Twenty
Have you ever smashed in a viper’s head, Tewfik, and then watched it die?” Hajjaj asked.
“Oh, aye, your Excellency-a couple of times, as a matter of fact,” his majordomo answered. “I wouldn’t have lived to get all these white hairs if I hadn’t, especially once: cursed thing was coiled up in my hat.”
The Zuwayzi foreign minister nodded. “All right. You’ll know what I’m talking about. The snake thrashes and thrashes, for what seems like forever. If you get too close, or if you poke it with your finger, you’re liable to get bitten no matter how well you’ve smashed it. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“Oh, you’re right, lad, no doubt about it,” Tewfik said. “That almost happened to me, matter of fact. I was a young man, and not so very patient.”
Tewfik was close to twenty years older than Hajjaj, who had trouble imagining him as a young man. Nodding again, Hajjaj said, “The point is, though, once its head is smashed in, it
“That’s so, your Excellency.” Tewfik cocked his head to one side and studied Hajjaj. “You’re not just talking about vipers, are you?”
“What? You accuse me of allegory?” Hajjaj laughed, but not for long. “No, I’m not just talking about vipers. I’m talking about the Algarvian army down in Sulingen, or what’s left of it.”
“Ah.” Tewfik weighed that. “News from those parts isn’t good, I will say.”
“News from those parts could hardly be worse,” Hajjaj answered. To his majordomo and to his senior wife, he could speak freely. With everyone else, even with King Shazli, he guarded his words. “The Algarvians will soon be crushed. They cannot help being crushed.”
“And what will that do to the course of the war?” Tewfik asked. He had not spent upwards of half a century as majordomo to a leading Zuwayzi house without acquiring a good deal of knowledge and without getting a feel for which questions were the important ones.
No question, right then, was more important for Zuwayza-for the whole of Derlavai, come to that, but Hajjaj naturally put his own kingdom first. “It means the Algarvians are going to have a demon of a time knocking Unkerlant out of the war now,” he answered. “And if they don’t. .”
“If they don’t, Swemmel’s men are going to do some knocking of their own,” Tewfik predicted. He needed no magecraft to see what lay ahead there.
“How right you are,” Hajjaj said. “And how very much I wish you were wrong.”
“What will you do, your Excellency?” Tewfik asked. “I know you will do something to keep us safe.”
Everyone in Zuwayza knew Hajjaj would do some such thing. Hajjaj only wished he knew it himself, or had some idea of where such an escape might lie. He understood why his countrymen relied on him. He had, after all, been the kingdom’s foreign minister throughout its independent history.
“Sometimes,” he said with a sigh, “life offers a choice between good and better. More often, it offers a choice between good and bad. And sometimes the only choice one has is between bad and worse. I fear we are in one of those times now.”
“You’ll lead us through it, lad,” Tewfik said confidently. “I know you will. You got the Unkerlanter garrison out of Bishah, after all. If you can do that, you can do anything.”
In the chaos that followed the Six Years’ War, Hajjaj had indeed persuaded the Unkerlanter officer in charge of Bishah to leave the city in the hands of its own people, who’d promptly raised Shazli’s father to the throne of a newly free Zuwayza. But that case wasn’t comparable to this one. The Unkerlanters had been eager to go so they could throw themselves into the Twinkings War then engulfing their whole vast kingdom. These days, Hajjaj had no such convenient levers with which to manipulate affairs. He saw that only too clearly. Why couldn’t anyone else see it at all?
Eager to escape Tewfik’s unbridled optimism, he said, “I am going down into Bishah. Please have my carriage readied as soon as may be.”
“Of course.” The majordomo gave him a creaking bow. “You will want to be close to the news as it comes in.”
“So I will,” Hajjaj agreed. Some folk down in the city knew better than to think him a master mage of foreign affairs. His mouth twisted. He wished King Shazli were one of those people.
Since it hadn’t rained for a few days-even in winter, rain around Bishah was only intermittent-the road had firmed up. The journey down to the city, in fact, struck Hajjaj as quite pleasant. The road wasn’t dusty, as it always was in summer, and the rains that had fallen made long-dormant plants spring up all over, so the hillsides were green with occasional speckles of orange or red or blue flowers. Bees buzzed everywhere.
Down at the palace, people buzzed everywhere. Hajjaj was not unduly surprised when his secretary said, “Marquis Balastro craves an audience at your earliest convenience, your Excellency.”
“Tell him he may come, Qutuz,” Hajjaj answered. “I will be interested to hear how he turns this latest disaster into a triumph of Algarvian arms.”
“I wish he could, your Excellency,” Qutuz said, and Hajjaj had to nod.
A couple of hour later, the Zuwayzi foreign minister greeted King Mezen-tio’s envoy in Bishah. “You have terrible taste in clothes, your Excellency,” Balastro said.
“Considering how seldom I wear them, that should hardly surprise you,” Hajjaj replied. Qutuz brought in tea and wine and cakes then. Hajjaj didn’t use the refreshments to string things out to the degree he sometimes had; he wanted to find out what was in Balastro’s mind. After hurrying through the ritual sips and nibbles, he asked, “And how fare things with you and your kingdom?”
“We’re making the Unkerlanters pay a fearful price for Sulingen,” Balastro said. Hajjaj inclined his head without answering. The Algarvians hadn’t come to Sulingen for that purpose. And Balastro admitted as much: “It’s not the way we would have had things turn out there, which I can hardly deny. We’ll hit Swemmel more hard licks yet, see if we don’t.”
“May it be so,” Hajjaj murmured. Algarve made an imperious, demanding, unpleasant ally. But if the Unkerlanters took the bit firmly between their teeth, who could guess what they’d do to Algarve.. and to Zuwayza?
Then, to Hajjaj’s surprise, Balastro said, “But that isn’t what I came to discuss with you today.”
“No?” Hajjaj said. “Tell me what is in your thoughts, by all means do.” If he wouldn’t have to listen to Balastro haranguing him about how Algarvian victory was just around the corner despite whatever misfortunes the redheads had suffered at the moment, he would face anything else with heightened equanimity.
Leaning forward a little, Balastro said, “And so I shall, your Excellency. You’ve taxed my kingdom for being first to use certain strong sorceries in the Derlavaian War, is it not so?”
Hajjaj had never before heard multiple murder mentioned so delicately. He almost twitted Balastro about that, but held back. All he said was, “Aye, I have taxed you about it, and with reason, I think. Why do you mention it now?”
“Because my kingdom’s mages tell me that, down in Kuusamo or Lagoas, our foes have done something even more vicious,” Balastro answered.
“They do not even know just where?” Hajjaj asked, and Balastro shook his head. Hajjaj went on, “Do they know just what?” The Algarvian minister shook his head again. Hajjaj stared at him in some exasperation. “Then why should I not believe you are weaving this from whole cloth for no other reason than to make me happier with you and more inflamed against your enemies?”
“Because, if the reports I get from Trapani are anywhere close to true, half the mages in Algarve are tearing their hair out, trying to figure out what in blazes the islanders have gone and done,” Balastro answered.
Hajjaj studied him. He didn’t think Balastro was lying, though the Algarvian minister wouldn’t have let an untruth or six stop him from doing what he judged would serve his kingdom best. Hajjaj asked, “Do your mages think they’ll be able to learn?”
“How should I know?” Balastro returned. “They’ve got a war to fight, too; they can’t very well go haring after everything anybody else does. But this was big enough to set them in a tizzy over it, and I figured you ought to know.”
