Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  "It certainly is," the Algarvian colonel agreed. After a moment, he bowed to Terbatu. "You must understand, sir, that I appreciate the spirit in which you offer yourself and whatever countrymen who might fight under your banner. There are, however, certain practical difficulties of which I doubt you are aware."

  You're a Kaunian, and we're already killing Kaunians to fight Unkerlant. That was what Lurcanio meant. Krasta knew it. Again, she had all she could do not to shout it at the top of her lungs.

  And then Terbatu said, "Wouldn't you sooner have live men fighting on your side than dead ones, Colonel?"

  Krasta stared at him. So did Lurcanio. After a long, long pause, Lurcanio said, "I have no idea what you are talking about, my lord Viscount."

  The backwoods noble started to get angry. Then, grudgingly, he checked himself and nodded. "I suppose I see why you have to say such things, your Excellency. But we're men of the world, eh, you and I?"

  Lurcanio certainly was. He didn't look as if he wanted to admit any such thing about Terbatu. Krasta didn't blame him there. He let another pause stretch longer than it should have, then said, "In any case, your Excellency, I am not the man to hear such proposals. You must put them to Grand Duke Ivone, my sovereign's military governor for Valmiera. If you will excuse me-" Rather pointedly, he took Krasta by the elbow and steered her away.

  He also left Valnu's mansion earlier than he might have. "I trust you enjoyed yourself, your Excellency, milady?" Valnu said.

  Krasta was willing to keep silent for politeness' sake. Lurcanio said, "I am glad to find you such a trusting soul." Once out of the mansion and into his carriage, he asked Krasta, "Do you know what that Terbatu fellow was talking about back there?"

  Cautiously- ever so cautiously- she answered, "I think a lot of people have heard things. Nobody knows how much to believe." The first sentence was true, the second anything but: she, at least, knew exactly how much to believe.

  "A good working rule," Lurcanio said, "is to believe as little as one possibly can." Krasta laughed a nervous laugh, but he was plainly serious. And if a crack like that didn't mark him as a man of the world, what would?

  ***

  King Shazli of Zuwayza leaned toward his foreign minister. "The question, I gather, is no longer whether Algarve can go forward against Unkerlant, but whether she can keep Unkerlant from going forward against her."

  "No, your Majesty." Hajjaj solemnly shook his head.

  "No?" Shazli frowned. "This is what I have understood from everything you and General Ikhshid have been telling me. Am I mistaken?"

  "I'm afraid you are, your Majesty." Hajjaj wondered how he would have been able to say such a thing to King Swemmel. Well, no: actually, he didn't wonder. He knew it would have been impossible. As things were, he had no trouble continuing, "Unkerlant will go forward against Algarve this summer. This question is, how far?"

  "Oh," King Shazli said, in the tones of a man who might have expected better but who saw the difference between what he'd expected and what lay before him. "As bad as that?"

  "I would be lying if I told you otherwise," Hajjaj said. "Down in the south, our ally's attack did not do everything the Algarvians had hoped it would. Now it's Swemmel's turn, and we'll have to see what he can do. One hopes for the best while preparing for the worst."

  "A good way to go about things generally, wouldn't you say?" Shazli remarked. Hajjaj nodded. He had to work hard to keep his face straight, but he managed. He'd been saying such things to his young sovereign for many years. Now the king was repeating them back to him. Few things gave a man more satisfaction than knowing someone had listened to him. But then, with the air of someone grasping for straws, Shazli went on, "Things are quiet here in the north."

  "So they are- for now," Hajjaj agreed. "For the past two summers, the greatest fight in Unkerlant has been down in the south. But I would say that, at the moment, the Algarvians don't know how long that will last, and neither do we. The only people who know are King Swemmel and perhaps Marshal Rathar."

  Shazli poured more date wine into his goblet. He gulped it down. "If the blow falls here, can the Algarvians withstand it? By the powers above, your Excellency, if the blow falls here, can we withstand it?"

  "From my conversations with General Ikhshid, he is reasonably confident the blow will not fall on us any time soon," Hajjaj replied.

  "Well, that's something of a relief, anyhow," the king said.

