Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“You Algarvians are spoiled,” he remarked to Marquis Balastro at a gathering at the Algarvian ministry one evening. “You get to enjoy your gardens and woods through most of the year.”

“Well, so we do, your Excellency,” Balastro agreed. “Tell me, did you think we were spoiled when you went through your first winter at the University of Trapani?” His smile showed sharp teeth.

“Spoiled? No, your Excellency.” Hajjaj shook his head. “How could you possibly spoil when you froze solid for a couple of months every year?”

Balastro threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “Oh, you are a funny fellow when you choose. I could wish you chose to be more often.”

“I could wish I had more things to laugh about,” Hajjaj replied, and Balastro’s own mirth cut off as abruptly as if sliced by a knife. The war news from Unkerlant wasn’t good, and not all of the Algarvian minister’s verbal gymnastics could make it good. It wasn’t dreadfully bad, not lately, not with the spring thaw miring Mezentio’s men and Swemmel’s alike, but it wasn’t good. What little movement there was had the Unkerlanters pushing forward and the Algarvians falling back.

Over in one corner of the reception hall, a couple of stocky, swarthy men in Unkerlanter tunics were busily drinking themselves blind. If you asked them, they would insist they weren’t Unkerlanters: they were Grelzers, from the free and independent (and Algarvian-backed) Kingdom of Grelz. Of course, withKingRaniero horribly dead, their insistence mattered very little. The quondam Kingdom of Grelz mattered very little, too. Hajjaj sighed. Typical of the Algarvians to bring them up to Zuwayza and try to make something of them after the collapse and not before.

Doing his best to recover from the awkward moment, Marquis Balastro said, “I am glad our dragons have helped keep the Unkerlanter air pirates from troubling Bishah.”

“They have done that, and I do thank you for it.” Hajjaj bowed. The waistband of his kilt dug into his flesh as he moved. Nudity was far more comfortable. He went on: “Our own dragons, flying south into Unkerlant, have noted what looks to be something of a buildup of Unkerlanter soldiers in the northern regions ofKingSwemmel ’s realm.”

“We have noted the same thing.” Balastro didn’t sound very concerned. “I assure you it is nothing we can’t handle.”

“I am glad to hear that,” Hajjaj said, and hoped the Algarvian minister was right.

“We do keep an eye on things,” Marquis Balastro said, as if Hajjaj had denied it. “We also do our best to keep enemy air pirates from ravaging Algarve itself.”

“Aye, of course,” Hajjaj said. If you hadn’t lost Sibiu, you’d have an easier time of it, too. He didn’t say that; it would have been most undiplomatic. But that didn’t make it untrue.

Balastro bowed again; Algarvians were a punctiliously polite folk, even if they didn’t spend so much time on it as Zuwayzin did. “KingMezentio has ordered me to express his thanks toKingShazli through you,” he said.

“I shall be happy to do so.” Hajjaj bowed in return. “Ahh… his thanks for what?”

“Why, for his help in keeping Kaunian bandits here and, more to the point, keeping them out of Forthweg, of course,” Balastro answered.

“Oh.” After a moment, Hajjaj nodded. “He is very welcome. I speak for myself at the moment, you understand. But I shall convey your sovereign’s words to mine, and I am certain I speak inKingShazli ’s name here.”

He also wished he weren’t sayingKingMezentio was welcome. As far as he was concerned, the Kaunians who’d managed to flee from Forthweg had every right in the world to try to hit back at the Algarvians. But when they hit back, they unquestionably hurt the Algarvians’ war against Unkerlant. That, in turn, hurt Zuwayza. As foreign minister, Hajjaj found himself forced to condemn what he personally condoned.

Marquis Balastro smiled. “Believe me, your Excellency, I do understand your difficulty.”

And he probably did. He was a civilized man, in the best traditions of civilization in eastern Derlavai. Had Hajjaj not admired those traditions, he never would have chosen to finish his education at the University of Trapani. That didn’t keep him from wondering how such an eminently civilized man as Balastro could approve of the way his kingdom slaughtered Kaunians. He did, though-Hajjaj had no doubt of it.

His certainty oppressed him. He bowed his way away from Balastro and went over to the bar, where an Algarvian servitor who was almost surely also an Algarvian spy gave him a goblet of date wine. He was almost the only one in the room drinking the sweet, thick stuff. Even the Zuwayzi officers the Algarvian military attache had invited to the reception preferred vintages pressed from grapes. Hajjaj enjoyed those, too, but the taste of date wine took him back to his youth. For a man with white hair, few things could work such magic.

Sipping the date wine, the Zuwayzi foreign minister looked around the hall. There stoodHorthy, the Gyongyosian minister to Zuwayza, in earnest conversation with Iskakis, his Yaninan counterpart. They were both speaking classical Kaunian, a language that had never been used in either of their kingdoms but the only one they had in common. Hajjaj took another pull at his goblet, savoring the irony of that.

After a moment, Iskakis, a short, bald man with a mustache that looked like a black-winged moth perched between his nose and upper lip, sidled away from the large, leonineHorthy and started chatting up an Algarvian captain, one of the men on the military attache’s staff. The captain, a stalwart, handsome young man, beamed at the Yaninan. Iskakis was partial to stalwart, handsome young men. He was even more partial to boys.

His wife, meanwhile, was talking to Marquis Balastro. She was about half Iskakis’ age, and extraordinarily beautiful. Such a waste, that marriage, Hajjaj thought, not for the first time. Balastro, now, Balastro had the sleek look of a cat who’d fallen into a pitcher of cream. What Hajjaj saw as a waste, he saw as an opportunity. However civilized Balastro was, no Algarvian born had ever reckoned philandering anything but a pleasant diversion-unless, of course, he found himself wearing horns rather than giving them.

Balastro wouldn’t have to worry about that here. He stroked Iskakis’ wife’s cheek, an affectionate gesture that said he’d likely done other, more intimate stroking in private. Hajjaj wouldn’t have been surprised. He’d watched the two of them at a reception at the Gyongyosian ministry the autumn before.

Here, though, Iskakis’ wife twisted away. At first, Hajjaj thought that was playacting, and clever playacting to boot. Iskakis might prefer boys, but Yaninans had a prickly sense of honor. If Iskakis saw Balastro making free with the woman he thought of as his own, he would certainly call out the Algarvian minister. That their kingdoms were allies wouldn’t matter a bit, either.

Then Hajjaj saw the fury distorting the Yaninan woman’s delicately sculpted features. That wasn’t playacting, not unless she belonged on the stage. He hurried over toward her and Balastro. Yanina and Algarve were both allied to Zuwayza, too. The things I do for my kingdom, he thought.

“Everything’s fine, your Excellency,” Balastro said with an easy smile.

“This man is a beast, your Excellency.” Iskakis’ wife spoke fair Algarvian, with a gurgling Yaninan accent that made Hajjaj pause to make sure he’d understood her correctly. But he had. Her glare left no room for doubt.

“She’s just a trifle overwrought,” Balastro said.

“He is a swine, a pig, a pork, a stinking, rutting boar,” Iskakis’ wife said without great precision but with great passion. Then she said a couple of things in Yaninan that Hajjaj didn’t understand but that sounded both heartfelt and uncomplimentary.