“Oh, I’ll come,” Ilmarinen said. “Some of them may care to see that you haven’t murdered me. Of course, some of them may not, too.”
When Pekka got down to the dining hall, she was surprised to find Fernao and Raahe and Alkio still there. Piilis had come down to eat, too. Her rebellion—my successful rebellion, she thought dizzily—hadn’t taken long. Fernao’s eyes widened when he saw Ilmarinen behind her. Pekka said, “Ah, good. Now I can tell everyone at once. With the agreement of Prince Juhainen, I am now responsible for taking our work forward. If the weather lets us do it, I want us experimenting again within three days.”
She’d spoken Kuusaman. She started to turn her words into classical Kaunian for Fernao, but the Lagoan mage waved to show her she needn’t bother. Her eyes darted to the other theoretical sorcerers. No one burst into applause—that would have been cruel to Ilmarinen—but everyone looked pleased. It’s mine now, Pekka thought, and responsibility, heavy as the weight of the world, came pressing down on her shoulders.
Qutuz came into Hajjaj’s office. “Your Excellency, the Marquis Balastro is here to see you,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister’s secretary said.
“I thank you,” Hajjaj answered. “Show him in—as you see, I am ready to receive him.” He wore an Algarvian-style tunic and pleated kilt. With every day that spring advanced, clothes grew less comfortable for him, but discomfort was part of the price he paid for diplomacy.
Qutuz, being a mere secretary, did not have to drape himself in cloth that clung and held the heat. After bowing to Hajjaj, he went out to the antechamber and returned with Algarve’s minister to Zuwayza. Balastro wore tunic and kilt, too, and was sweating in them even more than Hajjaj.
The Algarvian minister offered his hand. Hajjaj clasped it. Balastro said, “You look very well, your Excellency. And you are the picture of sartorial splendor—for the year after the end of the Six Years’ War.”
Hajjaj laughed. “What I usually wear never goes out of style—another advantage to skin, if you care what I think.”
“As much as I ever do.” Balastro’s grin showed teeth white but slightly crooked. He was a bluff, blocky, middle-aged man with sandy-red hair streaked with gray. He wasn’t subtle, but he wasn’t stupid, either. On the whole, Hajjaj liked him—not that he let that get in the way of doing what he needed to do for his kingdom.
“And how can I help you today, your Excellency?” Hajjaj inquired. “Besides amusing you with my wardrobe, I mean. Would you care for some refreshments?”
Before answering, Balastro lowered himself to the carpeted floor and piled up cushions till he’d made a comfortable nest. More than most foreign envoys who came to Zuwayza, he imitated local customs. Once he was reclining, he grinned at Hajjaj and shook his head. “Since you give me the choice, I’ll decline. How many hours over the years have you kept me simmering while we sip and nibble?”
“As many as I thought were needed,” Hajjaj answered imperturbably, which made Balastro laugh out loud. Hajjaj piled up pillows, too, by his low desk. “If, today, I claim I am simply aiming to get out of these unpleasantly warm garments before too long, I doubt you will be able to contradict me.”
“If you like, I’ll take off my clothes so you can shed yours,” Balastro said. He’d done that a few times, which made him unique in the annals of diplomacy in Zuwayza. With his pale body and his circumcision, though, he did not make an inconspicuous nude in this kingdom—on the contrary.
And so Hajjaj said, “Never mind. By all means do say on, though. I listen with great attention.” He had to listen with great attention, Algarve being Zuwayza’s cobelligerent against King Swemmel of Unkerlant and much the bigger power of the two.
“Things are looking up,” Balastro said. “It’s been a hard winter, aye, but things are looking up. I can, I think, say that truthfully now, looking at the way things down in the south have gone.”
“Considering how things were there a few weeks ago, Algarve does seem to have managed a revival,” Hajjaj agreed. “After Sulingen fell, there was some small concern lest your entire position in the south unravel.” A lifetime of diplomacy had taught him to minimize things. Zuwayza and Yanina and even neutral, landlocked Ortah had all been terrified of the prospect of swarms of Unkerlanters rolling down on their kingdoms without any Algarvian armies left to throw them back.
