He hurried down the hill to the harbor. Gulls scavenging garbage from the gutters rose in mewing, squawking clouds as he strode past them. He hoped none of them would avenge itself on his hat or the sleeve of his tunic. As if to give that hope the lie, a dropping splashed on to the cobbles only a yard or so from his shoe. He hurried on, and reached Commodore Delfinu's office unbefouled.
After the two men exchanged salutes and kisses on the cheeks, Cornelu asked, "Sir, have we had any better luck in getting leviathans into the Barian ports?"
Glumly, Delfinu shook his head. "No, and we've lost more men try ing, too, as you will probably have heard." When Cornelu nodded, the head of the Leviathan Service went on, "The Algarvians have Imola and Lungni as tightly locked up as if they were virgin daughters. They keep dragons in the air over them all the time, too, so we can't learn from above what they're doing, either."
"Curse them," Cornelu said. Dragons above Tirgoviste were one thing, dragons above the ports the enemy had taken for his own some thing else again - something onunous. Cornelu took a deep breath. "If you like, sir, Eforiel and I will cross the strait and see what they're up to
– and, if you like, put down some eggs to keep them from doing it, what ever it is."
Delfinu shook his head again. "I am ordering no man across the strait to Lungri and Imola. I have lost too many. The Algarvians are not so skilled in using leviathans as we are" - pride rang in his voice - "but they have become all too skilled at hunting them down." The pride leaked away, to be replaced by chagrin.
"My lord, you need not order me." Cornelu drew himself up to stiff attention. "I volunteer my leviathan and myself," Delfinu bowed. "Commander, Sibiu is fortunate to have you in her service. But I will not take advantage of your courage in this way, as if I were a cold-blooded Unkerlanter or a calculating Kuusaman. The odds of success do not justify the risk… and your wife is with child, is it not so?"
– Sir, it is so," Cornelu said. "But I am not with child myself, and I took oath to serve King Burebistu and his kingdom as best I could. What the kingdom requires of me, that shall I do."
"This the kingdom does not require of you," Delfinu said. "I have n desire to make your wife grow old a widow, nor to make your child gro, up not knowing its father. I will send you into danger: indeed, I will set you into danger without a qualm. But I will not send you to almost certain death when no good to king or kingdom is likely to come from [..i..].
Cornelu bowed in turn. "My lord, I am lucky to have you as superior. Unlike the no-" He stopped, unsure how Count Delf would take what he'd been on the point of saying.
Even though he hadn't said it, Delfinu figured out what it
"Unlike the nobles in the Kauman kingdoms, ours are supposed to k a little something before they put on their fancy uniforms? Is that you had in mind, Commander?" To Cornelu's relief, he laughed.
"Well, aye, sir - something on that order, anyhow," Cornelu a ted.
"Kaunian blood is older than ours, which makes them take mor( in it than we do," Delfinu said. "If you ask my opinion, being old, makes it thinner, but no Kaunian has seen fit to ask my opinion."
[..trait so stiff her if I odds not nd I hat e no ow send t cer om,it. as my Delfinu it was. o know at what admit re pride der only..]
"For my part, I confess to losing very little sleep over theirs. Personally, I feel more sympathy for Algarve, but I know my kingdom's needs come ahead of my personal sympathies."
"Myself, I have no great use for the Kaunian kingdoms," Cornelu said, "but I have no use at all for Algarve. Did King Mezentio get his hands on us, he would squeeze till our eyes popped out of our heads."
"Since I think you are right about that, I can hardly argue with you," Delfinu said. "But, for the time being, I cannot in good conscience send you forth against the Barian ports, either. Enjoy your time off duty, Commander, and keep in mind that it is not likely to last."
"Very well, my lord." Cornelu saluted again. "I think I'll draw a bucket from the rest crate and pay Eforiel a visit in her pen. She'll think I've forgotten her, poor thing. I don't want that."
"No, indeed." Count Deffirm returned the salute. "Very well, Commander, you are dismissed from my presence."
The chamber in which the large Leviathan Services rest crate sat had a strong fish smell. The smell would have been much stronger had the rest crate been other than what it was. Cornelu reached in and drew forth a big bucket full of mackerel and squid, all of them as fresh as when they'd been pulled from the sea. He lugged it down to the wire-enclosed pen where his leviathan slowly swam back and forth, back and forth.
Eforiel swam to the little wharf that jutted out into the pen. She stuck her head out of the water and examined Cornelu first with one small black eye, then with the other. "Aye, it's me," he said, and reached out to [..pat Ine ena..] of her tapered snout. "It's me, all night, and I've brought you presents."
He tossed her a squid. Those enormous jaws came open. They closed on the squid with a wet smacking noise. When they opened again, the squid was gone. Eforiel emitted a soft, pleased grunt. Cornelu fed her a mackerel. She approved of that, too. He kept tossing her treats tin the bucket was empty.
