Darkness: Through The Darkness Part 25

"Clear?" Balastro nodded. "Oh, aye, that it is. But it is still not palatable to King Mezentio, who has ordered me to make that clear to you as well."

Hajjaj's courtesy grew even more frigid. "I thank you," he said, inclining his head. "Now that you have delivered your sovereign's message, I a.s.sume you have no further business here. Perhaps I will see you again on a happier occasion. Until then, good day."

Balastro grimaced. "By the powers above, sir, I've known dentists who used me more gently than you do."

"Do you speak for yourself now, or as Mezentio's man?" Hajjaj inquired.

"For myself," Balastro replied.

"If I'm speaking to Balastro, then, and not to Mezentio's minister--who could, after all, be anyone--I'll say that your dentist figure is an apt one, because dealing with Mezentio's minister is like pulling teeth."

"Well, if you think dealing with the Zuwayzi foreign minister is easy for King Mezentio's minister--who could, as you say, be anyone--you'd better think again, your Excellency," Balastro said. "I believed our kingdoms were supposed to be allies."

"Cobelligerents," Hajjaj said, admiring the precision of the Algarvian language; the distinction would have been harder to draw in Zuwayzi. "We have had this particular discussion before."

Balastro's sigh seemed to start at his sandals. "We've been friends a long time, you and I. Our side is winning this cursed war. Why are we quarreling more than we ever did when times were harder for us?"

"We've had that discussion before, too," Hajjaj replied. "The answer is, because some of the things Algarve has done make my blood run cold. I don't know how to put it any more plainly than that."

"We will do whatever we have to do to win," Balastro said. "We'll have Sulingen soon, and all the cinnabar in the hills behind it. Let's see King Swemmel keep fighting us then."

"Didn't I hear this same song sung about Cottbus something less than a year ago?" Hajjaj asked. "Algarvians sometimes boast about what they will do, not what they have done."

Balastro heaved himself to his feet. That meant Hajjaj had to rise, too, even if his joints creaked. Bowing, Balastro said, "You make it very plain I've come on a bootless errand. Perhaps we'll do better another time." He bowed again. "No need to escort me out. Believe me, I know the way." Off he went, strutting as if Algarve's armies had taken Cottbus and Sulingen and Glogau, too.

Hajjaj's secretary stuck his head into the office, an inquiring look on his face. "Go away," the Zuwayzi foreign minister snarled. His secretary disappeared. Hajjaj scowled, angry at himself for letting his temper show.

A few minutes later, the secretary came in again. "Your Excellency, one of General Ikhshid's aides would speak with you, if you are available to him."

"Of course, Qutuz," Hajjaj said. "Send him in. And I am sorry I snapped at you a moment ago."

Qutuz nodded and went out without a word. He returned a moment later, saying, "Your Excellency, here is Captain Ifranji."

Ifranji was an intelligent-looking officer whose medium-brown skin and prominent nose suggested he might have had an Unkerlanter or two down near the roots of his family tree. He carried a large envelope of coa.r.s.e paper: carried it very carefully, as if it might bite him if he didn't keep an eye on it. When Qutuz brought in tea and wine and cakes, the captain took two token sips and one token nibble and gazed expectantly at Hajjaj.

With a smile, Hajjaj asked, "Is something on your mind, Captain?"

"Aye, your Excellency, something is," Ifranji answered, not smiling back. He tapped the envelope with his forefinger. "May I show you what I have here?"

"Please do." Hajjaj opened a desk drawer, pulled out his reading gla.s.ses, and held them up while raising a questioning eyebrow. Ifranji nodded. Hajjaj slipped the spectacles onto his nose.

