Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

“I suppose not, your Majesty,” Hajjaj replied in a tone that supposed anything but. King Shazli laughed again, and gently clapped his hands together to show the meeting with the foreign minister was over.

While Hajjaj’s secretary spoke on the crystal with the Algarvian ministry to arrange a time for the appointment, Hajjaj himself went through his meager wardrobe. He did have some Algarvian-style tunics and kilts, just as he kept tunics and trousers—which he truly loathed—for consultations with envoys from Jelgava and Valmiera. After donning a blue cotton tunic and a pleated kilt, he examined himself in the mirror. He looked as he had in his student days. No—his clothes looked as they had then. He’d grown old since. But Marquis Balastro would be pleased.

Hajjaj sighed. “What I do in the service of my kingdom,” he muttered.

His secretary had set up the meeting with the Algarvian minister for midafternoon. Hajjaj was meticulously on time, though the Algarvian set less stock in perfect punctuality than did the folk of Unkerlant or the Kaunian kingdoms. Outside the ministry, clothed and sweating Algarvian guards stood watch, as their Unkerlanter counterparts did outside the residence of King Swemmel’s envoy. The Algarvians, though, were anything but still and silent as they watched good-looking Zuwayzi women saunter by. They rocked their hips and called lewd suggestions in their own language and in what scraps of Zuwayzi they’d learned.

The women kept walking, pretending they hadn’t heard. Such public admiration was anything but the style in Zuwayza. Hajjaj had been shocked the first time he’d heard it when he’d gone off to Algarve for college. It didn’t start clan feuds there, though. Algarvian girls giggled and sometimes gave back as good as they got. That had shocked him, too.

He was harder to shock these days. And the Algarvian minister’s secretary was a polished man by any kingdom’s standards. Escorting Hajjaj past the guards and into the ministry, he murmured in fluent Zuwayzi: “I do beg your pardon, your Excellency, but you know how the soldiers are.”

“Oh, aye,” Hajjaj answered. “I have learned to make allowances for the foibles of others, and hope others will make allowances for mine.”

“What an admirable way to look at things,” the foreign minister exclaimed. He ducked into a doorway and returned to his own native tongue: “My lord, the Zuwayzi foreign minister.”

“Send him in, send him in,” Marquis Balastro said. He did not speak Zuwayzi, but, since Hajjaj knew Algarvian well, they had no trouble talking with each other. Balastro was in his early forties, and wore a little stripe of hair under his lower lip and mustaches waxed till they were as straight and sharply pointed as the horns of a gazelle. Such adornments aside, he had as little of the fop in him as any Algarvian, and was, for a diplomat, forthright.

He—or his secretary—also knew not to plunge too abruptly into business with a Zuwayzi. A tray of cakes and wine appeared as if by magic. Balastro made small talk, waiting for Hajjaj to open: another nice courtesy. At length, Hajjaj did begin, saying, “Your Excellency, it is surely destructive of good order among the kingdoms of the world when the large can with impunity bully and oppress the small for no better reason than that they are large.”

“With Algarve so grievously beset, I could hardly fail to admit the principle,” Balastro said. “Its application, though, will vary according to circumstances.”

Algarve was hardly a small kingdom. Hajjaj refrained from saying as much. What he did say was, “As you will have heard from me before, King Swemmel of Unkerlant continues to make unreasonable demands on Zuwayza. Since Algarve, from its own experience, understands such extortion—”

Balastro held up a hand. “Your Excellency, let me be plain about this. Algarve is not at war with Unkerlant. King Mezentio does not now desire to make war on King Swemmel. This being so, Algarve cannot reasonably object to whatever King Swemmel chooses to do on frontiers distant from her. King Mezentio may privately deplore such deeds, but he will not—I repeat, will not—seek to hinder them. Do I make myself clear?”

“You do, unmistakably so.” Hajjaj did his diplomatic best to hold disappointment from his voice. Balastro had not been encouraging before. Now he was blunt. Zuwayza would have no help from Algarve. Zuwayza, very probably, would have no help from anyone.

Krasta was angry. When she was angry, people around her suffered. That was not how she thought of it, of course. As far as she was concerned, she was making herself feel better. In any case, other people’s feelings had never seemed quite real to her, any more than the idea that there could be numbers smaller than zero had. But the master who’d taught ciphering had been so marvelously handsome, she’d pretended to believe it harder than she would have otherwise.

Now, though, the noblewoman had no reason to dissemble. Waving a news sheet at Bauska, she cried, “Why do they feed us such lies? Why don’t they tell us the truth?”

“I don’t understand, milady,” the servant said. She would not have presumed to read the news sheet before her mistress saw it. Had she so presumed, she would not have been rash enough to admit it.

Krasta waved the news sheet again; Bauska had to leap back hurriedly to keep from getting hit in the face. “They say only that we are advancing in Algarve and moving on the enemy’s fortifications. We’ve been moving on them for weeks. We’ve been moving on them since this stupid war started. Why haven’t we moved past them yet, in the name of the powers above?”

“Perhaps they are very strong, milady,” Bauska replied.

“What are you saying now?” Krasta’s eyes sparked furiously. “Are you saying that our brave soldiers—are you saying that my brother, the hero—cannot break through whatever defenses the barbarians throw up against us? Is that what you’re saying?”

Bauska babbled denials. Krasta listened with only half an ear. Servants always lied. Krasta threw down the news sheet. As far as she was concerned, the war had gone on far too long already. It had grown boring.

“I am going into town,” she announced. “I shall spend the day in the shops and the cafes. Perhaps—perhaps, mind you—I shall find something of interest there. Summon the coachmen at once.”

“Aye, milady.” Bauska bowed and hurried away. As she went, she muttered something under her breath. It could not possibly have been what it sounded like, which was, Out of my hair for a while. Krasta dismissed the possibility from her mind. Bauska would never have dared say such a thing, not where she could hear it. The servant knew what was liable to happen to her if Krasta found her even slightly disrespectful. All the servants at the estate knew.

With a low bow, the coachman handed Krasta up into the carriage. “Take me to the Avenue of Equestrians,” she said, naming the street with the most shops—and the most expensive shops—in Priekule. “The corner of Little Hills Road will do. I shall expect to see you there again an hour before sunset.”

“Aye, milady,” the coachman said, as Bauska had done before. Some nobles let their servants speak to them in tones of familiarity. Krasta was not one to make that mistake. They were not her equals, they were her inferiors, and she intended that they remember it.

The carriage went swiftly through the streets. Not much traffic was on them. Many common folk, Krasta knew, had had their horses and donkeys impressed into the service of the kingdom. The public caravans that traveled the ley lines were also far from crowded. Most of the passengers aboard them were women, so many men having been summoned into King Gainibu’s army.