Darkness Descending (33 page)

Horses’ hooves clopping, the carriage bore the three mages to the princely palace. It stood on the highest ground in Yliharma, having begun its history as a hill fort centuries before the Kaunians crossed the Strait of Valmiera farther west. Savants still dug below the far more splendid buildings gracing the hilltop these days, and sometimes came up with fascinating finds.

“What sort of man is Prince Rustolainen?” Pekka asked. “Living down in the south, I hear less of him than I’d like.”

“He’s not the sort to think the doings of the Prince of Yliharma belong in the news sheets, anyhow,” Siuntio said, at which Ilmarinen nodded. Siuntio went on, “He’s a solid sort, and far from a fool.”

“Less forward-looking than Joroinen,” Ilmarinen added. “He sees what is, not what he wants to be. But Siuntio’s right—he’s solid about what is.”

The Seven Princes of Kuusamo went in for less in the way of gaudy ceremonial than did the kings on the mainland of Derlavai—or Bang Vitor of Lagoas, for that matter. The usher who brought the mages before the Seven announced them as matter-of-factly as if he were presenting them to seven prominent merchants. Pekka went to one knee for a moment; Siuntio and Ilmarinen bowed.

Prince Joroinen said, “We need stand on no special ceremony here this morning.” He looked along the table behind which the Seven sat. No one contradicted him. The princes dressed more like prosperous merchants than rulers, too.

Prince Rustolainen sat in the center of the group, since they were gathered at his castle. Being the prince whose domain included Yliharma, he was the most powerful among the Seven no matter where he sat. He leaned forward, nodding to Siuntio. “Master mage, you have persuaded me to call my comrades together. I have explained the business as best I can, but I am no sorcerer. Tell it to them plain, as you told it to me.”

“They will have also heard from mages in their own domains, I expect,” Siuntio said, and some of the princes nodded. Siuntio went on, “In any case, it is less a matter of magecraft than of simple right and wrong. The Algarvians have turned to murder in their war against Unkerlant.”

“War is about murder,” Rustolainen said.

Siuntio shook his head. “So you said when I first brought this to your notice, your Highness. I told you then and I tell you now, war is about killing. A soldiers foe has a chance to slay him. The Algarvians took folk who could not possibly fight back and killed them for the sake of their life energy, which they then turned against King Swemmel’s armies. They go forward once more because of it, where they had been stopped.”

“How strong a magic can they make this way?” asked Prince Parainen, whose lands were in the far east, looking across the Bothnian Ocean toward Gyongyos.

“How many Kaunian captives do they care to kill?” Siuntio answered bluntly. “The greater the murder, the greater the magecraft.”

“Killing is easier than it used to be in the old days, too,” Ilmarinen added. “They don’t have to go up to each captive and smite him with a sword or an axe. They can beam the victims down one after another with sticks. Ah, the modern age we live in!” His glee was savage and sardonic.

Prince Joroinen asked, “How does the power of this magic the Algarvians are using compare to the force of the new magecraft the three of you and your colleagues are investigating?”

To Pekka’s surprise, both Siuntio and Ilmarinen looked toward her. She said, “Your highness, no wood fire can burn hotter than a coal fire. We are looking at coal, or at something hotter than coal. But a large wood fire will do more harm than a small coal fire. The Algarvians have kindled the largest wood fire the world has ever seen, and the one with the foulest smoke.”

“A good figure,” Siuntio murmured. Pekka smiled her thanks.

“We summoned the Algarvian minister to Kuusamo before us yesterday,” Rustolainen said, and the rest of the princes nodded. “He denied that his kingdom has done any such thing—says it’s a lie put about by King Mezentio’s enemies. How say you?”

“Your Highness, I say Algarve has a bad conscience,” Siuntio replied. “The thing was done. They could not hide it, not from those with the senses and training to feel it. They can only pretend to innocence they no longer have.”

“They say that if anyone worked such a magic, it was the Unkerlanters, trying to hold them back,” Rustolainen said.

Pekka, Ilmarinen, and Siuntio all laughed bitter laughs. “Oh, indeed,” Ilmarinen said. “That’s why Swemmel’s troops go back in triumphant retreat, while the Algarvians advance in fear and chaos and disorder.”

“Results speak louder—and truer—than words,” Pekka agreed.

Joroinen asked, “How soon will you have your hotter fire ready to burn?”

