Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

At last, though, with a sigh, King Shazli said, “I’m comfortably certain this is no mere social call, your Excellency, although I am always glad of your company.”

“No one ever pays a king a mere social call, save perhaps another king,” Hajjaj said, and quickly summarized what he’d learned from Balastro and Ikhshid.

King Shazli sighed when he finished. “We knew this day was coming when the Unkerlanters began driving the Algarvians back this summer.” Before Hajjaj could speak, Shazli held up a pale-palmed hand. “We knew this day might come when the Algarvians failed before Cottbus, and we knew it probably would come when they failed in Sulingen. Now we have to deal with it as best we can.”

Hajjaj gave the king a seated bow. “Just so, your Majesty. As long as you keep that view of the world, Zuwayza is in good hands.”

“Provided the Unkerlanters don’t end up parading through Bishah,” Shazli said. “Well, if worse comes to worst, your Excellency, I rely on you to keep that dark day from dawning.”

“I’ll do my best,” Hajjaj promised, though he thought the king relied on him for altogether too much.

After his busy and gloomy morning, after a nap in the heat of noontime, Hajjaj left Bishah and went up into the hills to pass the rest of the day at home. “I didn’t expect you back so soon, young fellow,” Tewflk said when Hajjaj alighted from his carriage.

“Life is full of surprises,” Hajjaj said, doing his best to forget how many of them were unpleasant. “Would you be so kind as to have a servant”-he would never have offended the majordomo by sayinganother servant -”bring some date wine to the library for me?”

“Of course, your Excellency,”Tewfik replied; Hajjaj would have been astonished had he said anything else.

Once inside the library, Hajjaj pulled out a book of poetry by a Kaunian named Mikulicius, who’d lived in what the historians called Late Imperial times. Mikulicius had watched things fall apart all around him, and written about what he’d seen. With his kingdom’s Algarvian allies in headlong retreat, with the Unkerlanters massing against Zuwayza, the bitter verses seemed perfectly timely even if they were more than a thousand years old.

The door opened. The servant with the wine, Hajjaj thought. Without glancing up from the book, he said, “Just set the tray down, if you please.”

“Aye, your Excellency.”

That answer did make him look up, in surprise. It came in throatily accented Algarvian, not the Zuwayzi he’d expected. There with the tray and the wine jug and the cup stood Tassi. She wore no more than she had when she’d first knocked on the door to Hajjaj’s home. He looked her up and down; he could hardly help doing that. He switched to Algarvian-sharp Algarvian-himself to ask, “Who sent you here?” Minister Iskakis’ very estranged wife hadn’t learned much Zuwayzi yet.

“Why, Master Tewfik did,” she answered, her eyes perhaps too convincingly innocent. “He said you needed some wine.”

“Did he?” Hajjaj said. Tassi dipped her head, as Yaninans often did instead of nodding. “And did he say I needed anything else?”

“No.” Now she tossed her head, a gesture that gave birth to enchanting motions of other parts of her body. Curse it, she doeslook naked to me, not nude. Hajjaj had to think in Algarvian to have that make any sense to him; his own tongue lacked the distinction between the words. Tassi went on, “He did say you seemed unhappy.”

“Did he say why?” Hajjaj asked.

Tassi tossed her head again. “Why does not matter,” she replied, which went dead against a lifetime of experience for Hajjaj. She took a deep breath. Hajjaj admired that, too. She said, “I have been unhappy, too. I know what it is like. I know it is bad. I understand.”

Do you? he wondered. Does being unhappy because your husband likes boys more than he likes you let you understand a man who is unhappy because he sees his kingdom in mortal danger? Analytical as always, Hajjaj found the idea unlikely, but couldn’t quite dismiss it out of hand.

Tassi had not an analytical bone in her body. She got down on the carpet beside Hajjaj. “Whatare you doing?” he demanded, though he knew, and knew he could do what she obviously had in mind.

“Making you happy for a little while,” she answered. “Your senior wife said I should just do this, and not pay any attention to your grumblings.”

“Kolthoum said that, did she?” Hajjaj asked. Tassi dipped her head again. Her hair-she’d perfumed it-brushed over his chest and belly. “And Tewfik sent you?” he said. She didn’t bother responding to that; she’d already answered it once. Hajjaj took off his reading glasses and wagged a finger at her. “I sense a plot.”

Tassi didn’t respond to that, either-not with words, at least. But she didn’t need words to be very distracting. Hajjaj supposed he could have picked her up bodily and thrown her out of the library. But that would have been undignified, and a man would suffer almost anything before losing his dignity. Not, he thought as his arms went round her, that I’m suffering too much.

Fourteen

Every news sheet, every rumor, that came to the farm in southern Valmiera brought Merkela ferocious joy. “They’re losing,” she gloated. “They’re running. They’d running like whipped, bleeding dogs with their tails between their legs.” Then, suddenly, her grim delight faded. “Gedominu!” she exclaimed. “What did you just put in your mouth?”

The baby had started crawling not long before. That meant she and Skarnu had to keep a closer eye on him than ever. She reached down, grabbed him, and stuck a finger in his mouth. She got something out of there, then wiped her hand on her trousers. “What was it this time?” Skarnu asked with clinical curiosity.

“Just a dust bunny, powers above be praised,” Merkela answered. She glared at Gedominu with mock fury. “At least you didn’t swallow that dead cockroach a couple of days ago.” Gedominu laughed. He thought it was funny-though he’d squealed in outrage when his mother took the bug away from him. Merkela set him down once more. He started to crawl backwards, but then decided to go ahead instead.

Adventures with Gedominu notwithstanding, Skarnu hadn’t forgotten what Merkela was saying. Every news sheet, every rumor, that came to the farm brought him nothing but frustration. “Aye, they’re losing,” he said. “Aye, they’re running. They’re running in the west. They’re running in Jelgava. But what are they doing here? Not bloody much, powers below eat them.”

“That’s not true,” Merkela said.

And, in fact, it wasn’t true, or it wasn’t strictly true. The Algarvians occupying Valmiera had sent a lot of men west to fight the Unkerlanters, and a few north to fight the Lagoans and Kuusamans in Jelgava. Their grip on the countryside had loosened. Skarnu worried much less than he had before about an Algarvian patrol swooping down on the farm here.

But the redheads still held the southern coast strongly against invasion from across the Strait of Valmiera. They still held the kingdom’s towns- with no small aid from the Valmieran constabulary and from the many traitors they’d recruited to do their dirty work for them. True, the underground could strike more readily than it had. Still, its strikes remained pinpricks, and everywhere else, or so it seemed, Mezentio’s men were taking hammer blows.

“I want tosmash the Algarvians,” Skarnu said. “I want to smash them till they can’t get up again. Our army fell to pieces. I was there. I watched it happen. We never knew what hit us. We need revenge for that now if we’re ever going to be able to hold our heads up once this war finally ends.”

“Ends?” Merkela stared at him as if she’d never heard the word before. She pursed her lips. “Do you know, I never thought about the war ending. Never once. Either the Algarvians would have us down, or we’d have them down. Having them down is what I look forward to… Gedominu!” She grabbed their son. This time, she got whatever was in his hand before he could stick it in his mouth.