Hajjaj didn’t care. He’d never cared. She understood him perfectly. He couldn’t say that about anyone else in the world. She began to tick off points on her fingers: “First, you could send Tassi back toMinisterIskakis. That would make him stop screaming at everyone fromKingShazli down to the Zuwayzin who walk past the Yaninan ministry.”
“Well, so it would,” Hajjaj said. “It would also probably be dangerous for Tassi. She didn’t show up on my doorstep-she didn’t show up naked on my doorstep-because she was madly in love with Iskakis. You know that as well as I do. She was just a bauble to him. And how will he use her, now that she’s offended him by running off and showing the world a side he wanted hidden away?”
“Every word of that is true,” Kolthoum said. “Which brings me to the next possibility-sending her to Marquis Balastro. He would take good care of her.”
“For a while-till he got bored,” Hajjaj said. Kolthoum laughed, though neither of them thought it was funny. “But he and Tassi have already quarreled. And if he flaunts her to infuriate Iskakis-and he will, being an Algarvian- he’ll just make things between Algarve and Yanina worse than they are already. They’re both supposed to be our allies, you know. I can’t think of anything Yanina can do to hurt our kingdom, but I can think of plenty of thingsKingTsavellas might do to hurt Algarve.”
“Would Tsavellas do them?” his senior wife asked. “In the war against Unkerlant, anything that hurts Algarve hurts Yanina, too.”
“When Yaninans go after revenge, they’re even worse than we are,” Hajjaj said. “They don’t care what happens to them as long as something worse happens to their foes.”
“That does make things harder,” Kolthoum admitted. “And you are right-Balastro wouldn’t keep her. Next choice is to bestow her on some Zuwayzi noble, then, wouldn’t you say?”
“I might do that. I’ve been trying to do that,” Hajjaj replied. “But there are only so many nobles who might be interested in a foreign woman, and it’s not obvious that Tassi would be interested in any of them. Which leaves, as far as I can see, nothing.”
“No?” Kolthoum looked amused. “You could just keep her here, you know, for your own pleasure. She’s young and pretty, and you haven’t had a woman like that since you sent Lalla back to her clanfather.”
“Do you know, I haven’t thought about that in any serious way,” Hajjaj said slowly. He looked down at his hands, at the dry, wrinkled skin and prominent veins. “And if my not having thought about it seriously doesn’t prove I’ve got old, I don’t know what would.”
“You’re not so old as all that,” Kolthoum said.
Hajjaj smiled. “You’re sweet to say so, my dear.” The two of them hadn’t bedded each other in something close to a year-but then, they needed less physical reminding of what they shared than they had when they were younger. He went on: “Things do still work… occasionally.”
“Well, then,” Kolthoum said, as if everything were all settled.
But Hajjaj shook his head. “It’s not so simple, you know. Where I might see Tassi as my reward, she’s more likely to see me as her punishment.”
“No.” His senior wife shook her head, too. “Not when she came here to your house and showed herself off to you without her clothes. I know what that means for people who aren’t Zuwayzin.”
Hajjaj grunted. The same thought had crossed his mind when he saw the young Yanina woman naked. Tassi hadn’t done anything to discourage it, either; on the contrary. Were he younger himself, he supposed-no, he knew- he would have done more to explore her half-promises. As things were… As things were, he shook his head again and said, “I don’t think I’m in urgent need of a pet, even one of the two-legged sort. Besides, I would feel as if I was taking advantage of her.”
“As if you were,” Kolthoum corrected.
“As if I was,” Hajjaj repeated. “I don’t think the condition would be contrary to fact, and so it doesn’t need the subjunctive.” He grinned at Kolthoum. Not even Qutuz, his secretary, quibbled with him over grammar.
She grinned back, unabashed, and stuck out her tongue at him as if she were a cheeky young girl herself. “You don’t know whether the condition is contrary to fact or not, because you haven’t bothered finding out,” she said.
“True-I haven’t,” he said. “And doesn’t that tell you something all by itself?”
“It tells me you are an old-fashioned gentleman,” Kolthoum answered, “which is nothing I haven’t known for a good many years. But, if you are going to make choices for this woman, don’t you think you ought to know what she wants for herself?”
“Now I know why you let me win the grammatical arguments,” Hajjaj said. Kolthoum made a small, questioning noise. He explained: “So I won’t feel too disappointed when you win the ones that matter.”
His senior wife hid her face in her hands. “My secret’s out. What shall I do?” she asked, her voice muffled behind her palms.
Slipping an arm around her shoulder, Hajjaj said, “When we have this between us, why do I need a young woman, a stranger?”
“Why?” Kolthoum reached out and gently stroked him between the legs. “That’s why.”
“There. You see? I already have a shameless woman, too.” Hajjaj kissed her. More than a little to his own surprise, he found himself rising to the occasion. He and Kolthoum made love slowly, lazily; somehow, the lack of urgency, the lack of fuss, added to his enjoyment-and, he hoped, hers-rather than taking away from it. Afterwards he said, “I didn’t expect that to happen.”
“Neither did I.” Kolthoum wagged a forefinger in front of his nose. “But you’re not going to use it as an excuse to keep from asking Tassi what she wants.”
“Aye, my dear,” Hajjaj answered. Under the circumstances, he could hardly say no.
Having made the promise, he had to keep it. A couple of days later, he askedTewfik to bring Tassi into his study. The majordomo nodded. “Just as you say, your Excellency.” His wrinkled, jowly face gave no hint of what he thought. He shuffled off and returned a few minutes later withMinisterIskakis ’ runaway wife.
“Good day, your Excellency,” she said in her careful Algarvian, dipping her head to Hajjaj. She was still bare, and still seemed barer than any Zuwayzi would have-but then, she would also have seemed out of place in his house had she chosen to wear clothes.
“And a good day to you,” Hajjaj replied in the same language. “Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Would you care for tea and wine and cakes?” When she dipped her head in Yaninan-style agreement, Hajjaj nodded toTewfik, who waited in the doorway. The majordomo left and returned with a silver tray bearing the essentials of Zuwayzi hospitality.
While Tassi and Hajjaj ate and drank, they stuck to small talk. He wondered if she knew the social rules of his kingdom. He had, from time to time, used them to annoy foreigners. Now she seemed as content with delay as he was.
But, at last, he could avoid things no longer. “Tell me,” he said, “what am I to do with you?”
“Whatever suits your kingdom best, of course,” Tassi answered. “That is the way of such things, is it not so?” She spoke with a curious bitter resignation.
Hajjaj shook his head. “Not necessarily. Not entirely. If I thought only about what suited my kingdom best, I would have sent you back to your husband at once. Do you doubt it, even for an instant?”
“No,” she said in a small voice.
“All right, then,” Hajjaj said. “We understand each other, at least so far. If you had your choice, what would you do?”
“Blaze my father when he made the match with Iskakis,” Tassi replied without hesitation. “He could not have done worse if he tried for a hundred years.”
“You cannot do anything about that now. Of the things you can do, what would you do?”
“I have no good answers for you,” Tassi said, and Hajjaj nodded: he hadn’t expected her to have any good answers. She went on, “If you are willing to let me stay here, I would like to do that. No one bothers me here. Until now, I have never been in a place where no one bothers me.”
Well, Hajjaj thought with wry amusement, this is hardly the time to ask if she wants to keep my bed warm. Not even Kolthoum could argue with me about that, not after what she just said. Even so, his eyes traveled the length of her. Maybe it was the way her nipples and the hair between her legs stood out against her light skin that made her seem more naked than a Zuwayzi woman would have. That was the closest he’d come to an explanation that made sense, anyhow.
