Some of the trees in the forests north of the Vaattojarvi Hills were oaks and maples, bare-branched in winter. The rest were the pines and firs and spruces that dominated the woods farther south. Once, Pekka thought she saw a red fox trotting over the crusted snow, but the caravan swept past before she could be sure.

  She got into Yliharma around lamplighting time—an hour that varied through the year and that, in winter, came later in the capital than down in Kajaani, though it did not come very late in any part of Kuusamo. Steep-roofed buildings stood black against the sky. Steep roofs were Kuusamo and Unkerlant’s contribution to the world’s architecture, as surely as columns were the Kaunian contribution and extravagant detailing the Algarvian.

  When the caravan sighed to a stop in the station—which also had a steep roof— Pekka threw on her heavy cloak and a rabbit-fur hat with earflaps. She pulled a pair of carpetbags from the rack above the seats and, thus burdened, walked up the aisle to the door near the forward stove. A square stone block not much different from the ones riders had used to mount horses in the days before stirrups helped her dismount from the car now.

  “Mistress Pekka!” Among the folk waiting on the platform to meet and greet arrivals was a man calling her name. She had expected to be met and greeted. But when she saw who was waving to her, her eyes widened. She hadn’t expected this man to do the job himself.

  “Master Siuntio!” she called. She couldn’t wave, not burdened as she was. She couldn’t bow, either, which was what she really wanted to do. Siuntio had headed the theoretical-sorcery faculty at the Princely University of Yliharma for more than twenty years. Calling him a first-rank mage was an understatement on the order of calling the heart of the sun warm. Had scholars won prizes like athletes, he would have had a roomful. And he had come to meet her at the station? “Master, you honor me beyond my worth,” she said as she came up to him.

  “Pekka, I’m going to tell you a sorcerous secret: a lot of the really good ones haven’t the faintest notion of what they’re worth,” Siuntio answered. He was a stooped, graying man only a couple of inches taller than Pekka, who was herself short even by Kuusaman standards. He looked like an apothecary on the point of retirement. Looks deceived, as they often did. He reached out. “Here, give me one of those bags.”

  Pekka did, the lighter one. She would have felt less strange, less constrained, with one of the Seven Princes carrying her carpetbag. They hadn’t earned their rank; they’d just been born into it. Siuntio came honestly by every speck of the acclaim he’d gained through the years.

  He seemed an ordinary enough man on the platform, though, using her bag to fend off other people and, once or twice, to help clear a path through them. He cursed when someone trod on his toes, and got cursed when he trod on someone else’s. Pekka would have reckoned getting her toes stepped on by the greatest theoretical sorcerer of his generation a privilege, but not everybody shared her knowledge or her point of view.

  “Here we are,” he said when they reached his carriage. “I’ll take you over to the Principality. We’ve got you booked there. I hope that’s all right?” He cocked his head to one side and gave her an anxious look.

  “I—think so,” Pekka said faintly. When kings and their ministers visited Yliharma, they stayed at the Principality. Kuusamo did not have another hostel to compare to it; every third romance set a banquet scene there—and a spicy scene in one of the famous bedchambers.

  “Well, fine, then.” Siuntio put the bag he was carrying into the carriage, then took the other one from Pekka and set it alongside. He handed her up on to the seat, unhitched the horse, went around to the other side of the carriage, took up the reins, and began to drive. He could readily have afforded a coachman, but didn’t bother. As the carriage started to roll, he said, “You won’t be the only one at the Principality, you know. Several others have come in from the provinces. It should be an interesting gathering in the Ahvenanmaa Room tomorrow midmorning, don’t you think?”

  “Should it?” Pekka plucked up her courage and said, “Master Siuntio, I’m not precisely sure why I was asked up to Yliharma.”

  “Is that a fact?” Siuntio chuckled, as if she’d said something funny. Had most people done that, she would have got angry. Siuntio she granted the benefit of the doubt. He went on, “It has to do with the business Prince Joroinen asked you not to put in the journals any more. From the bits and pieces you have published, you may be closer to the bottom of things than any of us.”

  “That?” Pekka gaped. “I’ve been doing that for my own amusement, nothing more. I don’t know if it will ever have any use.”