  "So it is." Hajjaj didn't think he needed to tell Shazli Ikhshid's reason for holding that opinion: that Zuwayza was only a distraction to Unkerlant, and Algarve the real fight. Hajjaj did say, "The Algarvians are the ones who will best know their situation in this part of the world."

  "How much do you suppose Balastro would tell you?" King Shazli asked.

  "As little as he could," Hajjaj said with a smile. Shazli smiled, too, though neither of them seemed much amused. Hajjaj added, "Sometimes, of course, what he doesn't say is as illuminating as what he does. Shall I consult with him, then?"

  "Use your own best judgment," Shazli answered. "By the nature of things, you will be seeing him before too long. So long as the blow has not fallen, when you do will probably be time enough." He gnawed at the inside of his lower lip. "And if the blow does fall, it will tell us what we need to know." He softly clapped his hands together, a gesture of dismissal.

  Hajjaj rose and bowed and left his sovereign's presence. Even the thick mud-brick walls of Shazli's palace couldn't hold out all the savage heat, not at this season of the year. Servitors strolled rather than bustling; sweat streamed down their bare hides. Hajjaj was not immune to sweat. Indeed, he was sweating as much from what he knew as from the weather.

  When he got back to his own office, his secretary bowed and asked, "And how are things, your Excellency?"

  "You know at least as well as I do," Hajjaj said.

  "Maybe I do," Qutuz answered. "I was hoping they would be rather better than that, though."

  "Heh," Hajjaj said, and then, "What have we here?" He pointed to an envelope on his desk.

  "One of Minister Horthy's aides brought it by a few minutes ago," Qutuz said.

  "Horthy, eh?" Hajjaj said. Qutuz nodded. What went through Hajjaj's mind was, It could be worse. It could have been an invitation from Marquis Balastro. Or it could have come from Minister Iskakis of Yanina. Horthy of Gyongyos was a large, solid man not given to displays of temper- he made a good host.

  Like any diplomat, Horthy wrote in classical Kaunian, saying, Your company at a reception at the ministry at sunset day after tomorrow would be greatly appreciated. Hajjaj studied the note in some bemusement. In the days of the Kaunian Empire, his ancestors had traded with the blonds, but that was all. In far-off Gyongyos, the Kaunian Empire had been the stuff of myth and legend, as Gyongyos had been to the ancient Kaunians. Yet he and Horthy, who had no other tongue in common, shared that one.

  There was one irony. Another, of course, was that Zuwayza and Gyongyos shared Algarve as an ally. Considering what King Mezentio's soldiers and mages were doing to the Kaunians of Forthweg, Hajjaj sometimes felt guilty for using their language.

  "May I see, your Excellency?" Qutuz asked, and Hajjaj passed him the leaf of paper. His secretary read it, then found the next logical question: "When I reply for you, what shall I say?"

  "Tell him I accept with pleasure, and look forward to seeing him," Hajjaj said. His secretary nodded and went off to draft the note for his signature.

  Hajjaj sighed. Balastro would be at Horthy's reception. So would Iskakis. The diplomatic community in Bishah was shrunken these days. The ministers for Unkerlant and Forthweg, Valmiera and Jelgava, Sibiu and Lagoas and Kuusamo stood empty these days. Little Ortah, the only neutral kingdom left in the world, looked after the buildings and after the interests of the kingdoms.

  From his office in the anteroom to Hajjaj's, Qutuz asked, "Do you suppose Iskakis will bring his wife?"

  "I'm sure I don't know, though he often does," Hajjaj replied. "He likes to
show her off."

  "That's true," his secretary said. "As far as anyone can tell, though, showing her off is all he likes to do with her." He sighed. "It's a pity, really. I don't care how pale she is- she's a lovely woman."

  "She certainly is," Hajjaj agreed. "Iskakis wears a mask and wants everyone to take it for his face." No matter how lovely his wife was, Iskakis preferred boys. That didn't particularly bother Hajjaj. The Yaninan minister's hypocrisy did.

  "What sort of clothes will you wear?" Qutuz asked.

  "Oh, by the powers above!" the Zuwayzi foreign minister exclaimed. That problem wouldn't arise at a Zuwayzi feast, where no one would wear anything between hat and sandals. "Algarvian-style will do," Hajjaj said at last. "We are all friends of Algarve's, however… exciting the prospect is these days."

