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His fiancée plainly hadn’t thought of that. Neither had Skarnu, till this moment. “They’ll have to live with it all their lives, won’t they?” Merkela murmured. Skarnu nodded. A bit later, and more than a bit reluctantly, so did she. “All right. Let it be as you say.”

“Do invite me,” Valnu cooed. “After all, I may be an uncle.”

Merkela hadn’t thought of that, either. Skarnu said, “We wouldn’t think of doing anything else. We’ll need someone to pinch the bridesmaids--and maybe the groomsmen, too.”

“You flatter me outrageously,” Valnu said. And then, pouring oil on the fire, he asked, “And will you invite the aunt, too?”

Skarnu wanted to hit him with something. But Merkela merely sounded matter-of-fact as she answered, “She wouldn’t come anyhow. I’m only a peasant. I don’t belong. I could be a traitor, so long as I had blue blood. That wouldn’t matter. But a farm girl in the family ...”

“Is the best thing that ever happened to me.” Skarnu slipped his arm around her waist.

Valnu said, “Nobles wouldn’t be nobles if we didn’t fret about such things. It could be worse, though. It could be Jelgava. Jelgavan nobles make ours look like shopkeepers, the way they go on about the glory and purity of their blood.”

With a certain venomous satisfaction, Merkela said, “It didn’t keep their noblewomen from lying down for the redheads, did it?”

“Well, no.” Valnu wagged a finger at her. “You’re almost as radical as an Unkerknter, aren’t you? When Swemmel’s nobles turned out not to like him, he just went and killed most of them.”

“And the Unkerlanters threw Algarve back,” Merkela replied. “What do you suppose that says, your Excellency?” She used the title with sardonic relish. Valnu, for once, had no comeback ready.

Five

When people spoke of walking on eggs, they commonly meant the kind hens or ducks or geese laid. These days, Fernao felt as if he were walking on the sort egg-tossers flung and dragons dropped. Anything he said, anything he did, might lead to spectacular disaster with the woman he loved.

And even if I don’t do anything, I can be in trouble, he thought. If he left Pekka alone, she was liable to decide he was cold and standoffish. If he pursued her, she might decide he didn’t care about anything but getting between her legs. When word first came back that Leino had died, he’d wondered if he really ought to be sorry. After all, her husband, his own rival, was gone now. Didn’t that leave Pekka all to him?

Maybe it did. On the other hand, maybe it didn’t. He hadn’t realized how guilty she would feel because she’d been in his chamber, because they’d just finished making love, when she got summoned to learn of Leino’s death. If she’d been somewhere else, if she’d never touched him at all, that wouldn’t have changed a thing up in Jelgava. Rationally, logically, anyone could see as much. But how much had logic ever had to do with what went on in people’s hearts? Not much, and Fernao knew it.

In the cramped hostel, he couldn’t have avoided Pekka even had he wanted to. Everyone gathered in the refectory. He felt eyes on him whenever he went in there. Powers above be praised that Ilmarinen’s in Jelgava, went through his mind once--actually, rather more than once. If anybody could be relied upon to start bursting the eggs under one’s metaphorical feet, Umarinen was the man.

Pekka didn’t automatically come sit by him, as she had before the Algarvians killed Leino. But she didn’t go out of her way to avoid him, either, which was some solace, if not much. One evening about a month after the news got back to the Naantali district, she did sit down next to him.

“Hello,” he said carefully. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” Pekka answered, to which he could only nod. When a serving girl came up and asked her what she wanted, she ordered a reindeer cutlet, parsnips in a reindeer-milk cheese sauce, and a lingonberry tart. The girl nodded and briskly walked away toward the kitchen as if the request were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Fernao couldn’t take it in stride. To a Lagoan, especially to a Lagoan from sophisticated Setubal, it seemed a cliché come to life. He didn’t smile the way he wanted to, but he did say, “How . . . very Kuusaman.”

“So it is,” Pekka answered. “So I am.” The implication was, What are you going to do about it?

“I know,” Fernao said gently. “I like what you are. I have for quite a while now, you know.”

Pekka tossed her head like a unicorn bedeviled by gnats. “This isn’t the best time, you know,” she said.

“I’m not going to push myself on you,” he said, and paused while his serving girl set his supper before him: mutton and peas and carrots, a meal he could easily have eaten back in Lagoas. He sipped from the mug of ale that went with it, then added, “I think we do need to talk, though.”

“Do you?” Pekka said bleakly.

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