Out of the Darkness d-6

by Harry Turtledove

  Veterans missing arms and legs-and one man short his left ear-filled Pirello’s waiting room. Sabrino gave his name to a pretty receptionist he wouldn’t have minded knowing better, then eased himself down into a chair and got ready to wait till everyone ahead of him had seen the healer.

  Before long, though, the receptionist gave him an inviting smile and said, “Count Sabrino? Master Pirello will see you now.”

  Sabrino struggled to his foot. Other mutilated men gave him sour looks, for which he didn’t much blame them. His own suspicions flared. He hadn’t given the receptionist his rank. How did Pirello know it? He’s likely a mage, after all, Sabrino thought. And his own name and station hadn’t been unknown in Trapani before the war. Still, he wasn’t the only Sabrino around, either. If he knows I’m a noble, maybe he thinks he can pry more money out of me than from ordinary men who‘ve had bad luck. If I can get my leg back, though. .

  “Here you are, your Excellency,” the girl said. Her kilt was very short, showing off shapely legs. “Go right in.”

  “Thanks,” Sabrino said. She beamed at him. He wondered if he ought to ask her name. Later, he thought. A hitching step at a time, he went into Pirello’s sanctum.

  It was lined with books, though not all of them had anything to do with healing or sorcery. The mage-or is he just a mountebank? Sabrino wondered- sprang from his chair and bowed himself almost double. “Your Excellency! What a privilege to meet you!” he cried. He was about thirty, with his mustaches and chin beard waxed to spikes. Plainly, he’d never missed a meal. “I hope I can help you.”

  “I hope you can, too,” Sabrino said. “I’ve heard about something to do with the law of similarity, and about some elixir of yours, and I decided to see what’s going on here. What have I got to lose?”

  “Exactly so, your Excellency. Exactly so!” Pirello beamed, as if Sabrino had been clever. “Do sit down, sir. I will tell you what I do. I will tell you in great detail, in fact.” And he did. He went on and on and on, and grew more technical the longer he spoke.

  Not all of what he said made sense to Sabrino, who wondered how much of it would have made sense to a first-rank mage. Before long, he held up a hand and said, “Enough, sir. Cut to the chase. You can help me, or else you can’t. If you can, how long will it take and how much will it cost?”

  “Between the spell and the elixir, which of course stimulates the regenerative faculty, you should see results-the beginning of results, I should say-within two months,” Pirello replied. “As for the fee, I am the soul of reason. You pay me a third when I begin and the balance when completely satisfied.” The price he named wasn’t cheap, but wasn’t exorbitant, either. “I would charge less, sir, but for the rare and costly ingredients in the miracle elixir, gathered from the land of the Ice People, from Zuwayza, from the most inaccessible and exotic islands of the Great Northern Sea. . ”

  “It sounds impressive.” It sounded, in fact, a little too impressive for Sabrino to trust it fully. “How did you learn about this sorcery and your precious elixir, if I may ask?”

  “Of course you may. I am the soul of truth as well as reason,” Pirello said. “As the war neared an end, I was working on spells to help hold back the Unkerlanters. I realized that one of them-reversed, you might say-could prove a boon to mankind rather than a bane. Further research-and here we are.”

  “Here we are,” Sabrino echoed. It had a certain amount of plausibility to it. As Sabrino knew to his own horror, Algarve had trotted out all sorts of desperate spells in the last days of the war. It could have been as Pirello claimed, no doubt of that. It could have been, but not necessarily. Sabrino found another question: “How long have you had this place open?”

  “Not quite a month, sir,” Pirello replied.

  “All right.” Grunting with effort, Spinello rose from the chair. “I may be back in a month or two, then. We’ll see how things go.”

  “You have no confidence in me!” Pirello wailed. “I am insulted. I am outraged. I am furious. You have made me into a cheat, a criminal, a man without honor. In your mind, sir, this is what I am. Oh, the indignity of it!” He made as if to rend his garments.

  Sabrino shook his head. “No, I’m just careful. I lived through the war. I want to see how things go before I jump in. Good day.”

  Behind him, Pirello expostulated volubly. The more the mage squawked, the less Sabrino trusted him. He made his slow way out of the office, past the receptionist-who’d stopped smiling at him-and out onto the street. His driver helped him up into the carriage. “Take me home,” he said.

