officer. If the news wasn’t important, he’d make him sorry even so. Meanwhile . .. The foreign minister sighed. “I’m on my way.”
“Good.” Ikhshid’s image disappeared. Light flared, and then the crystal was merely a transparent globe once more.
Tewfik yowled like a scalded cat when he found out Hajjaj proposed leaving the house while it was still raining. “You’ll catch your death, lad, from inflammation of the lungs,” he said. When he found Hajjaj obdurate, he stood out in the rain, naked as any Zuwayzi, lecturing the driver on his responsibility to get Hajjaj to and from the palace safely. Though a good many years older than the foreign minister, he didn’t worry about the possibility of coming down with pneumonia himself.
The driver took longer than Hajjaj would have liked. The roadway, usually rock solid, was full of gluey mud. And once the carriage got into Bishah, it moved slowly even on paved roads. A couple of tangles on rain-slick cobbles had created snarls that would take hours to unknot.
At last, Hajjaj raised an umbrella--far more often used as a parasol--above his head and walked into the palace. Several servitors exclaimed in surprise at seeing him there. He didn’t tell them why he’d come. Of course, they would start guessing, but he couldn’t do anything about that.
He made his way through the winding corridors that led to General Ikhshid’s office (and past a couple of pots with water dripping into them, proving not even the royal roof was exempt from leaks). Then he went through the inevitable ritual of tea and wine and cakes, until, finally, he could ask, “And what is it you would not speak of through the crystal?”
Ikhshid wasted few words: “The Algarvians have begun falling back from Cottbus.”
“Have they?” Hajjaj murmured. For a moment, ice ran through him, as if an Unkerlanter winter lived in his belly. Then he rallied: “Is it very bad?”
“Well, your Excellency, it’s not what you’d call good,” the general answered. Like most Zuwayzi soldiers, he felt more passion for the alliance with Algarve than did Hajjaj, who saw the need for it but, these days, found little more to love in King Mezentio’s followers than in King Swemmel’s. Ikhshid went on, “If Cottbus doesn’t fall, Unkerlant doesn’t fall, you know.” He gave Hajjaj an anxious glance, as if uncertain whether the foreign minister really did know that.
“Oh, aye,” Hajjaj said absently. “The fight just got harder, in other words.” General Ikhshid nodded. He’d served in the Unkerlanter army in the Six Years’ War; he knew about hard fighting. At the moment, he looked thoroughly grim. Hajjaj found another question: “How do we know this? Are you sure it’s true?”
“How?” Ikhshid said. “The Unkerlanters are trumpeting it so loud, it’s a bloody wonder you need a crystal to hear them, that’s how.”
“The Unkerlanters,” Hajjaj observed with delicate understatement, “have been known to trifle with the truth.”
“Not this time.” Ikhshid sounded positive. “If they were lying, the Algarvians would be yelling even louder than they are. And the redheads aren’t. Except for saying there’s heavy fighting, they’re keeping real quiet.”
Hajjaj clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Quiet from the Algarvians is never a good sign. They boast even more than Unkerlanters.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Ikhshid checked himself; he was at bottom an honest man. “Well, maybe I would, but they aren’t so obnoxious to listen to.”
“Something to that,” Hajjaj said. “They’re more like us--they want to impress with how they say things, too. But never mind that. If we start talking about why foreigners are the way they are, we’ll be at it for the next year. We have more important things to worry about. For instance, have you told his Majesty yet?”
Ikhshid shook his head. “No. I thought you’d better find out first.”
Hajjaj made another clicking noise. “Not good, General. Not good. King Shazli needs to know these things.”
“So do you, your Excellency,” Ikhshid said. “It could even be that you need to know more than he does.”
That had truth written all over it, no matter how impolitic it was. But truth, Hajjaj was convinced, held many layers. “Would your heart be gladdened if I undertook to tell him?”
“It would, I’ll not deny,” Ikhshid replied at once.
“I’ll tend to it, then,” Hajjaj said, trying not to sound too resigned. Getting him to tell the king of the Algarvians’ misfortune was liable to be more than half the reason the general