“Well, it didn’t. It didn’t, and it won’t.” Balastro always spoke confidently. Here, his confidence seemed justified. He went on, “We’ve stabilized the battle line, and we’re deeper into Algarve than we were a year ago.” That was all true, even if mildly obscene. Of course, it said nothing of the debacle at Sulingen. But then, Balastro did not pretend to be objective.
“I am pleased to hear it,” Hajjaj said. “General Ikhshid has been full of admiration for the way you let the Unkerlanters overextended themselves and then struck them in the flanks and rear.”
“For which I think him,” Balastro, as if the generalship were his. He continued, “Pity we couldn’t drive them out of Durrwangen again, too, but the mud got too thick too fast. When it dries out again, we’ll deal with them there.”
“May it be so,” Hajjaj said, on the whole sincerely. He knew of Unkerlanter mud, of course, but it didn’t seem quite real to him, any more than the savage summer heat of Bishah would seem real to a man from Durrwangen hearing about it without having experienced it.
“Oh, it will.” Balastro might have been talking about tomorrow’s sunrise. “We’ve pushed well past the place to both east and west, even if we couldn’t quite break in. A couple of attacks to pinch off the neck of the salient”—he gestured—“and the head falls into the basket.”
“A vivid image.” Deadpan, Hajjaj asked, “Are you sure you will have enough Kaunians to make it real?”
“You need have no fear on that score,” the Algarvian minister replied. He impaled Hajjaj with a cold green stare. “We would have even more if you weren’t harboring those cursed refugees.”
“Since they are here in my kingdom, King Shazli’s kingdom, they are no concern of yours,” Hajjaj said: the position Zuwayza had held ever since Kaunians from Forthweg began sailing to her eastern shore. “And I have repeatedly ordered them to stay here in Zuwayza and under no circumstances to return to Forthweg.”
“You are the soul of virtue,” Balastro said sourly. “You know as well as I, your Excellency, that any order you have to give repeatedly is an order that is not working.”
“Would you rather I gave no such order at all?” Hajjaj returned.
“I would rather that you put some teeth in the order you have given,” Balastro said. “String up a few blonds and the rest will get the point.”
“I shall consider it.” Hajjaj wondered if he would have to do more than consider it. If the Algarvian minister insisted boisterously enough, he might have to follow through.
Balastro grunted. “That’s more than I thought I’d get out of you. You’re a stubborn old crow, Hajjaj—you know that?”
“Why, no, your Excellency.” Hajjaj’s eyes widened in almost convincing surprise. “I had no idea.”
“Prevaricating old porcupine, too,” Balastro said. “Your father was a tortoise and your mother was a thornbush.”
“Have you got any more compliments to pay me, or are we through till the next session of teeth-pulling?” Hajjaj asked, but less gruffly than he would have liked—on the whole, he took Balastro’s words for compliment rather than insult.
“Not quite through,” the Algarvian minister answered. “My military attaché has asked me to ask you if Zuwayza can do without a good many of the behemoths and dragons we’ve sent you over the past couple of years.”
“I am not the one to respond to questions on matters military,” Hajjaj said, trying to hide the alarm he couldn’t help feeling. “If your attaché does not care to do so himself, I shall raise the issue with General Ikhshid and pass on to you his reply.” Assuming he doesn’t have an apoplexy and fall down frothing on the floor. “M
ay I tell him why you would consider withdrawing this aid?” You can’t be that angry about our harboring the Kaunians … can you?
“I’m no soldier, either,” Balastro said, “but what it amounts to is this: we aim to force a decision in Unkerlant, and we’ll need everything we can scrape together when we do it. We don’t aim to lose a fight because we didn’t strike a blow with all our strength.”
“I … see,” said Hajjaj, who was not altogether sure he did. “Well, would you have me inquire of Ikhshid, or would your attaché sooner do it directly?”
“If you’d be so kind, I’d be grateful,” Balastro answered, suave and smooth as if he’d never called Hajjaj a porcupine in all his born days.
“As you wish, of course,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said.
“Good.” Balastro heaved himself to his feet, which meant Hajjaj had to rise, too. The Algarvian made his farewells and departed with the air of a man well pleased with himself.
Hajjaj was pleased to be able to shed the clothes he despised. He was much less pleased when he called Qutuz and said, “Would you be so kind as to inquire of General Ikhshid if he would give me the pleasure of his company for a few minutes as soon as he conveniently can?”
