Out of the Darkness

Fernao nodded. His ponytail brushed the back of his neck. “We ought to think about where we’re going.”

“Or if we’re going anywhere,” Pekka said.

“Or if we’re going anywhere,” Fernao agreed, doing his best to keep his voice steady. “We probably won’t decide anything, not so it stays decided, but we should talk. Come back to my room with me after supper. Please.”

The glance she turned on him was half alarm, half rueful amusement. “Every time you ask me to go to your room with you, something dreadful happens.”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Fernao said. The first time he’d asked her to his chamber, it had been to put rumors to rest. He hadn’t intended to make love with her, or, he was sure, she with him. They’d surprised each other; Pekka had dismayed herself, and spent months afterwards doing her best to pretend it hadn’t happened or, at most, to make it into a one-time accident.

“I know you wouldn’t,” she said now. “That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right.”

“It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong, either,” Fernao answered. “Please.” He didn’t want to sound as if he were begging. That didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t, though.

Before Pekka said anything, her supper arrived. Then she sent the serving girl back for a mug of ale like his. Only after she’d drunk from it did she nod. “All right, Fernao. You’re right, I suppose: we should talk. But I don’t know how much there is for us to say to each other.”

“We’d better find out, then,” he said, hoping neither his voice nor his face gave away the raw fear he felt. Pekka nodded as if she saw nothing wrong, so perhaps they didn’t.

Fernao wanted to shovel food into his mouth, to be able to leave the refectory as soon as he could. Pekka took her time. She seemed to Fernao to be deliberately dawdling, but he doubted she was. He was nervous enough to feel as if time were crawling on hands and knees--and that quite without sorcerous intervention. But at last Pekka set down her empty mug and got up. “Let’s go,” she said, as if they were heading into battle. Fernao hoped it wouldn’t be anything so grim, but had to admit to himself that he wasn’t sure.

He opened the door to his room, stood aside to let her go in ahead of him, then shut the door again and barred it. Pekka raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. She sat on the chamber’s one chair. Fernao limped over to the bed and eased himself down onto it. He leaned his cane against the mattress.

His face must have shown the pain he always felt going from standing to sitting or the other way round, for Pekka asked, “How’s your leg?”

“About the same as usual,” he answered. “The healers are a little surprised it’s done as well as it has, but they don’t expect it to get any better than this. I can use it, and it hurts.” He shrugged. Better than getting killed, he almost said, but thought better of that before the words passed his lips.

“I’m glad it’s no worse,” Pekka said. “You did look like it was bothering you.” She fidgeted, something he’d rarely seen her do. This isn’t easy for her, either, Fernao reminded himself. She took a deep breath. “Go on, then. Say your say.”

“Thank you.” Fernao found he needed a deep breath, too. “I don’t know what you would have done--what we would have done--if your husband had lived.”

Pekka nodded shakily. “I don’t, either,” she said. “But things are different now. You must see that.”

“I do,” Fernao agreed. “But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, and you need to know it. I still love you, and I’ll still do anything I can for you, and I still want us to stay together for as long as you can put up with me.” And Leino is dead, and that might make things easier. Before he died, I never thought it might make things harder.

“I do know that,” Pekka said, and then, “I’m not sure you understand everything that goes with it. You want us to stay together, aye. How do you feel about raising up another man’s son?”

In truth, Fernao hadn’t thought much about Uto. Up till now a confirmed bachelor, he had a way of thinking about children in the abstract when he thought about them at all--which wasn’t that often. But Uto was no abstraction, not to Pekka. He was flesh of her flesh, probably the most important thing in the world to her right now. More important than I am? Fernao asked himself. The answer formed in his mind almost as fast as the question. He’s much more important than you are, and you‘d better remember it.

“I don’t know that much about children,” Fernao said slowly, “but I’d do my best. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

She studied him, then nodded again, this time in measured approval. “One of the things you might have told me was that you didn’t want to have anything to do with my son. That’s what a lot of men tell women with children.”