Harry Turtledove: Out of the Darkness

He got no answer till that evening, when he put the same question to Captain Drogden. “The redheads have something new there,” the regimental commander replied, with what Leudast reckoned commendable calm. “Steering eggs by sorcery is hard even for them, so they don’t do it very often, and it doesn’t always work.”

“It worked here,” Leudast said morosely. Drogden nodded. The Unkerlanters stayed on the west bank of the Skamandros a while longer.

Hajjaj was glad to return to Bishah. The Zuwayzi foreign minister was glad he’d been allowed to return to his capital. He was glad Bishah remained the capital of the Kingdom of Zuwayza, and that Unkerlant hadn’t chosen to swallow his small, hot homeland after knocking it out of the Derlavaian War. But, most of all, he was glad to have escaped from Cottbus.

“I can understand that, your Excellency,” Qutuz, his secretary, said on the day when he returned to King Shazli’s palace. “Imagine being stuck in a place where they wear clothes all the time.”

“It’s not so much that they wear them all the time,” Hajjaj replied. Like Qutuz, he was a lean, dark brown man, though his hair and beard were white rather than black. And, like Qutuz, like almost all Zuwayzin, he wore only sandals and sometimes a hat unless meeting with foreigners who would be scandalized at nudity. He groped for words: “It’s that they need to wear them so much of the time, that they would really and truly die if they didn’t wear them. Until you’ve been down to the south, you have no idea what weather can do-none, I tell you.”

Qutuz shuddered. “That probably helps make the Unkerlanters what they are.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hajjaj answered. “Of course, other Derlavaians, ones who don’t live where the weather’s quite so beastly, wear clothes, too. I wouldn’t care to guess what that says about them. And the Kuusamans have a climate every bit as beastly as Unkerlant’s, and they are, by and large, very nice people. So you never can tell.”

“I suppose not,” his secretary said, and then, in musing tones, “Kuusamans. We haven’t seen many of them in Zuwayza for a while.”

“No, indeed,” Hajjaj agreed. “A few captives from sunken ships, a few more from leviathans killed off our shores, but otherwise. .” He shook his head. “We’ll have a lot of closed ministries opening up again before long.”

“Ansovald is already back at the Unkerlanter ministry,” Qutuz observed.

“So he is,” Hajjaj said, and let it go at that. He despised the Unkerlanter minister to Zuwayza, who was crude and harsh even by the standards of his kingdom. He’d despised him when Ansovald served here before Unkerlant and Zuwayza went to war, and he’d despised him down in Cottbus, when Ansovald had presented King Swemmel’s terms for ending the war to him. Ansovald knew. He didn’t care. If anything, he found it funny. That only made Hajjaj despise him more.

“Kuusamans,” Qutuz repeated. “Unkerlanters.” He sighed, but went on, “Lagoans. Valmierans. Jelgavans. New people to deal with.”

“We do what we can. We do what we must,” Hajjaj said. “I’ve heard that Marquis Balastro did safely reach Algarve.”

“Good news,” Qutuz said, nodding. “I’m glad to hear it, too. Balastro wasn’t a bad man, not at all.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Hajjaj agreed, wishing the same could be said of the cause for which Algarve fought.

Having the Algarvian ministry standing empty felt as strange as imagining the others filled. Not even Hajjaj could blame Swemmel of Unkerlant for requiring Zuwayza to renounce her old ally and cleave to her new ones. He’d never liked many of the things Algarve had done; he’d loathed some of them, and told Balastro so to his face. But any kingdom that could help Zuwayza get revenge against Unkerlant had looked like a reasonable ally. And so … and so Zuwayza had gambled. And so Zuwayza had lost.

With a sigh, Hajjaj said, “And now we have to make the best of it.” The Unkerlanters had made Zuwayza switch sides. They’d made her yield land, and yield ports for her ships. They’d made her promise to consult with them on issues pertaining to their dealings with other kingdoms-that particularly galled Hajjaj. But they hadn’t deposed King Shazli and set up the Reformed Principality of Zuwayza with a puppet prince, as they’d threatened to do during the war. They hadn’t deposed Shazli and set up Ansovald as governor in Bishah, either. However much Hajjaj disliked Swemmel and his countrymen, they might have done worse than they had.

And they would have, if they weren’t still fighting hard against Algarve - and not quite so hard against Gyongyos, Hajjaj thought. Well, if they’ve chosen to be sensible, I won’t complain.

One of the king’s serving women came into the office and curtsied to Hajjaj. “May it please your Excellency, his Majesty would confer with you,” she said. But for some beads and bracelets and rings, she wore no more than Hajjaj and Qutuz. Hajjaj noticed her nudity more than he would have if he hadn’t just come from a kingdom where women shrouded themselves in baggy, ankle-length tunics.

“Thank you, Maryem,” he replied. “I’ll come, of course.”

He followed her to Shazli’s private audience chamber. He enjoyed following her; she was well-made and shapely. But I don’t stare like the pale-skinned foreigners who drape themselves, he thought. We may scandalize them, but who really has the more barbarous way of looking at things? He chuckled to himself. If he hadn’t studied at the University of Trapani in Algarve, such a notion probably never would have occurred to him.

“Your Majesty,” he murmured, bowing as he came into King Shazli’s presence.

“Always a pleasure to see you, your Excellency,” Shazli replied. He too was nude, but for sandals and a thin gold circlet on his brow. He was a slightly plump man-nearing forty now, which startled Hajjaj whenever he thought about it- with a sharp mind and a good heart, though perhaps without enormous force of character. Hajjaj liked him, and had since he was a baby. “Please, sit down,” the king said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you, your Majesty.” Zuwayzin used thick rugs and piles of cushions in place of the chairs and sofas common elsewhere in Derlavai. Hajjaj made himself a mound of them and leaned back against it.

Shazli waited till he’d finished, then asked, “Shall I have tea and wine and cakes sent in?”

“As you wish, your Majesty. If you would rather get down to business, I shan’t be offended.” Zuwayzin wasted endless convivial hours in the ritual of hospitality surrounding tea and wine and cakes. Hajjaj often used them as a diplomatic weapon when he didn’t feel like talking about something right away.

“No, no.” Shazli hadn’t had a foreign education, and clung to traditional Zuwayzi ways more strongly than his much older foreign minister. And so another serving girl fetched in tea fragrant with mint, date wine (Hajjaj actually preferred grape wine, but the thicker, sweeter stuff did cast his memory back to childhood), and cakes dusted with sugar and full of pistachios and cashews. Only small talk passed over tea and wine and cakes. Today, Hajjaj endured the rituals instead of enjoying them.

At last, the king sighed and blotted his lips with a linen napkin and remarked, “The first Unkerlanter ships put in at Najran today.”

“I hope they were suitably dismayed,” Hajjaj remarked.

“Indeed,” King Shazli said. “I am given to understand that their captains made some pointed remarks to the officers in charge of the port.”

“I warned Ansovald when I signed the peace agreement that the Unkerlanters would get less use from our eastern ports than they seemed to expect,” Hajjaj said. “They didn’t seem to believe me. The only reason Najran is a port at all is that a ley line runs through it and out into the Bay of Ajlun.” He’d been there. Even by Zuwayzi standards, it was a sun-blazed, desolate place.