Into The Darkness

"Let's see." Leino ran his hand down the page. "All the border fortifications, all the power points halfway from the border to Bishah, the right to base a fleet at the harbor of Samawa. - and to have the Zuwayzin pay for it. No, not much: not much he deserves, I mean."

"And all that on pain of war if Zuwayza refuses," Pekka said sadly. "If he were an ordinary man instead of a king, he' be up before a panel of judges on extortion charges."

Leino had read a little more than she had. "Looks like another war, sure enough. Here, see a crystal report from Bishah quotes their foreign minister as saying that Yielding to an unjust demand is worse than making one. If that doesn't sound like the Zuwayzin intend to fight, I don't know what does."

"I wish them well," Pekka said.

"So do I," her husband answered. "The only thing I'm sorry about is that, if they'd given in, Swemmel might have gone back to war with

Gyongyos. As is, the Gongs are only fighting us, and that makes them tougher."

"If a few islands out in the Bothman Ocean were in different places, if a few ley lines ran in different directions, we'd have no quarrel with Gyongyos," Pekka said.

"Gyongyos would probably have a quarrel with us, though," Leino answered. "The Gongs enjoy fighting, seems like."

"I wonder what they say about us," Pekka said in musing tones.

Whatever it was, it did not appear in the Kajaani Crier or any other Kuusaman news sheet.

A caravan hummed up to the stop. The conductor opened the door.

A couple of people in hats and capes got off. Pekka preceded Leino up the steps and into the car. They both plopped eight-copper silver bits in the fare box. Nodding, the conductor waved them back to the seats, as if it were only through his generosity that they had so many from which to choose.

As the caravan began to move, Pekka said, "My grandmother said that, when she was a little girl, her grandmother told her how frightened she was when she was a little girl, the first time she got up on the step to go into a ley-line caravan. There it was, floating on nothing, and she couldn't see why it didn't fall down or tip over."

"Can't expect a child to understand the way complex sorceries work,"

Leino answered. "For that matter, back in those days ley lines were a new thing in the world, and nobody understood them very well - though people thought they did."

"People always think they know more than they do," Pekka said. "It's one of the things that make them people."

They got off at the road that led up to their house. No butterflies flitted now. No birds sang. Rain fell. Rain dripped from trees. Wet branch ' slapped them in the face as they slogged uphill to pick up Uto from Pekka's sister.

When Elimaki came to the door, she looked harried. Uto, on the other hand, seemed the picture of innocence. Pekka did not need grounding in theoretical sorcery to know appearances could deceive.

"What did you do?" she asked him.

"Nothing," he answered sweetly, as he always did.

Pekka glanced to her sister. Elimaki said. "He went climbing in the pantry. He knocked over a five-pound canister of flour, and then tried to tell me he hadn't. He n-fight have gotten away with it, too, if he hadn't left a footprint right in the middle of the pile of flour on the pantry floor."

Leino started to laugh. So did Pekka, in spite of herself She and her husband weren't the only ones in the family straying off the beaten track, either. Ruffling Uto's hair, she said, "You'll go a long way, son - if we decide to let you live."

Colonel Dzirnavu was not a happy man. So far as Talsu could tell,

Dzirnavu was never a happy man. Like a lot of common people, the

Jelgavan count took out his unhappiness on everyone around him. Since he was an officer and a noble, the soldiers in his regiment couldn't tell him to jump off a cliff, as they surely would have if he'd been a com moner like themselves.

"Vartu!" he shouted one morning - he shouted the way singers went through the scales, to warm up his voice. "Confound it, Vartu, where have you gone and hidden yourselP Get your whipworthy arse into my tent this instant!"

"Confound it, Vartu!" Talsu echoed as Dzirnavu's servant came by on the dead run. Vartu gave him a dirty look before ducking under the tent flap and facing his principal's wrath.

"How may I serve you, my lord?" he asked, his words clearly audible through the canvas.

"How may you serve me?" Dzirnavu bellowed. "How may you serve me? You may get me that rascally cook, that's how, and serve me his guts for tripe at my luncheon today. Will you look at this? Will you look at this, Vartu? The hani-fisted thumbfingered son of a whore had the gall to serve me a plate of runny scrambled eggs. How in the names of the powers above am I supposed to eat runny scrambled eggs?"