  “Well?” Gismonda asked when he got back.

  “He’s a fraud,” Sabrino answered. “I think he’s a fraud, anyhow. If he’s still in business six weeks from now, maybe I’m wrong.”

  Five weeks and three days after his visit to Master Pirello, news sheets- which had happily displayed his advertising-reported that his establishment was suddenly empty, as was the account he’d set up at a nearby bank. A warrant had been sworn out for his arrest, but the occupying authorities seemed more inclined to laugh at the Algarvians than to go after the trickster.

  “Well, you were right,” Gismonda said with a grimace.

  “So I was. I’ve still only got one leg, but I’ve still got all my silver, too.” Sabrino sighed. “But oh, how I wish I’d been wrong!”

  Hajjaj eyed Tassi reproachfully. “You are extravagant, you know. You should come to me before you order jewels for yourself.”

  The Yaninan woman stamped her foot, which made her pale, dark-tipped breasts jiggle invitingly. “They were pretty. I wanted them. I got them,” she replied in the throatily accented Algarvian she still spoke far better than Zuwayzi.

  “You should have asked me first,” Hajjaj repeated. “I am happy to give you a refuge here-”

  Tassi twitched her hip. “I should hope so!”

  “I did not let you stay here on account of that,” the retired Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “I let you stay here on account of your trouble with Minister Iskakis. I am an old man: I make no bones about it. That does not matter to me nearly so much as it would have thirty years ago. And there is something you should know.”

  “And that is?” Tassi asked ominously.

  “I divorced a wife not so very long ago-a young wife, a pretty wife, a wife most enjoyable in bed-because she spent more than she should have, because she thought she could take advantage of me,” Hajjaj said. “I sent her back to her clan-father. I would send you away, too. You need to understand that, and to believe it.”

  “You wouldn’t do such a thing to me.” She sounded very sure of herself. As if by accident, she scratched her hipbone. Hajjaj didn’t believe in accidents- certainly not in this one. The motion, he was sure, was aimed at guiding his gaze toward her patch of pubic hair. She’d noticed him noticing it; it stood out against her paleness much more than a darker-skinned Zuwayzi woman’s did. Aye, she knew what her weapons were, and used them.

  But those weapons wouldn’t save her here. Hajjaj had to convince her of that. “Wearily, he said, “You had better listen to me. I enjoy you. I am not infatuated with you. That I did not want Iskakis to punish you does not mean I am. You may not do whatever you like in my house. I do not have to keep you here, and I will not if I decide you abuse my hospitality. Have you got that?”

  Tassi studied him. At last, she dipped her head-and then, a moment later, nodded. “You mean this, I think.”

  “You had best believe I mean it.” Hajjaj nodded, too.

  “How can you be so cold?” the Yaninan woman exclaimed.

  “I ran my kingdom’s affairs the whole of my adult life,” Hajjaj said. “Did you think I would not be able to run my own?”

  “But you ran your kingdom’s affairs here.” Tassi touched a painted fingernail to her forehead. “Your own affairs-those belong here.” Her finger came to rest near her left nipple.

  “I find less difference between the two than you seem to,” Hajjaj said. “If my wits tell me my he
art is making me act like a fool, why should I go on doing it?”

  “Because your heart drives you! Because you are passionate!”

  She meant it. Hajjaj was sure of that. He shook his head even so. “I would rather be right.”

  “Right?” Tassi scornfully tossed her head. “Wouldn’t you rather be happy?”

  Hajjaj thought about that. “I am happy-or as happy as I can be with Unkerlant too strong in this land. If you mean, do I want to be head over heels in love. . well, no. I have too many years and the wrong temperament for that.” His chuckle was rueful. A good many of his own countrymen thought him cold-blooded, too.

  Tassi snorted, but she also nodded again, this time without using a Yaninan gesture first. “I will remember,” she said, and turned again. Walked wasn’t quite the word; the twists her bare backside made did their best to refute everything Hajjaj had told her.

  He chuckled. Enjoying someone in bed wasn’t the same as falling in love with her-or with him, Hajjaj supposed. He’d needed more than a few years to reach that conclusion, but he was convinced of it now.

