to come from very far away.
From even farther away, Sergeant Panfilo shouted in despair: “Back! We have to fall back!”
Dimly, Tealdo knew the sergeant was right. Despair filled him, too, despair and anguish. Thalfang wasn’t going to fall. If it didn’t, Cottbus wouldn’t, either. If Cottbus didn’t fall, what would the war look like then?
He looked around for his stick. It was gone . .. somewhere. Color washed out of everything, leaving only gray fading toward black. However the war turned out, he wouldn’t know about it. He lay in the square in burning Thalfang. Unkerlanters on snowshoes shuffled past him, and his countrymen retreated.
Rain pattered down on Bishah and on the surrounding hills. That happened every winter--several times in a wet winter--but always seemed to take the Zuwayzin by surprise. Hajjaj had been through winters in Algarve. He’d even seen winter in Unkerlant. He knew how lucky his kingdom was to enjoy a warm climate, and also knew it needed what rain it got. All the same, watching drops splash down on the flagstones of his courtyard, he wished the rain would go away.
Tewfik came up behind him. Hajjaj knew that without turning his head; no one else’s sandals scraped across the floor the same way. The crusty old majordomo stopped, waiting to be noticed. Hajjaj was not so rude as to keep him waiting. “How now, Tewfik?” he asked, glad to turn away from the wet outside.
“Well, lad, they’ve found another leak in the roof.” Tewfik spoke with a certain morose satisfaction. “I’ve sent a runner down to the city to lay hold of the roofers, provided he doesn’t break his neck in the mud.”
“My thanks,” Hajjaj said. “The trouble is, everyone’s roof leaks when it rains, because no one bothers fixing a roof when the sun shines. Powers above only know when our turn with the roofers will come.”
“It had better come soon, or I’ll have a thing or two to say about it,” Tewfik declared. “Everyone’s roof may leak, but not everyone is the foreign minister of Zuwayza.”
“All the other clanfathers are just as grand as I am,” Hajjaj answered. “And all the rich merchants in the city are closer to the roofers than we are.”
Tewfik’s first sniff said he cared little for the pretensions of Zuwayzi nobles not fortunate enough to have him serve them. His second sniff said he cared even less for any merchants’ pretensions. “I know what’s required, and the roofers had cursed well better, too,” he growled.
Arguing with him was pointless, so Hajjaj yielded: “All right. How are the walls holding up?”
“Well enough,” Tewfik said grudgingly. “The wind’s not too bad, so the eaves keep the water away.”
“They’d better,” Hajjaj said. Like most Zuwayzi houses, his was made of thick bricks baked only by the sun. If they got soaked, they turned back into the mud from which they’d been made. In every rainstorm, people died when their houses fell in on them.
A serving woman came into the chamber where Hajjaj and Tewfik stood. “Excuse me, your Excellency,” she said, bowing to Hajjaj, “but General Ikhshid awaits in the crystal. He would speak with you.”
“Ikhshid himself? Not an aide-de-camp?” Hajjaj asked. The maidservant nodded. One of Hajjaj’s graying eyebrows rose. “Something’s gone wrong somewhere, then. I’ll speak with him; of course I will.”
He hurried to the crystal’s chamber, next to the library, and took care to shut the door behind him; he didn’t want the servants listening in. Sure enough, there in the crystal was the reduced image of General Ikhshid. “Good day, your Excellency,” the plump old soldier said when he saw the foreign minister. “Keeping dry?”
“As best I can,” Hajjaj replied. “Harder now than when I saw you last down in the desert near the old border with Unkerlant. What’s toward?” With crystals, as opposed to face-to-face meetings, coming straight to the point was good form.
Ikhshid said, “It might be best if you drove down to the palace. No matter how tight our control spells are, you never can tell who’s liable to pick up the emanations from a crystal.”
Hajjaj weighed that. “Is it really so bad?”
“If it weren’t, would I ask you out in the rain?” Ikhshid returned.