That was more Pekka’s to answer than either of her colleagues. She said, “Your Highness, I was almost ready to make the experiment to see how the new fire would burn—or it if would burn at all—when the Algarvians . . . did what they did. We will know more after I finally do make it. How long we will need to control it, if there is anything to control, I can’t say, not yet. I’m sorry.” She looked down at the carpet. It was woven in a pattern of rushes, to imitate the rushes Kuusaman chieftains had strewn on their floors before they knew of carpets.

“The Algarvian minister may talk prettier than we do. He may talk fancier than we do,” Ilmarinen said. “But there’s one other difference you had better remember, you Seven of Kuusamo: we tell you the truth.”

As usual, Prince Rustolainen spoke for the group: “And what would you have us do?”

Siuntio took a step forward. “It must be war, your Highness,” he said. “If we let them do this without punishing them, the world will suffer because of it. Men must know they may not do such things. I say it sadly, but say it I must.”

“What of our war with Gyongyos?” Prince Parainen exclaimed. That war concerned him more intimately than any of the other princes, for his ports looked out toward the islands on which it was fought.

“Your Highness, the war with Gyongyos is a war for Kuusamo’s advantage,” Siuntio said. “The war against Algarve will be a war for the world’s advantage.”

“With Unkerlant for our partner?” Parainen raised an eyebrow, for which Pekka had trouble blaming him. He put his objections into words: “King Swemmel, I think, would sooner wreck the world than save it.”

“Doubtless he would,” Ilmarinen agreed. “But what Swemmel would do, Mezentio is doing. What has the greater weight?”

Swemmel might have taken the mage’s head for such lese majesty. Parainen bit his lips and, ever so reluctantly, nodded. Rustolainen said, “If we war against Algarve, we war without the new magic, is it not so?”

“It is so, your Highness, at least for now,” Pekka said. “It may come. I don’t know how soon it will, and I don’t know how much good it will do when it does.”

“A leap in the dark,” Parainen muttered.

“No, your Highness—a leap into the light,” Siuntio said.

“Is it?” Parainen remained unconvinced. “Swemmel will start slaughtering his own as soon as he thinks of it. Tell me I am wrong.”

Pekka didn’t think he was wrong. She feared he was right. But she said, “Two things, your Highness. What a man does to save himself is different from what he will do to hurt another. And Mezentio is leaving his own untouched. He has other victims, who can do nothing to make him stop.”

The princes murmured to one another. Rustolainen said, “We thank you, Masters, Mistress. If we need to hear more of your views, we shall summon you.” Pekka left the conference chamber downhearted. She had hoped for more—she had hoped for a promise. But the news of the Seven Princes’ declaration of war on Algarve beat her carriage back to the Principality. She had never dreamt she could be so pleased about something that promised such sorrow.

Rumors swirled through Priekule. Some were frightened. Some were furious. Krasta had no idea which of them to believe, or whether to believe any. She wanted to ignore them, but could not do that, either.

If anyone would know the truth, Colonel Lurcanio would. He looked up from his paperwork when she pushed her way past Captain Mosco and stood in the doorway to the chamber he was using as his office—she didn’t quite dare bursting in on him. “Come in, my dear,” he said with his usual cruelly charming smile, setting down a steel pen. “What can I do for you?”

“Is it true?” Krasta demanded. “Tell me it is not true.”

“Very well: it is not true,” Lurcanio said agreeably. Krasta knew a moment’s relief, a moment shattered when her Algarvian lover’s smile grew broader and he inquired, “Now—what are we talking about?”

Krasta set her hands on her hips. Her temper flared, as it had a way of doing. “Why, what everyone says, of course.”

“ ‘Everyone says’ all manner of things,” Lurcanio replied with a shrug. “Most of them are stupid. Almost none are true. I think I stood on fairly safe ground when I denied yours, whatever it was.” He made as if to go back to his papers.

Being brushed off, even by the formidable Lurcanio, was more than Krasta would tolerate. Voice whipcrack sharp, she said, “Then why did Kuusamo go to war against Algarve?”

She succeeded in getting her lover’s attention. He set down the pen and looked her full in the face. His smile, now, was gone. The expression that replaced it made Krasta wish she hadn’t sounded so prickly: she’d got more of Lurcanio’s attention than she wanted. “You had better tell me just what you are saying, and where you heard it, and from whom,” he said softly; unlike every other man she knew, the quieter he was, the more menacing he sounded.

