Authors: Harry Turtledove
Something close to panic swept over her, as if he’d made much more overt, much cruder advances. What caused part of the panic was that alarm wasn’t the only reason her heart beat faster. Even so, she took her hand away. “That’s over,” she said. “It has to be over.”
“Why?” he asked, in much the same tones her son Uto might have used with an endless series of
Why?s
when he was four years old.
She felt like answering,
Because,
which had the virtue of stopping that whole ley-line caravan of questions. In fact she did say, “Because,” but went on, “I have a family, and I want to go on having a family. Once”—she shrugged—”anything can happen once. If something like that happened again and again, though, what would I have to go home to?”
“Me,” Fernao answered.
He meant it. She could see as much. That made it worse, not better. “It’s impossible,” she said. “It has to be.” She grimaced; that left her open to another,
Why?
Instead of using it, Fernao just shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. “You’ve decided you want it to be that way, which isn’t the same thing at all. If you think I’m going to quit trying to get you to change your mind, you’re wrong.”
He told her that in fluent, idiomatic Kuusaman. A few months before, he would have had to use classical Kaunian to get his meaning across. Pekka wished he still did; that would have accented the differences between them. She said, “If you go on this way now, you’ll make me angry. That won’t do you any good.”
Fernao studied her face, plainly trying to decide if she meant it. She did her best to look stern, partly to convince him, partly to convince herself. Most of her recognized the need for that. Part of her, though, kept saying things like,
Of course you can enjoy yourself here, and then break it off when the war’s over or when Leino comes home or when you and Fernao get assigned to two different places.
A serving woman came up and asked her what she wanted. She ordered smoked salmon and eggs, glad for the distraction.
How am I going to make Fernao believe I don’t want to go to bed with him again when I have trouble making myself believe it?
she wondered. She called after the serving woman: “Oh, and a pot of tea, too.” The woman nodded. Pekka hoped the tea would help her think straight. She hoped something would.
By Fernao’s expression, he knew she was fighting a war with herself. He wasn’t of two minds; he knew exactly what he wanted. In a way, that was flattering. In another way, it just made life more difficult.
Before Fernao could find anything to say, a serving girl came up to the table they were sharing. “Mistress Pekka?” she asked.
“Aye?” Lost in her own thoughts, Pekka needed a moment to realize it wasn’t the woman who’d taken her breakfast order. “What is it, Linna?” she asked. She needed another moment to realize that, whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Linna was pale and biting her lip. “What’s wrong?”
Fernao was a jump ahead of her: “Is it something to do with Ilmarinen?”
Looking paler than ever, Linna nodded. “Is he—?” Pekka broke off the question without finishing it. Ilmarinen wasn’t a young man, and Linna was a young, pretty woman. If he’d tried to do something too strenuous, he might have died happy, but that could only be horror for the person in whose company he was at the time.
But Linna said, “I don’t know where he is. I went to his chamber this morning, and I found two envelopes. This one was addressed to me.” She pulled out an envelope and took a note from it. “It says, ‘If I come back, we’ll celebrate. If I don’t, there’s a little something in my will to remember me by. Have fun with it. I had fun with you.’ “ She folded the leaf of paper, and then produced another envelope. “This one has your name on it, Mistress Pekka.”
“So it does.” Pekka took the envelope with a certain reluctance. She glanced over at Fernao. “Do I want to find out what’s in it?”
“I think you’d better.” He was all business now, not mooning over her at all.
Pekka sighed. “I think I’d better, too. But do I want to?” She opened the envelope and pulled out the leaf of paper inside. Fernao and Linna both bent toward her to see what Ilmarinen had written.
I still think I’m right,
the note said,
and I think I can prove it. I’m going to try, anyhow.
The rest of the page was covered with closely written calculations.
“Right about what?” Linna asked. “What’s he talking about?”
Of course the calculations made no sense to her. Pekka said, “I’m not quite sure myself. I’ll have to look at this. Thank you for bringing it to me. It’s something I need to see.”
And something you don’t,
she added by implication.
Linna took the hint. “All right,” she said. “Please let me know what you find out, though. I’m worried about him.” She went off, looking back over her shoulder.
