Bowing his own head, the marshal said, “Thank you, your Majesty, for doing me the honor of inviting me here.”
“Oh, aye,” Swemmel said carelessly. He gestured to the servitor, who filled the glasses yet again. Rathar wondered what outrages the king might commit while drunk, and also whether he himself would be fit for duty in the morning. If an Algarvian mage were somehow keeping track of Swemmel’s drinking bouts… Rathar shook his head. Mezentio’s men could have worked far worse outrages than they had if that were so. The king, meanwhile, leaned toward the servitor and commanded, “Bring on the supper.”
“Aye, your Majesty,” the fellow replied, and went off to the kitchens.
Now King Swemmel did turn his bloodshot gaze full on Marshal Rathar. “Tomorrow or the next day, we shall have somewhat to say to the ministers from Lagoas and Kuusamo. They claim they are Algarve’s foes, but leave to our kingdom the burden of fighting and dying.”
“They have taken Sibiu back from the redheads,” Rathar said, “and their dragons visit Algarve’s towns by day and night.”
Swemmel snapped his fingers. “This for the islands of Sibiu!” He snapped them again. “And this for dragonfliers! If our so-called allies would reckon themselves men before their mothers, let them come forth to fight on the mainland of Derlavai. ‘Soon,’ they say. ‘Before long,’ they say.” He made his voice a piping, mocking falsetto to show what he thought of that.
“Well, all right, then, your Majesty,” Rathar said. King Swemmel had a point. Had the Algarvians not chosen to grapple with Unkerlant to the death, they could have worked far more mischief in the east than they had. Were King Vitor of Lagoas and Kuusamo’s Seven Princes grateful for the burden Unkerlant had so unwillingly assumed? So far as Rathar could see, only in the sense of being glad they hadn’t had to shoulder it themselves.
The servitor came back from the kitchen with a large iron pot, the lid still on. He had cloths wrapped around the handles so he wouldn’t burn his fingers. Setting the pot down on a trivet in the middle of the table, he bowed to the king. “Supper, your Majesty,” he announced unnecessarily.
Or perhaps not so unnecessarily; Swemmel started as if he’d forgotten all about food. Once reminded, he nodded and said, “As a mark of our favor, you may serve Marshal Rathar first.”
“As you say, Your Majesty.” The servitor took the lid off the pot. A great cloud of savory steam rose from it.
“You do me too much honor, your Majesty,” Rathar said, and not for politeness’ sake alone. When the king sobered up tomorrow, would he remember what he’d done, remember and regret it? He might. If I let Rathar eat before I did, he might think, my cursed marshal might decide he deserves first place in the kingdom all the time. Other men, famous in their day, had vanished when such thoughts occurred to King Swemmel.
But Swemmel seemed unconcerned now. As the servitor spooned meat from the pot, the king said, “We give you what you have earned, Marshal.”
When the first whiff of that savory steam reached Rathar’s redoubtable nose, he recoiled in something worse than mere horror. When Raniero went into the stewpot in Herborn, Rathar had smelled this precise odor of cooked flesh. He was sure of it. Swemmel wouldn’t, couldn’t, serve him… The servitor set the plate in front of him. Just as he was about to push it away and flee the table, heedless of what the king might think, the man murmured, “I hope the stewed pork pleases you, lord Marshal.”
“Stewed… pork,” Rathar said slowly. He looked down the length of the table to his sovereign.
Swemmel rarely laughed. He was laughing now, laughing till tears gleamed in his eyes and slid down his hollow cheeks. “Well, Marshal?” he said, dabbing at his face with a snowy linen napkin. “Well? Did you think we were serving you up a ragout of boiled traitor?” More laughter shook him. It hit him hard, as spirits smote a man who seldom drank.
“Your Majesty, I must say it crossed my mind,” Rathar replied. Most courtiers would have denied the very idea. Rather had found the king could- sometimes-take more truth than most people thought.
Swemmel shook his head. “It may be that we shall eat of Mezentio’s roasted heart, but we would not share that dish with any subject. It is ours.’“ Was he still joking? Or did he mean every word of it? For the life of him, Rathar couldn’t tell. Swemmel wagged a forefinger at him. “Before that day comes, though, we needs must drive the redheaded robbers from all our land, not merely from the south. How do you propose doing what we require?”
Rathar sighed with relief at dealing with a purely military matter. “I have some thoughts along those lines, Your Majesty,” he replied, and took a bit of pork. He hoped it was pork, anyhow.
At the isolated hostel in the rustic Naantali district of southeastern Kuusamo, Fernao felt like a pine in a forest of poplars. He was the only Lagoan mage- the only Lagoan at all-there. The rest of the theoretical sorcerers, all the secondary sorcerers, and all the servitors were Kuusamans: short, golden-skinned, black-haired, flat-featured, slant-eyed. As a tall, fair, straight-nosed, ponytailed redhead, he could hardly have stood out more.
No, that isn ‘t quite true, he thought, and nodded to himself. My eyes are set on a slant, too, even if they’re green, not black. Lagoans were of mostly Algarvic stock, descendants of the invaders who’d settled in the northwest of the large island off the Derlavaian mainland after the Kaunian Empire collapsed. But they’d intermarried with the folk they found there, and a fair-sized minority showed some Kuusaman features. Similarly, some few who lived under the Seven Princes, especially in lands near the Lagoan border, had the inches or the nose or the bright hair that spoke of foreign stock grafted onto the roots of their family tree.
Fernao waved to one of the serving women in the refectory. She came over to him and asked, “What is it you want?”