Ifranji opened the envelope and pulled out a folded, rather battered broadsheet. He pa.s.sed it to Hajjaj, who opened it and read, FORMATION OF A LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT OF ZUWAYZA. By agreement with a number of n.o.bles of Zuwayza and with Zuwayzi soldiers who refuse to fight further for their corrupt regime, a new government of Zuwayza--the Reformed Princ.i.p.ality of Zuwayza-- has been formed at the town of Muzayriq under the rule of Prince Mustanjid. All Zuwayzin are urged to give their allegiance to the Reformed Princ.i.p.ality, and to abandon the insane and costly war the brigands of Bishah have been waging against Unkerlant.

"Well, well." Hajjaj peered over the tops of his spectacles at Captain Ifranji. "I have been called a great many things in my time, but never before a brigand. I suppose I should be honored."

Ifranji's mouth set in disapproving lines. "General Ikhshid takes a rather more serious view of this business, your Excellency."

"Well, when you get down to it, so do I," the Zuwayzi foreign minister admitted. He read the broadsheet again. "There's more subtlety here than I would have looked for from Swemmel. Up till now, he's always said Zuwayza has no business existing as a kingdom at all. Now he seems to be content with turning us into puppets, with him pulling a tame prince's strings."

"Even so," Ifranji said, nodding. "General Ikhshid knows no n.o.ble by the name of Mustanjid, and has no notion from which clan he might come. He charged me to ask if you did."

Hajjaj thought, then shook his head. "No, the name is not familiar to me, either. Ikhshid knows our clans as well as I do, I am sure."

"He said no one knew them so well as you, sir," Ifranji replied.

"He flatters me." And Hajjaj was flattered, which didn't mean he thought the praise false. He thought some more. "My guess is, the Unkerlanters found some merchant or captive and gave him a choice between losing his head and becoming a false prince. Or perhaps there is no Prince Mustanjid at all, only a name on the broadsheets to seduce our soldiers."

"The seduction is what concerns General Ikhshid," Ifranji said. "His thought marched with yours: King Swemmel has not tried a ploy like this before."

"How much have we got to worry about?" Hajjaj asked. "Are our soldiers throwing down their sticks and going over to King Swemmel in droves?"

"Your Excellency!" Indignant reproach filled Ifranji's voice. "Of course not. The men carry on as they always have."

"In that case, Ikhshid hasn't got much to worry about, has he?" Hajjaj said. His feeling was that Ikhshid didn't have much to worry about as long as the war went well. If things went wrong, who could guess what might happen?

Ifranji said, "Is there nothing we can do on the diplomatic front to weaken the force of these broadsheets?"

"I don't suppose King Swemmel will accept a formal protest," Hajjaj said dryly, and General Ikhshid's aide had to nod. Hajjaj went on, "Our men know what the Unkerlanters have done to us in years gone by. They know what the Unkerlanter invasion did to us a couple of years ago, too. That's our best guarantee no one will want to have much to do with this Reformed Princ.i.p.ality."

Now Captain Ifranji looked happier. "That is a good point, sir. I shall take your words back to the general." He reached for the broadsheet. Hajjaj handed it to him, and he refolded it and put it back in its envelope. Then he got to his feet, which meant Hajjaj had to do the same. They exchanged bows; Hajjaj's back clicked. Ifranji, young and straight, hurried away.

With a sigh, Hajjaj sank back to the pillows behind his low desk. He sipped at the date wine left almost untouched during the ritual of hospitality. His face bore a scowl that drove Qutuz away when his secretary looked in after Ifranji left. Hajjaj didn't know he seemed so grim. "Swemmel has no business trying anything new," he muttered under his breath. Of itself, this ploy didn't feel dangerous; if anything, it might even help incite the Zuwayzin against Unkerlanter domination. But, if Swemmel tried one new thing, who could say he wouldn't try another one, one that might prove more effective?

No doubt King Shazli would hear of the Reformed Princ.i.p.ality of Zuwayza from General Ikhshid. Hajjaj inked a pen and set it to paper even so. He was sure the king would ask his opinion, and he would look good in his sovereign's eyes if he gave it before it was asked.