  Thus it was that, two days later, he rolled through the streets of Bishah in a royal carriage while wearing one of his unstylish Algarvian outfits. His own countrymen stared at him. A few of them sent him pitying looks- even though the sun had sunk low, the day remained viciously hot. And someone sent up a thoroughly disrespectful shout: "Go home, you old fool! Have you lost all of your mind?" Patting his sweaty face with a linen handkerchief, Hajjaj wondered about that himself.

  The Gyongyosian guards outside the ministry were sweating, too. No one shouted at them. With their fierce, leonine faces- even more to the point, with the sticks slung on their backs- they looked ready to blaze anyone who gave them a hard time. What with Gyongyosians' reputation as a warrior race, they might have done it.

  But they bowed to Hajjaj. One of them spoke in their twittering language. The other proved to know at least a few words of Zuwayzi, for he said, "Welcome, your Excellency," and stood aside to let the foreign minister pass.

  Inside the Gyongyosian ministry, Horthy clasped Hajjaj's hand and said the same thing in classical Kaunian. With his thick, gray-streaked tawny beard, he too put Hajjaj in mind of a lion. He was a cultured lion, though, for he continued in the same language: "Choose anything under the stars here that makes you happy."

  "You are too kind," Hajjaj murmured, looking around in fascination. He didn't come here very often. Whenever he did, he thought himself transported to the exotic lands of the uttermost west. The squared-off, heavy furniture, the pictures of snowy mountains on the walls with their captions in an angular script he could not read, the crossed axes that formed so large a part of the decoration, all reminded him how different these folk were from his own.

  Even Horthy's invitation felt strange. Alone among civilized folk, the Gyongyosians cared nothing for the powers above and the powers below. They measured their life in this world and the world to come by the stars. Hajjaj had never understood that, but there were a great many more urgent things in the world that he didn't understand, either.

  He got himself a glass of wine: grape wine, for date wine was as alien to Gyongyos as swearing by the stars was to him. He took a chicken leg roasted with Gyongyosian spices, chief among them a reddish powder that reminded him a little of pepper. Nothing quite like it grew in Zuwayza.

  One of the Gyongyosians was an excellent fiddler. He strolled through the reception hall, coaxing fiery music from his instrument as he went. Hajjaj had never imagined going to war behind a fiddle- drums and blaring horns were Zuwayza's martial instruments- but this fellow showed him a different way might be as good as his own.

  There was Iskakis of Yanina, in earnest conversation with a handsome junior military attachй from Gyongyos. And there, over in a corner, stood Balastro of Algarve, in earnest conversation with Iskakis' lovely young wife. Hajjaj strolled over to them. He had not the slightest intention of asking about the military situation in southern Unkerlant, not at the moment. Instead, he hoped to head off trouble before it started. Iskakis might not be passionately devoted to her as a lover, but he did have a certain pride of possession. And Balastro… Balastro was an Algarvian, which meant, where women were concerned, he was trouble waiting to happen.

  Seeing Hajjaj approach, he bowed. "Good evening, your Excellency," he said. "Coming to save me from myself?"

  "By all appearances, someone should," Hajjaj replied.

  "And what would you save me from, your Excellency?" Iskakis' wife asked in fair Algarvian. "The marquis, at least, seeks to save me from boredom."

  "Is that what they call it these days?" Hajjaj murmured. Rather louder, he added, "Milady, I might hope to help save you from yourself."

  Not caring in the least who heard her, she answered, "I would like you better if you looked to save me from my husband." With a sigh, Hajjaj went off to find himself another goblet of wine. Diplomacy had failed here, as it had all over Derlavai.

  ***

  Part of Pekka wished she'd never gone home to Kajaani, never spent most of her leave in her husband's arms. It made coming back to the Naantali district and the rigors of theoretical sorcery all the harder. Another part of her, though, quite simply wished she hadn't come back. The wilderness seemed doubly desolate after seeing a city, even a moderate-sized one like Kajaani.

  And she had trouble returning to the narrow world that centered on the newly built hostel and the blockhouse and the journey between them. Everything felt tiny, artificial. People rubbed her raw without intending to do it. Or, as in the case of Ilmarinen, they meant every bit of it.

