Rulers of the Darkness

"No, none," Hajjaj agreed. "Ortah's been able to stay apart from the rest of Derlavai too long. Nobody there knows how to do anything else." With seeming irrelevance, he added, "I read an account once of an island the Valmierans- I think it was the Valmierans- found in the Great Northern Sea."

Qutuz's eyebrows rose. "Your Excellency?" he asked, obviously hoping Hajjaj would make himself clear.

The Zuwayzi foreign minister did his best: "It was an uninhabited island- uninhabited by people, anyhow. It was full of birds that looked like big doves, doves the size of dogs, so big they couldn't fly. If I remember rightly, the Valmierans called them solitaires, or maybe it was Solitary Island. I haven't thought of it in years."

"Why couldn't they fly?" Qutuz still sounded confused.

"They'd lost the need, you might say. They had no enemies there," Hajjaj replied. "The Ortahoin, who've lost the need to deal with their neighbors, put me in mind of them."

"Ah." Qutuz still didn't seem altogether clear about where his superior was going, but he found the right question to ask: "What happened to these big birds, then?"

Hajjaj grimaced. "They were good to eat. The Valmierans hunted them till none was left- they couldn't get away, after all. The island wasn't very big, and they couldn't fly to another one. All we know of them now, we know from a few skins and feathers in a museum in Priekule." He paused. "If I were you, I wouldn't tell this tale to Hadadezer."

"I promise," Qutuz said solemnly.

***

When Pekka walked into the refectory in the hostel in the Naantali district, she found Fernao fighting his way through a Kuusaman news sheet. What with the news sheet, a Kuusaman-Lagoan lexicon, and, almost incidentally, the grilled herring and scrambled eggs and hot tea in front of him, he was as busy a man with breakfast as Pekka had ever seen.

Somehow, he wasn't too busy to notice her come in. He smiled at her and waved the news sheet in the air, almost upsetting his teacup. "Habakkuk!" he exclaimed.

"Aye, Habakkuk." Pekka turned the word into a happy, three-syllable squeak.

"That is brilliant sorcery. Brilliant, I say." Fernao spoke in classical Kaunian so he wouldn't have to pause and search for a word or two every sentence. "Sawdust and ice for strengthening the landing surface the dragons use. More magecraft, drawing energy from the ley lines to keep the icebergs frozen in warm seas. Aye, brilliant. Sea fights will never be the same, now that so many dragons can be carried across the water so quickly."

"You talk like an admiral," Pekka said. The term literally meant general on the ocean; the ancient Kaunian Empire had been far stronger on land than at sea.

Fernao waved the news sheet again. "I do not need to be an admiral to see what splendid magecraft went into this." He read from the sheet: " 'Not least because of their dominance in the air, Kuusaman and Lagoan forces had little trouble overwhelming the relatively weak Algarvian garrisons on the five main islands of Sibiu.' "

"You read that very well," Pekka said. "Your accent is much better than it used to be. How much did you understand?"

"Almost all- now." Fernao tapped the lexicon. "Not so much before I worked my way through it."

"All right." Pekka nodded. "If you stay here too much longer, though, we will make a Kuusaman of you in spite of yourself."

"Though I would have to clip my ponytail, there are probably worse fates. And I already have some of the seeming." Fernao rested his index finger by one narrow, slanted eye to show what he meant. Those eyes argued powerfully that he did have some Kuusaman blood. Then he waved to the seat across from his at the table. "Will you join me? You must have come here to eat, not to talk shop."

"Nothing wrong with talking shop," Pekka said as she did sit down. "But you will have to move that news sheet if I am to have enough room for my breakfast." When a serving girl came up to her, she ordered smoked salmon scrambled with eggs and her own mug of tea.

The tea arrived very quickly. She had to wait a little longer for the rest of her breakfast. As she sat chatting with Fernao, she noticed that neither of them said a word about Leino, though they both knew her husband had had a lot to do with the icebergs-turned-dragon-carriers that went by the name of Habakkuk. Fernao had praised the magecraft without praising the mages who worked it. As for her, she was proud as could be of Leino. But she didn't have much to say about him to Fernao, any more than she'd had much to say about Fernao when she went home to Leino.

But those shouldn't be inverses of each other, she thought. Before she had much chance to wonder why she'd acted as if they were, Ilmarinen came in and started raising a fuss. "Why are we here?" he said loudly. "What are we doing wasting our time in the middle of nowhere?"

"I do not know about you," Fernao said, buttering a slice of dark brown bread. "As for me, I am eating breakfast, and enjoying it, too."