  “As a matter of fact, neither do I,” Siuntio said. “But it may, Mistress Pekka; it may. You have seen deeper into it than most, as I told you. Others, though, may have had a wider vision.” Before Pekka could say anything to that, Siuntio pulled back on the reins and the horse stopped. “Here we are. You see, it wasn’t far. Go right on in. Shall I carry that bag for you?”

  “Please don’t bother. I can manage.” Pekka jumped down and took both carpetbags.

  Siuntio beamed. “I’ll see you at midmorning, then. The Ahvenanmaa Room, remember.” He clucked to the horse and nicked the reins. The carriage rattled off, leaving narrow wheel tracks in the slush on the street.

  Still dazed, Pekka went into the Principality. By the way the staff fawned on her, she might have been Swemmel of Unkerlant, with the power and the will to take their heads if they displeased her in the slightest. The chambers to which they led her could not have displeased Swemmel or anyone else; they were about the size of her house, and ever so much more luxuriously appointed. She ordered mutton and kale and parsnip fritters from the menu by the enormous bed. The supper came up by dumbwaiter with almost magical speed. It was almost magically good, too.

  And the bed, besides being enormous, was almost magically soft. When Pekka lay down on it, she knew a moment’s regret that Leino couldn’t have come along to enjoy it with her and help her enjoy it more. But it was only a moment’s regret. Though she’d dozed a little on the journey up from Kajaani, travel remained wearing. She yawned once, twice, and then slept soundly till morning.

  Her suite had an attached steam room and cold plunge. She was still toweling her hair dry when she sent down a breakfast order. The fat smoked herrings and mashed turnips came up almost before she could blink. By the time she’d got outside them and some hot tea, she felt ready to go looking for the Ahvenanmaa Room.

  When she got down to the lobby, she almost bumped into Siuntio. He was talking with another theoretical sorcerer, a man of her own generation named Piilis. After the greetings, Piilis said, “Everyone who’s anyone in our business is here today. I just left Master Alkio and Mistress Raahe in the hostel’s cafe.”

  “Master Ilmarinen will be here, too,” Siuntio said, “or I’ll know the reason why. And that should be the lot of us.”

  Pekka felt like a herring—not like a smoked one, but like a live one swimming in the company of a pod of leviathans. For some unfathomable reason, they seemed to think her a leviathan, too. Piilis pointed and said, “There go Raahe and Alkio. They must know where our room is.”

  When Pekka and the other theoretical sorcerers walked into the room, they found Ilmarinen already there. He had close to Siuntio’s years, and stood second only to Siuntio in reputation—first, if you listened to him. Raahe and Alkio were both comfortably middle-aged; Raahe, Pekka thought, would have been a beauty in her younger days.

  “Let us begin,” Siuntio said, and then, “Before the Kaunians came, we of Kuusamo were here. Before the Lagoans came …” The age-old ritual soothed Pekka, as it always did. When it was over, Siuntio went on, “All of us, in one way or another, have been seeking a unity below the Two Laws.”

  Everyone nodded. Gruffly, Ilmarinen said, “Aye, we’ve been seeking it, all right. And if we find it, we’re all liable to end up wishing we hadn’t.”

  Siuntio inclined his head in grave agreement. Raahe said, “But if someone else finds it, we shall all wish we had sought harder.” Siuntio also inclined his head to her. So did Ilmarinen, but his agreement seemed sour, not grave.

  “All of you, I think, know more of this than I do,” Pekka said. “My approach has been purely theoretical, with no thought to consequences.”

  “Which is, I daresay, why you have made such progress,” Siuntio said.

  Ilmarinen snorted. “Who could have dreamt such innocence survived in this day and age?” he said. Piilis’s laugh was small and dry.

  Alkio turned to Pekka. “Consider, Mistress,” he said. “The more we’ve learned of how the world works, the more effective our sorcery has become. If One is the foundation of the Two, will we not be able to attempt things never imagined before?”

  “I suppose that may be so,” Pekka said. “I had not thought much about it, but I suppose it may be so.”