He'd almost finished when a horrible banging overhead made his hand jerk. Glaring at the ceiling, he scratched out the word he'd ruined. The banging went on and on. "Qutuz!" Hajjaj called irritably. "What is that hideous racket? Are the Unkerlanters dropping hammers on us instead of eggs?"

"No, your Excellency," his secretary answered. "The roofers are making repairs now against the winter rains."

"Are they?" Hajjaj knew he sounded astonished. "Truly his Majesty is a mighty king, to be able to get them out before urgent need. Most folk, as I know too well, have trouble persuading them to come forth even at direst need." Doing his best to ignore hangings and clatterings, he wrote a sentence, then handed the paper to Qutuz. "Please take this to his Majesty's secretary. Tell him the king should see it today."

"Aye, your Excellency." As Ifranji had before him, Hajjaj's secretary hurried away.

The Zuwayzi foreign minister finished the goblet of date wine and poured himself another one. Normally a moderate man, Hajjaj felt like getting drunk. "Algarve or Unkerlant? Unkerlant or Algarve?" he murmured. "Powers above, what a horrible choice." His allies were murderers. His enemies wanted to extinguish his kingdom--and were murderers themselves.

He wished the Zuwayzin could have dug a ca.n.a.l across the base of their desert peninsula, hoisted sail, and floated away from the continent of Derlavai and all its troubles. If that meant taking along some Kaunian refugees, he was willing to give them a ride.

Had he been able to float away, though, Derlavai would probably have come sailing after him and his kingdom. That was how the world worked these days.

"Reformed Princ.i.p.ality of Zuwayza." Hajjaj tasted the words, then shook his head. No, that didn't have the right ring to it. King Swemmel hadn't figured out how to interest the Zuwayzin in betraying their own government-- not yet, anyhow. But could he, if he kept trying? Hajjaj wasn't sure. That he wasn't sure worried him more than anything else about the whole business.

Even though Bembo couldn't read all of the message painted in broad strokes of whitewash on the brick wall, he glowered at it. He could tell it contained the word Algarvians. No whitewashed message containing that word in Gromheort was likely to hold a compliment.

Bembo grabbed the first Forthwegian he saw and demanded, "What does that say?" When the swarthy, bearded man shrugged and spread his hands to show he didn't understand the question, the constable did his best to turn it into cla.s.sical Kaunian.

"Ah." Intelligence lit the Forthwegian's face. "I can tell you that." He spoke Kaunian better than Bembo did. Almost anyone who spoke Kaunian spoke it better than Bembo did.

"Going on," Bembo urged.

"It says"--the Forthwegian spoke with obvious relish--"Algarvian pimps should go back where they came from." He spread his hands again, this time in a show of innocence. "I did not write it. I only translated. You asked."

Bembo gave him a shove that almost made him fall in the gutter. To the constable's disappointment, it didn't quite. He made as if to grab the bludgeon he carried. "Getting lost," he growled, and the Forthwegian disappeared. "Pimp," Bembo muttered in Kaunian. He switched to Algarvian: "Takes one to know one."

Before walking on, he spat at the graffito. Some Forthwegian or other thought himself a hero for sneaking around with a paint brush in the middle of the night. Bembo thought the Forthwegian, whoever he was, nothing but a cursed nuisance.

Half a dozen Forthwegians in identical tunics came up the street toward him. After a moment, he realized they belonged to Plegmund's Brigade. He eyed them warily, much as he would have eyed so many mean dogs running around outside a farm. They were useful creatures, no doubt about it, but liable to be dangerous, too. And, by the way they looked at him, they were thinking about being dangerous right now.

He'd moved out of their way before he quite realized what he was doing. They realized it fast enough; a couple of them laughed as they tramped past. His ears burned. Forthwegians weren't supposed to intimidate Algarvians--it was supposed to be the other way round.

