Rulers of the Darkness

"Don't worry about it," Pekka said. "You've done fine, believe me." Her body felt all aglow, so that it seemed they would hardly need the bedchamber lamp that evening.

"I wasn't worried," Leino said. "The people who worry about things like that are the ones who think there's only one way to get from hither to yon. Mages know better- or if they don't, they ought to." With fingers and tongue, he showed her what he meant. He was right, too- that road worked as well as the other one.

When Pekka's breathing and heartbeat had slowed to something close to normal, she said, "They talk about women wearing men out. This is the other way round." She ran a hand down his smooth chest- Kuusamans weren't a very hairy people. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you."

"I hope not," Leino said. "This is like putting money in Olavin's bank." Elimaki's husband, these days, was keeping the finances of the Kuusaman army and navy straight, but Pekka understood what her own husband meant. He went on, "We don't get many chances now, so we have to make the most of them, put them away in our memory bank. They may not earn interest, but they're interesting."

"That's one word," Pekka remarked. Leino's hands had started wandering again, too. But when one of them found its way between her legs, she said, "Wait a bit. I really have done everything I can right now. Let's see what I can do for you."

She crouched beside him, her head bobbing up and down. Rather sooner than she'd expected, she pulled away, taking a couple of deep breaths and choking a little. "Well, well," Leino said. "I didn't think I had it in me."

"You certainly did." Pekka went over to the sink and washed off her chin.

"You'll have to excuse me now," her husband said, curling up on the bed. "I'm going to sleep for about a week." He offered a theatrical snore.

It made Pekka smile, but it didn't convince her. "A likely story," she said. "You'll be feeling me up again before Uto gets home."

"Who was just doing what to whom?" Leino asked, and Pekka had no good answer. He stretched out again, then said, "I love you, you know."

"I love you, too," she said. "That's probably why we've been doing all this."

"Can you think of a better reason?" Leino said. "This is a lot more fun than being lonely and jumping on the first halfway decent-looking person you find."

"Aye," Pekka said, and wished Fernao hadn't chosen that moment to cross her mind again.

***

Vanai poured out wine and listened to Ealstan pour out excitement. "He is! Pybba is, by the powers above," her husband said. "Sure as I'm sitting here, he's funneling money into things that hurt the Algarvians."

"Good for him," Vanai said. "Do you want some sausage? It's the first time in a while the butcher had some that looked even halfway decent."

"Sausage? Oh, aye." Ealstan's voice was far away; he'd heard what she said, but he hadn't paid much attention to it. His mind was on Pybba's accounts: "If he's fighting the Algarvians, maybe I'll finally get the chance to fight them, too. I mean, really fight them."

"And maybe you'll get in trouble, too," Vanai said. "For all you know, his accounts are like a spiderweb, set up to catch somebody who's not quite as smart as he thinks he is." She put a length of sausage on Ealstan's plate and then set a hand on her own belly. "Please be careful."

"Of course I'll be careful." But Ealstan didn't sound as if that were the first thing on his mind, or even the fourth or fifth. He sounded annoyed at Vanai for reminding him he might need to have a care.

You're a man, sure enough, Vanai thought. You'll do whatever you please and then blame me if it doesn't work out the way you want. She sighed. "How is the sausage?" she asked.

Ealstan suddenly seemed to notice what he'd been devouring for supper. "Oh! It's very good," he said. Vanai sighed again. As soon as Ealstan finished eating, he started going on about Pybba some more. Short of clouting him in the head with a rock, Vanai didn't know how to make him shut up. But when he declared, "It's practically my patriotic duty to see what's going on," she lost patience with him.

"You are going to do this thing," she said. "I can tell you're going to do it, and you won't listen to me no matter what I say. But I am going to say this: don't go charging straight ahead, as if you had four legs and two big horns and no brains at all. If you do that, I have the bad feeling you'll disappear one day, and I'll never see you again."

"Don't be silly," he answered, which really made her want to clout him in the head with a rock. But he went on, "I'm my father's son, after all. I don't go blindly charging into things."