Viscount Valnu patted her again and gave her a sweet smile, as if she were a child. "I take it back," he said, fond indulgence in his voice. "You really are a featherbrain."
"I ought to slap your face," she snapped. She didn't know why she didn't. Had anyone else spoken to her so (except Colonel Lurcanio, who hit back), she would have. But Valnu made a habit of saying and doing preposterous things, to her and to everyone he knew. His panache had kept him out of trouble so far, and kept him out of trouble now.
He said, "Here, let's do something that's more fun instead," took her in his arms, and gave her a thoroughly competent kiss. Then, bowing as extravagantly as an Algarvian, he turned and sauntered up the Avenue of Equestrians as if he had not a care in the world. Knees aside, he looked better in a kilt than most redheads.
Krasta hadn't bought anything-a shockingly unusual trip to the Avenue of Equestrians. Even so, she went back to her carriage, which waited in a side street. Her driver, surprised at her coming back so soon, hastily hid a flask. "Take me home," she told him. But would she find any shelter there, either?
Three
Winter was the rainy season in Bishah. The capital of Zuwayza rarely got much in the way of rain, but what it got, it got in winter. Sometimes, at this season, it also got cool enough at night to make Hajjaj think wearing clothes might not be the worst idea in the world.
The Zuwayzi foreign minister's senior wife patted his hand when he presumed to say that out loud. "If you want to put on a robe, put on a robe," Kolthoum told him. "No one here will mind if you do." Her tone suggested than anyone living in
Hajjaj's home who did mind any eccentricity he happened to show would answer to her, and would not enjoy doing it.
But he shook his head. "My thanks, but no," he said. "No for two reasons. First, the servants would be scandalized, no matter what they said. I'm an old man now. I've been through too many scandals to invite another one."
"You're not so old as all that," Kolthoum said.
Hajjaj was far too courteous to laugh at his senior wife, but he knew better. His hair, having gone from black to gray, was now going from gray to white. (So was Kolthoum's; they'd been yoked together for almost fifty years. Hajjaj didn't notice it in her, for he saw her through the eyesight of a shared lifetime, where today and the lost time before the Six Years' War could blur into each other at a blink.) His dark brown skin had grown wrinkled and leathery. When it did rain here, his bones would ache.
He went on, "The second reason is even more compelling: so far as I know, we haven't got any clothes here. I have this style and that-short tunics and long ones and kilts and trousers and who knows what useless fripperies-in a closet next to my office down in the city, but I don't need to bother with such foreign nonsense in my own home."
"If you're feeling chilly, it isn't nonsense," Kolthoum said. "I'm sure we could have a maidservant fix you something out of a blanket or curtains or whatever would suit you."
"I'm fine," Hajjaj insisted. His senior wife looked eloquently unconvinced, but stopped arguing. One of the reasons they'd got on so well for so long was that they'd learned not to push each other too far.
Tewfik, the majordomo, walked into the chamber where they were sitting. Next to him, Hajjaj truly wasn't so old as all that: Tewfik had served his father before him. Bowing, the clan retainer said, "Sorry to disturb you, lad" -he was the only man Hajjaj knew who could call him that-"but a messenger from the palace just brought you this." He handed Hajjaj a roll of paper sealed with King Shazli's seal.
"I thank you, Tewfik," Hajjaj replied, and the majordomo bowed again. Hajjaj wasn't upset that he hadn't heard the messenger arrive; sheltering behind thick sandstone walls, his home, like any clanfather's, was a compound well on its way to being a little village. He put on his spectacles, broke the royal seal, unrolled the pape r, and read.
"Can you speak of it?" Kolthoum asked.
"Oh, aye," he said. "His Majesty summons me to his audience chamber tomorrow morning, that's all."
"But you'd see him tomorrow anyhow," his senior wife observed. "Why does he need to summon you?"
"I don't know," Hajjaj admitted. "By tomorrow morning, though, I should find out, don't you think?"
