Through the Darkness

“By the power vested in me as representative of the independent community of Skrunda, I have the authority to make this wedding both true and legal, so long as that be the wish of those entering into it,” the burgomaster’s assistant said. The independent community of Skrunda had been a joke before the war; with Algarvian occupation, it was a worse joke, and a sadder one, now. Somehow, that didn’t matter. “Is it your wish, separately and conjointly?” the burgomaster’s assistant asked.

“Aye,” Talsu and Gailisa said together. Traku and the burgomaster’s assistant might have heard them. Talsu doubted anyone else did.

But that didn’t matter, either. The burgomaster’s assistant spoke loud enough for them both: “It is accomplished!” Everyone in the hall cheered. Talsu took Gailisa in his arms and planted a decorous kiss on her mouth. The cheering got louder. Several people shouted bawdy advice. At any other time, Talsu would have been furious. Now, he grinned at Gailisa. She smiled back. Was she waiting as eagerly as he was? He hoped so.

They had a while to wait. They ate and drank and danced and accepted money for luck (and to set up housekeeping on their own) and congratulations. All the men in the crowd wanted to kiss Gailisa, and none of the women seemed to mind if Talsu wanted to kiss them. He had an enjoyable time indeed.

The best advice came from his father: “Don’t get too drunk, boy. Tonight of all nights, you don’t want to fall asleep early.”

After the wedding, Gailisa would move in with Talsu for the time being, even though his room, crowded for one, would be desperately small for two. But none of that mattered the first night, either. They’d rented a room in a hostel not far from the hall. As they went into the hostel, some of the wedding guests gathered outside, calling out more lewd suggestions.

Inside the room waited a jar of wine and two glasses. Talsu opened the jar and poured the glasses full. He gave one to Gailisa and raised the other high. “To my wife,” he said, and drank.

“To my husband.” She drank, too. Not very much later, her fingers were exploring the scars on his flank. “I didn’t realize it was this bad,” she whispered.

“The healers left some of that. They opened me up while I was slowed down, so they could patch up what the cursed Algarvian did,” Talsu said. His fingers wandered and explored, too, and liked everything they found. He laughed. “The redhead didn’t hurt anything really important.” Gailisa lay back. He soon showed her he was right.

Sweat ran down Hajjaj’s face as he bowed low before King Shazli. The autumnal equinox had come and gone, but that was a small thing in Bishah, as indeed it was in most of Zuwayza. The northern kingdom’s capital often had its hottest days in early fall, and this year looked to be no exception. Not even the thick clay walls of Shazli’s palace could hold all the heat at bay.

“What is your judgment, your Excellency?” Shazli asked. “Will our allies strike south over the Wolter and carry all before them?”

“Just in getting to the Wolter, your Majesty, they have carried all before them,” Hajjaj replied. “The Algarvians are a bold and formidable people; anyone who thinks otherwise does so at his peril. They have come a long, long way from their own border-well, from the Yaninan border-to Sulingen on the Wolter.”

“But they haven’t come far enough, not if they’ve come to Sulingen,” Shazli replied. “What they want, what they need, lies on the far side of the river. Can they get it?”

Hajjaj bowed again; Shazli had found the right question to ask, which was certainly the beginning of wisdom. “If they are going to do it in this campaigning season, they had better do it soon,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “I’ve seen Cottbus in the wintertime. Sulingen is a long way south of Cottbus. I wouldn’t care to try a winter campaign in those parts, not against the Unkerlanters.”

“What happens if they fail?” Again, Shazli found the right question.

“The less cinnabar they have, the less good their dragons do them,” Hajjaj said. “They made their own disaster down in the land of the Ice People. If the Unkerlanters make one for them in Sulingen …” He shrugged his scrawny naked shoulders. “The war gets harder for them.”

“Which also means the war gets harder for us,” King Shazli said, and Hajjaj could only incline his head in agreement. The king said, “And what do we do under these circumstances, your Excellency?”