“You know perfectly well, or you cursed well ought to.” Krasta tried to hold on to her defiance. Against Lurcanio, that was next to impossible. He had the edge on her, just as Algarve’s army had had the edge on Valmiera’s a year and a half before.

And he knew it. “Suppose you tell me,” he repeated. “Suppose you tell me in great detail. Come in and sit down; do make yourself comfortable. And close the door behind you.”

Krasta obeyed. She was very conscious of obeying, of following his will rather than her own. It chafed at her, like trousers too tight in the crotch. Trying to get a little freedom, a little breathing space, she gave Lurcanio a saucy smile and said, “Your men will think I came her for another reason.” She’d done that once, on a whim, and certainly had distracted Lurcanio from whatever he’d been working on.

She did not distract him today. “Let my men think whatever they please,” he said. “You came down here to tell me you had heard . .. certain things. Now you do not seem to want to tell me what these things are. I need to know that.” He waited, looking at her.

Again, Krasta felt herself obeying. Because she was obeying and not doing as she wanted—as she did whenever she was not around Colonel Lurcanio—she gave it to him full in the face: “Is it true that Algarve is taking Kaunians out of Valmiera or Jelgava or ... or wherever”—she’d been shaky in geography, as she’d been shaky in a good many subjects at the academies she’d sometimes (often briefly) graced—“and doing horrible things to them off in barbarous Unkerlant?”

“Oh. That.” Lurcanio gestured dismissively, as if flicking a speck off his tunic. “I thought you were talking about something important, my sweet. No, it is not true that we are taking people out of Valmiera or Jelgava or doing anything to them anywhere. There. Is that plain enough?”

She didn’t notice he hadn’t answered quite all of her questions; had she paid closer attention at one of her academies or unfinished finishing schools, perhaps she might have. But his assertion didn’t lay a fortnight’s rumors to rest at a stroke, either. “Then why do people say you are?” she persisted.

“Why?” Lurcanio sighed. “Have you not seen for yourself that most people—especially most common people—are fools and will repeat anything they hear, as if they were so many trained jackdaws?”

That, aimed at Krasta, was a shrewder stroke. “I certainly have!” she exclaimed. “The commoners who aren’t fools are commonly knaves. Commoners... commonly.” She laughed. She made jokes mostly by accident, and didn’t always recognize them even then. When she did, she felt uncommonly pleased with herself.

Lurcanio laughed, too, more than the feeble wordplay deserved. “There—you see? Out of your own mouth you convict these liars. Have any of your friends disappeared? Have any of your servants disappeared? Have any
of their
friends disappeared? Of course not. How could we hope to keep such a thing secret if it were so? It would be impossible.”

“Aye, so it would,” Krasta admitted. Had anything truly been going on in Valmiera, the rumors would have been juicier, full of more details. Now that she thought about it, she saw that plain. Still. . . “Why does Kuusamo war on you, then?”

“Why?” Colonel Lurcanio raised an elegantly sardonic eyebrow. “I’ll tell you why, my sweet: because the Seven Princes are jealous of our triumphs, and look for any excuse to tear us down.”

“Ah.” Again, that made sense to Krasta. She’d done the same thing to social rivals and had it done to her. She nodded.

Now Lurcanio’s smile was charming again. He pushed his chair back and away from his desk. The chair was Algarvian military issue; its brass wheels squeaked. “As long as you are here, do you care to give my men something to gossip about?”

This time, his voice held no command. He never tried to force Krasta in such matters: not overtly, anyhow. Had she chosen to walk out the door, he would never have said a word about it. Not least because she was free to refuse, she decided not to. Knowing the other Algarvian officers
would
be jealous of Lurcanio didn’t hurt, either. She sank to her knees in front of him and flipped up his kilt.

Having eased her mind (and her body; Lurcanio was scrupulous about returning such favors), she went back to her bedchamber to choose a cloak for the day’s journey through the shops of Priekule. Bauska was no help. With her, what people called morning sickness lasted all day long. She was liable to gulp and flee at any moment. If that was what carrying a child meant, Krasta wanted no part of it.

Her driver, also muffled against the chill of approaching winter, took the carriage to the Boulevard of Horsemen. As soon as he handed her down onto the street, he took a flask out of his pocket and swigged from it. That would help keep him warm, or at least make him stop caring he was cold.