"b.u.g.g.e.r aem," Bembo said under his breath. "They don't pay me enough to be a hero." He laughed a nasty laugh. They doubtless didn't pay those young toughs in Plegmund's Brigade enough to be heroes, either. All he had to do was pound the pavement here in Gromheort. The Forthwegians would get shipped off to the west to fight King Swemmel's troopers. They might not make heroes, but a lot of them would end up dead.

Serve aem right, too, Bembo thought. Let aem laugh now. They'll be laughing out of the other side of their mouths soon enough.

Once he'd got round the corner from the men of Plegmund's Brigade, he started swaggering once more. Why not? No one who'd seen him embarra.s.s himself was around now. As far as he was concerned, what had happened back there might as well have belonged to the days of the Kaunian Empire.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he saw a Kaunian on the street. He reached for his bludgeon. A Forthwegian woman who saw him and the blond called out in Algarvian: "Make him wish the powers below had hold of him instead of you!"

"Don't worry, sweetheart," Bembo answered, even though the woman was ten years older than he was, shapeless, and homely to boot. She got even homelier when she smiled, which she did now. Bembo didn't have to look at her for long, though. He swung his attention--and his anger--toward the Kaunian. "You there! Aye, you, you miserable son of a wh.o.r.e! Who let you out of your kennel?"

The Forthwegian woman giggled and clapped her hands and hugged herself with glee. She stared avidly. If anything dreadful happened to the Kaunian, she wanted to watch. The blond turned out to speak Algarvian. Bowing to Bembo, he said, "I am sorry, sir."

"Sorry doesn't cut it." Bembo advanced on him, club upraised. The Forthwegian woman clapped her hands again. "Sorry doesn't begin to cut it," the constable growled. "I already asked you once, what are you doing running around loose? This isn't your part of Gromheort, and you'll pay for poking your nose out of the part that is."

"Do what you want to me." The Kaunian bowed again. This time, he kept on looking down at the cobbles. "My daughter is sick. None of the Kaunian apothecaries has the drug she needs. And so"--he shrugged--"I went outside to find it. If you had a daughter, sir, would you not do the same?"

Since he'd got out of the Kaunian district, odds were he'd already bribed one Algarvian constable. Bembo was as sure of that as he was of his own name. "Have you got any money left?" he demanded.

"Aye, some," the blond answered, and the Forthwegian woman let out an angry, thwarted screech. The Kaunian went on, "If it is all the same to you, though, I think I would sooner take a beating. I will need the money for more medicine, and for food."

Bembo stared at him. Either the blond was serious, or else he'd just come up with the most outlandish scheme to escape a beating Bembo had ever heard of. He didn't know whether to admire the fellow's nerve or to beat him to within an inch of his life to teach him not to try that sort of nonsense again. The Forthwegian woman had no doubts. "Wallop him!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. "He deserves it. He said so himself. Wallop him!"

Reluctantly--he didn't want to do anything the noisy woman suggested-- Bembo decided he had to give the Kaunian a lesson. If the blonds got the idea they could shame the Algarvians into leaving them alone, who could guess how much trouble they'd cause? And so, raising the bludgeon, he advanced on the blond.

He hoped the Kaunian would run. The fellow was skinny and looked agile. The constable wasn't like to be able to catch him. He could prove his own ferocity and still not beat a man who wasn't fighting back.

But the Kaunian just stood there waiting. Bembo didn't soften. Instead, he got angry. The club thudded down on the Kaunian's back. The blond grunted, but held his ground. That made Bembo angrier. His next stroke laid open the Kaunian's scalp.

And that proved too much for the blond to bear. With a howl of pain, he turned and fled. His trousers flapped at his ankles. Bembo tried to kick him in the backside, but missed. He ran after him for half a block. By then, he was panting; his heart thudded in his chest. He slowed, then stopped. He'd done his duty.

"You should have blazed him!" the Forthwegian woman shouted. "It would have served him right."