  “If we can handle sorcerous energies at a level below the Two,” Ilmarinen said roughly, “don’t you think we’ll be able to make the biggest eggs look like glowworms alongside lightning bolts? I do, curse it, and I wish I didn’t.”

  Pekka had not thought along those lines at all. She wished no one else had, either. But Ilmarinen was right. She saw that at once. Understanding the laws of sorcery did give control over them. And the theoretical sorcerer had been right before that, too. Pekka said, “I hope none of the kingdoms fighting the Derlavaian War is working on this.”

  “So do we all, my dear,” Siuntio said slowly. “We hope Gyongyos is not working on it, either. We hope—but we do not know. That something is absent from the journals does not prove no one is examining it. And, before the war began, there were hints in the literature from Lagoas, from Algarve, and from Gyongyos. How seriously the sorcerers in those lands are following where those hints lead—again, we do not know.” His smile was sweet and sad. “I wish we did.”

  “They must not get ahead of us!” Pekka exclaimed.

  “That is why we are met here today,” Alkio said. “That is why we will go on meeting. That is why we will go on working, and sharing with one another what we know—eventually sharing it with more rnages, I suppose, as we progress, if we progress. But, for now, we are racing blindly. Lagoas and the others may be ahead of us, or they may not have started at all. We just have to keep running.”

  Heads bobbed up and down around the table in the posh Ahvenanmaa Room. Pekka’s agreement was no less emphatic than anyone else’s.

  Talsu and his regiment were back to slogging. He’d enjoyed Colonel Adomu’s brief tenure as regimental commander. The dashing young marquis had gained more ground during that brief tenure than the late Colonel Dzirnavu had managed in a much longer time. But Adomu’s dash had cost him, too; he was as dead as Dzirnavu.

  Colonel Balozhu, the count who’d replaced Adomu, was not actively vile, as Dzirnavu had been. But he wasn’t aggressive, either, as Adomu had been. So far as Talsu could tell, Balozhu wasn’t much of anything. He would have made a perfect clerk, keeping track of boots and belts, tunics and trousers. As a regimental commander, he was hardly there at all.

  “We are ordered to advance two miles today,” he would say at morning parade. “I am sure all of you will do your duty to King Donalitu and to the kingdom.” He didn’t sound sure. What he sounded was bored. And then he would return to his tent, and it would be up to the captains and sergeants to see to it that the regiment gained the required two miles. And sometimes it would, and sometimes it wouldn’t. The Algarvians had officers telling them what to do, too.

  One evening, with both of them leaning back against tree trunks and gnawing on bread and smoked beef, Talsu said to Smilsu, “You ever get the feeling that the cursed redheads’ officers don’t give them as much trouble as ours give us?”

  Smilsu looked around to see who else might be listening. Talsu had already done that, and hadn’t seen anyone. Maybe Smilsu thought he did, or maybe he felt cautious, for he answered, “I haven’t seen Colonel Balozhu giving us any trouble. Powers above, you hardly know he’s around.”

  ”Powers above is right. That’s trouble all by itself, isn’t it?” Talsu burst out. Maybe the beer he was drinking with his supper had gone to his head. “He’s supposed to be leading us against the enemy, not pretending he’s invisible.”

  “Colonel Adomu led us against the enemy,” Smilsu said, still either cautious or contrary. “Are you going to complain about him, too?”

  “Not a bit of it,” Talsu answered. “I wish we had more officers like him. I think the Algarvians do have more officers like him.”

  Smilsu took a pull at his own beer. “Well, maybe they do. Vartu would say so, anyhow.” He chuckled. “Of course, Vartu was Colonel Dzirnavu’s body servant, so he’s not in the mood to be fair. But no matter what the redheads have, pal, we’re still the ones doing the advancing.”

  “So we are, but we ought to be doing more of it,” Talsu said. “You can see the Algarvians don’t have anything more than skeleton forces facing us. We should be in front of Tricarico by now.” He shook his head. “That’s not right—we should be in Tricarico by now, and past it, too.”

