Out of the Darkness

This time, Hajjaj hid his smile. The blonds might be a persecuted minority, but they kept a haughty pride of their own. He said, “Let me ask it a different way: would you swear loyalty to King Beornwulf if that let you be loosed against the Algarvians still in Forthweg?”

Nemunas, Vitols, and Kaudavas looked at one another. They all shrugged again, more raggedly than before. “Why not?” Nemunas said at last. “When the war’s finally over, we’ll be living under him if we go back to Forthweg.”

“He can’t be much worse than that vain fool of a Penda,” Kaudavas added.

His opinion of the former King of Forthweg closely matched Hajjaj’s. The foreign minister also noted that some Kaunian refugees looked to be thinking about staying in Zuwayza. After the Six Years’ War, the kingdom had taken in some Algarvian refugees. The blonds might also fit in.

None of that, though, had anything to do with the business at hand. “I shall speak to Minister Ansovald for you,” Hajjaj promised. “I do not know what he will say, but I shall speak to him.” The blonds were effusive in their thanks. They bowed themselves almost double as they left Hajjaj’s office. No matter how much gratitude they showed, though, they had no idea of the size of the favor Hajjaj was doing for them.

Qutuz did. “I’m sorry, your Excellency,” he said.

“So am I,” Hajjaj answered bleakly. “Some things can’t be helped, though.” But he couldn’t stay that calm, however much he tried. “Every time I talk to the Unkerlanter barbarian, I want to go take a bath right afterwards. And he has the whip hand now, powers below eat him.”

Ansovald didn’t deign to grant him an audience for three days. The Unkerlanter minister no doubt thought he was humiliating and angering Hajjaj. Hajjaj, however, was just as well pleased with delay here. At last, though, he had to don an Unkerlanter-style tunic and travel over to the ministry. He alighted from his carriage with a sigh. The Unkerlanter sentries looked through him as if he didn’t exist.

By all the signs, Ansovald would also have loved to pretend Hajjaj didn’t exist. He and the Zuwayzi foreign minister had never got on well. These days, Ansovald-a tough, beefy man with a permanent sour expression-not only had the whip hand, he enjoyed using it. “Well, what now?” he demanded in Algarvian when Hajjaj came before him.

“I have a petition to present to you,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister replied, also in Algarvian. It was the only language they shared. Using it with the Unkerlanter had an ironic tang that usually appealed to Hajjaj. Today, though, he wondered at the omen.

“Go ahead,” Ansovald rumbled, and fiddled with a fingernail as if more interested in that than in anything Hajjaj was likely to say. No doubt he is, Hajjaj thought unhappily. Nevertheless, he went on with the request the Kaunians from Forthweg had made. Ansovald did start to listen to him; he gave the Unkerlanter minister to Zuwayza that much. And, when he finished, Ansovald wasted no time coming to a decision. He looked Hajjaj straight in the eye and said, “No.”

Hajjaj hadn’t really expected anything else. Ansovald was here not least to thwart Zuwayza. But he asked, “Why not, your Excellency? Surely you cannot believe these Kaunians would prefer King Mezentio to King Swemmel? Why not loose them against the enemy you both hate?”

“I don’t have to tell you a cursed thing,” Ansovald answered. Hajjaj just inclined his head and waited. Ansovald glared at him. At last, patience won what anger-or anger openly revealed, at least-wouldn’t have. “All right. All right,” the Unkerlanter minister said. “I’ll tell you why, curse it.”

“Thank you,” Hajjaj said, and wondered whether he was more pained to say those words or Ansovald to hear them.

Ansovald might have bitten into a lemon as he went on, “Because these Kaunians are a pack of cursed troublemakers, that’s why.”

“Don’t you want Mezentio’s men to have trouble?” Hajjaj asked.