"Oh, shut up, you old hag," Bembo said, but not very loud. He didn't want her screeching at him anymore. What he wanted was a simple, quiet tour on the beat, a tour where he didn't have to do anything but stop in at some shops he knew to cadge a few cups of wine and some cakes and sausages and whatever else he might happen to crave. He sighed. What he'd been through felt too much like work. And his day wasn't even half over yet.

A few blocks later, he came to the park where he and Oraste had met and blazed a drunken Kaunian mage. It was daytime now, not the middle of the night, and all--or at least most--Kaunians were closed up in their own district nowadays. On the other hand, the park was even more decrepit than it had been a few months before. No one had bothered cutting gra.s.s or tr.i.m.m.i.n.g weeds. He could hardly make out the paved paths along which Oraste and he had walked.

He wanted to go through the park as much as he would have wanted to go fight Unkerlanters alongside the men of Plegmund's Brigade. He stood at the edge, indecisive. A gust of wind sprang up and wrapped long stalks of gra.s.s around his ankles, as if trying to pull him in. He made a disgusted noise and hopped back.

But that wouldn't do. He realized as much, however unhappy the knowledge made him. Sergeant Pesaro would have some pungent things to say if he funked the job. And if Pesaro didn't just ream him out but told his superiors, Bembo knew he was liable to get shipped off to Unkerlant. And so, with a melodramatic sigh, he plunged into the park.

Dry gra.s.s scrunched under his sandals. Sure enough, staying on the paths was next to impossible. Weeds and shrubs grew higher than a man's middle. Here and there, they grew higher than a man's head. When Bembo looked back over his shoulder, he could hardly see the street from which he'd come. If anything happens to me in here, he thought nervously, n.o.body'd find out for days.

That wasn't quite true. If he didn't come back from his shift, people would go looking for him. But would they find him soon enough to do him any good? He had his doubts.

A Kaunian Emperor from the days of old might have held court on the benches in the middle of the park without anyone outside being the wiser. When Bembo got to them, he found not a Kaunian Emperor but a couple of Forthwegian drunkards. By their unkempt, s.h.a.ggy beards and filth, they made the park their home.

Bembo's hand went not to his bludgeon but to the short stick he carried next to it. The Forthwegians watched him. He nodded to them. They didn't move. He walked past them. Their eyes followed him. He didn't want to turn his back on them, but he didn't want them to see he was afraid, either. He ended up sidling away from them crab-fashion.

A rustling in the bushes made him whip his head around. Another Forthwegian, as grimy and disreputable as the two on the benches, waved his arms and shouted, "Boo!"

He laughed like a loon. So did the other two drunks. "You stupid bald-a.r.s.ed b.u.g.g.e.r!" Bembo screamed. "I ought to blaze you in the belly and let you die an inch at a time!" As a matter of fact, he wasn't sure he could blaze the Forthwegian; his hand shook like a fall leaf in a high breeze.

The fellow who'd frightened him hawked and spat. "Oh, run along home to mother, little boy," he said in good Algarvian. "You cursed well don't belong anywhere they let grown-ups in." He laughed again.

"Futter your mother!" Bembo was still too rattled to hang on to his aplomb as a proper Algarvian should.

His shrill voice made all the Forthwegians start laughing. He thought about blazing them. He thought about blazing the tall gra.s.s that choked the paths, too, in the hope of roasting them alive. The only thing wrong with that was, he might end up roasting himself, too.

Instead, after cursing all the drunks as vilely as he knew how, he pushed on down the path toward the far side of the park. He pa.s.sed two more Forthwegians, both of them curled up asleep or blind drunk in the gra.s.s with jars of spirits or wine beside them. One wore a tattered Forthwegian army tunic.

Seeing that made Bembo laugh, and he was sure his laugh was last and best. "Worthless clots!" he said, as if the three back by the benches were still close enough to hear. "This is what you get. This is what all of Forthweg gets. And oh, by the powers above, do you ever deserve it."

