Out of the Darkness

One of the diehards showed himself at a window--only for a moment, but long enough for Leudast’s beam to cut him down. “Urra!” Leudast yelled. “King Swemmel! Revenge!” Maybe that one word said everything that needed saying.

Aye, we might get killed, but we’ll do a lot of killing first. Before long, Trapani was going to fall. He intended to be one of those who helped bring it down. “Urra!” he cried again, and ran on.

Not a lot of mail came to the hostel in the Naantali district. As far as most of the world was concerned, that hostel didn’t exist. Pekka and the other mages who labored there might as well have dropped off the face of the earth. Even relatives who knew the sorcerers were working somewhere didn’t usually know where, and relied on the post office to get letters where they needed to go.

One envelope that got to Pekka did not, at first, look as if it had come to the right place. The printed design on the corner that showed postage fees had been paid was not Kuusaman. After a bit of puzzling, she figured out the letter was from Jelgava. I don’t know anyone in Jelgava, she thought. I certainly don’t know anyone in Jelgava who knows I’m here.

Even the script challenged her. Printed Jelgavan used the same characters as Kuusaman, but the two kingdoms’ handwritings were quite different. Her name wasn’t on the envelope. A chill ran through her when she realized Leino’s was.

She turned the envelope over. There on the back, in red, was a stamp in her own language: military post--deceased, forward to next of kin.

Pekka’s lips skinned back from her teeth. That explained how she’d got the letter--explained it in more detail than she’d wanted. She opened the envelope. The letter inside was in Jelgavan, too. She had only a few words of the language, and could make out next to nothing of what it said.

She found Fernao in the refectory at suppertime. He was demolishing a plate of corned venison and red cabbage. “Do you read Jelgavan?” she asked, sitting down beside him. Pointing to his supper, she added, “That looks good.”

“It is,” he said, and then asked, “Why do you need me to read Jelgavan? I can probably make sense of it--it’s as close to Valmieran as Sibian is to Algarvian, maybe closer, and I don’t have much trouble with Valmieran.”

“Here. I got this today.” Pekka gave him the letter. “I knew you were good with languages. Can you tell me what it says?” A serving girl came up. Pekka ordered the venison and cabbage for herself, too.

“Let me see.” Fernao started to read, then looked up sharply. “This is to your husband.”

“I know.” Pekka had destroyed the envelope with that hateful rubber stamp. “It got sent to me. What does it say?” She wondered, not for the first time, if Leino had had a Jelgavan lover. She could hardly be angry at him now if he had; it would go some way toward salving her own conscience.

Even so, she started when Fernao said, “It’s from a woman.” He continued, “She’s writing about her husband.”

Was the fellow angry at Leino? Pekka didn’t care to come right out and ask that. Instead, she said, “What does she say about him?”

“Says he helped your husband when he was with the irregulars, but now he’s disappeared, and she’s afraid he’s been thrown into a dungeon,” Fernao replied. “She asks if Leino can do anything to get him out.”

“A Jelgavan dungeon.” Pekka winced. Jelgavan dungeons had an evil reputation. Leino, she remembered, had met King Donalitu aboard the Habakkuk, met him and despised him. Helping anyone who’d fallen foul of his men seemed worth doing. She asked, “Who is this fellow?”

“His name is Talsu. He’s from a town called Skrunda--whereabouts in Jelgava that is, powers above only know. I know I don’t, not without a book of maps,” Fernao said. “His wife’s called Gailisa.”

That name meant nothing to Pekka. Talsu, on the other hand.. . “Aye, Leino said something about him in a letter. He helped our men slip through the Algarvian lines in front of this Skrunda place.”

“You probably ought to see what you can do for him, then,” Fernao said. Pekka smiled and nodded, glad he was thinking along with her. Leino had done a lot of that; if Fernao could, too--and if she could with him--that struck her as promising. Fernao’s next question was thoroughly practical: “Do you think you can do anything?”

“By myself? No. Why should any Jelgavan want to listen to me? But I’ve got connections, and what good are they if I don’t use them?” Listening to herself, Pekka had to laugh. She sounded very much like a woman of the world, not a theoretical sorcerer from a town that looked southwest toward the land of the Ice People. She’d seen Fernao smile a couple of amused and tolerant smiles in Kajaani, though he’d done his best to hide them.

He nodded vigorously now. “Good for you. At least half the time, knowing people counts for more than knowing things does.”