Fernao sat in the dining room of the small hostel in the Kuusaman wilderness. When he lifted a finger, a serving woman brought him a new glass of brandy. Glasses he'd already emptied crowded the table in front of him. No one said a word about it. Kuusamans often mourned their dead with spirits. If a foreigner wanted to do likewise, they would let him.

Presently, I shall fall asleep. Fernao thought with the false clarity of a man already drunk and getting drunker. Then they will carry me upstairs, the way they carried Ilmarinen upstairs half an hour ago.

He was surprised and proud he'd outlasted the Kuusaman mage. But Ilmarinen had thrown himself into his binge with a frightening enthusiasm, as if he didn't care whether he came out the other side. He'd known Siuntio for more than fifty years. In their minds, they'd both gone places no one else in the world could reach till they showed the way. No wonder Ilmarinen drank as if he'd lost a brother, maybe a twin.

Fernao reached for the new glass- reached for it and missed. "Hold still," he told it, and tried again. This time, he not only captured it, he raised it to his mouth.

Even if his body didn't want to obey him, his wits still worked after a fashion. What will I be like tomorrow morning? he wondered- a truly frightening thought. He drank some more to drown it. Part of him knew that wouldn't help. He drank anyway.

He'd almost emptied the glass when Pekka stepped into the dining room. Seeing him, she came his way. She walked slowly and carefully. She'd taken a nasty whack when the blockhouse came down in ruin, and her head had to hurt even more now than his would come morning.

"May I join you?" she asked.

"Aye. Please do. I am honored." Fernao remembered to answer in classical Kaunian, not Lagoan, which she didn't speak. He stopped just before he ran through the whole passive conjugation of the verb to honor: you are honored, he/she/it is honored, we…

"I wondered if I would see Master Ilmarinen here," Pekka said.

"He went belly-up a while ago," Fernao answered.

"Ah." Pekka nodded. "They understood each other, those two. I wonder if anyone else did."

That so closely paralleled Fernao's thought, he tried to tell her of it. His tongue tripped over itself and wouldn't let him. "I am sorry, milady," he said. "You see me… not at my best." He knocked back his brandy and signaled for another.

"You need not apologize, not here, not now," Pekka said. "I would drink to the dead, too, but the healers gave me a decoction of poppy juice and told me I must not take spirits with it."

The serving woman brought Fernao a fresh brandy, then glanced a question at Pekka. Ever so slightly, the Kuusaman mage shook her head. The serving woman went away. "Which decoction?" Fernao asked. What with his injuries down in the land of the Ice People, he'd become something of an expert on the anodynes made from poppy sap.

"It was yellow and tasted nasty," Pekka answered.

"Ah, the yellow one." Part of Fernao's nod was drunken gravity, part remembering. "Aye. Compared to some of the others, it leaves your wits fairly clear."

"Then the others must be ferocious," Pekka said. "I thought my head would float away. Considering how it felt, I hoped my head would float away. Some of the drug has worn off since." Her grimace showed she wished it hadn't. She brightened when she added, "I can take more soon."

For Fernao, the yellow decoction had been a long and welcome step back toward the real world; he'd been taking more potent mixtures before. For Pekka, plainly, it was a long and welcome step out of the real world.

After a little while, she said, "One of the secondary sorcerers told me you dragged me out of the blockhouse. Thank you."

"I wish I could have carried you." Abrupt fury filled Fernao's voice. "If I could have moved faster, I might have got you out and then gone back in and got Siuntio, too, before the fire spread too badly. If…" He knocked back the brandy. In spite of it, his hand shook as he set down the empty glass.

Pekka said, "Had you been standing closer to him than to me, you would have taken him first, and then you would have tried to come back for me." She reached into her belt pouch and took out a bottle full of the yellow decoction and a spoon. "It is not quite time for my dose yet, but I do not care. I do not wish to think about that." Fernao would have taken more, but he was bigger than she.

The serving woman appeared at his elbow. He hadn't noticed her come up. There were a good many things he wasn't noticing right now. "Will I get you another, sir?" she asked.

"No, thank you," he said, and she went away again.

"How badly are we set back?" Pekka said.

Fernao shrugged. "I think they are still sorting things out. Sooner or later, we shall have answers."

"Answers of a sort," Pekka said. "But we shall never again have Master Siuntio's answers, and there are none better." She sighed, but then her pain-and grief-lined face softened. "The decoction works quickly. I can forget for a little while that my head belongs to me."

"I know about that," Fernao said. "Believe me, I know about that." He also knew he would wish for some of the yellow liquid- or maybe one of the stronger ones- in the morning. He would wish for it, but he wouldn't borrow any from Pekka. After so long taking decoctions of one color or another, he'd had to get over a craving for poppy juice. He didn't want to bring it back to life. He hoped he would remember that when he went from drunk to hung over.

Pekka said, "What will we do without Siuntio? How can we go on without him? He made this field what it is today. Everyone else walks in his footsteps- except Ilmarinen, who walks around them and pisses in them whenever he sees the chance."

Fernao would have laughed at that even sober. Drunk, he thought it the funniest thing he'd ever heard. He laughed and laughed. He laughed so hard, he had to put his head down on the table. That proved a mistake, or at least the end of his evening. He never heard himself starting to snore.

He never knew how he got into his bed, either. Most likely, the servitors carried him up, as they'd carried up Ilmarinen. Fernao couldn't have proved it. For all he could prove, it might as readily have been cockroaches or dragons.

Whoever had done it, he wished they'd thrown him on the rubbish heap instead. His head pounded even worse than he'd thought it would. The wan sunshine of winter in southern Kuusamo seemed as bright as the Zuwayzi desert; he had to squint to see at all. By the taste in his mouth, he'd been sleeping in a latrine trench.

He felt of himself, and made at least one happy discovery. "Powers above be praised, I didn't piss the bed," he said. Then he winced again. His voice might have been a raven's, a very loud raven's, harsh croak.

Holding his head with his free hand, he limped into the commode with one crutch. Along with a water closet, it also boasted a cold-water tap. He splashed water on his face. He cleaned his teeth. After rinsing his mouth, he took a couple of sips of water. Even that was almost too much for his poor, abused stomach. He thought he'd be sick right there. Somehow, he wasn't.

Groaning- and trying not to groan, because the noise hurt his head- he limped back to bed. He felt better than he had before he got up, which meant he was no longer actively wishing he were dead. He lay there for a while. Quiet and with his eyes closed, he did his best to wait out the hangover.

Again, he didn't notice drifting off. This time, he fell into something close to real sleep, not sodden unconsciousness. He would have slept longer, but someone tapped on his door. The taps weren't very loud- except to his ears. He sat up, and winced. "Who is it?" he asked, and winced again.