Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

“Ah, but if you doubt everything, how can I know how much weight to place on any particular doubt?” Shazli asked with a smile.

Hajjaj smiled, too. “There you have me, I must admit.”

“Explain your doubts here, then, your Excellency, if you would be so kind,” Shazli said. “That we want, that we are entitled to, revenge on Unkerlant cannot be doubted. What better way to get it than by making common cause with Algarve? The Algarvians have proved willing—nay, eager—to make common cause with us.”

“Oh, indeed,” Hajjaj said. “Count Balastro has been accommodating in every possible way. And why not? We serve his interests, as he serves ours.”

“Well, then!” Shazli said, for all the world as if Hajjaj had just completed a geometric proof on the blackboard.

But Hajjaj knew all too well that kingdoms did not behave so neatly as circles and triangles and trapezoids. “Algarve is a great kingdom,” he said, “but Unkerlant is also a great kingdom. Zuwayza is not a great kingdom, nor shall it ever be. If the small involve themselves in the quarrels of the great, they may be sorry afterwards.”

“We are already sorry. Unkerlant has made us sorry,” Shazli said. “Do you deny this? Can you deny it?”

“I do not. I cannot,” Hajjaj said. “Indeed, I was glad to begin conversations with the Algarvians, as your Majesty surely knows.”

“Well, then,” Shazli said again. This time, he amplified it: “How can we go wrong here, Hajjaj? Algarve does not border us. She can make no demands upon us, as Unkerlant can and does. All she can do is help us get our own back, and get our own back we shall.”

“She will be able to make demands afterwards, for we shall owe her a debt,” Hajjaj replied. “She will remember. Great kingdoms always do.”

“Here, I think, you start at shadows,” the king said. “Perhaps she can make demands. How can she enforce them?”

“How many dragons did Algarve hurl against Valmiera?” Hajjaj asked. “How many against Jelgava? They could fly against us, too. How do you propose to stand against them, your Majesty, come the evil day?”

“If you would have us withdraw from the alliance we have made, say so now and say so plainly.” Shazli spoke with a hint of anger in his voice.

“I would not,” Hajjaj said with a sigh. “But neither am I certain all will go as well as we hope. I have lived a long time. I have seen that things rarely go as well as people hope they will.”

“We shall take back the land Swemmel stole from us,” Shazli said. “Perhaps we shall even take more besides. Past that, I am willing to let the future fend for itself.”

It was a good answer. It was, at the same time, a young man’s answer. Hajjaj, who would probably see far less of the future unfold than would his sovereign, worried about it far more. “Indeed, I think we shall take it,” he said. “I only hope we shall keep it.”

Shazli leaned forward, staring at him in surprise. “How can we fail? The only way I can imagine our failing would be for Unkerlant to defeat Algarve. How likely do you suppose that to be?” He threw back his head and laughed, which gave Hajjaj his view on the subject.

“Not very likely, else I would have warned you not to follow this course,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “But how likely would we have reckoned it that Algarve could overthrow Valmiera and Jelgava in bare weeks apiece?”

“All the more reason to think the redheads will give King Swemmel the thrashing he deserves,” Shazli said, not quite taking Hajjaj’s point. “Efficiency!” His lip curled. “Not in Unkerlant. Will you tell me otherwise?” He looked a challenge at Hajjaj.

“I will not. I cannot,” Hajjaj said. Shazli nodded, an I-told-you-so look in his eye. Then he nodded again, in a different way. Hajjaj rose, knowing he had been dismissed. “We have only to wait for spring, to see what comes then. May it prove good for the kingdom, as I hope with all my heart it does.”

When he got back to his own office, he found his secretary arguing with a fellow who wore several amulets and lockets that clanked together whenever he moved. “No,” Shaddad was saying when Hajjaj walked in, “that is not acceptable. His Excellency would—” He turned. “Oh. Here you are, your Excellency. Powers above be praised! This bungler proposes to undertake sorcery in and around your office.”

“I am not a bungler, or I hope I am not.” The fellow with the amulets bowed, which produced more clinkings and clankings. “I am Mithqal, a second-rank mage, with the honor of serving in his Majesty’s army. My orders, which your secretary now has, request and require me to do my best to learn whether any other mages have been sorcerously spying on you.”

“Let me see these orders,” Hajjaj said, and put on his spectacles to read them. When he was through, he looked over the tops of the spectacles at Shaddad. “Captain Mithqal appears to be within his rights.”

“Bah!” his secretary said. “For all we know, he just wants to snoop about. Why, for all we know, he could be—”

“Do not say something you may regret.” Hajjaj did not like to bring Shaddad up so sharply, but his secretary sometimes got an exaggerated notion of his own importance. And having a mage, especially a mage who was also a soldier, angry at Shaddad would not do the secretary any good. Hajjaj went on, “Use the crystal to consult with this man’s superiors. If they have indeed sent him here, well and good. If not, then by all means raise the alarm.”

“I tried to suggest this very course to him, but he would not hear me,” Mithqal said.

Shaddad sniffed. “As if I should take seriously any mountebank who sets himself before me.” He bowed to Hajjaj. “Very well, your Excellency. Since you require it of me—” He turned his back on Mithqal to use the crystal, bending low over it to speak in a quiet voice. After a moment, his shoulders slumped further. When he turned around again, he looked as embarrassed as Hajjaj had ever seen him. “My apologies, Captain Mithqal. I seem to have been mistaken.”

“May I now proceed?” Mithqal asked, a sardonic edge to his voice. He was looking at Hajjaj, who nodded. Shaddad nodded, too, which the mage affected not to notice. Hajjaj bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling.

Shaddad sidled up to the Zuwayzi foreign minister. “I must confess, I am mortified,” he murmured.

“We are all foolish now and then,” Hajjaj said. What he was thinking was, Well you might be, but that would only have flustered Shaddad further.

Mithqal said, “Your Excellency”—he kept right on ignoring Shaddad—“I aim to check two things: first, to learn whether anyone is spying on your office from a distance; and second, to learn whether anything has been secreted hereabouts to send word or your doings to whoever may be listening: a clandestine crystal, perhaps, though that is not the only way to achieve the effect.”

“No one could have placed such a thing here,” Shaddad said. “Had someone brought such an object during a meeting with his Excellency, it would have been noted, and we do have sorcerous wards in place to keep out unwelcome guests when his Excellency and I are not present.”

“What one mage can do, another can undo,” Mithqal said. “That is as basic a law of sorcery as those of similarity and contagion, though I own that many mages are loth to admit as much.”

He took from the large pouch he wore on his belt a candle of black beeswax, which he set on Shaddad’s desk, and used ordinary flint and steel to light it. The glow that came from it, though, was anything but ordinary. Hajjaj rubbed at his eyes. Not only could he see Shaddad and Mithqal, but also, in an odd sort of way, into them and through them as well. He could also see into and through Shaddad’s desk.