“Say on,” Fernao told him.
“I’ll do just that,” Colonel Peixoto replied. “Curse me if I won’t. Now, then--I see you’ve served as a ship’s mage. You were doing that when the war broke out, weren’t you? Can’t very well hit the Algarvians a proper lick unless we cross the sea to get at ‘em, can we?”
“No, indeed,” Fernao said. The wine lent his voice extra solemnity. “Although the research I’m working on now is important, if you think I could best serve the kingdom by going back to sea, I’ll do it.”
Peixoto beamed. “Spoken like a patriot, my dear sir. But that’s not precisely what we have in mind for you, by your leave. You’re not far off--don’t get me wrong--but you’re not quite on, either. Plenty of mages--plenty of Lagoan mages, anyhow--go to sea. But do you know--do you know, sir?--that only a handful of Lagoan mages, and fewer of the first rank, have ever set foot on the land of the Ice People?”
Fernao discovered he’d made a mistake, a dreadful mistake, when he’d decided he didn’t care why he’d been called to the palace so long as it had nothing to do with King Penda. “Colonel,” he said plaintively, “have you ever eaten boiled camel hump? Have you ever tried to gnaw through strips of dried and salted camel meat?”
“Never once, powers above be praised.” Colonel Peixoto sounded pleased that that was true, too, for which Fernao could hardly blame him. The mage wished it were true for himself. Peixoto went on, “But since you have, that makes you all the more valuable for this expedition. You must see that, mustn’t you?”
“What expedition?” demanded Fernao, who was not in the mood to see anything if he could help it.
“Why, the one we’re planning to the austral continent, of course,” Peixoto said. “With a little bit of luck--with only a little bit of luck, mind you--we’ll throw out the Yaninans and however many Algarvians they’ve got down there to give them a hand, and then where will they be? Eh? Where then?”
“Somewhere warm and civilized,” Fernao answered. Colonel Peixoto laughed heartily, as if he’d said something funny rather than speaking simple truth. The mage asked, “Why on earth are we mad enough to want to take the land of the Ice People away from the Yaninans? As far as I’m concerned, they did us a favor when they ran us out of it last year.”
“What’s on the earth there doesn’t matter, not a bit--no, not a bit. It’s what’s in the earth that counts.” Peixoto leaned forward and breathed a wine-smelling word into Fernao’s face: “Cinnabar.”
“Ah,” the mage said. “Indeed. But still--”
“But me no buts, my dear sir,” Peixoto said. “Without the austral continent, Algarve has not got a lot of cinnabar. Without cinnabar, her dragons cannot flame nearly so fiercely as they can with it. If we take it away, that makes fighting the war harder for them. Can you tell me I am mistaken in any particular there?”
“No,” Fernao admitted. “But can you tell me that whatever we have to spend to take the cinnabar from the land of the Ice People away from Mezentio’s men won’t be twice--three times--five times--what it costs them to do without?”
Peixoto beamed at him. The colonel really was too cheerful to make a typical soldier. “Ah, a very nice point, a very nice point indeed! But you must recall, we can think differently now that Kuusamo has joined the fight on our side and we don’t have to worry about being stabbed in the back. Algarvian folly there, nothing else but.”
“I do recall that, aye,” Fernao said. He’d hoped it would mean the Kuusamans would start sharing whatever they know of whatever they weren’t talking about. So far, it hadn’t; they’d kept blandly denying everything. Pointing to a map on the wall by the desk, he continued, “But I also recall that Sibiu sits over our route to the austral continent, and that there are a certain number of Algarvians and Algarvian ships and Algarvian leviathans and Algarvian scouting dragons in Sibiu.”
“It’s true. Every bit of it’s true.” Nothing fazed Peixoto. “I never said this would be easy, sir mage. I said we were going to undertake it. If we succeed in landing men and dragons on the austral continent, we will require sorcerers somewhat familiar with conditions there--and also with conditions in the waters thereabouts. Can you deny you are such a mage?”
After his journey by leviathan back from the land of the Ice People to Lagoas, Fernao was more familiar with those waters than he’d ever wanted to be. “I don’t suppose I can deny it, no,” he said, wishing he could. “Even so--”
Colonel Peixoto held up a hand. “My dear sir, your voluntary cooperation would be greatly appreciated--greatly appreciated indeed. It is not a requirement, however.”
Fernao glared at him. That was plain enough--unpleasant, but plain. “You will dragoon me, then.”
“If we must, we will,” Peixoto agreed. “We need you. I promise you this: the rewards of success will not be small, neither
