16
“No, Jefar. I will see no one,” Alessid snapped. “I will not receive people I don’t know, who have the impertinence to come here—uninvited!—during a time of mourning. How you can even suggest it is beyond my comprehension.”
The younger man bowed nearly double. “Forgive me, al-Ma’aliq.”
Alessid was instantly ashamed of himself. His own sorrow for the death of Meryem Shagara was deep; Jefar was hurting, too, for he had recently lost his young wife in childbed. So Alessid gave him words rarely thought, let alone spoken. “I am sorry, my friend. That was selfish of me.”
Jefar straightened up, gesturing away Alessid’s concern. “The apology must be mine, al-Ma’aliq, for disturbing you. But what I have heard, together with what little this man has told me, made me believe you would wish to see him.”
“Who is he?” Alessid rose from the paper-strewn table where he had spent the last futile hour trying to lose his grief in work. Meryem, one of the mainstays of his life—and one of the few who still remembered his father, Azzad. It irked him that this latter thought occurred to him over and over again. “What does he want?”
“He calls himself Baron Zandro do’Gortova, an emissary from Count Garza do’Joharra.”
“Oh. A barbarian.”
“Ayia, yes,” Jefar replied casually, “but with a tale to tell of King Orturro of Qaysh, and—”
Interest sparked. “The one with the daughter?”
“Yes.” Jefar paused. “The intriguing thing is that I have had a report from a border garrison that an emissary from the King of Qaysh crossed into Tza’ab Rih a day behind this man who would speak for Count do’Joharra.”
Alessid paced the carpet for a few moments, then turned to Jefar with a smile. “Then the rumors are true, and the girl is with child.”
“So it would seem, al-Ma’aliq.” Jefar had a golden Shagara face of the type that would only grow more handsome as he entered his thirties and forties, but his eyes at that moment might have been those of a naughty little boy contemplating mischief with unholy glee. “Qaysh and Joharra are evenly matched, they say.”
“The reason for the proposed marriage alliance. Precisely. I think I would very much enjoy meeting these barbarians, don’t you?”
Orturro do’Ferro da’Qaysh, a man in his late prime, had occupied the throne of his ancestors for eight years. Depending on which faction one listened to, he was energetic, self-confident, and resolute, or restless, arrogant, and stubborn. Denied by his late father nothing but that which he wanted most—power—he had come to kingship at the age of forty determined to exercise the full scope of royal privilege, especially when it came to the right of taxation. Decrees flowed from the palace at Ferro, and what flowed back was money—in torrents. With it, he established a court such as Qaysh had never before seen. To this court at Ferro had come Count Garza do’Joharra, who ruled an independent realm of his own. Approximately the king’s age, having just buried his third wife, Count Garza presented himself as a suitor for the hand of Orturro’s daughter. He was still very handsome; she was ambitious for an important marriage; her father understood quite thoroughly that he could not best Joharra on the battlefield, so he might as well face facts. Matters progressed to the satisfaction of all—until Count Garza’s only daughter, Nadaline, arrived in Qaysh ten days before the celebration of her father’s fourth wedding.
It was said that King Orturro had been so instantaneously smitten that the fabulous pearl-and-garnet necklace he had intended as his daughter’s wedding present had graced Nadaline’s lovely throat within hours of her arrival. Everybody was furious, nobody was speaking to anybody else, and not only had the marriage been canceled, but all parties had withdrawn to their best-defended strongholds to prepare for a war neither could win.
“Ayia, one would not think it compassionate,” Alessid mused, “to find so much amusement in other people’s calamities.”
“I think, al-Ma’aliq, that Acuyib has a most elegant sense of humor.”
“I agree. Allow these men to present themselves—one at a time, and each without knowing the other is here. This is possible?” he asked, knowing it was.
“Of course,” Jefar answered. “The one from Qaysh has been here three days, the one from Joharra less than one—both in strict isolation. They’re not happy about it.” He shook his head sadly, dark eyes dancing.
“In a few days, then, they will be most desperate to be cheered up.”
Jefar bowed again, shoulders shaking now with repressed mirth. “AlMa’aliq is wise and perceptive.”
“Al-Ma’aliq is wondering how he will keep from laughing himself silly.”
Four mornings later Alessid entered the tent in his garden. Garbed in a white silk robe with an embroidered white-on-white gauze cloak over it, an elaborate hazzir gleaming from his breast and the rings that had been his father’s and great-uncle’s on his hands, he arranged himself on carpets and pillows to receive the ambassador. He had not ordered refreshments; those who believed in Acuyib’s Glory did not eat or drink with barbarians. In fact, everything about this reception would purposely emphasize the differences between the people of Tza’ab Rih and those who had once thought to conquer them. It was as luscious as the taste of wine-soaked pears on a sweltering day, that now the northern barbarians had come not to conquer but to beg. For Alessid had a very good notion of why both the King of Qaysh and the Count do’Joharra, so evenly matched in military terms and so enraged with each other, had sent their men to him.
The tent flap parted, and Raffiq Murah entered and bowed. He was a plump little man with a scholarly air, sent to court some years ago by his father to acquire some polish. As the scope of Tza’ab Rih’s affairs widened, Alessid had been delighted to discover that Raffiq had an ear for languages and a tongue that could work its way around barbarian speech. Its written form was as ugly to the eye as its words were to the ear, all angles and sharp points; a language, spoken or written, ought to flow like water.
“Stand here beside me, Raffiq, and do not give me only his words, but your thoughts on their meaning.”
“Al-Ma’aliq honors me.”
Jefar brought in the ambassador. A big, brawny-chested man with a high color staining his broad cheeks, he had to duck far beneath the opened flap, which caused him to bow sooner and lower than he intended. This upset him, and Alessid almost smiled to see it. But what interested him most in these first moments was that the man wore a most curious assemblage of clothing. The bright red shirt had flamboyant, billowing sleeves, not buttoned at throat and wrists like an honest man’s but tied with fluttering ribbons stiff with gold embroidery. The sleeveless woolen garment that went over it was bright green and likewise embroidered in gold; it was closed with laces to the waist, where it was cut sharply back to fall from hips to the tops of high black boots. An immodest garment, showing everything a man possessed, for, oddest of all, he wore trousers such as women wore beneath work tunics. The trousers were made of leather. Alessid blinked once, thinking that he must be mad to wear such things in this climate, and nodded permission for Jefar to speak.
“Al-Ma’aliq, I present to your notice Don Pederro do’Praca, nephew and ambassador of King Orturro do’Ferro da’Qaysh.”
Hearing his name, the man bowed and spoke. Raffiq translated. “My noble uncle King Orturro greets His
