Curse you, Lurcanio, Krasta thought. What he’d just forbidden would have been the most convenient arrangement all the way around-except that he’d just forbidden it. “Aye,” she said coldly. “And will you let your wife know you’ve sired a brand new bastard?”
“I may,” Lurcanio replied, “if it turns out I have. And now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.” He rose, bowed once more, and departed.
Krasta quietly cursed him again, this time for being so invulnerable, so impenetrable. A moment later, she started to giggle. If only I’d been impenetrable myself. I wouldn‘t have anything to worry about then. She wanted to call Lurcanio back so she could tell him the joke. Even as things stood, he would have laughed. She was sure of it. But she sat where she was and didn’t say a word.
Kolthoum looked at Hajjaj and slowly shook her head. With a sigh, she said, “You really are going to have to do something about this impossible situation, you know.”
“Of course I am,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister agreed. “But I have no idea what. I am most open to suggestions.”
He hoped his senior wife would have some. He and Kolthoum had been together for half a century. He told anyone who would listen that she was wiser than he. Few Zuwayzin seemed to want to hear that. As happened so often, the truth made people nervous. They dealt with him, so they wanted to think he had all the answers.
“As I see it,” Kolthoum said, “you have four choices.”
“Really?” Hajjaj said, his surprise altogether genuine. “Try as I would, I could find only three. Tell me, my dear, by all means tell me. Now you truly have my interest.”
His wife laughed. Her body shook. She’d never been a famous beauty, and she’d put on flesh over the years. Hajjaj didn’t care. He’d never cared. She understood him perfectly. He couldn’t say that about anyone else in the world. She began to tick off points on her fingers: “First, you could send Tassi back toMinisterIskakis. That would make him stop screaming at everyone fromKingShazli down to the Zuwayzin who walk past the Yaninan ministry.”
“Well, so it would,” Hajjaj said. “It would also probably be dangerous for Tassi. She didn’t show up on my doorstep-she didn’t show up naked on my doorstep-because she was madly in love with Iskakis. You know that as well as I do. She was just a bauble to him. And how will he use her, now that she’s offended him by running off and showing the world a side he wanted hidden away?”
“Every word of that is true,” Kolthoum said. “Which brings me to the next possibility-sending her to Marquis Balastro. He would take good care of her.”
“For a while-till he got bored,” Hajjaj said. Kolthoum laughed, though neither of them thought it was funny. “But he and Tassi have already quarreled. And if he flaunts her to infuriate Iskakis-and he will, being an Algarvian-he’ll just make things between Algarve and Yanina worse than they are already. They’re both supposed to be our allies, you know. I can’t think of anything Yanina can do to hurt our kingdom, but I can think of plenty of thingsKingTsavellas might do to hurt Algarve.”
“Would Tsavellas do them?” his senior wife asked. “In the war against Unkerlant, anything that hurts Algarve hurts Yanina, too.”
“When Yaninans go after revenge, they’re even worse than we are,” Hajjaj said. “They don’t care what happens to them as long as something worse happens to their foes.”
“That does make things harder,” Kolthoum admitted. “And you are right-Balastro wouldn’t keep her. Next choice is to bestow her on some Zuwayzi noble, then, wouldn’t you say?”
“I might do that. I’ve been trying to do that,” Hajjaj replied. “But there are only so many nobles who might be interested in a foreign woman, and it’s not obvious that Tassi would be interested in any of them. Which leaves, as far as I can see, nothing.”
“No?” Kolthoum looked amused. “You could just keep her here, you know, for your own pleasure. She’s young and pretty, and you haven’t had a woman like that since you sent Lalla back to her clanfather.”
“Do you know, I haven’t thought about that in any serious way,” Hajjaj said slowly. He looked down at his hands, at the dry, wrinkled skin and prominent veins. “And if my not having thought about it seriously doesn’t prove I’ve got old, I don’t know what would.”
“You’re not so old as all that,” Kolthoum said.
Hajjaj smiled. “You’re sweet to say so, my dear.” The two of them hadn’t bedded each other in something close to a year-but then, they needed less physical reminding of what they shared than they had when they were younger. He went on: “Things do still work… occasionally.”
