases up. But then I’m flying-or more likely sailing-north for the winter.” Off he went down the hallway. Pekka wondered why she’d even tried to change his mind. He was no more inclined to listen to her than she was to pay attention to the advice she got from a clerk at a grocer’s shop. He did what he wanted, and reveled in it.
If he wants to tell Leino, I’ll kill him, she thought. But that worried her less than it had when he first asked his sardonic question. Had Ilmarinen really intended to blab to her husband if he saw him, he wouldn’t have teased her about it first. She was sure-well, she was pretty sure-of that.
Still shaking her head in astonishment, she went back to the paperwork. A few minutes later, another knock on the door interrupted her. This time, it was Fernao: tall and redheaded and, but for his eyes, most un-Kuusaman looking. Even the neat ponytail in which he wore his hair shouted that he was a Lagoan.
But, over the past couple of years, he’d got pretty fluent in Kuusaman. “You’ll never guess what,” he said now. He even had something of a Kajaani accent, which only showed he’d done a lot of talking and listening to Pekka.
“About Ilmarinen disappearing?” she said, and watched his jaw drop. “He came to me first,” she told him. “How did you find out about it?”
“He’s in the refectory, pouring down ale and boasting about the wires he pulled to get away,” Fernao answered.
“That sounds like him,” Pekka said sourly.
“He’s really off to Jelgava?” Fernao asked.
“That’s what he says,” Pekka replied. “He has connections with the Seven Princes that go back longer than either one of us has been alive, so I suppose he is. I haven’t seen the paperwork, but he wouldn’t carry on like that without it.”
“No, he wouldn’t.” Fernao didn’t sound particularly happy. After a moment, he showed Pekka why: “If he goes to Jelgava, if he sees your husband there, will he talk? You Kuusamans are such a straitlaced folk, I fear he might.”
“We’re no such thing!” Pekka exclaimed. Then, a little sheepishly, she asked, “Is that how Lagoans see us?”
“A lot of the time, aye,” he said. “You. . often take such things too seriously.”
“Do we?” Pekka suddenly remembered fleeing his bedchamber in tears after the first time they’d made love. “Well, maybe we do. But I don’t think Ilmarinen will talk too much to Leino. He’s not an ordinary Kuusaman, you know.”
“Really?” Fernao’s voice was dry. “I never would have noticed. What did you do, tell him you’d put a lifetime itching spell on his drawers if he ever opened his mouth?”
Pekka giggled. “It’s a pretty good idea, but no. If I’d threatened him, he would blab to Leino if he ever saw him. He may not see him, of course. He probably won’t, in fact-Jelgava is a good-sized kingdom. But when he teased me about it, I told him to do whatever he wanted, so he won’t feel he has to run off at the mouth.”
“Good thinking.” Fernao quirked up an eyebrow. “And what do you want to do?”
“It’s more fun than paperwork,” Pekka said. Realizing a heartbeat too late how imperfect that was as praise, she did her best to show him-and herself- exactly how much more fun than paperwork it really was.
A new broadsheet went up all over the Jelgavan town of Skrunda. Talsu read a copy pasted to the front wall of the crowded block of flats where he and his family had moved, exchange of currency, the headline read. Below it, in almost equally large characters, it declared, All coins bearing the impress of the false king, usurper, and vicious tyrant, Mainardo the cursed Algarvian, must be exchanged for those minted under the auspices of his glorious Jelgavan Majesty, Donalitu III, by-the date named was less than two weeks away. The broadsheet continued, Any attempt to pass the monies of the false king and vicious tyrant after the date aforesaid shall be punished with the greatest possible severity. By order of his glorious Jelgavan Majesty, long may he reign.