When the other serving woman brought breakfast a moment later, Pekka hardly noticed. She and Fernao had their heads together, both of them bent over the note Linna had brought. Their index fingers traced Ilmarinen’s calculations line by line. Pekka’s finger moved a little faster than Fernao’s. When she got to the bottom of the paper, she exclaimed, “He can’t do that!”
Fernao grunted. He didn’t say anything till he’d got to the bottom, too. Then he replied, “No, but he thinks he can. He may even be right, but I don’t think so.” He switched to classical Kaunian for precision’s sake: “See this indeterminacy two-thirds of the way down?” He pointed. “He treats it as if its value were defined, but it is not. If he acts on that basis, I believe the spell will fail.”
Pekka studied. She nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “I missed that when I hurried through. I think you’re right. I’m not sure, but I think so. But if the spell does fail,
how
will it fail?”
Some spells that didn’t work just didn’t work: the world went on as if nothing had happened. Others … Fernao summed up the others in one classical Kaunian word: “Energetically.”
She feared he was right. They both got to their feet. “Your breakfast, Mistress Pekka!” the serving woman said. Pekka ignored her, but hurried out of the refectory, out of the hostel, with Fernao. He limped and leaned on his stick, but still moved fast enough to suit her.
When they went to the stable for a carriage, they discovered one was already gone. “Are you heading out to the blockhouse with Master Ilmarinen?” their driver asked. “He left a while ago.”
“Did he?” Pekka said tonelessly. “Well, then, maybe you’d better hurry, hadn’t you?” The fellow barely had time to nod before she scrambled into the passenger compartment with Fernao. She looked at the Lagoan mage. “If it does fail energetically, it occurs to me that we might get there just in time to be caught in the energy release.”
“Aye, that occurred to me, too,” Fernao agreed. “We have to try, though, don’t we?” He waited for her to nod, then went on, “There’s a worse possibility, too, you know: he might succeed.”
“In going back through time? In changing things?” Pekka shook her head. “I don’t believe that. Powers above, I don’t want to believe it. And if he does it no matter what I believe …” She shuddered.
Fernao took her hand. She let him; she was glad of the contact. “If he can meddle, others will be able to do it, too,” he said. “And we won’t have a past to call our own anymore.”
Pekka leaned out the carriage. “Faster!” she told the driver. Obligingly, he got the horses up to a trot.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Fernao said. “If we’re late—”
“We have to try,” Pekka said, though every instinct in her shouted for turning around and going the other way. If Ilmarinen failed … energetically, Leino would lose his wife and Uto would grow up not remembering much of his mother. Pekka clutched at Fernao’s hand. Suddenly, absurdly, she wanted him very much. No chance of that, not now.
I
know I might die at any moment. That’s what it is.
The carriage stopped. Pekka and Fernao piled out. She ran for the blockhouse. He followed at the best pace he could manage. In spite of the stick, his long legs made him not much slower than she.
When Pekka threw open the door, her worst fear was finding the place empty. That would mean Ilmarinen had done what he’d set out to do, and that would mean disaster. But there stood the elderly mage, still incanting. “Stop!” Pekka shouted. He hadn’t come to the indeterminacy, but he couldn’t be far away.
He smiled and shook his head and kept on with what he was doing. Fernao wasted no time talking. He simply tackled Ilmarinen and knocked him down. Ilmarinen shouted in fury, but Fernao, bad leg and all, was much bigger and younger and stronger than he. Pekka quickly chanted a counterspell to neutralize the sorcerous potential Ilmarinen’s magecraft had built up.
“You idiots!” Ilmarinen cried, and then several choicer epithets.
“No,” Fernao and Pekka said together. She went on, “Your calculations have an error in them. Fernao found it, and I’m sure he’s right.” Ilmarinen kept right on cursing. Pekka didn’t care. She still had a future—and the world, despite Ilmarinen’s best efforts, still had a past.
King Donalitu of Jelgava paced along
Habakkuk’s
icy deck once more. Leino made a wish. Wishes had very little to do with magecraft; the Kuusaman sorcerer knew as much. He made this one anyhow.
And, whether by the powers above or just dumb luck, it came true. As Donalitu was pompously declaiming, “And so we approach once more the land from which I was unjustly driven almost four long years ago—” his feet went out from under him and he landed, hard, on the royal backside.