Kolthoum sighed. "I suppose so." She reached out and patted her husband on the thigh, a gesture having more to do with sympathy than with desire. It had been a long time since they'd made love. Hajjaj couldn't remember just how long, in fact, but their companionship hardly needed physical intimacy anymore. One of these days, he would have to wed a new junior wife if he sought such amusements. Lalla, recently divorced, had been more expensive and more temperamental than
she was worth. One of these days. As he neared seventy, lovemaking seemed less urgent than it had a couple of decades earlier.
He fortified himself with strong tea the next morning before his driver took the carriage down from the foothills and into Bishah proper. It hadn't rained lately, which meant the road wasn't muddy. It also wasn't dusty, a more common annoyance.
Men shouted back and forth on the roof of the royal palace. They weren't guards; the Zuwayzin liked King Shazli well. They were roofers: when the rains came, even the royal roof leaked. Unlike his citizens, Shazli didn't have to wait his turn to get things set right.
As he'd said he would, the king awaited his foreign minister in the audience chamber, a less formal setting than the throneroom. Shazli was about half Hajjaj's age. Hajjaj thought well of him: for a man so young, he was no fool. Only a gold circlet showed the king's rank-the Zuwayzi custom of nudity made display harder.
Bowing, Hajjaj said, "How may I serve your Majesty?"
"Before we talk business, we can take refreshment," Shazli answered, by which Hajjaj knew the business wasn't a desperate emergency-the king, unlike his subjects, could put aside the rules of hospitality if he chose. Shazli clapped his hands. A serving woman brought in tea and date wine and honey cakes enlivened with chopped pistachios.
While they nibbled and sipped, Shazli and Hajjaj were limited to polite small talk. Presently, the wine drunk and the cakes diminished, the maidservant came back and carried off the silver tray on which she'd fetched them. Hajjaj watched her swaying backside with appreciation but without urgency. That wasn't just his years; he'd seen so much bare flesh, it didn't inflame him as it did most Derlavaian folk.
"You will be wondering why I summoned you." Rituals completed, Shazli could with propriety get down to business.
"So I will, your Majesty," Hajjaj agreed. "As always, though, I expect you will enlighten me."
"Always the optimist," King Shazli said. Hajjaj raised an eyebrow. He'd been his kingdom's foreign minister since Zuwayza regained her freedom from an Unkerlant embroiled in the Twinkings War after the earlier ravages of the Six Years' War. Few men who'd spent their whole careers as diplomatists retained much in the way of optimism by the time they got old. Shazli's wry chuckle said he did know that. He reached under a pillow next to the one against which he reclined and pulled out a sheet of paper. Passing it to Hajjaj, he said, "This was brought to our line under flag of truce and, once its import was recognized, flown straight here by dragon."
Like any Zuwayzi, Hajjaj carried a large leather wallet to make up for his dearth of pockets. As he had for Shazli's summons, he took out his spectacles so he could read the document. When he was through, he peered over the lenses at his sovereign. "Unkerlant has never been a kingdom renowned for subtlety," he remarked. "The Unkerlanters would always sooner order than persuade, and they would sooner threaten than order... as we see here."
"As we see here," the king agreed. "All-out war against us-'war to the knife' was the phrase they used, wasn't it? -unless we leave off fighting them and go over to their side against Algarve. They graciously allow us three days' time before our reply is due."
Hajjaj read the document again. Shazli had accurately summarized it. Inclining his head, the foreign minister inquired, "And what would you have of me in aid of this, your Majesty?"
"Can Swemmel do as he threatens?" Shazli demanded. "If he can, can we hope to withstand him if he hurls everything he has against us?"
"I hope you are also asking General Ikhshid these same questions," Hajjaj said. "I am not a soldier, nor do I pretend to be."
"I am consulting Ikhshid, aye." King Shazli nodded. "And I have some notion of what you are and what you are not, your Excellency. I'd better, after all these years. I want your view not as a man of war but as a man of the world."
