Harry Turtledove - Out of the Darkness

Before long, though, the receptionist gave him an inviting smile and said, “Count Sabrino? Master Pirello will see you now.”

Sabrino struggled to his foot. Other mutilated men gave him sour looks, for which he didn’t much blame them. His own suspicions flared. He hadn’t given the receptionist his rank. How did Pirello know it? He’s likely a mage, after all, Sabrino thought. And his own name and station hadn’t been unknown in Trapani before the war. Still, he wasn’t the only Sabrino around, either. If he knows I’m a noble, maybe he thinks he can pry more money out of me than from ordinary men who‘ve had bad luck. If I can get my leg back, though. .

“Here you are, your Excellency,” the girl said. Her kilt was very short, showing off shapely legs. “Go right in.”

“Thanks,” Sabrino said. She beamed at him. He wondered if he ought to ask her name. Later, he thought. A hitching step at a time, he went into Pirello’s sanctum.

It was lined with books, though not all of them had anything to do with healing or sorcery. The mage- or is he just a mountebank? Sabrino wondered- sprang from his chair and bowed himself almost double. “Your Excellency! What a privilege to meet you!” he cried. He was about thirty, with his mustaches and chin beard waxed to spikes. Plainly, he’d never missed a meal. “I hope I can help you.”

“I hope you can, too,” Sabrino said. “I’ve heard about something to do with the law of similarity, and about some elixir of yours, and I decided to see what’s going on here. What have I got to lose?”

“Exactly so, your Excellency. Exactly so!” Pirello beamed, as if Sabrino had been clever. “Do sit down, sir. I will tell you what I do. I will tell you in great detail, in fact.” And he did. He went on and on and on, and grew more technical the longer he spoke.

Not all of what he said made sense to Sabrino, who wondered how much of it would have made sense to a first-rank mage. Before long, he held up a hand and said, “Enough, sir. Cut to the chase. You can help me, or else you can’t. If you can, how long will it take and how much will it cost?”

“Between the spell and the elixir, which of course stimulates the regenerative faculty, you should see results-the beginning of results, I should say-within two months,” Pirello replied. “As for the fee, I am the soul of reason. You pay me a third when I begin and the balance when completely satisfied.” The price he named wasn’t cheap, but wasn’t exorbitant, either. “I would charge less, sir, but for the rare and costly ingredients in the miracle elixir, gathered from the land of the Ice People, from Zuwayza, from the most inaccessible and exotic islands of the Great Northern Sea. . ”

“It sounds impressive.” It sounded, in fact, a little too impressive for Sabrino to trust it fully. “How did you learn about this sorcery and your precious elixir, if I may ask?”

“Of course you may. I am the soul of truth as well as reason,” Pirello said. “As the war neared an end, I was working on spells to help hold back the Unkerlanters. I realized that one of them-reversed, you might say-could prove a boon to mankind rather than a bane. Further research-and here we are.”

“Here we are,” Sabrino echoed. It had a certain amount of plausibility to it. As Sabrino knew to his own horror, Algarve had trotted out all sorts of desperate spells in the last days of the war. It could have been as Pirello claimed, no doubt of that. It could have been, but not necessarily. Sabrino found another question: “How long have you had this place open?”

“Not quite a month, sir,” Pirello replied.

“All right.” Grunting with effort, Spinello rose from the chair. “I may be back in a month or two, then. We’ll see how things go.”

“You have no confidence in me!” Pirello wailed. “I am insulted. I am outraged. I am furious. You have made me into a cheat, a criminal, a man without honor. In your mind, sir, this is what I am. Oh, the indignity of it!” He made as if to rend his garments.

Sabrino shook his head. “No, I’m just careful. I lived through the war. I want to see how things go before I jump in. Good day.”

Behind him, Pirello expostulated volubly. The more the mage squawked, the less Sabrino trusted him. He made his slow way out of the office, past the receptionist-who’d stopped smiling at him-and out onto the street. His driver helped him up into the carriage. “Take me home,” he said.

“Well?” Gismonda asked when he got back.

“He’s a fraud,” Sabrino answered. “I think he’s a fraud, anyhow. If he’s still in business six weeks from now, maybe I’m wrong.”

Five weeks and three days after his visit to Master Pirello, news sheets- which had happily displayed his advertising-reported that his establishment was suddenly empty, as was the account he’d set up at a nearby bank. A warrant had been sworn out for his arrest, but the occupying authorities seemed more inclined to laugh at the Algarvians than to go after the trickster.

“Well, you were right,” Gismonda said with a grimace.

“So I was. I’ve still only got one leg, but I’ve still got all my silver, too.” Sabrino sighed. “But oh, how I wish I’d been wrong!”

Hajjaj eyed Tassi reproachfully. “You are extravagant, you know. You should come to me before you order jewels for yourself.”

The Yaninan woman stamped her foot, which made her pale, dark-tipped breasts jiggle invitingly. “They were pretty. I wanted them. I got them,” she replied in the throatily accented Algarvian she still spoke far better than Zuwayzi.

“You should have asked me first,” Hajjaj repeated. “I am happy to give you a refuge here-”

Tassi twitched her hip. “I should hope so!”

“I did not let you stay here on account of that, ” the retired Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “I let you stay here on account of your trouble with Minister Iskakis. I am an old man: I make no bones about it. That does not matter to me nearly so much as it would have thirty years ago. And there is something you should know.”

“And that is?” Tassi asked ominously.

“I divorced a wife not so very long ago-a young wife, a pretty wife, a wife most enjoyable in bed-because she spent more than she should have, because she thought she could take advantage of me,” Hajjaj said. “I sent her back to her clan-father. I would send you away, too. You need to understand that, and to believe it.”

“You wouldn’t do such a thing to me.” She sounded very sure of herself. As if by accident, she scratched her hipbone. Hajjaj didn’t believe in accidents- certainly not in this one. The motion, he was sure, was aimed at guiding his gaze toward her patch of pubic hair. She’d noticed him noticing it; it stood out against her paleness much more than a darker-skinned Zuwayzi woman’s did. Aye, she knew what her weapons were, and used them.

But those weapons wouldn’t save her here. Hajjaj had to convince her of that. “Wearily, he said, “You had better listen to me. I enjoy you. I am not infatuated with you. That I did not want Iskakis to punish you does not mean I am. You may not do whatever you like in my house. I do not have to keep you here, and I will not if I decide you abuse my hospitality. Have you got that?”

Tassi studied him. At last, she dipped her head-and then, a moment later, nodded. “You mean this, I think.”

“You had best believe I mean it.” Hajjaj nodded, too.

“How can you be so cold?” the Yaninan woman exclaimed.

“I ran my kingdom’s affairs the whole of my adult life,” Hajjaj said. “Did you think I would not be able to run my own?”

“But you ran your kingdom’s affairs here.” Tassi touched a painted fingernail to her forehead. “Your own affairs-those belong here.” Her finger came to rest near her left nipple.