Out of the Darkness

“Both, of course,” Pekka answered at once. That made Fernao laugh. He’d never known a woman who made him laugh so easily. Must be love, he thought. One more sign of it, anyhow.

When they walked into the refectory, he saw right away that Pekka had known whereof she spoke. All the mages already there looked subdued. Some of them looked a good deal worse for wear than merely subdued. No one moved very fast or made loud noises of any sort. When a mug slipped off a serving girl’s overloaded tray and shattered, everybody flinched.

Fernao pulled out a chair for Pekka. She smiled at him as she sat. “I could get used to these fancy Lagoan manners,” she said. “They make me feel. . . pampered, I think, is the word I want.”

“That’s what they’re for,” Fernao agreed. His leg and hip yelped as he too went from standing to sitting. Little by little, he was getting used to the idea that they would probably do that as long as he lived.

After a quick nod, Pekka frowned. “Maybe you have them and we don’t because we have an easier time with the idea that women and men can mostly do the same jobs than you Lagoans do. Do the fancy manners and the deference men show your women help keep them from thinking about things they can’t have?”

“I don’t know,” Fernao confessed. “I haven’t the faintest idea, to tell you the truth. I never would have thought of connecting manners and anything else. Manners are just manners, aren’t they?” But were they just manners? Now that Pekka had raised the question, her remark made a disturbing amount of sense.

Before he could say so, one of the serving girls came up and asked, “What would you like this morning?”

“Oh, hello, Linna,” Fernao said. “How are you today?”

“My head hurts,” she answered matter-of-factly. She’d been at Ilmarinen’s farewell celebration. For all Fernao knew, she’d given the master mage a special farewell of her own once the celebration wound down. Fernao wondered just what Ilmarinen had seen in her: to him, she wasn’t especially pretty or especially bright. But Ilmarinen had bristled like a young buck whenever anyone else so much as gave her a good day. Now she sighed and went on, “I’ll miss the old so-and-so, powers below eat me if I won’t.”

“He’ll miss you, too,” Pekka said.

“I doubt it,” Linna replied with casually devastating cynicism. “Oh, maybe a little, till he finds somebody else to sleep with him up in Jelgava, but after that?” She shook her head. “Not likely. But I will miss him. I’ve never known anybody like him, and I don’t suppose I ever will.”

“There isn’t anybody like Ilmarinen,” Pekka said with great conviction. “They only minted one of that particular coin.”

“You’re right there,” Linna said. “He’s even good in bed, would you believe it? I finally told him aye as much to shut him up as for any other reason I can think of. He’d been pestering me for so long--I figured we might as well get it over with, and then I could let him know I wasn’t interested any more. But he fooled me.” She shook her head again, this time in slow wonder. “Once he got started, I never wanted him to stop.”

Fernao coughed and looked down at his hands. That was more than he’d expected or wanted to hear. Kuusamans--especially their women--were a lot franker about some things than Lagoans. Casting about for some sort of answer, he said, “Ilmarinen would be good at anything he set his mind to.”

“He probably would,” Pekka agreed.

Linna didn’t say anything, but the look on her face did argue that Ilmarinen had indeed been good at something. Recalling herself--she needed a moment to do so--she said, “What can I bring you? You never did tell me.”

“Tea. Hot tea. Lots of hot tea, and a jar of spirits to splash into it,” Fernao said.

“Same for me,” Pekka added. “And a big bowl of tripe soup to go alongside.” Linna nodded and hurried off toward the kitchens.

“Tripe soup?” Fernao echoed, wondering whether he’d heard right. But Pekka nodded, so he must have. He gave her an odd look. “Do Kuusamans really eat things like that? I thought you were civilized.”

“We eat all sorts of strange things,” Pekka answered, a twinkle in her eye. “We just don’t always do it where foreigners can see us. Chicken gizzards. Duck hearts. Reindeer tongue, boiled with carrots and onions. And tripe soup.” She laughed at him. “Turn up your nose all you like, but there aren’t many things better when you’ve had too much to drink the night before.”

“I’ve had tongue,” Fernao said. “Beef tongue, not reindeer. They sell it smoked and sliced in fancy butcher’s shops in Setubal. It’s not bad, as long as you don’t think about what you’re eating.”

The twinkle in Pekka’s eye only got more dangerous. “You’ve never had brains scrambled together with eggs and cream, where what you’re eating thinks about you.”