Leino had all he could do not to clap his hands in glee, as Uto would have done. Like everyone else aboard
Habakkuk,
Donalitu wore shoes with cleats or spikes to keep such mishaps from occurring. Maybe he hadn’t paid attention when people had explained how to walk in them. He didn’t seem much in the habit of paying attention to anything.
Beside Leino, Xavega did clap her hands. But even she tried to pretend she hadn’t done it afterwards. She grinned at Leino. He smiled back. If it hadn’t been for Donalitu, they never would have ended up in bed together. If it hadn’t been for Donalitu, she still would have looked down her nose at him—not hard, when she was taller than he was.
He wasn’t about to arrange a dissolution from Pekka to spend the rest of his days with Xavega. She remained bad-tempered, arrogant, difficult, prejudiced. He could see all that clearly enough. But when she stripped off her clothes and lay down beside him, there was never a dull moment. He hadn’t been sleeping well aboard
Habakkuk.
He did now.
Assisted by Captain Brunho, Donalitu got to his feet and managed to stay upright. He started to go on with his remarks, but didn’t get the chance. One after another, screeching with fury, dragons flapped their way into the air and flew off toward the west. Not even a king so manifestly foolish as Donalitu was foolish enough to try to outshout a dragon.
Leino looked around and then back over his shoulder. Every ley line leading west toward the Jelgavan mainland was full of ships. Some of them flew Lagoas’ crimson and gold banners. Quite a few more, though, showed the sky blue and sea green of Kuusamo. Xavega might not think much of either his homeland or his countrymen, but Kuusamo was stronger than her kingdom.
Since she thought well enough of him to open her legs, her other opinions distressed him less than they had. He knew that was wrong, but had trouble doing anything about it.
He didn’t want to think about her other opinions just now, anyway. He said, “I hope the ruse worked. When the fleet sailed from Kihlanki, we made it very plain we were sailing against Gyongyos—so plain, the Algarvians couldn’t help but find out about it. All the ships flew Kuusaman flags then, till we were out of sight of land.”
“Everything seems fine so far,” Xavega said. “We are close enough to the Jelgavan coast to send out our dragons, and the Algarvians have not troubled us with dragons of their own, or with ships of their own, or with leviathans. It looks as if our surprise is complete.”
“It will not stay complete for long,” Leino said. “Having dragons drop eggs on you and flame your soldiers will probably draw your notice.”
“Aye, I suppose so,” Xavega said. Leino hid a sigh. He’d tried to be playful with his classical Kaunian—the only language they had in common, since he’d never needed to learn Lagoan and Xavega showed less than no interest in everything Kuusaman except him. Had she even noticed? He shook his head. She hadn’t.
So what are you doing with her?
he wondered. But the answer to that was as obvious as it was trite:
I’m screwing her till we annoy the people in the cubicles on either side of ours.
He’d been surprised at how much a man in his mid-thirties could do—pleasantly surprised. Very pleasantly.
“We have to smash them,” Xavega said. “If we do not smash them, the landing on the Jelgavan coast will fail. And it must not fail.”
“It had better not, anyhow,” Leino agreed. “And so the war comes back to eastern Derlavai. I wonder if the Jelgavans will thank us for it.”
“Of course not,” Xavega said—she was no more fond of Jelgavans as a people than of Kuusamans as a people. But then she asked a perfectly reasonable question: “Does King Donalitu seem grateful?”
“No. As far as King Donalitu is concerned, he is doing us a favor by allowing us to convey him back to Jelgava on
Habakkuk?
That made Xavega laugh, though Leino hadn’t been joking. He looked toward the west. More dragons were flying in that direction, not only from
Habakkuk
but also from other ice-ships in her class and from the smaller, more conventional (which, to his way of thinking, also meant old-fashioned) dragon-haulers Kuusamo had devised to fight the war against Gyongyos in the wide reaches of the Bothnian Ocean. Again, some of the dragons were painted red and gold, but more were Kuusamo’s sky blue and sea green.
Along with the ships that carried dragons were a great many more that bore soldiers, and others with behemoths and horses and unicorns and egg-tossers and all the other supplies an army needed to fight on land these days. Xavega said, “This is a far mightier armada than the one the Algarvians used to take Sibiu.”