Every time Ealstan saw a broadsheet praising Plegmund's Brigade, he felt like tearing it from the wall to which it was pasted. He didn't much care what happened to him afterwards--after what Sidroc had done to his brother, and after Sidroc had got away with it because he'd joined the Algarvians' hounds, Ealstan ached for vengeance of any sort.

The only thing that held him back was fear of what would happen to Vanai if he were seized and cast into prison. She depended on him. He'd never had anyone depend on him before. On the contrary--he'd always depended on his father and his mother and poor Leofsig and even on Conberge. He hadn't thought about everything loving a Kaunian woman meant when he started doing it. He'd thought about little except the most obvious. But now . . .

Now, very much his father's son, he refused to evade the burden he'd a.s.sumed. And so, in spite of scowling at the broadsheets, he walked on toward Ethelhelm's flat without doing anything more. Scowling wouldn't land him in trouble; most of the Forthwegians in Eoforwic scowled when they walked by broadsheets urging them to join Plegmund's Brigade.

Most, but not all. A couple of fellows not far from Ealstan's age stared at one of the broadsheets, their lips moving as they read its simple message. "That wouldn't be so bad," one of them said. "Cursed Unkerlanters deserve a good boot in the b.a.l.l.s, you ask me."

"Oh, aye." His pal nodded; the sun gleamed off the grease with which he made his hair stand up tall enough to give him an extra inch or so of apparent height. The nasty-sweet odor of the grease didn't quite cover the reek that said neither he nor his friend had gone to the baths any time lately. Their tunics were grimy, too; if they'd ever had any luck, they were down on it now.

"I bet they feed you good there," the first one said, and his friend nodded again.

Both of them eyed Ealstan as he went by. He didn't need to be a mage to see into their thoughts: if they knocked him over the head and stole his belt pouch, they might also eat well for a while. He hunched his shoulders forward and let one hand fold into a fist, as if to say he wouldn't be easy meat. The two hungry toughs turned away to watch a girl instead.

When Ealstan got to Ethelhelm's building, the doorman gave him the once-over before letting him in. In this prosperous part of Eoforwic, his own ordinary tunic seemed almost as shabby and worthy of suspicion as those of the young men who'd been looking at the broadsheet. But then the doorman said, "You're the chap who casts accounts for the band leader, right?"

"That's me," Ealstan agreed, and the flunky relaxed.

Up the stairs Ealstan went. As usual, he contrasted the stairwell in this block of flats with the one in his own. The stairs here were clean and carpeted and didn't stink of boiled cabbage or of sour p.i.s.s. Neither did the hallways onto which the stairs opened.

After he knocked, Ethelhelm opened the door and pumped his hand, saying, "Come in, come in. Welcome, welcome."

"Thanks," Ealstan said. Ethelhelm lived more splendidly than his own family had back in Gromheort. Living large was part of what made a bandleader what he was, while a bookkeeper who did the same would only make people wonder if he skimmed cash from his clients. Even had his father been a bandleader, though, Ealstan doubted Hestan would have flaunted his money. Powers above knew Ealstan didn't--couldn't--do any flaunting of his own.

"Wine?" Ethelhelm asked. When Ealstan nodded, the musician brought him some lovely golden stuff that glowed in the goblet and sighed in his throat. Ealstan wished Vanai could taste it. Calling it by the same name as the cheap, harsh stuff he brought home to their flat hardly seemed fair. Ethelhelm, by all appearances, took it for granted. That hardly seemed fair, either. The bandleader said, "Shall I bring you tea and little cakes, too, so we can pretend we're naked black Zuwayzin?"

"No, thank you." Ealstan laughed. Ethelhelm waved him to the sofa. When he sat down, he sank into the soft cushions there. Fighting against the comfort as he fought against the languor the wine brought on, he asked, "And did this latest tour go well?"