“They’ve got trouble. We’re giving it to them.” Ansovald’s glare settled on the Zuwayzi foreign minister. “If we weren’t, I wouldn’t be here yattering with you, would I?” Hajjaj spread his hands, yielding the point. Ansovald bulled ahead: “But that isn’t the kind of troublemakers I meant. Aye, they’d give the redheads a hard time, as long as there are any redheads left in Forthweg. There won’t be, though, not for very much longer. And after that- troublemakers make trouble, you know what I mean? Pretty soon, they’d start giving us trouble, just on account of we were there. Why let ‘em? You’ve got yourself some blonds, and you’re welcome to them. My orders on this one come from Cottbus, and Cottbus knows what it’s talking about.”

Hajjaj considered. Ansovald’s words did have a certain ruthless logic behind them-the sort King Swemmel came up with on one of his good days. Troublemakers were fond of making trouble, and against whom didn’t always matter. Hajjaj had told the blonds he would try, and he’d tried. “Let it be as you say,” he murmured.

“Of course it’ll be as I say,” Ansovald answered smugly. He thrust a thick finger out at Hajjaj. “Now, as long as you’re here-when are you going to give this Tassi bitch back to Iskakis?”

“Good day, your Excellency,” Hajjaj said with dignity, and rose to leave. “You may have a good deal to say about what goes on in my kingdom, but not, powers above be praised, in my household.” But as he walked away, he hoped that wasn’t more wishful thinking.

With nothing to do but lie on his back and eat and drink, Bembo should have been a happy man. The constable had often aspired to such laziness as an ideal, though a friendly woman or two had also played a part in his daydreams. A broken leg most emphatically had not.

It got me back to Tricarico, he thought. Oraste was right-if I’d stayed in Eoforwic, if I’d stayed anywhere in fornicating Forthweg, I’d probably be dead now. None of the news coming out of the west was good, even if the local news sheets did try to make it as palatable as they could.

What Oraste hadn’t thought about was that, even back in his own home town in northeastern Algarve, Bembo still might get killed. Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons flew over the Bradano Mountains every night-and sometimes during the day-to drop their eggs on Tricarico. Bembo wondered how long it would be before enemy soldiers started coming over the mountains, too.

“However long it is, I can’t do anything about it,” he muttered. His leg remained splinted. It still hurt. It also itched maddeningly under the boards and bandages where he couldn’t scratch.

A nurse came down the neat row of cots in the ward. The sanatorium was crowded, not just with men wounded in combat but with all the civilians hurt by falling eggs. Bembo had hoped to be something of a hero when he got back to Tricarico. Hardly anyone seemed to care, or even to notice.

“How are we today?” the nurse asked when she got to his cot.

“I’m fine.” Bembo whipped his head around, as if to see if he were sharing the bed with other men he didn’t know about. “Don’t see anyone else, though.”

He got a dutiful smile from the nurse. She looked tired. Everyone in Tricarico, or at least in the sanatorium, looked beat these days. She set a hand on his forehead. “No fever,” she said, and scribbled something on the leaf of paper in her clipboard. “That’s a good sign.”

“How are you, sweetheart?” Bembo asked. He felt good enough to notice she was a woman, and not the homeliest one he’d ever seen.

She was pretty, in fact, when she smiled, which she did now-this one had nothing of duty in it. But her brightening had nothing to do with Bembo’s charms, if any. “I got a letter from my husband last night,” she answered. “He’s in the west, but he’s still all right, powers above be praised.”

“Good,” Bembo said, more or less sincerely. “Glad to hear it.”

“Do you need to use the bedpan?” she asked.

“Well. . aye,” he said, and she tended to it, holding up the blanket on the cot as a minimal shield for his modesty. She handled him with efficiency King Swemmel might have envied, as if his piece of meat were nothing but a piece of meat. He sighed. You heard stories about nurses. … If he’d learned one thing as a constable, it was that you heard all sorts of stories that weren’t true.

“Anything else?” she asked. Bembo shook his head. She went on to the fellow in the next cot.

One of the stories you heard was how bad sanatorium food was. That one, unfortunately, had turned out to be true. If anything, it had turned out to be an understatement. What Bembo got for supper was barley porridge and olives that had seen better days and wine well on the way to turning into vinegar. He didn’t get much, either: certainly not enough wine to make him happy.