Conqueror

'You remember you told me to strike up an acquaintance with young Cabot?'

Who is fully three years your junior, Raj thought 'Yes?' he said.

'I did. A very. . energetic young man. Intelligent, I'd say. Brave, certainly.'

'And?'

'And. . we were drinking one night on the voyage. He commiserated with me, saying he knew how it was, to be forced to serve an enemy of one's family.'

'Ah,' Raj said. 'Thank you again, Ludwig.'

'I'll probably hoist a few with him again, sometime, Messer.' A shrug. 'He knows some remarkably good filthy drinking songs, too.'

CHAPTER SIX

'Thank you, thank you,' Suzette said. Her servants bore out the glittering heap of gifts. 'You have nothing to fear, messas, nothing at all. The proclaimed terms are open for everybody.'

The crowd of women looked at her desperately, willing themselves to believe. Most of them were civilian landowners' wives, with a fair sprinkling of Brigaderos magnates' spouses; they came in a clump, for mutual protection. She smiled at them, willing gracious reassurance. They seemed to take some comfort that the fearsome Raj Whitehall had brought an actual wedded wife along with him; it made him seem less of the ogre who had slashed the neighboring Squadron into oblivion in one summer's campaign.

'But,' she went on, 'your husbands really will have to come in themselves. Or I can't answer for what will happen to you and your families. And that is the final word.'

Suzette sighed and sank back on her chair as the whispering clump left the room; it was an upper chamber of the little manor house. She fanned herself against the mingled odor of perfume and fear, until the sea-breeze dispelled it and left only a hint of camp-stink in its place. This was the second time the Whitehalls had stayed here. The jumping-off camp for the Southern Territories campaign had been on this spot, although the Brigade had been neutral in that war. Those memories were far from uniformly happy.

At her feet, Fatima cor Staenbridge strummed her sitar. The cor meant that she had been legally freed from chattel-slave status; it was followed by her patron's name, because that relationship carried a number of obligations.

'Strange,' she said, in Sponglish that now carried only a trace of throaty Arabic accent 'They come to plead for their men, yes?'

'Yes,' Suzette said. 'It's a tradition, rather out of date, but the customs here on Stern Isle are like the clothes, a generation behind East Residence. I take it they wouldn't have done so back in the Colony?'

Fatima laughed. She was dressed in the long pleated skirt, embroidered jacket and lace mantilla of an East Residence matron of the middle classes, but she had the oval face and plump prettiness of Border Arab stock from the desert oases south of Komar. After two children, only her consistent practice of her people's dancing-what outlanders called belly-dancing-kept her opulence within bounds.

'Muslim general throw them to his men as abandoned women,' she said. 'Muslim man cut off his wife's nose rather than take life from her hands after she see enemy with face uncovered.'

'Interesting,' Suzette said.

And rather appalling. Our own men are bad enough, most of them, sometimes.

One of the few men she knew who had little or no false pride of that sort was Gerrin Staenbridge-which was understandable, all things considered. It made him disconcertingly hard to fool, more so even than Raj, and Raj had grown disturbingly, delightfully insightful over the past four years. She glanced down at Fatima; the Arab girl had had an interesting life so far as well. The rather bizarre menage a trois she'd fallen into seemed to suit all parties, though. Gerrin got the children he'd wanted, and which a nobleman needed; he and Bartin both got a willing woman at the very, very occasional times they desired one-Bartin more often than Gerrin, but then he was much younger; and Fatima acquired the legal status of an acknowledged mistress and mother of acknowledged heirs to a wealthy nobleman.

Certainly better than what the other women of El Djem were undergoing now; most of them were probably dead. If Fatima ever desired something more passionate than the avuncular/brotherly relationship she had with Gerrin and Bartin, she never showed it. Of course, she was harem-raised. And the despised daughter of a minor concubine at that.

'I have a problem,' she said. 'With young Cabot.'

Fatima sat erect, bright-eyed. Suzette and Raj had stood Starparents to her children, a close bond, and had sponsored her into the Church. 'Anything I can do, my lady. I poison his food?'

'No, no,' Suzette laughed. Actually, my dear, when I need poisons I have Ndella or Abdullah. 'I need advice about him. He grovels at my feet, but he talks to you, occasionally; you're more nearly his age, and you aren't born Messa.'

'He want you, and he hate Raj,' Fatima said. 'His uncle would send Raj the bowstring-' she fell back into Arabic for that phrase '-if he did not need him so much.'

Suzette nodded. The Arab girl continued more slowly: 'His uncle hate and fear Raj. Cabot, he hate and envy Raj. Envy his victory in war, envy that the soldiers love and fear Raj as he were All-, ah, as he were the Spirit of Man.' She frowned. 'He would not be bad young man, if he not an enemy.'

The East Residence patrician chuckled: 'My dear girl, you've lived among us of the Civil Government for years and not noticed that the definition of a bad man is someone who belongs to the other faction?'

'Oh,' Fatima said, with her urchin grin, 'Arab think that way too.' More seriously, she continued: 'The Sultan al'Residance, he would kill Raj for spite. Young Cabot, he would be Raj if he could. Want his fame, want his glory, his followers. Want his woman-not just open her legs, but have her love. He want all. That why he must think bad of Raj, but can't be away from him either; he think to learn from him, then take all that is his. But maybe in deepest heart, he love Raj like other soldiers do, and hate himself for love.'

'You,' Suzette said, chucking Fatima under the chin, 'are a remarkably perceptive young lady.'

'I learn from you, Lady Whitehall. Gerrin talk to me a lot too, and I learn,' she replied. Her head tilted to one side. 'Why is it, lady, that man who want bed woman all the time, very much, what's the word?'

'Muymach.'

'Ah. Muymach man, often not want to talk to woman? Like, oh, Kaltin?'

'Kaltin Gruder's a loyal Companion,' Suzette said. Who hates my guts, but that's neither here nor there. Kaltin Gruder had lost a brother and acquired scars external and mental in Raj's service, but he remained very. . straightforward. Intelligent, but not subtle.

'Yes, a man-of-men. I friend with his concubine; they say he like bull in bed, but they lonely-he never talk to them. Back home,' she went on, 'man never talk to woman, not even father to daughter.'

'And I have the best of both worlds,' Suzette said with a fond smile for an absent man. 'Do keep talking to Cabot,' she went on. 'You've been very helpful.'

She touched a handbell. The door opened and a man looked through; for effect with the locals, he was dressed in his native costume of jellabah and ha'aik, with a long curved dagger and sheath of chased silver thrust through his belt. The Star amulet around his neck was protective camouflage; Abdullah al'Azziz had been born a Druze, and was authorized by the tenants of his own faith to feign the religion of any region in which he lived. Suzette had seen him imitate an Arab sheik of Al Kebir, a Sufi dervish, a fiercely orthodox Star Spirit-worshipping Borderer from the southeastern marchlands of the Civil Government, an East Residence shopkeeper, and a wandering scholar from Lion City in the Western Territories. No, not imitate, be those things. Though she had saved him and his family from slavery, she suspected that the man served her as much for the opportunity to use his talents as from gratitude.

'Who's next, Abdullah?' She switched to Arabic; hers was far better than Fatima's Sponglish, and the tongue