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"Something, aye." Pekka still didn't want to talk about it.
Leino said, "They tried to use that same spell to drive us off the austral continent, you know." Pekka nodded; she'd heard something about that. Her husband continued, "It went wrong. It went horribly wrong, and came down on their heads instead of ours and the Lagoans'. Magecraft that works fine here or on the mainland of Derlavai has a way of going wrong down in the land of the Ice People."
"That's what they say." Pekka nodded again, then laughed. "Whoever they are." Because she found worrying about her husband's problems easier than worrying about her own, she quickly found another question to ask: "Will that cause trouble for Habakkuk?"
"It shouldn't." Leino used an extravagant gesture. "Habakkuk is… something else." He chuckled ruefully. "I can't talk about it, any more than you can say much about whatever it is you're working on."
"I know. I understand." Pekka wanted to tell him everything. Just for a moment, she wished Fernao were there so she could talk shop. Then she shook her hair, and had to brush hair out of her eyes. He was part of what she'd come here, come away from the project, to escape.
"I love you," Leino said, and Pekka reminded herself he'd come a long way to escape hard, dangerous work, too. She clung to him as he clung to her. They didn't make love again; Leino wasn't so young that he could do it whenever he wanted. But the feel of him pressed against her was about as good as the real thing for Pekka, especially when they'd been apart so long. She hoped holding her was as good for him, but had her doubts. Men were different that way.
The next morning, Uto woke both of them at an improbably early hour. With Kajaani so far south, spring days lengthened quickly: the sun rose early and set late. Even so, Pekka's sleep-gummed eyelids told just how beastly early it was. "You don't treat Aunt Elimaki this way, do you?" she asked, wishing either for tea, which she could get, or another couple of hours' sleep, which she wouldn't.
"Of course not," her son said virtuously.
That, as Pekka knew, might mean anything or nothing. "You'd better not," she warned. "Aunt Elimaki is going to have a baby of her own, and she needs all the sleep she can get."
"She won't get it later, that's for sure." Leino sounded as sandbagged as Pekka.
"All right, Mother. All right, Father." Uto, by contrast, might have been the soul of virtue. He patted Pekka on the arm. "Are you going to have another baby, too, Mother?"
"I don't think so," Pekka answered. She and Leino smiled at each other; if she wasn't, it was in spite of last night's exertions. She yawned and sat up in bed, somewhat resigned to being awake. "What would the two of you like for breakfast?"
"Anything," Leino said before his son could speak. "Almost anything at all. Down in the land of the Ice People, I counted for a good cook, if you can believe it."
"I'm so sorry for you," Pekka exclaimed. The horror of that idea was plenty to rout her out of bed and into the kitchen. She got the teakettle going, then folded fat, fresh shrimp into an omelette. Along with fried mashed turnips and bread and butter (olive oil was an imported luxury in Kuusamo, not a staple), it made a fine breakfast.
Uto inhaled everything. He wasn't picky in what he ate; he chose other ways to make himself difficult. Leino ate hugely, too, and put down cup after cup of tea. "That's so much better," he said.
"Will you be able to sleep at all tonight?" Pekka asked him.
He nodded and opened his eyes very wide, which made Uto laugh. "Oh, aye," he said. "I won't have any trouble. I may have to eat seal every now and again down in the land of the Ice People, but there's plenty of tea. The Lagoans drink even more of it than we do. They say it lubricates the brain, and I can't argue with them."
"Seal?" Uto sounded horrified, but looked interested. "What does it taste like?"
"Greasy. Fishy," his father answered. "We eat camel, too, sometimes. That's better, at least for a while. It sort of tastes like beef, but it's fatter meat. The Ice People live on camel and reindeer almost all the time."
"Are they as ugly as everybody says?" Uto asked.
"No," Leino said, which obviously disappointed his son. Then he added, "They're uglier," and everything was right with the world as far as Uto was concerned.
"Hurry up and get ready for school," Pekka told him. He greeted that with moans and groans. Now that his parents were back in Kajaani, he wanted to spend as much time as he could with them. Pekka was inflexible. "You'll be back this afternoon, and you need to learn things. Besides, you're the one who got us up early." That produced as many more groans as she'd thought it would, but Uto, wearing a martyred expression, eventually went out the door and headed for school.
"Privacy," Leino said when he was gone. "I'd almost forgotten what it means. There in the little sorcerers' colony east of Mizpah, everybody lives in everybody else's belt pouch all the time."
"It's not quite so bad over in the Naantali district." Pekka started to laugh. "And now we've both said more than we should have."