  "No, we are not going to do that," she told the elderly theoretical sorcerer. She sounded sharper than she'd intended. "I've told you why not before- we're trying to make a weapon here. We can investigate the theoretical aspects that haven't got anything to do with weapons when we have more time. Till then, we have to concentrate on what needs doing most."

  "How can we be sure of what that is unless we investigate widely?" Ilmarinen demanded.

  "We don't have the people to investigate as widely as you want," Pekka answered. "We barely have the people to investigate all the ley lines we're on right now. There aren't enough theoretical sorcerers in the whole land of the Seven Princes to do everything you want done."

  "You're a professor yourself," Ilmarinen said. "On whom do you blame that?" Sure enough, he was being as difficult as he could.

  Pekka refused to rise to the bait. "I don't blame anyone. It's just the way things are." She smiled an unpleasant smile. If Ilmarinen felt like being difficult, she could be difficult, too. "Or would you like us to bring in more mages from Lagoas? That might give us the manpower we'd need."

  "And it might give Lagoas the edge against us in any trouble we have with them," Ilmarinen answered. Then he paused and scowled at Pekka. "It might give you the chance to poke pins in me to see me jump, too."

  "Master Ilmarinen, when you are contrary with numbers, wonderful things happen," Pekka said. "You see things no one else can- you see things where no one else would think to look. But when you are contrary with people, you drive everyone around you mad. I know you do at least some of it for your amusement, but we haven't got time for that, either. Who knows what the Algarvians are doing?"

  "I do," he answered at once. "They're retreating. I wonder how good they'll be at it. They haven't had much practice."

  That wasn't what she'd meant. Ilmarinen doubtless knew as much, too. He hated the Algarvians' murderous magecraft perhaps even more than she did. But she thought- she hoped- he'd made the crack as a sort of peace offering. She answered in that spirit, saying, "May they learn it, and learn it well."

  "No." Ilmarinen shook his head. "May they learn it, and learn it badly. That will cost them more." He called down imaginative curses on the heads of King Mezentio and all his ancestors. Before long, in spite of everything, he had Pekka giggling. Then, making her gladder still, he left without arguing anymore for abstract research at the expense of military research.

  "He has lost his sense of proportion," Pekka told Fernao at breakfast the next morning. The Lagoan mage probably would have understood had she spoken Kuusaman; he'd made new strides in her language even in the short time she'd been away. But she spoke classical Kaunian a
nyhow- using the international language of scholarship helped give her some distance from what had gone on.

  Fernao spooned up more barley porridge seasoned with butter and salt. His answer also came in classical Kaunian: "That is why you head this project and he does not, or does not anymore. You can supply that sense of proportion, even if he has lost it."

  "I suppose so." Pekka sighed. "But I wish he would remember that, too. Of course, if he remembered such things, I would not have to lead the way here now. I rather wish I did not."

  "Someone must," Fernao said. "You are the best suited."

  "Maybe." Pekka had a little bone from her grilled smoked herring stuck between two teeth. After worrying it free with her tongue, she said, "I had hoped more would be done while I was away."

  "I am sorry," Fernao said, as if the failure were his fault.

  Pekka didn't think that was true. She knew, however, that Fernao was the only theoretical sorcerer who showed any sign of taking responsibility for the lull. She said, "Maybe you should have been in charge while I went to Kajaani."

  "I doubt it," he answered. "I would not care to take orders from a Kuusaman in Lagoas. No wonder the reverse holds true here."

  "Why would you not want to take orders from one of my countrymen in your kingdom?" Pekka asked. "If the Kuusaman were best suited to lead the job, whatever it was…"

  Fernao laughed, which bewildered Pekka. He said, "I think you may be too sane for your own good."

  That made her laugh in turn. Before she could say anything, a crystallomancer came into the dining hall calling her name. "I'm here," she said, getting to her feet. "What is it?"

  "A message for you," the young woman answered stolidly.

  "I suspected that, aye," Pekka said. "But from whom? My son? My husband? My laundryman back in Kajaani?" That was a bit of sarcasm of which she thought even Ilmarinen might have approved.