“Well, then,” Kolthoum said, as if everything were all settled.
But Hajjaj shook his head. “It’s not so simple, you know. Where I might see Tassi as my reward, she’s more likely to see me as her punishment.”
“No.” His senior wife shook her head, too. “Not when she came here to your house and showed herself off to you without her clothes. I know what that means for people who aren’t Zuwayzin.”
Hajjaj grunted. The same thought had crossed his mind when he saw the young Yanina woman naked. Tassi hadn’t done anything to discourage it, either; on the contrary. Were he younger himself, he supposed-no, he knew-he would have done more to explore her half-promises. As things were… As things were, he shook his head again and said, “I don’t think I’m in urgent need of a pet, even one of the two-legged sort. Besides, I would feel as if I was taking advantage of her.”
“As if you were,” Kolthoum corrected.
“As if I was,” Hajjaj repeated. “I don’t think the condition would be contrary to fact, and so it doesn’t need the subjunctive.” He grinned at Kolthoum. Not even Qutuz, his secretary, quibbled with him over grammar.
She grinned back, unabashed, and stuck out her tongue at him as if she were a cheeky young girl herself. “You don’t know whether the condition is contrary to fact or not, because you haven’t bothered finding out,” she said.
“True-I haven’t,” he said. “And doesn’t that tell you something all by itself?”
“It tells me you are an old-fashioned gentleman,” Kolthoum answered, “which is nothing I haven’t known for a good many years. But, if you are going to make choices for this woman, don’t you think you ought to know what she wants for herself?”
“Now I know why you let me win the grammatical arguments,” Hajjaj said. Kolthoum made a small, questioning noise. He explained: “So I won’t feel too disappointed when you win the ones that matter.”
His senior wife hid her face in her hands. “My secret’s out. What shall I do?” she asked, her voice muffled behind her palms.
Slipping an arm around her shoulder, Hajjaj said, “When we have this between us, why do I need a young woman, a stranger?”
“Why?” Kolthoum reached out and gently stroked him between the legs. “That’s why.”
“There. You see? I already have a shameless woman, too.” Hajjaj kissed her. More than a little to his own surprise, he found himself rising to the occasion. He and Kolthoum made love slowly, lazily; somehow, the lack of urgency, the lack of fuss, added to his enjoyment-and, he hoped, hers-rather than taking away from it. Afterwards he said, “I didn’t expect that to happen.”
“Neither did I.” Kolthoum wagged a forefinger in front of his nose. “But you’re not going to use it as an excuse to keep from asking Tassi what she wants.”
“Aye, my dear,” Hajjaj answered. Under the circumstances, he could hardly say no.
Having made the promise, he had to keep it. A couple of days later, he askedTewfik to bring Tassi into his study. The majordomo nodded. “Just as you say, your Excellency.” His wrinkled, jowly face gave no hint of what he thought. He shuffled off and returned a few minutes later withMinisterIskakis ’ runaway wife.
“Good day, your Excellency,” she said in her careful Algarvian, dipping her head to Hajjaj. She was still bare, and still seemed barer than any Zuwayzi would have-but then, she would also have seemed ou
t of place in his house had she chosen to wear clothes.
“And a good day to you,” Hajjaj replied in the same language. “Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Would you care for tea and wine and cakes?” When she dipped her head in Yaninan-style agreement, Hajjaj nodded toTewfik, who waited in the doorway. The majordomo left and returned with a silver tray bearing the essentials of Zuwayzi hospitality.
While Tassi and Hajjaj ate and drank, they stuck to small talk. He wondered if she knew the social rules of his kingdom. He had, from time to time, used them to annoy foreigners. Now she seemed as content with delay as he was.
But, at last, he could avoid things no longer. “Tell me,” he said, “what am I to do with you?”
“Whatever suits your kingdom best, of course,” Tassi answered. “That is the way of such things, is it not so?” She spoke with a curious bitter resignation.
