“I’m glad it’s no worse,” Pekka said. “You did look like it was bothering you.” She fidgeted, something he’d rarely seen her do. This isn’t easy for her, either, Fernao reminded himself. She took a deep breath. “Go on, then. Say your say.”
“Thank you.” Fernao found he needed a deep breath, too. “I don’t know what you would have done-what we would have done-if your husband had lived.”
Pekka nodded shakily. “I don’t, either,” she said. “But things are different now. You must see that.”
“I do,” Fernao agreed. “But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, and you need to know it. I still love you, and I’ll still do anything I can for you, and I still want us to stay together for as long as you can put up with me.” And Leino is dead, and that might make things easier. Before he died, I never thought it might make things harder.
“I do know that,” Pekka said, and then, “I’m not sure you understand everything that goes with it. You want us to stay together, aye. How do you feel about raising up another man’s son?”
In truth, Fernao hadn’t thought much about Uto. Up till now a confirmed bachelor, he had a way of thinking about children in the abstract when he thought about them at all-which wasn’t that often. But Uto was no abstraction, not to Pekka. He was flesh of her flesh, probably the most important thing in the world to her right now. More important than I am? Fernao asked himself. The answer formed in his mind almost as fast as the question. He’s much more important than you are, and you‘d better remember it.
“I don’t know that much about children,” Fernao said slowly, “but I’d do my best. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
She studied him, then nodded again, this time in measured approval. “One of the things you might have told me was that you didn’t want to have anything to do with my son. That’s what a lot of men tell women with children.”
Fernao shrugged, more than a little uncomfortably. He understood that point of view. He would have taken it himself with a lot of women. With Pekka … If he wanted to stay with her, he had to take everything that was part of her. And … In musing tones, he said, “If we had a baby, I wonder what it would look like.”
Pekka blinked. Her voice very low, she answered, “I’ve wondered the same thing a few times. I didn’t know you had. Sometimes a woman thinks a man only cares about getting her into bed, not about what might happen afterwards.”
“Sometimes that is all a man cares about.” Remembering some of the things that had happened in his own past, Fernao didn’t see how he could deny it. But he went on, “Sometimes, but not always.”
“I see that,” Pekka said. “Thank you. It’s… a compliment, I suppose. It gives me more to think about.”
“I love you. You’d better think about that, too,” Fernao said.
“I know. I do think about it,” Pekka answered. “I have to think about all the things it means. I have to think about all the things it might not mean, too. You’ve helped clear up some of that.”
“Good,” Fernao said. You don’t say you love me, he thought. I can see why you don’t, but oh, I wish you would.
What Pekka did say was, “You’re a brave man-powers above know that’s true. And you’re a solid mage. Better than a solid mage, in fact; I’ve seen that working with you. There are times I think I never should have gone to bed with you in the first place, but you always made me happy when I did.”
“We aim to please,” Fernao said with a crooked smile.
“You aim well,” Pekka said. “Does all that add up to love? It might. I thought it did before. . before Leino died, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. But that’s turned everything upside down.”
“I know.” Fernao kept the smile on his face. It wasn’t easy.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Pekka smiled, too, ruefully. “Usually, the busier I am, the happier I am. When I’m doing things, I haven’t got time to think. And I don’t much want to think right now.”
“That makes sense,” Fernao agreed. He heaved himself to his feet without using the cane. That hurt, but he managed. He managed the couple of steps he needed to get over to the chair, too. Getting down beside it hurt more than standing up had, but he ignored the pain with the practice of a man who’d known much worse. “But there’s happy and then there’s happy, if you know what I mean.” To make sure she knew what he meant, he kissed her.
It was, he knew, a gamble. If Pekka wasn’t ready, or if she thought he cared about nothing but bedding her, he wouldn’t do himself any good. At first, she just let the kiss happen, without really responding to it. But then, with what sounded like a small surprised noise down deep in her throat, she kissed him, too.
When their lips separated-Fernao didn’t push the kiss as far as he might have, as far as he wanted to-Pekka said, “You don’t make things easy, do you?”
“I try not to,” Fernao answered.
“You’ve succeeded. And I’d better go.” Pekka rose, then stooped to help Fernao up and gave him his cane. He wasn’t embarrassed for the aid; he needed it. Even as Pekka unbarred the door and left, Fernao nodded to himself with more hope than he’d known for some little while.
“What sort of delegation?” Hajjaj asked, thinking he’d misheard. His ears weren’t all they’d once been, and he was unhappily aware of it.
But Qutuz repeated himself: “A delegation from the Kaunian refugees from Forthweg who have settled around Najran, your Excellency. Three of them are out in the corridor. Will you receive them, or shall I send them away?”
“I’ll talk with them,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “I have no idea how much I’ll be able to do for them-I can’t do much for Zuwayzin these days-but I’ll talk with them.”
“Very well, your Excellency.” Qutuz made an excellent secretary. He gave no sign of his own approval or disapproval. He got his master’s instructions and acted on them-in this case by going out into the corridor and bringing the Kaunians back into the office with him.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Hajjaj said in classical Kaunian when they came in. He read the language of scholarship and sorcery as readily as Zuwayzi, but was less fluent speaking it.
“Good day, your Excellency,” the blonds chorused, bowing low. They all wore tunics and trousers; for men with their pale, easily sunburned skins, nudity was not an option in Zuwayza, even during her relatively mild winter.
“Two of you I have met before,” Hajjaj said. “Nemunas, Vitols.” He nodded to each of them in turn. Nemunas was older than Vitols, and had a scarred left hand. Before Forthweg fell to the Algarvians, they’d both been sergeants in King Penda’s army-unusually high rank for Kaunians-which made them leaders among the blonds who’d fled across the Bay of Ajlun to keep from ending up in one of King Mezentio’s special camps.
The third blond, the one Hajjaj didn’t know, bowed again and said, “I am called Kaudavas, your Excellency.”
“I am glad to meet you,” Hajjaj said. As long as he stuck to stock phrases, he was fine.
Both Nemunas and Vitols stared at him. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, your Excellency,” the older blond said. “Thanks very much for recalling our names.”
“You are welcome,” Hajjaj replied-another stock phrase. A good memory for names and faces came in handy for a diplomat. When he went beyond stock phrases, he had to think about what he said and speak slowly: “And you and your countrymen are welcome in my kingdom, and all three of you are welcome here. Would you care for tea and wine and cakes?”
All three Kaunians from Forthweg chuckled. “We’d sooner just get down to business, sir, if you don’t mind,” Nemunas said.