trappings to gain obedience. When he gave a command, everyone who heard hurried to carry it out. People respected him for the man he was as well as for the rank he held.
'Very good indeed to see you in one piece, your Excellency,' he told Hajjaj when the foreign minister reached his side. 'Swemmel's whoresons have struck us a heavy blow here.'
'Aye, your Majesty.' Hajjaj knew more than a little gratitude that the king didn't blame him for the Unkerlanter attack- or, if he did, didn't say so in public.
'We are going to have to strengthen our defenses against dragons around the city,' Shazli said. 'If the Unkerlanters did this once, they'll come back to do it again.'
'That's… true, your Majesty.' Hajjaj bowed with no small respect. 'I hadn't thought so far ahead.' That such a thing could happen once to Bishah was appalling enough. That it might happen again and again… He shivered.
'Do you know whether General Ikhshid lives?' King Shazli asked.
'I'm sorry, but no,' Hajjaj answered. 'I have no idea. The eggs stopped falling, and the first thing I wanted to do was make sure you were safe.'
'Here I stand.' Shazli had lived the softest of soft lives. He was inclined to be pudgy, and had never looked particularly impressive. But there was iron in him. 'King Swemmel will think he can put fear in us, so that we will do whatever he wants. He will find he is wrong. He will find he cannot make us bend our necks by dropping eggs from the sky.'
Several of the people in the damaged hallway clapped their hands. Hajjaj almost clapped himself. He did bow again. 'This is the spirit that led your father to reclaim our freedom after the Unkerlanters ruled us for so long.'
King Shazli nodded. 'And we shall stay free, come what may. Are we not still the men of the desert our forefathers were in days gone by?'
'Even so, your Majesty,' Hajjaj replied, though he and the king both knew the Zuwayzin were no such thing. This generation was more urban, and more like townsfolk in the rest of Derlavai, than any before it. But Shazli had to know saying such things was the best way to rally his people.
Neither of them mentioned that the king's father had needed to free Zuwayza because the Unkerlanters had been strong enough to hold it down for generations, and neither of them mentioned that enough blows like the one the Unkerlanters had just delivered might break any people's will- to say nothing of ability- to keep on fighting. Hajjaj understood both those things painfully well. This did not seem the best time to ask Shazli whether he did, too.
'I shall find out what we need to learn about Ikhshid,' the king said. He pointed at Hajjaj. 'I want you to find a crystallomancer and speak to Marquis Balastro. Assure him we are still in the fight, and see what help we can hope to get from Algarve.'
'As you say.' Hajjaj's cough had nothing to do with the dust and smoke in the air. It was pure diplomacy. 'Seeing how things are going for them in their own fight against Unkerlant, I don't know what they'll be able to spare us.'
Shazli, fortunately, recognized a diplomatic cough when he heard one. 'You may tell the marquis that we need tools to stay in the fight. They have more dragons than we do. They also have more highly trained mages than we do; they're bound to be better off when it comes to things like heavy sticks that can knock a dragon out of the sky.'
'Every word you say there is true,' Hajjaj agreed. 'I'll do what I can.' He nodded to Qutuz. 'To the crystallomancers.' His secretary nodded and followed.
One of the thick mud-brick walls of the crystallomancers' office had a new, yard-wide hole in it. Some of their tables were overturned; some of their crystals were bright, jagged shards on the floor; some of them were bleeding. But one of the men who hadn't been hurt quickly established an etheric connection with the Algarvian ministry. Balastro's image stared out of a surviving crystal at Hajjaj. 'Good to see you in one piece, your Excellency,' the redhead said.
'And you,' Hajjaj answered. 'King Shazli expects the Unkerlanters to pay us more such calls.'
'I shouldn't be surprised,' Balastro said. 'They missed me this time, so they'll have to come back and try again.'
Hajjaj smiled at his self-importance, which was partly an act and partly typical of a lot of Algarvians. The Zuwayzi foreign minister said, 'Any help you can give us, we'll be grateful for and put to good use. We have the men to serve heavy sticks and the men to fly dragons, if only we could get them. Then the Unkerlanters wouldn't have such an easy time of it.'
'I'll pass that along,' Balastro said. 'When we haven't got enough of anything ourselves, I don't know what they'll say about it back in Trapani. But I'll pass it on with my recommendation that they give you all they can.' His eyes narrowed. He was shrewd, was Balastro. 'After all, we have to keep you fighting Swemmel, too.'
'You and King Shazli see things much alike here,' Hajjaj said. 'I am glad of it.' And I hope it does some good. But will it? Will anything?
Captain Orosio stuck his head into Colonel Sabrino's tent. 'Sir, the field post is here,' the squadron commander said.
'Is it?' Sabrino rose from his folding chair. He winced. The blazed shoulder he'd taken escaping the Unkerlanters after his dragon was flamed out of the sky still pained him. He wore a wound badge along with his other decorations now. He knew how lucky he was to be alive, and savored survival with Algarvian gusto. 'Let's see what we've got, then.'
He wore the furs and leather in which he would have flown into the frigid upper air. It was frigid enough down here on the ground in the Kingdom of Grelz. The third winter of the war against Unkerlant, he thought with a sort of dull wonder. He'd never imagined, not that first heady summer when the Algarvians plunged ahead on their western adventure, that the war against King Swemmel could last into its third winter. He'd found a lot of things here that he'd never imagined then.
The postman, who wasn't a dragonflier, looked cold, but Algarvian soldiers who stayed on the ground weren't always freezing, as they had that first dreadful winter, for which they'd been so woefully unprepared. The fellow saluted as Sabrino came up to him. 'Here you go, Colonel,' he said, and handed the wing commander an envelope.
'Thanks.' Sabrino recognized the handwriting at once. To Orosio, he said, 'From my wife.'
'Ah.' Orosio stepped back a couple of paces to give him privacy to read it.
Opening the envelope with gloved hands was a clumsy business, but Sabrino managed. Inside were two pages closely written in Gismonda's clear, precise script. As was her way, she came straight to the point. I have good reason to believe that your mistress has taken up with another man, she told him. Fronesia has been seen too much with an infantry officer- some say a major, others a colonel- to leave any doubt that he has seen too much of her. That being so, I suggest you let him pay for her flat and her extravagances.
'And so I shall,' Sabrino muttered.
'What's that, sir?' Oraste asked.
'Cut off my mistress' support,' Sabrino answered. 'My wife tells me some colonel of footsoldiers, or whatever he may be, is getting the benefits from her these days. If he's getting the benefits, by the powers above, he can bloody well pay the freight, too.'
'I should say so.' But Orosio's rather heavy features clouded. 'As long as you're sure your wife's telling the truth, that is.'
Sabrino nodded. 'Oh, aye, without a doubt. Gismonda has never given me any trouble about Fronesia. I should hope she wouldn't. My dear fellow, do you know a proper Algarvian noble who hasn't got a mistress or two? -aside from the handful who have boys on the side instead, I mean.'
'Well…' Captain Orosio hesitated, then said, 'There's me.'
Sabrino slapped him on the back. 'And we know what your problem is: you've been here fighting a war and serving your kingdom. You get back to civilization, you'll need to carry a constable's club to beat the women back.'