Hajjaj spread his hands. “If you have a better answer than the ones I’ve found, your Majesty, I beg you not to be shy with it. Believe me, as things are now, I am looking for any answers I can find.”

Shazli said, “Waiting and seeing, playing Unkerlant and Algarve off against each other. . What else can we do?”

“I see no other choice,” Hajjaj said. “Unkerlant has raised this false Reformed Principality against us. And if we cast ourselves altogether into Algarve’s arms, if we expel the Kaunian refugees and do everything we can to help Mezentio’s men finally seize the port of Glogau …”

Shazli made a sour face. “I am not going to expel the refugees,” he declared, and Hajjaj had all he could do to keep from clapping his hands. The king went on, “With the Algarvians fighting so hard down in the south, could they take Glogau now, even with our help?”

“You would do better asking General Ikhshid than me,” Hajjaj replied.

“Perhaps I shall,” the king said. “But I also want your opinion. You are not a warrior, but you may well know more about the workings of the world than any other man alive.”

“If that be so, the world is in worse shape than even I imagined,” Hajjaj said, on the whole sincerely. His sovereign raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. After a moment’s thought, he did: “In my unprofessional opinion, the Algarvians have put their whole striking force in the south. If they win there and have anything left after the victory, we may see them moving again here in the north come spring. I doubt very much they can do anything before then.”

“Whatever we end up doing, then, we need not decide at once,” King Shazli said, and Hajjaj nodded. Shazli smiled. “Good.”

“Aye,” Hajjaj said. “We have fought Unkerlant, and we have also fought Algarve, fought to stay cobelligerents and at least somewhat masters of our own fate and not helpless cat’s-paws like the Yaninans. At this stage of things, can you imagine King Tsavellas refusing Mezentio anything?”

Shazli’s arched nostrils flared; his lip curled in scorn. “If Mezentio told Tsavellas to send his virgin daughter to a soldiers’ brothel, Tsavellas would do it. I do not want Zuwayza so beholden to Algarve.”

“Geography makes that less likely for us than for the Yaninans, but I see what you are saying, your Majesty, and I agree,” Hajjaj said. “Geography makes us worry about Unkerlant, worse luck.”

“We are free of King Swemmel,” Shazli said. “If this war ends with us free of Swemmel and of Mezentio both, we shall not have done too badly, whatever else happens. I know you will continue working toward that end.”

“With all my heart,” Hajjaj said, and rose to his feet: he recognized a dismissal when he heard one. Shazli nodded. Hajjaj bowed and left the royal presence.

He hadn’t taken more than half a dozen paces out of the king’s audience chamber before a steward sidled up to him and asked, “And what is his Majesty’s will, your Excellency?”

“I am sure he will make it known to you at the time he deems proper,” Hajjaj replied. The steward’s face fell; he hadn’t looked to be so smoothly rebuffed. Hajjaj smiled, but only on the inside, where it didn’t show. He’d been fending off inquisitive courtiers for as long as the steward had been alive.

When the Zuwayzi foreign minister returned to his own office, his secretary asked, “Anything new, your Excellency?”

Now Hajjaj did smile for the whole world, or at least for Qutuz, to see. “Not very much,” he said. “We go on, and we do the best we can as one day follows another. What else is there?”

With a saucy grin, Qutuz set those last two sentences to the tune of a traditional Zuwayzi song about a camel herder longing for the lover he could not visit. “And may we have better fortune than he did,” the secretary finished.

“That would be good,” Hajjaj agreed. “You are, of course, every bit as much a wandering son of the desert as I am.” Relatively few Zuwayzin were nomads these days. More lived in Bishah and other urban centers, and lived lives more like those of other settled Derlavaians than those of their wandering ancestors.

Qutuz understood that, too. “Oh, indeed, your Excellency. I spend my every free moment riding my camel from one waterhole to the next.”

“Since your moments here are not free,” Hajjaj said, “pray be so good as to find out whether General Ikhshid