  And besides, he thought, any woman who wants to make me fall head over heels in love with her isn‘t going to have much chance to do it, because I’m already head over heels in love with someone else.

  How Kolthoum would laugh if he told her that! And why shouldn’t she laugh? Her temperament was much the same as his own. That was one reason why he loved her, why the two of them fit like foot and sandal, why he wondered how he might go on living if anything happened to her. Arranged marriages didn’t usually work out so. Then again, from what he’d seen, marriages springing from first fruits of passion didn’t usually work out so, either. Every once in a while, you get lucky.

  He rose to his feet and left the library. He wasn’t much surprised when Tewfik came up to him a few minutes later and said, “You put a flea in her ear, did you, young fellow?”

  No one could have overheard his conversation with Tassi. But Tewfik might have been as much prophet as majordomo. Hajjaj was convinced the old man knew what went on well before it happened. “I hope I did,” Hajjaj said now. “Maybe she’ll listen. Maybe she’ll go on thinking she can do just as she pleases, the way Lalla did.”

  “She’s smarter than Lalla,” Tewfik said.

  “I think so, too,” Hajjaj said. “I hope she is, for her sake. I don’t want to give her back to Iskakis, but if she makes me not want to have her around, either. . ”

  “Pity Marquis Balastro didn’t want to keep her,” Tewfik said. “Pity Balastro got himself hauled down to Unkerlant, too. You could have sent her to him if he hadn’t.”

  “For one thing, he didn’t want her any more. That was part of the reason she came here, if you’ll recall,” Hajjaj said. The majordomo nodded. Hajjaj also thought it a pity the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza had been sent down to Unkerlant. Had that not happened, he wouldn’t have been a retired diplomat himself. But… “A great pity Balastro got taken away. Swemmel’s men blazed him, you know.”

  “I had heard that, aye, sir. Most unfortunate.”

  “I’m sure the marquis would be the first to agree with you,” Hajjaj said.

  Tewfik coughed. “If I may say so, sir, it is perhaps not the worst of things that the Unkerlanters’ passion for vengeance should be aimed mostly at our late allies and not at us.”

  “Passion indeed,” Hajjaj said-one more dangerous exercise of it. “And I fear you are right there, too, as you usually are.”

  The majordomo made a self-deprecating gesture. Inside, though, he would be preening. Hajjaj had known him all his own life, and was sure of it. But his praise of Tewfik hadn’t been hypocritical. Had the Unkerlanters wanted to avenge themselves on Zuwayza as they were avenging themselves on Algarve, he might have been blazed alongside Balastro.

  He wondered why Swemmel was so much more intent on punishing the redheads. Maybe there was some sense in Unkerlant that the Zuwayzin had had good reason for waging the war they did. After all, the Unkerlanters had invaded Zuwayza before the war with Algarve started. King Shazli owed them as much revenge as he could get, and if he lined up with the Algarvians to grab it, then he did, that was all.

  Or maybe I’m imagining things, Hajjaj thought. If I’m giving Swemmel a sense of justice, that’s bound to be senility creeping up on me.

  “If I may make a suggestion, sir?” Tewfik said.

  “By all means,” Hajjaj said.

  “You really should get the roofers out here, sir, before the fall rainy season begins,” the majordomo said. “If the powers above be kind, they may perhaps find some leaks before the rain makes them obvious.”

  “And if they don’t find any, they’ll start some, to give them business later.” Hajjaj hated roofers.

  “Chance we take,” said Tewfik, who did not admire them, either. “If we don’t have them out, though, the rain is bound to show us where the holes are.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Hajjaj said. “Why don’t you see to it, then?”

  “I’ll do that, sir,” Tewfik said. “I expect they’ll be out in the next few days.” Ancient and bent, he shuffled away.

  Hajjaj stared after him. What exactly was that last supposed to mean? Had the majordomo already summoned the roofers, and was he getting retroactive permission for it? That was what it sounded like. Hajjaj shrugged. He’d run Zuwayza’s foreign affairs for a generation, aye. Tewfik had been running this household a lot longer than that.

  What will happen when he finally falls over dead? Hajjaj wondered. His shoulders went up and down in another shrug. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find Tewfik outlasting him. The majordomo seemed as resistant to change as the hills outside Bishah.