Reclining against cushions didn't make even a seated bow easy, but Hajjaj managed. "You do me too much credit," he murmured, thinking nothing of the sort. After a few seconds, he shook his head. "I don't believe King Swemmel can do it," he said. "Aye, the Unkerlanters crushed Algarve at Sulingen, but they're still locked with Mezentio's men from the Narrow Sea in the south to the Garelian Ocean here in the tropic north. If they pull enough men from their lines to be sure of crushing us, the Algarvians are bound to find a way to make them pay. Algarve can hurt them worse than we'd ever dream of doing."
"Ikhshid said the same thing when I asked him last night, which does somewhat relieve my mind," Shazli said. "Still... My next question is, is Swemmel so mad for revenge against us that he'd do anything to harm us, not caring what might happen to his own kingdom?"
Hajjaj clicked his tongue between his teeth and sucked in a long, thoughtful breath. No, his sovereign was no fool. Far from it. Though a rational man himself, Shazli knew Swemmel of Unkerlant wasn't, or wasn't always. Swemmel did some unbelievably foolish things, but he also did some unexpectedly clever ones, not least because nobody else could think along with him.
After a second longish pause, Hajjaj said, "I don't believe Swemmel will forget the war against Algarve just to punish us. I would not swear by the powers above, but I don't believe so. The Algarvians, over the past year and a half, have made themselves very hard for any Unkerlanter to forget."
"This is also General Ikhshid's view," King Shazli said. "I am glad the two of you speak with a single voice here, very glad indeed. If you disagreed, I would have more hesitation about rejecting the Unkerlanter demands out of hand."
"Oh, your Majesty, you mustn't do that!" Hajjaj exclaimed.
"How not?" Shazli asked. "Will you tell me I misunderstood you, and that you want Zuwayza to bow down to Unkerlant after all? If you will tell me that, I shall have certain things to tell you: of that you may rest assured."
"By no means," Hajjaj said. "All I ask is that you not send Swemmel a paper as hot as the ultimatum he has given you. In fact, you might be wisest not to send him any reply at all. Aye, I believe that's best. Do nothing to inflame him, and our kingdom will stay safe."
By the nature of things, Zuwayza would never be a great power in Derlavai. The kingdom had not enough people, not enough land-and much of the land it did have was sun-blasted desert, in which thornbushes and lizards and camels might flourish but nothing else did. Hajjaj's ancestors had been nomads who roamed that desert waste and fought other Zuwayzi clans for the sport of it. Though generations removed from a camel-hair tent, he'd learned the old songs, the
brave songs, as a boy. Counseling prudence came hard. But he reminded himself he was no barbarian but a civilized man. He did what needed doing.
And King Shazli nodded. "Aye, what you say makes good sense. Very well, then. If you will be so kind as to let me have that,..." Hajjaj passed the paper back to the king. Shazli tore it to pieces, saying, "Now we rely on the Algarvians to keep Unkerlant too busy to worry about the likes of us."
"I think we may safely do that," Hajjaj replied. "After all, the Algarvians have the strongest incentive to fight hard: if they lose, they're likely to get boiled alive."
***
Colonel Sabrino shook his head like a wild beast, trying to get the snow off his goggles. How was he supposed to see down to the ground if he couldn't see past the end of his nose? The Algarvian officer was tempted to take off the goggles and just use his eyes, as he did in good weather. But even then, his dragon could fly fast enough to make tears stream from his eyes and ruin his vision. The goggles would have to stay.
The dragon, sensing him distracted, let out a sharp screech and tried to fly where it wanted to go, not where he wanted it to. He whacked it with his long, iron-shod goad. It screeched again, this time in fury, and twisted its long, snaky neck so that it could glare back at him. Its yellow eyes blazed with hatred. He whacked it again. "You do what I tell you, you stupid, stinking thing!" he shouted.
Dragons were trained from hatchlinghood never to flame their riders off them. As far as humans were concerned, that was the most important lesson the great beasts ever learned. But dragonfliers knew how truly brainless their charges were. Every once in a while, a dragon forgot its lessons....