Hajjaj shook his head. “Not necessarily. Not entirely. If I thought only about what suited my kingdom best, I would have sent you back to your husband at once. Do you doubt it, even for an instant?”
“No,” she said in a small voice.
“All right, then,” Hajjaj said. “We understand each other, at least so far. If you had your choice, what would you do?”
“Blaze my father when he made the match with Iskakis,” Tassi replied without hesitation. “He could not have done worse if he tried for a hundred years.”
“You cannot do anything about that now. Of the things you can do, what would you do?”
“I have no good answers for you,” Tassi said, and Hajjaj nodded: he hadn’t expected her to have any good answers. She went on, “If you are willing to let me stay here, I would like to do that. No one bothers me here. Until now, I have never been in a place where no one bothers me.”
Well, Hajjaj thought with wry amusement, this is hardly the time to ask if she wants to keep my bed warm. Not even Kolthoum could argue with me about that, not after what she just said. Even so, his eyes traveled the length of her. Maybe it was the way her nipples and the hair between her legs stood out against her light skin that made her seem more naked than a Zuwayzi woman would have. That was the closest he’d come to an explanation that made sense, anyhow.
She mistook his silence for one of a rather different sort. Or perhaps it wasn’t so different after all. As she had when she dropped to her knees in the doorway, she said, “I would do anything to be able to stay here, anything you might ask me.”
That could mean only one thing. Hajjaj said, “If I took you up on that, you would not be able to say that no one here bothered you.”
“I do not think it would be much of a bother,” Tassi said.
And what is that supposed to mean? Hajjaj wondered. That she wouldn’t mind doing whatever he wanted or that she didn’t think he would want anything very often? He didn’t ask the question. Not asking was better when he didn’t really want to know the answer. Instead, he said, “You are welcome to stay here for as long as you like, but I do not think you can make this your true home. You are a young woman. One day, very likely, you will want to start a family of your own, and you will need to meet a man whose family is of a rank to match yours.”
Tassi tossed her head so vigorously, her dark curls flew. Yaninans used that gesture when they meantNo. She said, “Bloodlines are splendid-in a horse or a unicorn.” A Zuwayzi would have spoken of camels. “But Iskakis has some of the best blood in Yanina, and how much joy did my marriage to him bring me?”
“Iskakis also has some… special tastes,” Hajjaj pointed out, as delicately as he could.
“I know.” She grimaced. “He tried them with me a few times. They hurt, if you must know. But even so, I did not much interest him that way.”
Then he was a fool. But Hajjaj did not say that aloud. Tassi was too likely to judge he wanted pleasure from her body. And he knew he might, though taking it seemed more trouble than it was worth. “You may stay here- unbothered-for as long as you like,” was what he did end up saying.
“Thank you,” Tassi said softly.
“You are welcome,” Hajjaj replied, “and you may take that however you like.”
The ley-line ship slid to a halt. Since it wasn’t moving any more, it settled down into the water instead of gliding above all but the worst of the waves. “Well, we’re here,” Istvan said, “whereverhere is and whatever the Kuusamans are going to do with us now.”
“They don’t dare treat us too badly,”Kun said. “Gyongyos has plenty of Kuusaman captives, and our people can take revenge on them.”
“They haven’t done anything too horrible yet,” Szonyi said. “They’ve given us plenty of food, even if it is accursed fish all the time. If I eat any more fish, I’ll grow fins.”
CaptainFrigyessaid, “They are islanders. They eat fish themselves. They give us the same rations they give their own warriors. That is honorable.” No matter how honorable it was, Istvan’s company commander had been sunk in gloom ever since the Kuusamans captured him on Becsehely. He’d been ready to lay down his life to power the sorcery that would help drive the enemy off the island. He’d been ready, aye, but he hadn’t got the chance-and Becsehely had fallen, as so many other islands in the Bothnian Ocean had fallen to Kuusamo.
“We did all we could, Captain,” Istvan said, not for the first time. “The stars will still shine on us. We didn’t do anything to make them want to withhold their light.”
“We failed,” Frigyes said. “We should have held Becsehely, and we failed.”