  “I’m so sorry, General Grand Duke Talsu, sir, my lord,” Smilsu said with a snort. “I didn’t know King Donalitu had set you in command of the fight against Algarve.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Talsu’s voice was as sour as the beer he was drinking. “Maybe I will go looking for Vartu. You’re no cursed good, not when it comes to making sense you’re not.” He started to get to his feet.

  “Sit tight, sit tight,” Smilsu said. “One thing you’ve got to know is that the redheads have some men who are really good with a stick lurking around here somewhere, waiting to see if they can put a beam through a fellow’s ear. You want to give them a clean blaze at you?”

  “No, but I don’t want to hang around with a fool, either. It might be catching.” Despite his harsh words, Talsu didn’t get up.

  And Smilsu didn’t get angry. He spat out a piece of gristle, then said, “And what if you’re right? What are we supposed to do then? There’s nothing we can do. If the Algarvians don’t get us, the dungeons back of the line will. We’re stuck in the middle. All we can do is hope we win in spite of ourselves.”

  “We can hope the Algarvians kill all our nobles,” Talsu said savagely. “Then we’d be better off.”

  “We’ve been round that barn before—and you want to be careful with what you say, and you want to be careful who you say it to.” Smilsu kept his own voice very low indeed. “Otherwise, you won’t be better off, no matter what happens to the rest of us. Do you hear what I’m telling you, my friend?”

  “I hear you.” Talsu remained furious at the world in general and at the hidebound Jelgavan nobility in particular.

  Because Smilsu kept his mouth shut, the Jelgavan nobility did not take their revenge. The world was another matter. Not ten minutes later, a cold, nasty rain started falling. A couple of weeks earlier in the season or a little higher in the foothills and it would have been snow. Even though Talsu had to make a wet, miserable bed, he didn’t loathe the rain so much as he might have. Like dust and smoke, it cut down the range at which beams were effective. He hoped all those clever Algarvian stick men came down with chest fever from staying out in the bad weather. He wouldn’t grieve a bit.

  The Algarvians, unfortunately, found other ways to be troublesome than with sneaky stick men struggling not to sneeze. They started lobbing eggs in the direction of the Jelgavan encampment. They didn’t know exactly where King Donalitu’s men were resting, but they had a fair notion—fair enough to get Talsu and the other Jelgavan soldiers out of their blankets and digging holes in the rocky, muddy soil.

  He cursed with every shovelful of dirt he flung aside. “Stinking redheads,” he muttered. “Won’t even let a man get a decent night’s sleep.” An egg burst close by. The flash illuminated the camp for a moment, as a lightning bolt would have done. The suddenly released energy also picked up earth and stones and flung them about. A good-sized rock hissed past, only a foot or two from Talsu’s head. He cursed again and dug harder.

  Every so often through the long night, someone would shriek as he was wounded. The redheads weren’t tossing eggs in enormous numbers—this wasn’t anything like the enormous cataclysms of the Six Years’ War, where battlefields became scorched, cratered wastelands. But the eggs the Algarvians tossed did serve their purpose: they hurt a few Jelgavans and kept the rest from getting the sleep they needed. Had Talsu commanded the Algarvian forces, he would have pinned gold stars on the men tossing them.

  At last, sullenly, the darkness lifted, though rain kept pouring down. It had put out all the cookfires during the night. Talsu breakfasted on cold, soggy porridge, on cold, greasy—almost slimy—sausage, and on beer that even insistent rain had trouble making any more watery than it already was. He enjoyed it about as much as he’d enjoyed trying to sleep in the wet hole he’d dug for himself.

  Colonel Dzirnavu would have thrown a tantrum because the rain interfered with cooking his fancy breakfast. Colonel Adomu would have eaten what his men did and then led them in an attack on the egg-tossers that had harassed them in the night. Talsu didn’t know what Colonel Balozhu ate. Balozhu did appear at an hour earlier than Dzirnavu would have stirred abroad. He carried an umbrella and looked more like a schoolmaster than a noble who commanded a regiment.

  “No point trying to move forward in this,” Balozhu said after peering in all directions. “You couldn’t hope to blaze a man till you got close enough to hit him over the head with your stick. We’ll keep scouts out ahead of us, maybe send forward a patrol, but as for the rest, I think we’ll sit tight till this finally decides to blow over.”