He had to show her it was empty. "Sorry - no more," he said. Now the noise she made, though like nothing that could come from a human throat, was full of disappointment. "Sorry," he repeated, and patted her again. She didn't take his hand off at the wrist - or his arm at the shoulder.
She was a clever, well-trained beast.
Commodore Delfinu had as much as ordered Cornelu to have an [..annrl..] time while he wasn't assailing the Algarvians. After taking the empty bucket back for scrubbing, he headed away from the harbor, off to the quarters he shared with his wife. He could think of no one in whose company he would sooner be.
Costache was baking when he walked in; the spicy smell of cakes made the small, square rooms in which they lived seem anything but military.
"I'm glad you're back," she said. "I didn't know whether Delfinu would send you out or not."
"He didn't," Cornelu said. That Delfinu had kept him in Tirgoviste because he judged going out to the Barian ports a suicide mission was nothing his wife needed to know. He walked over to Costache, took her in his arms, and gave her a kiss, leaning over the swell of her belly to plant it on her mouth. With a grin, he told her, "I'm glad I'm taller than you are. Other-wise, I'd have to sneak up on you from behind instead of doing this the regular way."
"If you'd sneaked up on me from behind instead of doing it the regu lar way, I wouldn't be expecting now," Costache retorted. Her green eyes sparkled. Now that she wasn't throwing up every morning any more, pregnancy agreed with her. Along with her belly, her cheeks were rounder than they had been. To disguise that a bit, she let her red-gok hair fall straight to her shoulders, where she had worn it piled high on he head.
Cornelu did step behind her. He reached around and cupped he breasts in his hands. They were fuller and rounder than they had beer too. They were also more tender - he had to be careful not to squee2 too hard. When he was careful, they were more sensitive than they h, been; Costache's breath sighed out.
"You see?" Cornelu murmured into her ear. "From behind isn't bad." Having murmured into that ear, he nibbled it.
Costache turned and put her arms around him. "And how are things from in front?" she asked.
Things from in front were fine. In its generosity, the kingdom of Sit had furnished them with two military cots, which they'd pushed together.
With Cornelu and Costache both eager, the cots might have been a fit soft bed at a fancy hostel. Before long, his wife gasped and quiver beneath Cornelu, her belly grew hard and firm as her womb tighten during her spasm of pleasure. Cornelu spent himself a moment later.
He didn't let his weight down on her, as he would have before she was with child. "We won't be able to do it like that much longer," he said, and set a hand on her belly to show why. "Someone in there is getting in the way." As if indignant, the baby kicked. Cornelu and Costache both laughed, as content as any two people could be during wartime.
Pekka was working, and working hard, though no one could ha proved it by looking at her. She sat at the desk in her office at Kajaa City College, staring out the window at the driving rain. Every once a while, her eyes would slip down to the sheets of paper spread across the desk.
Once, as the rain kept drumming down, she reached out, inked a pen and wrote a couple of lines below what was already on the last of the sheets. She didn't look at them again for several minutes. When she did she blinked in surprise, as if someone else's hand, not her own, had do that writing.
Partly recalled to herself, Pekka wondered what the students in h theoretical sorcery class would think if they could see her now. They would probably laugh like loons. Comics had been making jokes about absent-minded mages since the days of the Kaunian Empire. Some of the Kaunian jokes had survived to the present day, and sounded remarkably like their modern equivalent. Some of them had doubtless been ancient in Kaunian times, too.
And then Pekka drifted away again, back into the haze of concentration that was the next thing to a trance. She noticed the rain o as background noise. Somewhere down at the root of things, the laws similarity and contagion were connected. She was morally certain of though wizards had been treating them as separate entities for as long men had been working magic. If she could link them together…
She had no idea what would happen if she could link them to [..ftthe..].
She would know something she hadn't known. She would know some thing no one in the world had ever known. That was enough. That was more than enough.
She scribbled another line. She wasn't close to an answer. She had no idea how long she would need to get close to an answer. She was getting closer to designing a sorcerous experiment that might tell her whether she was on the right track.
Someone knocked on the door. Pekka did her best not to hear. Her best was not good enough. She'd been about to write another line.
Whatever she'd been on the point of setting down vanished from her mind.
Fury roared in to take its place. Kuusamans were as a rule easygoing, especially when set alongside the proud and touchy folk of the kingdoms of Algarvic stock. But every mage had to keep in mind the difference between the rule and the exception.
Spninging to her feet, Pekka dashed to the door and flung it wide.
"What are you doing interrupting me?" she screeched, even before it had opened all the way.
Her husband, fortunately, lived up to the Kuusaman reputation for calm. "I'm sorry, dear," Leino said. His narrow eyes didn't widen; no surprise showed on his broad, high-cheekboned face. He'd seen Pekka burst like a large egg before. "It is time to head home, though."