She spoke Kuusaman. Fernao answered in the same tongue: “An omelette of smoked salmon and eggs and cheese, and bread and honey, and a mug of tea, Linna.” When he first came to Kuusamo, he’d known not a word of the local language. But he’d always had a good ear, and now he was getting close to fluent.
Linna nodded. “Aye, sir mage,” she said. “I’ll bring them to you as soon as they’re done.” She hurried off toward the kitchens.
“Thank you,” Fernao called after her.
A hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up in surprise. “What are you thanking her for?” Ilmarinen demanded in coldly precise classical Kaunian.
“My breakfast,” Fernao answered, also in the international language of magecraft and other scholarship.
“Is that all?” Ilmarinen said suspiciously. By his wrinkles and white, wispy little chin beard, the Kuusaman master mage carried twice Fernao’s years, but he sounded like an angry young buck. He’d been chasing Linna ever since this hostel in the wilderness went up, and he’d been annoying doing it. Not long before, she’d finally let him catch her. He’d been much more annoying since.
With what patience Fernao could muster, he nodded. “As sure as I am of my own name. If you care to, you may sit down beside me and watch me eat it. And if you care to”-he paused, as if about to make a radical suggestion- “you may even get one for yourself.”
“I think I’ll do just that,” Ilmarinen said, and slid into a chair.
“How are you this morning?” Fernao asked.
“Why, my usual sweet, charming self, of course,” the older mage replied. Like most educated folk, Fernao had no trouble using classical Kaunian to communicate-at first, he’d used it all the time after coming to Kuusamo, since it was the only tongue he’d had in common with the locals. But, again like most educated folk, he spoke it with a certain stiffness. Not so Ilmarinen. He was so fluent in the ancient language, it might almost have been his birth-speech.
Fernao eyed him. “I must say, you did not seem particularly sweet and charming.” Ilmarinen reveled in irony and crosstalk, but he hadn’t seemed ironic, either. What he’d seemed like was a jealous lover of the most foolish and irksome sort.
Perhaps he even knew as much, for the smile he gave Fernao was more sheepish than otherwise. “But did I seem my usual self?” he asked.
“If you mean your usual self lately, aye,” Fernao answered, not intending it as a compliment.
Before Ilmarinen could say anything, Linna came out again. She waved to the master mage, then walked over and ruffled his hair. Ilmarinen beamed. As long as she was happy with him, all seemed right with his world. Fernao wondered what would happen if-no, when-she tired of him. For the sake of the work on which so many mages were engaged, he hoped he wouldn’t have to find out any time soon.
Ilmarinen asked for smoked salmon, too, and sliced onions to go with it. Linna’s nose wrinkled. “Poo!” she said. “See if I kiss you.”
Ilmarinen looked devastated-but not so devastated as to change his order. Fernao took that for a good sign. Sniffing, Linna headed back to the kitchens.
And then Fernao stopped worrying about Ilmarinen’s infatuation, for Pekka walked into the refectory and he had to start worrying about his own. Like most Lagoan men, he’d always reckoned Kuusaman women on the small and scrawny side. By Lagoan standards, Pekka was on the small and scrawny side. Somehow, that mattered very little once Fernao had come to know her.
She sat down at the table with him and Ilmarinen. “I hope the two of you were talking about our next experiment,” she said in classical Kaunian.
Since she was not only a woman in whom he was interested but also the theoretical sorcerer heading the project for which he’d come to Kuusamo, Fernao didn’t want to lie to her. On the other hand, the prospect of telling her the truth didn’t fill him with delight, either. It didn’t bother Ilmarinen one bit. “Well, now that you mention it, no,” he said breezily.
Pekka gave him a severe look. It rolled off him the way water rolled off greasy wool. She said, “What were you talking about?”
“Oh, I just wanted to let this Lagoan lecher know that, if I ever caught him sniffing around my Linna, I’d cut out his liver and eat it without salt,” Ilmarinen replied.
He was on the small and scrawny side, too, to say nothing of being an old man. That didn’t keep a small twinge of icy dread, like a detached bit of the savage winter outside, from sliding up Fernao’s back. However small and scrawny and old Ilmarinen was, he was also, with Master Siuntio dead at Algarvian hands, the leading theoretical sorcerer of his generation, and a formidable practical mage as well. He wouldn’t have to use a knife to make unfortunate things happen to Fernao’s liver.
Fernao said, “For about the fourth time, I was not sniffing around her.”
When he brought out a phrase like that in classical Kaunian, he sounded both pompous and preposterous. Ilmarinen, now, Ilmarinen sounded menacing.
Pekka snorted. “I have never seen Fernao behave at all strangely around Linna,” she said, “which is rather more than I can say for certain other people of my acquaintance.” Linna came back with Fernao’s omelette and Ilmarinen’s smoked salmon and onions before the elderly theoretical sorcerer could make any more snide comments. He might well not have let that stop him; the serving girl didn’t speak much classical Kaunian, and couldn’t have followed whatever he said. But Pekka asked her for a plate of bacon and eggs and sent her off again.
Ilmarinen let out a cackle, the laugh of an old man who made trouble and had fun doing it. “Which women have you seen Fernao behaving strangely around, then?” he asked, and cackled again.
Without the least hesitation, Fernao kicked him in the ankle. And that wasn’t the only small, dull thud from under the table. Pekka must have kicked him from the other side.
“Aii!” Ilmarinen said. That wasn’t a cackle-more like a yelp. “Between the two of you, you can carry me out of here. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk.”