Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

They’d alarmed each other. Ansovald had intended to harm Hajjaj. He hadn’t intended to be alarmed in return. Well, Hajjaj thought, life does not always turn out as you intend. He got to his feet. “I think you are right, your Excellency. As always, a meeting with you is most instructive.”

He left the Unkerlanter minister chewing on that and not nearly sure he liked the flavor. Getting out among his own people was a pleasure, going back to the palace a larger one, and pulling the tunic off over his head the greatest of all. Once comfortably naked, he went to report the conversation to King Shazli.

There he found himself balked. “Do you not recall, your Excellency?” one of Shazli’s servitors said. “His Majesty is out hawking this afternoon.”

Hajjaj thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I’d forgotten,” he admitted.

The servitor stared at him. He understood why: he wasn’t supposed to forget anything, and came close enough to living up to that to make his lapses notable. He stared at her, too; she was worth staring at. Idly—well, a little more than idly—he wondered what sort of amusement she would make. Lalla really had grown too extravagant to justify the pleasure he got from her.

Resolutely, Hajjaj pushed such thoughts aside. He still craved the pleasures of the flesh, but not so often as he once had. Now he could recognize that other business might take precedence over such pleasure. With a last, slightly regretful, glance at the serving woman, he returned to his office.

He considered using the crystal there, but in the end decided against it. He did not think Unkerlanter mages could listen to what he said, but did not want to discover he was wrong. Paper and ink and a trusty messenger would do the job.

Your Excellency, he wrote, and then a summary of the relevant parts of his recent conversation with Ansovald. He had sanded the document dry when Shaddad appeared in the doorway. “How do you do that?” Hajjaj asked as he sealed the letter with ribbon and wax. “Come just when you’re wanted, I mean?”

“I have no idea, your Excellency,” his secretary replied. “I am pleased, however, that you find me useful.”

“I find you rather more than useful, as you know perfectly well,” Hajjaj said. “If you would be so kind as to put this in a plain pouch and deliver it…”

“Of course,” Shaddad said. Only a slight flaring of his nostrils showed his opinion as he went on, “I suppose you will expect me to clothe myself, too.”

“As a matter of fact, no,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said, and Shaddad smiled in glad surprise. Hajjaj continued, “You will be less conspicuous without mufflings, and there are times—and this is one of them—when discretion seems wisest. Just take this over to the Algarvian minister like the good fellow you are.”

Shaddad’s smile, now perhaps one of anticipation, grew broader. “Just as you say, your Excellency.”

Garivald squelched through the mud to return a sharpening stone he’d borrowed from Dagulf. “Thanks,” he said when the other peasant opened his door. “Did my sickle a deal of good when I needed it the most.”

Dagulf’s scar pulled the smile on his face into something like a leer. “Aye, you need sharp tools at harvest time,” he said. “Bloody work’s hard enough without you doing more than you need.”

“Aye,” Garivald said. “We did pretty well, we did, even if I do wish the rain would have held off for another couple of days.”

“Don’t we both? Don’t we all?” Dagulf peered through drizzle toward the prison cell he and Garivald had helped to build. Lowering his voice, he went on, “Wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have to feed the captives and guards and that worthless, drunken mage through the winter.”

“We’d get by easy then,” Garivald agreed. Under his cape, his shoulders sagged as he sighed. “Would have been better if they—well, the guards, anyhow—would have helped with the harvest. Then they’d’ve earned their keep, you might say.”

Dagulf’s laughter was short, sharp, and bitter. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for it, is all I’ve got to tell you.”

“I wasn’t,” Garivald said. “Those miserable, lazy bastards just take. If you asked ’em to give, they’d fall over dead.”

“But we’ve got a crystal connecting us to Cottbus.” Dagulf seemed more disgusted than delighted.

“Oh, aye, so we do,” Garivald said. If he was delighted, he concealed it so well, even he didn’t know about it. “When Waddo gets a brainstorm nowadays, he tells us it’s Cottbus’s idea, so we have to go along with it. Isn’t that grand?”

Dagulf spat. “You ask me, he doesn’t talk on the crystal half as much as he says he does. He just tells us what to do and says it’s an order from the capital. How can we prove any different? You have a crystal in your house so you can talk to King Swemmel and ask him what’s going on?”

“Oh, of course I do,” Garivald answered. “Two of ’em, matter of fact. The other one’s attuned to Marshal Rathar, so he can send in the army when I tell him what a big liar Waddo is.”

Both men laughed. Neither’s laugh was altogether comfortable, though. Truth was, Waddo could talk to Cottbus and they couldn’t. And if he wasn’t talking to Cottbus, they had no way of knowing that, either. They’d always been powerless when measured against inspectors. Now they were powerless against their own firstman, too. Garivald shook his head. That wasn’t how things were supposed to be.

He shook his head again. It wouldn’t really matter till spring. Not even the most energetic firstman, which Waddo wasn’t, would be able to accomplish much during winter in southern Unkerlant. The peasants would stay indoors as often as they could, stay warm as best they could, and drink as much as they could. Anyone who expected anything different was doomed to disappointment.

Interrupting Garivald’s caravan of thought, Dagulf said, “I hear tell Marshal Rathar got on Swemmel’s bad side some way or other. Don’t know how much good your crystal attuned to him will do you.”

“Now that I think on it, I heard that, too.” Garivald threw his hands in the air. “Isn’t that the way things turn out? You go to all the trouble to get the cursed crystal, and then it’s not worth anything.” He spoke with almost as much regret and resentment as if a crystal really did sit on the mantel above his fireplace.

Dagulf played along with him. “Ah, well, maybe you can attune it to the new marshal, whoever he turns out to be—and then to the one after him, too, when Swemmel decides he won’t answer.”

Garivald looked back toward the gaol again. No, the guards couldn’t possibly have heard that. He didn’t even think Dagulf’s neighbors could have heard it. Still… “You want to be careful what you say,” he told Dagulf. “Now word really can get back to Cottbus, and you won’t be happy if it does.”

“You’re a good fellow to have around, Garivald,” Dagulf said. “You brought back my hone, and I didn’t even have to come over and tell you I was going to burn down your house to get it. And you’re right about this other nonsense, too. It’s like having somebody peeking in your window all the time, is what it is.”

“You’re too ugly for anybody to want to peek in your window,” Garivald said, not wanting an unfounded reputation as a paragon to get out of hand.

“My wife says the same thing, so maybe you’ve got something there,”

Dagulf answered. “But I still get some every now and then, so I must be doing something right.”

Snorting, Garivald turned and headed back toward his own house. As he passed the cell he’d helped build, he paused in the drizzle to listen to one of the captives singing. It was a song about a boy falling in love with a girl—what else was there to write songs about, except a girl falling in love with a boy?—but not one Garivald had heard before. People had been singing most of the songs he knew for generations.