Leino nodded. He took keeping secrets seriously. His voice was thoughtful, musing, as he said, "The Naantali district, eh? Nothing but empty space in those parts- I can't think of anybody who'd want to go there or need to go there- which probably makes it perfect for whatever you're doing." He held up a hand. "I'm not asking any questions. And even if I did, I know you couldn't give me any answers."
"That's right." Pekka sent him a challenging stare. "Well, now that we've got this privacy, what shall we do with it?"
"Oh, maybe we'll think of something." Leino pulled his tunic off over his head.
Pekka didn't know if either of them had been so ardent even on their honeymoon. They'd spent that at a small hostel in Priekule, and had alternated making love and sightseeing. Now they just had each other, and they were intent on making the most of it before they both had to return to the war.
"I'm not quite so young as I used to be," Leino said at some point that morning when, after several days of horizontal exercises, he failed to rise to the occasion.
"Don't worry about it," Pekka said. "You've done fine, believe me." Her body felt all aglow, so that it seemed they would hardly need the bedchamber lamp that evening.
"I wasn't worried," Leino said. "The people who worry about things like that are the ones who think there's only one way to get from hither to yon. Mages know better- or if they don't, they ought to." With fingers and tongue, he showed her what he meant. He was right, too- that road worked as well as the other one.
When Pekka's breathing and heartbeat had slowed to something close to normal, she said, "They talk about women wearing men out. This is the other way round." She ran a hand down his smooth chest- Kuusamans weren't a very hairy people. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you."
"I hope not," Leino said. "This is like putting money in Olavin's bank." Elimaki's husband, these days, was keeping the finances of the Kuusaman army and navy straight, but Pekka understood what her own husband meant. He went on, "We don't get many chances now, so we have to make the most of them, put them away in our memory bank. They may not earn interest, but they're interesting."
"That's one word," Pekka remarked. Leino's hands had started wandering again, too. But when one of them found its way between her legs, she said, "Wait a bit. I really have done everything I can right now. Let's see what I can do for you."
She crouched beside him, her head bobbing up and down. Rather sooner than she'd expected, she pulled away, taking a couple of deep breaths and choking a little. "Well, well," Leino said. "I didn't think I had it in me."
"You certainly did." Pekka went over to the sink and washed off her chin.
"You'll have to excuse me now," her husband said, curling up on the bed. "I'm going to sleep for about a week." He offered a theatrical snore.
It made Pekka smile, but it didn't convince her. "A likely story," she said. "You'll be feeling me up again before Uto gets home."
"Who was just doing what to whom?" Leino asked, and Pekka had no good answer. He stretched out again, then said, "I love you, you know."
"I love you, too," she said. "That's probably why we've been doing all this."
"Can you think of a better reason?" Leino said. "This is a lot more fun than being lonely and jumping on the first halfway decent-looking person you find."
"Aye," Pekka said, and wished Fernao hadn't chosen that moment to cross her mind again.
Vanai poured out wine and listened to Ealstan pour out excitement. "He is! Pybba is, by the powers above," her husband said. "Sure as I'm sitting here, he's funneling money into things that hurt the Algarvians."
"Good for him," Vanai said. "Do you want some sausage? It's the first time in a while the butcher had some that looked even halfway decent."
"Sausage? Oh, aye." Ealstan's voice was far away; he'd heard what she said, but he hadn't paid much attention to it. His mind was on Pybba's accounts: "If he's fighting the Algarvians, maybe I'll finally get the chance to fight them, too. I mean, really fight them."
"And maybe you'll get in trouble, too," Vanai said. "For all you know, his accounts are like a spiderweb, set up to catch somebody who's not quite as smart as he thinks he is." She put a length of sausage on Ealstan's plate and then set a hand on her own belly. "Please be careful."
"Of course I'll be careful." But Ealstan didn't sound as if that were the first thing on his mind, or even the fourth or fifth. He sounded annoyed at Vanai for reminding him he might need to have a care.
You're a man, sure enough, Vanai thought. You'll do whatever you please and then blame me if it doesn't work out the way you want. She sighed. "How is the sausage?" she asked.
Ealstan suddenly seemed to notice what he'd been devouring for supper. "Oh! It's very good," he said. Vanai sighed again. As soon as Ealstan finished eating, he started going on about Pybba some more. Short of clouting him in the head with a rock, Vanai didn't know how to make him shut up. But when he declared, "It's practically my patriotic duty to see what's going on," she lost patience with him.