Rulers of the Darkness

Pekka got to her feet- indeed, almost sprang to her feet. The refectory swayed a little when she did: sure enough, she'd had more brandy than she thought. "I," she declared, "am going upstairs to bed. To sleep," she added, so as not to leave Fernao in any possible doubt about what she meant.

If he offered to escort her… I'll have to pretend to be angrier than I am, Pekka thought. But Fernao nodded. "I intend to do the same thing in a little while," he said. "I have not drunk quite enough yet, though."

"Try not to have too thick a head come morning," Pekka warned. "You will need to draft a report on what we did today."

"I remember," Fernao answered, and Pekka had to fight against a giggle. The Lagoan mage might have been Uto dutifully saying, Aye, Mother. Pekka got to her feet and hurried away. She'd had that thought about Ilmarinen a good many times. What did it mean when she also started having it about the other mages with whom she worked? That you think being in charge of them means mothering them? She wasn't sure she liked that. She was sure they wouldn't if they found out about it.

She almost ran to the stairway, as if running from her own thoughts. Had she had long legs like Fernao's, she would have gone up the stairs two at a time. As things were, she just climbed them as fast as she could. That proved plenty fast to startle two people embracing halfway up to the second floor.

Ilmarinen and… Linna? Pekka wondered if she'd drunk enough to start seeing things. Then Ilmarinen demanded, "Did you have to come by at the most inconvenient possible moment?" and his annoyance convinced her her imagination hadn't run wild after all.

"I didn't intend to," Pekka answered. "I am allowed to go up to my own room, you know."

"I suppose so." Ilmarinen sounded as if he supposed nothing of the sort. He turned back to the serving girl. "And how would you like to go up to my own room?"

"Better that than blocking the stairway," Pekka said.

Linna didn't say anything right away. Pekka hoped she wouldn't have to listen to Ilmarinen begging. That didn't suit her image of the way a master mage should act. Of course, a lot of the things Ilmarinen did failed to suit her image, and he cared not a fig. But humiliation seemed somehow worse than outrageousness.

Then Linna answered, "Well, why not? I've already come this far." Ilmarinen beamed and kicked up his heels like a frisky young reindeer. Pekka thought he would have carried Linna up the stairs if she'd shown any sign of wanting him to. The next question was, would he measure up once he lay down beside her? For his sake, Pekka hoped so. If he didn't, he was liable to be devastated.

She let the two of them go up the stairs ahead of her. Now that she'd escaped Fernao, any more rushing seemed pointless. She walked past Ilmarinen's chamber on the way to her own, but made a point of not listening to whatever was going on in there. Officially, it was none of her business. And Ilmarinen's attitude the next time she saw him would tell her everything she needed to know, anyhow.

The inside of her own room, bare and spare, was not the most welcoming place in which she'd ever found herself. Hoping to lose herself in the intricate business of trying to record events exactly as they'd happened, she inked a pen and began to write. But, after she'd set down a couple of sentences, she shook her head and pushed the leaf of paper away.

"He's saved your life twice, maybe three times now," she said aloud, as if someone had denied it. "This last time, he may have saved everything. Why are you running away from him, then?"

Part of her knew the answer to that. The rest, the larger part, proved not to want to think about it. Looking out the window, she saw it was snowing again. She ran a finger under the collar of her tunic. It felt unpleasantly warm inside the hostel- certainly inside her room. She set down the pen. With a sigh that was the next thing to a sob, she got up and headed for the refectory.

When she walked past Ilmarinen's room, Linna's giggle gave her pause. Indeed, it almost sent her running back to her own chamber. But she shook her head and kept going. She wondered if she would bump into Fernao on the stairway, and what would happen if she did.

She didn't. And when she went back into the refectory and looked around, she didn't see him there, either.

She stood in the entranceway looking around till one of the serving women came up to her and asked, "May I help you with anything, Mistress Pekka?"

Pekka jumped as if the woman had asked her something shameful. "No," she said, louder and more sharply than she'd intended. "I was just… looking for someone, that's all."

"Ah." The serving woman nodded. "Master Fernao went up to his chamber a couple of minutes ago."

"Did he?" Pekka said, and the woman nodded again. She knows whom I'd be looking for, does she? She probably knows why I'd be looking for him, too. And she probably knows why better than I do myself.