Harry Turtledove: Into the Darkness

“Time enough for me to get to the wheel myself, then,” Rogelio said. “That chucklehead of a helmsman we’ve got would likely be picking his nose or playing with himself when you signaled, and then we’d just keep barreling along, probably right down the Sibs’ throats.”

Without waiting for an answer, he hurried away. Fernao knew he was maligning the helmsman. He also knew Rogelio knew he was being outrageous, and that the captain always used the fellow with great courtesy when they were together. Extravagant Rogelio was; simple, no.

And then the mage forgot about Rogelio, forgot about everything but the sensation trickling out of the amulet and through him. He was not so much its interpreter as its conduit, in the same way that the ley line was a conduit for the energy the amulet sensed. He leaned a little as the trickle shifted, then thrust his right hand high into the air.

The Leopardess swung to starboard, the deck heeling under Fernao’s feet. No mere sailing ship could have turned so sharply; the motion was almost as if a geometer had scribed a right angle. Fernao could not see the crossing of the ley lines, but he did not need to see them. He had other senses.

As soon as he was sure the turn was good and true, he slid the amulet’s chain back over his head, returning the familiar weight to where it normally rested, just above his heart. From the bridge, Rogelio waved to him. He waved back. He took pride in what he did, and in doing it well.

And then, suddenly, he frowned. He yanked out the amulet once more and held it between his hands. He waved to the bridge again, urgently this time. “Captain!” he shouted. “We’re going to have company.”

“What’s toward?” Rogelio shouted back, cupping his hands in front of his mouth to make a megaphone.

“Quiver in the ley line, Captain—no, quivers.” Fernao corrected himself. “Two ships on this line, heading our way. Maybe an hour out from us, maybe a little less.”

Rogelio cursed. “They’ll know we’re here, too?” he demanded.

“Unless their mages are asleep, yes,” Fernao answered.

More curses came from the captain of the Leopardess. Then he grasped for a bright side to the unwelcome news. “They wouldn’t by any chance by Algarvian ships come to escort us into port?”

Fernao frowned once more; that hadn’t occurred to him. He concentrated on the amulet. “I don’t think they’re Algarvian,” he said at last, “but I can’t be sure. Sibiu and Algarve use about the same ley magic, not much different from ours. They aren’t Valmierans; I’m sure of that. Valmiera and Jelgava have their own style.”

Rogelio came forward, to be able to talk without screaming. “They’re going to be Sibs, all right,” he said. “Now life gets interesting.”

“We’re neutrals,” Fernao said. “Sibiu needs our trade more than Algarve does: those islands don’t come close to raising everything the Sibians want. If they try to block us, they go under embargo. You’d have to be a lackwit to think King Vitor would say something like that without meaning it, and the Sibs aren’t lackwits.”

“They’re in a war,” Rogelio said. “You don’t think straight when you’re in a war. Anyone who doesn’t know that is a lackwit, too, my dear mage.”

“As may be.” Fernao bowed with exquisite courtesy. “I tell you this, though, my dear captain: if Sibiu interferes very much with Lagoan shipping, Vitor won’t just embargo them. He will go to war, and that fight is one Sibiu can’t win.”

“The Sibs against Algarve and us?” Rogelio pursed his lips, then nodded. “Well, you’re right about that, though I’m hanged if I fancy the notion of allying with King Mezentio.”

“We wouldn’t be allies, just people with the same enemies,” Fernao said. “Unkerlant and Kuusamo are both fighting the Gyongyos, but they aren’t allies.”

“Would you ally with the Unkerlanters? I’d almost sooner pucker up and kiss Mezentio’s bald head,” Rogelio returned. Then he bared his teeth in a horrible grimace. “If the Sibs could talk Kuusamo into jumping on our backs, though—”

“That won’t happen,” Fernao said, and hoped he was right. He had reason to think so, anyhow: “Kuusamo won’t get into two wars at the same time.”

Rogelio grunted. “Mm, maybe not. I wouldn’t want to be in two wars at once. By the king’s beard, I wouldn’t even want to be in one war at once.”

A hail from the crow’s nest made him turn: “Two ships on the western horizon, sir! They look like Sibian frigates.”

Rogelio dashed for the bridge. Fernao peered west. The lean shark shapes swelled rapidly: Sibian frigates sure enough, bristling with sticks and with egg-tossers whose glittering spheroids could disable a ship at a range of several miles. The Leopardess could neither fight them nor outrun them.

“Master mage, they’re hailing us,” Rogelio called. “You speak Sibian, don’t you? Mine is foul, and the bastard I’m talking to doesn’t know much Lagoan.”

“Yes, I speak it.” Fernao hurried toward the bridge. Sibian, Algarvian, and Lagoan were related tongues, but the first two were brothers, with Lagoan a distant cousin that had dropped inflections the others shared and borrowed words from both Kuusaman and the Kaunian languages. The mage stared into the Leopardess’s crystal at a man in a sea-green Sibian naval uniform. Fernao identified himself in Sibian, then asked, “Who are you, and what do you require?”

“I am Captain Propatriu of the Impaler, Royal Sibian Navy,” the man replied, the words echoing from the glass. “You are to stop for boarding and inspection.”

Rogelio shook his head when the mage translated. “No,” Fernao said. “We are on our lawful occasions. You trifle with us at your peril.

“You are bound for Algarve,” Captain Propatriu said. “We will search you.”

“No,” Fernao repeated. “King Vitor has ordered us to allow no interference with our commerce with any kingdom, on pain of embargo or worse against the violator. Can Sibiu afford that?”

“Stinking, arrogant Lagoans,” Propatriu muttered. Fernao pretended not to hear. The Sibian naval officer gathered himself and spoke directly into the crystal once more: “You will wait.” The polished gem went blank.

“What’s he doing?” Rogelio asked.

“Calling home for instructions, unless I’m wrong,” Fernao answered. If he was wrong, things were liable to get sticky in a hurry.

But Captain Propatriu reappeared in the crystal a couple of minutes later. “Pass on,” he growled, looking and sounding as if he hated Lagoans. He added, “My curses go with you,” and vanished once more. Rogelio and Fernao let out sighs of relief. The Leopardess slid between the two Sibian frigates and sped on toward Algarve.

Hajjaj rode from King Shazli’s palace to the Unkerlanter ministry in Bishah with all the eagerness of a man going to have a tooth pulled. He, like King Shazli, like all Zuwayzin with a barleycorn’s weight of sense in their heads, regarded Zuwayza’s immense southern neighbor with the wary attention any house cat might give a lion living next door.

The sun blazed down almost vertically from a blue enamel sky: Zuwayza projected farther north than any other kingdom of Derlavai. Despite that tropic brilliance, most of the men and women on the streets wore only sandals and broad-brimmed hats, with nothing in between. With their dark brown skins, they took even the fiercest sun in stride.

In deference to Unkerlanter sensibilities, Hajjaj had donned a cotton tunic that covered him from neck to knee. He’d never seen any sense to clothes till his first winter at the university in Trapani, before the Six Years’ War broke out. He still didn’t see any sense to them in Bishah’s climate, but reckoned them part of the price he paid for being a diplomat.