Winter 2007 3

Suitov addressed Daaren. "I beg your pardon. Yes, exactly. You seemed to have heard of our exploits as the pair of Deaths, and I was warning you that we may not be as impressive as Nico made us sound." Close enough until he could work out what this Daaren's story was, anyway.

"Yep. I'm usually a complete idiot," Weft put in cheerfully.

Suitov reprimanded him with a look. But the magician's tone of voice remained light-hearted. "Now, don't say that. It was all your clever idea."

"If you want to," Nico answered. "But I should take care of this" - she lifeted the top of the sack she was holding on to a bit by way of indication - "before I forget it and it's too late."

Daaren answered Suitov's explanation with a shrug and a "It was not bad." He might have commented that realising ideas was often more difficult than coming up with them, but got the feeling that that would be working against Suitov in a matter he was not sure he understood fully, and anyway Nico tried to draw attention.

She called, "All right, all right, people, I need to know who of you has been naughty and who's been nice this year. Show of hands, who's been naughty?", then repeated basically the same translated for Helmine as an aside.

Helmine nodded, even smiling at the idea. None of that mocking smirking.

She looked around casually before she raised a hand.

Suitov gave a slipshod grin and waved a hand. No girlfriend present, after all.

Weft blinked. Rather a loaded question, he thought.

Nico drew breath, and then decided against the cross-check of asking who'd been nice - no risking complications like everyone abstaining.

"The naughty kids get a lump of coal, so you take care of the fire, yes?" she asked in common, pulled a box of matches out of a jacket pocket and offered it to Helmine, pointing at the grill with the other hand. She was grinning encouragingly, hoping they'd play along.

Helmine took the matches and the lump of coal with no hurry at all. She seemed vaguely amused as she placed the coals into the fireplace.

She really had no idea of what was going on.

Understanding the words didn't give Suitov any more clue. He gave the matches a fleeting glance that said oh really, how pedestrian, and helped stack the coal. One lump he held on to and looked at. It warmed in his hand, followed by a tiny tail of smoke beginning to rise from it.

"Mages," Weft muttered, keeping a nervous eye on this as though Suitov might make it explode.

Nico first told Helmine in Wessian, "So, assuming that by default everyone else has been nice, they don't get coals as presents, but chestnuts and apples, and since nice kids share with others, everyone gets in on that."

Then she repeated the same in tranlsation, a bit absentmindedly, while laying out the contents of the big sack on the bench near to the grill, but with room to spare. A smaller bag with chestnuts, two pans clamped together, one working as a lid, stacked small bowls, a small assortment of cutlery...

Daaren watched with slight amusement. He was pretty certain she would forget about that act as soon as the fire was burning; It had been one of those spur-of-the-moment ideas of hers, only started this morning.

"Thank you," Helmine said quietly to Suitov at first (and wondered about something idly), then cocked an ear at Nico. "I think you live in a gravely different reality than I do," she informed Nico matter-of-factly and struck a match, "but I hardly mind indulging in this little game."

It took her a while to realise what Suitov was doing. She looked vaguely amused. "Nice."

Nico smiled at Helmine and gave her a heartfelt "Thank you," growing ever so slightly less hyper.

Suitov also smiled, on general principle. He placed the smouldering chunk in with the rest and concentrated until the whole collection was most of the way towards its aspirations of firehood.

Then he blew the dust off his hands, where it magically hadn't stuck.

His breathing was slightly faster than usual. But once the fire got going he would be able to drop the insulation magic a little... before he toasted. Iceheart glanced at Weft.

Helmine felt a little useless once she got the general gist of what Suitov was doing. That in mind, she looked at Nico. "I suppose I am allowed to at least handle the other of those pans?" she asked.

"Mhh, see..." she answered, removing the clamps and poffering the lower pan. It held dark green, round objects the size of apples, but slightly flatter, apparently something wrapped in layers of aromatic leaves. Nico would have described the smell as somewhere between cinnamon and vanilla. "They're done already, just need warming up, 's better with closed lid. And you can just flip the whole thing over."

Ah. Great. "Well, maestro, the stage is yours," Helmine said, straightened and wiped dust off her hands.

Nico looked puzzled for a moment, then dug a pot cloth out and checked how the fire was going. She'd meant to take care of it herself anyway, until she'd gotten the impression Helmine was volunteering.

Daaren meanwhile moved to the end of the bench Nico had littered with her "presents", put his jacket aside, picked up one of the mismatched short-bladed knives she'd packed and one of the small bowls, and started to notch chestnuts to keep them from exploding later.

Nico asked Helmine, "So, how many languages do you speak already?"

"Just two," Helmine said, loitering by the fire. She wasn't going to let her do everything, but the answer had led her to assume she was just going to have to play with the fire. "The other one only enough to gravely insult bloodlines, question manhood and generally be a bit of a bitch." Pause. "It's an old thing."

Weft felt he was probably misunderstanding something.

"Should you want to learn the interworld language... I'll help if I can," he said in his accented version of Wessian.

Nico thought the fire was burning evenly enough and put the pan on the grille.

To Weft she said, "That's great! Means a smaller chance of mistakes, and of me passing off deathly insults as friendly greetings or so."

Then she turned back to Helmine. "Learning insults is as good a start as any. I mean, if you know how to say 'You're a fucking idiot' you might already have the grammar down to say, say, 'you're a horrible cook', too."

What is this, kindergarten? Helmine thought about this whole thing for a while, then nodded. "You are right about that," she first said to Nico, then to the both of them, with formality that suggested some kind of power distance or another type of distance. "I would be happy to learn from you both."

"Whenever I'm off duty, then," Weft said, then sighed -- not noticeably satisfied or dissatisfied.