What that meant in plain language was, Get Ikhshid here this instant. Qutuz, a good secretary, recognized as much. “Of course, your Excellency,” he said, and hurried away.
As Hajjaj had hoped he would, he had General Ikhshid with him when he returned. Ikhshid was not far from Hajjaj’s age: a stocky, white-haired soldier who’d served in the Unkerlanter army during the Six Years’ War and, rare for a Zuwayzi, had gained captain’s rank there. After bows and handclasps, Ikhshid spoke with almost Unkerlanter bluntness: “All right, what’s gone and got buggered up now?”
“Nothing yet,” Hajjaj said. “Marquis Balastro asked me to inquire of you how the buggering might go forward at some future date.” He relayed the Algarvian minister’s remarks to the general.
Ikhshid’s shining eyebrows were like signal flags, astonishingly visible against his dark skin. They twitched now, twitched and then descended and came together. “Sounds like they’re thinking of staking everything on one throw of the dice. You don’t really want to do that, not if you’re fighting a war.”
“I wouldn’t want to do it no matter what I’m doing,” Hajjaj said. “Why would King Mezentio?”
“Algarvians are better soldiers than Unkerlanters,” Ikhshid remarked, not quite responsively. “Put a company of redheads up against a company of Swemmel’s men and the Algarvians will come out on top. Put a company of Algarvians against two companies of Unkerlanters and they still might come out on top. Put them up against three …” He shook his head.
“Ah.” Hajjaj inclined his head. “There’s always the third Unkerlanter.”
“Aye, there is. There is indeed,” Ikhshid agreed. “The Algarvians didn’t take Cottbus. They didn’t take Sulingen. They don’t have that many more chances left. It’s not just men, either, your Excellency. It’s horses and unicorns and behemoths and dragons, too. Skill counts, or the redheads wouldn’t have got as far as they did. But weight counts, too, or they’d’ve got farther.”
“And so the Algarvians are aiming to put all their weight into whatever blow they choose to strike next,” Hajjaj said slowly. “Balastro said as much.”
Ikhshid nodded. “That’s how it looks to me, and it’d look that way even if Balastro hadn’t said so.”
“Can we afford to let them take dragons and behemoths out of Zuwayza to strike this blow?” the foreign minister asked.
“That comes down to two questions,” Ikhshid answered. “First, can we stop’em if they choose to do it? I doubt it. And second, of course—when they strike this blow, will it finally go to the heart?”
“Aye.” Hajjaj let out a long, slow sigh. “We have to hope for the best, then.” He wondered what the best was, and if, in this cursed war, it even existed.
Eight
Fernao found his Kuusaman getting better day by day. More Kuusaman mages had come to the hostel: not just Piilis and Raahe and Alkio, all of whom spoke excellent classical Kaunian, but several others who didn’t know so much. Those less fluent newcomers weren’t directly involved in the experiments the theoretical sorcerers were making, but were important even so. Their duty was to repel, or at least to weaken, any new assaults Algarvian mages might launch against the experiments.
“Can you do it?” Fernao asked one of them, a woman named Vihti. “Much force. Many killings.”
“We can try,” Vihti answered. “We can fight hard. They are not close. Distance—” She used a word Fernao didn’t know.
“Distance does what?” he asked.
“At-ten-u-ates,” Vihti repeated, as to a child, and then used a synonym: “Weakens. If you had been working in the north of Kuusamo and not down here in the south, the last attack would have done you all in.”
“You need not sound so happy,” Fernao said.
“I am not happy,” Vihti said. “I am telling you what is.” That was something Kuusamans were in the habit of doing. Vihti went off muttering under her breath, probably about flighty, overimaginative Lagoans.
When Fernao went out to the blockhouse with Pekka and Ilmarinen and the three newly arrived theoretical sorcerers, he didn’t think he was the overimaginative one. The Kuusamans had done things that no one else would have dreamt of for years.
The blockhouse was new, and stronger than the one the Algarvians had wrecked. But a few of the timbers were charred ones salvaged from the old blockhouse. Pointing to them, Pekka spoke in classical Kaunian: “They help remind us why we continue our work.”