  For a moment, that thought cheered Hajjaj. Then he frowned. What would happen to these hills if someone unleashed on them the appalling sorcery the Kuusamans and Lagoans had used against Gyorvar? Nothing good: Hajjaj was sure of that. The more he heard about that spell, the more it frightened him. He’d thought the first reports to come in to Bishah no more than frightened exaggerations, but they’d proved less than the dreadful reality. He’d never before known rumor to fall behind truth.

  He’d heard Minister Horthy’s aides had had to keep watch on the Gyongyosian minister day and night, to make sure he didn’t slay himself. Hajjaj didn’t know whether that was true; he did know Horthy hadn’t been seen in public since Gyongyos surrendered to the islanders and to Unkerlant.

  He sighed. So many things that had once seemed as changeless as these hills looked different, doubtful, dangerous, in the aftermath of the Derlavaian War. For as long as he’d been alive, Algarve had been the pivotal kingdom in the east, the one around which events revolved, the one toward which her neighbors looked with awe and dread. That had remained so even after she lost the Six Years’ War.

  No more. Hajjaj was sure of that. It wasn’t just that Mezentio’s kingdom had been shattered, with one king in Algarve propped up by the islanders, the other by Swemmel of Unkerlant. But Algarve had shattered herself morally as well. No one could look toward her now without disgust. That marked a great change in the world.

  Would everyone turn to Unkerlant, then? Swemmel surely ruled the most powerful kingdom on the mainland of Derlavai. Would Yaninans and Forthwe-gians and Zuwayzin and even Algarvians start shouting, “Efficiency!” at the top of their lungs? The notion made Hajjaj queasy, but where else would folk look?

  Kuusamo, maybe, he thought. Kuusamo and Lagoas were the only kingdoms that could hope to hold any sort of balance against Unkerlant. Kuusamo isn’t even a kingdom, not really, Hajjaj reminded himself. How does it hold together under seven princes? Somehow it managed, and more than managed. Its soldiers had done more than the Lagoans to beat Algarve in the east, and it had also beaten Gyongyos even without the final sorcery. Aye, Kuusamo was a place to watch.

  Hard to have a vicious tyranny like Unkerlant’s with seven lords in place of one, Hajjaj thought. And anything else, he was sure, made a better ch
oice than Swemmel of Unkerlant.

  Twenty

  Here, Vanai.” Elfryth held out a platter. “Would you like another slice of mutton?”

  “No, thank you,” Vanai said. “I’m full.”

  Her mother-in-law frowned. “Are you sure? Powers above, you haven’t even finished what you’ve got there. Now that we have enough food again, you really ought to eat.”

  “I’m full,” Vanai repeated. She meant it, too. In fact, what she’d already eaten was sitting none too comfortably in her belly.

  “I’ll have some more mutton,” Ealstan said. “And pass the porridge, too, please. Garlic and mushrooms and almonds.. ” He grinned and smacked his lips.

  Hestan picked up the bowl and handed it to Vanai. “Pass this to your husband.”

  “All right,” she said, and did. She’d had a helping of porridge herself, and liked it. But the odor of garlic wafting up from it now made her insides churn. “Here,” she told Ealstan. Then, gulping, she left the table in a hurry.

  When she came back, she’d got rid of what was bothering her-got rid of it most literally. She took a cautious sip of wine to kill the nasty taste in her mouth. She swallowed it even more cautiously, wondering if her stomach would rebel again. But the wine gave her no trouble.

  “Mama!” Saxburh said from her high chair. Vanai gave her a wan smile. The baby looked to be wearing more porridge than she’d eaten.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Elfryth asked.

  “I’m fine-now,” Vanai said.

  Something in her tone made her mother-in-law’s eyes widen. “Oh,” she said, and then, ‘‘If I’m wrong, you’ll tell me, but… is Saxburh going to have a little brother or sister?”

  So much for keeping it a secret a while longer, Vanai thought. Of course, bolting from the table in the middle of a good meal had a way of killing a secret dead. Vanai made herself nod. “Aye, I think she will.”

  And maybe it hadn’t been such a secret after all. Hestan nodded and said, “You’ve been falling asleep pretty early lately. That’s always a sign.”