“Too many Kuusaman ships,”Kun said, reasonable and logical as usual. “Too many Kuusaman dragons. Too many Kuusaman soldiers. Once they got ashore, sir, how could we hope to hold the island?”
“With our life’s blood,” Frigyes answered. “But we had no chance to give it.” He held his head in his hands, not bothering to hide his misery.
The iron door to the compartment housing the captives came open with a nasty squeal of hinges-even a lubber like Istvan could tell this ship had seen better years. A couple of Kuusaman troopers aimed sticks at the Gyongyosians. “To come out,” one of them said, speaking Istvan’s language very badly. “To go off this ship. To move-now.”The last word held the snap of command.
One by one, Istvan and his countrymen got to their feet and filed out of the compartment and into the corridor beyond. The Kuusamans stepped back. If anyone thought of seizing a stick and raising a revolt, he never got the chance. Istvan didn’t even think of it. He walked along the corridor and up the narrow iron stairway to the deck of the transport. It was the first time he’d seen the sky since going aboard the ship after Becsehely fell.
Then he saw the skyline-and started to laugh. A Kuusaman guard on deck swung his stick toward him. “Why you to laugh?” the little, slant-eyed fellow asked. By his tone, no captive had any business laughing.
Istvan didn’t care. “Why? Because this is Obuda, that’s why,” he answered. He knew the shape of Mount Sorong-not much of a mountain by his standards, but still a peak of sorts-as well as he knew the shape of his own foot. “I fought here. I didn’t expect to see the place again, I’ll tell you that.”
“You soldier here?” the guard said, and Istvan nodded. The guard shrugged. “Soldier no more. Now you to be captive here.”
Kunsaid, “This harbor wasn’t here when we were fighting on Obuda.”
Istvan nodded. Since the island fell, the Kuusamans had run up an enormous number of piers-and all of them looked to have ships tied up at them. Gyongyos and Kuusamo had fought over Obuda not least because several ley lines converged there, making it important for one navy or the other to hold the place. The Kuusamans weren’t just holding it these days-they’d taken it and made it their own.
“They couldn’t have got this much work out of the Obudans,” Istvan said as the guards marched him and his comrades toward the gangplank. “There weren’t that many of them, and they’re lazy buggers anyhow.” He never had thought much of the islanders.
“They didn’t even bot
her,”Kun said positively. “Most of this port was hammered together by sorcery.”
“How can you tell?” Istvan asked.
“Because all the piers and all the pilings are just alike,”Kun answered. “That means they used the law of similarity a lot-it can’t mean anything else.” He scowled. “I wishwe could afford to throw magecraft around like this. We’d stand a lot better chance in the fight, I’ll tell you.”
Under the sticks of the Kuusaman guards, the captives marched off the pier and onto the beach of Obuda. More Kuusamans waited for them there. One of the little men turned out to speak pretty good Gyongyosian. “I amColonelEino,” he said. “I am the commandant of the captives’ camp here. I want you to understand what that means. What that means is that, as far as you are concerned, I am the stars above. If anything good happens to you, it will happen because of me, and because of whatever you have done to please me. And if anything bad happens to you, it will also happen because of me, and because of whatever you have done to make me angry. Do not make me angry. You will be very sorry if you do.”
“Blasphemous, goat-eating son of a whore,” Istvan muttered. The captives around him-evenKun, that hard-boiled city man-nodded. ColonelEino might know the Gyongyosian language, but he didn’t know Gyongyosians.
Istvan’s close comrades weren’t the only ones to be appalled. More mutters rose from other soldiers captured on Becsehely-several hundred of them had filed off the transport. Some of them shouted instead of muttering.
Those shouts bothered Eino not at all. “I care nothing for what you think of me,” he said. “I care only that you obey me. When the war is over-when we have won it-you will go back to Gyongyos again. Until then, you belong to Kuusamo. Remember that.” He turned his back, ignoring the new shouts that rose from the captives.
The Kuusaman guards didn’t speak so much Gyongyosian. Of course, they didn’t need to, either. They shouted, “To march!”-and march the captives did.
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