Where nothing else lately seemed to have, that got Ilmarinen’s notice. “Aye,” he growled with something of the fire he’d had before the Algarvian attack. “Every one of those boards has Siuntio’s blood on it.”
“We shall have our revenge.” Piilis was a careful man who spoke careful Kaunian. “That is what Siuntio would have wanted.”
Pekka shook her head. “I doubt it. He saw what needed doing against Algarve, but vengeance was never any great part of his style.” Her eyes flashed. “I do not care. Regardless of whether he would have wanted me to take revenge, I want it for my own sake. I do not think he would have approved. Again, I do not care.”
“Aye.” Hot eagerness filled Fernao’s voice. He believed in vengeance, too, probably more so than any of the Kuusamans. Elaborate revenge was part of the Algarvic tradition Lagoas shared with Sibiu and Algarve herself. Kuusamans were generally calmer and more restrained. Siuntio had been. But calm and restraint, however valuable in peacetime, grew less so after war began.
Fewer secondary sorcerers had accompanied Fernao and his colleagues to the blockhouse this time. With the coming of spring, the experimental animals shouldn’t freeze unless magecraft kept them warm. But the secondary sorcerers still did have to transfer the spell Pekka would recite to the racks of cages that held the rats and rabbits.
“Remember, we are trying something new this time,” Pekka said. “If all goes as planned, most of the sorcerous energy we unleash today will strike at a point well removed from the animals. We have to learn to do this if we are to turn our magecraft into a proper weapon. The Algarvians can do it with their murderous magic. We must be able to match them.”
“And if things don’t go quite right, we’ll bring it down on our own heads, and that will put paid to this project once for all,” Ilmarinen said.
Oddly, his gloom didn’t bother Fernao so much. The master mage had been making cracks like that for as long as Fernao had been in Kuusamo … and undoubtedly for a lot of decades before that. Getting him back to sounding like his sardonic self was if anything an improvement.
“Are we ready?” Pekka’s voice had steel in it, warning that anyone who wasn’t ready would face her wrath. She didn’t even come up to the top of Femao’s shoulder, but he wouldn’t have wanted to have to do that. No one admitted he wasn’t ready. Pekka’s g
aze flicked around the blockhouse. After a sharp, abrupt nod, she quietly recited the ritual sentences with which Kuusamans began any sorcerous operation.
Raahe and Alkio and Piilis spoke the words with her. So did the secondary sorcerers and Vihti and the other protective mages. And so did Ilmarinen, who had about as little concern for most forms of ritual correctness as any wizard Fernao had ever known. Fernao himself stood mute. Pretending he shared the Kuusamans’ belief would have been useless, perhaps even dangerous, hypocrisy.
No one insisted that he join the recitation. But when it was through, Pekka glanced toward him. “In my class at Kajaani City College, you would have had to say the words,” she remarked.
“We are all learning here,” Fernao answered.
That seemed to please her. She nodded again, more relaxed, less jerky, than she had been. Then, after a couple of deep breaths, she turned to the secondary sorcerers and asked again in Kuusaman if they were ready. Fernao knew a certain amount of pride at understanding the question. He understood the answer, too—they confirmed they were. Pekka inhaled once more, then spoke first in her language and afterwards in classical Kaunian: “I begin.”
And begin she did, with the same quiet authority Fernao had seen again and again in her incanting. She was rougher at her work than a mage who spent day after day refurbishing rest crates would have been at his, but such a mage barely touched the surface of sorcery, while Pekka understood it down to the very roots, down deeper, in fact, than anyone before her had imagined those roots ran. Watching her, listening to her attack the spell, Fernao could have loved her not for who she was but for what she knew, a distinction of a sort he’d never imagined making.
He felt rather less proud of the spell she was using. All the Kuusamans had joined together in crafting it, and it had the smoothed comers and shapelessness characteristic of a work formed by committee. Even with his imperfect grasp of Kuusaman, he could tell as much from the feel of the air in the blockhouse as she worked. He did not doubt the spell would do what it was designed to do. But it had no elegance to it Had Siuntio drafted it, it would have been half as long and twice as strong; Fernao was sure of it. He had no proof, though. He would never have proof, not anymore, not with Siuntio dead.
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