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Skarnu's first impulse was to leap and run. Then he realized how stupid that was: it would make him stand out, which was the last thing he wanted. And even if it didn't, where would he go? Ventspils wasn't his town; aside from the men of the underground, he had no friends and hardly any acquaintances here.

After a last quick swig, the painter set down his empty mug. "Maybe we'd better not hang around and wait for them," he said, with which conclusion Skarnu could hardly disagree.

Skarnu didn't bother finishing his ale. He left the mug on the table and followed the other man out. "Where do we go now?" he asked.

"There are places," the painter said, an answer that wasn't an answer. After a moment, Skarnu realized the underground leader had security concerns of his own. Sure enough, the man went on, "I don't think we'll have to blindfold you."

"I'm so glad to hear it." Skarnu had intended the words to be sarcastic. They didn't come out that way. The Unkerlanters might have the Algarvians on the run in the distant west, but here in Valmiera the redheads could still make their handful of foes dance to their tune.

***

Fernao was studying his Kuusaman. That was, he understood, a curious thing for a Lagoan mage to do. Though Lagoas and Kuusamo shared the large island off the southeastern coast of Derlavai, his countrymen were in the habit of looking in the direction of the mainland and not toward their eastern neighbors, whom they usually regarded as little more than amusing rustics.

That was true even though a lot of Lagoans had some Kuusaman blood. Fernao's height and his red hair proved him of mainly Algarvic stock, but his narrow, slanted eyes showed it wasn't pure. Lagoans also did their best not to notice that Kuusamo outweighed their kingdom about three to one.

Outside, a storm that had blown up from the south did its best to turn this stretch of Kuusamo into the land of the Ice People. The wind howled. Snow drifted around the hostel the soldiers of the Seven Princes had run up here in the middle of nowhere. The district of Naantali lay so far south, the sun rose above the horizon for only a little while each day.

Down on the austral continent, of course, it wouldn't have risen at all for a while on either side of the winter solstice. Having seen the land of the Ice People in midwinter, Fernao knew that all too well. Here, he had a coal-burning stove, not the brazier he'd fed lumps of dried camel dung.

"I shall shovel snow," he murmured: a particularly apt paradigm. "You will shovel snow. He, she, it will shovel snow. We shall shovel snow. You-plural will shovel snow. They-"

Someone knocked on the door. "One moment!" Fernao called, not in Kuusaman but in classical Kaunian, the language he really did share with his Kuusaman colleagues. Just getting to the door took rather more than a moment. He had to lever himself up from his stool with the help of a cane, grab the crutch that leaned by the chair, and use both of them to cross the room and reach the doorway.