This one didn't. After another hideous screech, it resigned itself to doing as Sabrino commanded. He peered down through scattered, quick-scudding clouds at the fight around Durrwangen.
What he saw made him curse even more harshly than he had at his dragon. The Unkerlanters had almost completed their ring around the city. If they did, he saw nothing that would keep them from serving the Algarvian garrison inside as they'd served the Algarvian army that reached-but did not come out of-Sulingen.
Could Algarve withstand two great disasters in the southwest? Sabrino didn't know, and didn't want to have to find out. He spoke into his crystal to the squadron leaders he commanded: "All right, lads, let's give Swemmel's men the presents they've been waiting for."
"Aye, my lord Count." That was Captain Domiziano, who still seemed younger and more cheerful than he had any business being in the fourth year of a war that looked no closer to an end than it had the day it started: further from an end, perhaps.
"Aye." Captain Orosio didn't waste words. He never had. The other two squadron commanders also acknowledged the order.
Sabrino's laugh was bitter. He should have led sixty-four dragonfliers; each of his squadron commanders should have had charge of sixteen, including himself. When the fight against Unkerlant began, the wing had been at full strength. Now Sabrino commanded twenty-five men, and there were plenty of other colonels of dragonfliers who would have envied him for having so many.
Back in headquarters far from the fighting, generals wrote orders a full wing would have had trouble meeting. They always got irate when the battered bands of dragonfliers they had in the field failed to carry out those orders in full. Sabrino got irate, too-at them, not that it did him any good.
All he could do was all he could do. Having spoken through the crystal, he used hand signals, too. Then he whacked his dragon with the goad again. It dove on a large concentration of Unkerlanters below. The dragonfliers in the wing followed him without hesitation. They always had, since the first clashes with the Forthwegians. Good men, one and all, he thought.
A few of the Unkerlanters blazed up at the diving dragons. A few tried to run, though running in snowshoes wouldn't get them very far very fast. Most just kept on with what they were doing. Unkerlanters were a stolid lot, and seemed all the more so to the excitable Algarvians.
Sabrino's dragon carried two eggs slung beneath its belly. He released them and let them fall on the foe. The other dragonfliers in his wing were doing the same. Bursts of suddenly released sorcerous energy flung snow and Unkerlanters and behemoths in all directions. Whooping, Sabrino ordered his dragon high into the air once more. "That's the way to do it, boys," he said. "We can still hit 'em a good lick every now and again, curse me if we can't."
He knew a moment's pity for the Unkerlanter footsoldiers. He'd been a footsoldier, toward the end of the dreadful slaughters of the Six Years' War a generation before. Having somehow come through alive, he'd vowed he would never fight on the ground again. Dragonfliers knew terror, too, but they rarely knew squalor.
Captain Domiziano's smiling face appeared in Sabrino's crystal. "Shall we go down and flame some of those whoresons, too?" the squadron leader asked.
Reluctantly
, Sabrino shook his head. "Let's go back to the dragon farm and load up on eggs again instead," he answered. "It's not like flying down to Sulingen was-we can get back here again pretty fast. And that'll save on cinnabar."
Along with brimstone, the quicksilver in cinnabar helped dragons flame farther and fiercer. Brimstone was easy to come by. Quicksilver... Sabrino sighed. Algarve didn't have enough. Algarve had never had enough. Her own sorcery had turned and bit her, helping Lagoas and Kuusamo drive her from the land of the Ice People, from which she'd imported the vital mineral. There were quicksilver mines aplenty in the Mamming Hills south and west of Sulingen-but the Algarvians had never got to them. And so...
And so, as reluctantly, Domiziano nodded. "Aye, sir. Makes sense, I suppose. We'll save the dragonfire we've got for fighting with Unkerlanter beasts in the air."
"My thought exactly," Sabrino agreed. "We don't always get to do what we want to do. Sometimes we do what we have to do."
Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness Page 9
