Conqueror

'Men tend to ignore women and servants,' Suzette said judiciously.

'Fools do,' Abdullah conceded. 'But then, most men are fools. Even the wise among us can be led into folly by the organ of generation. Or so my wife claims.'

'So I've found,' Suzette agreed. 'Now, there are some juicy details in there on just how far along Forker went toward surrender at one point. Use them with extreme discretion, but anyone who knows him will probably believe it.

'Here,' she went on, 'are ayzed and beyam.' Zanj, an abortificant and poison respectively; brewed from native Bellevue herbs known only in the far south and utterly untraceable in the western Midworld. Suzette sighed: 'I only wish there were two of you, Abdullah.'

The Druze smiled. 'Am I not multitudes, saaidya?'

Right now he was a Spanjol-speaking merchant of Port Murchison; down to the four-cornered hat with modest plume, green linen swallowtail jacket with brass buttons, striped cravat and natty chiseled-steel buckles on the shoes below his knee-breeches. He made a flourish with the hat, bowing and letting his hand rest on the hilt of a plain sword.

'I shall be welcome in Lion City.' Particularly bringing a sloop with a cargo of Stern Isle sulfur and Southern Territories saltpeter. Both restricted cargoes in time of war, of course, but a few hundred pounds would make no real difference.

'Less so in Carson Barracks,' she said. More briskly:

'Now: unless I miss my woman and your reports are false, Marie Welf is well aware that she's the sheep at the carnosauroid's congress. Forker and half the nobles in the Brigade want to murder her, the other half to marry her and father an heir to the Seat-and once she's had a male child, she's an inconvenience and danger. None of the prospects pleases, and most of the men are vile.

'You will approach her only when she's desperate. This isn't a girl who waits for a rescuer, but she's inexperienced. She'll jump at a way out. Forker keeps her isolated, but she has friends, and the Welfs have partisans. Investigate them also.'

'Ah, saaidya,' Abdullah said, tucking the small case of vials into an inside pocket of his tailcoat. 'Were you a man, what a ruler you would be!'

'Were I a man,' Suzette said tartly, 'I'd have better sense than to want to be a ruler.'

'As I said, my lady.'

She extended a hand, and Abdullah bent over it in the style of the Civil Government. Suzette dropped back into Arabic:

'Go, thou Slave of God,' she said, which was what his name meant. 'May my God and thine go with thee.'

'May the Beneficent, the Lovingkind, be with thee and thy lord.'

Alone, Suzette picked up a packet of letters-they were copies of Cabot's reports to his uncle-and put them down again. Raj was out with most of the Expeditionary Force, on maneuvers again. Cabot and she were to meet at a little cove, where the swimming was safe. Quite respectable, since several of her women would be along; the Civil Government had a nudity taboo but not during bathing.

'Some men,' she murmured, stroking the cat, 'are governable by the fulfillment of their desires, and some by their frustration.' For the present, Cabot Clerett wanted to worship from afar; his concubine was probably sitting down rather carefully these days.

How long he could be controlled that way was another matter, of course. A man who knew himself able, but also knew he owed everything to his uncle's preferment. Wild to accomplish something of his own. . and dangerously reckless in his hate, from the evidence in the letters. Far too dangerous to Raj to be tolerated.

* * *

'That Bureaucrat's Bottom is slowing you down, Whitehall,' Gerrin Staenbridge taunted, and lunged.

Clack. The double-weight wooden practice sabers met, touched. Lunge, parry from the wrist, feint, cut-stamp-cut. They advanced and retreated across the carefully uneven gravel-rock-earth floor of the salle d'armes. The scuff of feet and slamming clatter of oak on oak echoed from the high whitewashed walls. For a moment they went corps-a-corps.

'Save your breath. . old man,' Raj grunted. A convulsive heave sent them to blade's length again.

In fact, neither man was carrying an ounce of spare flesh, something fully apparent since they were stripped to the waist for the exercise, with only face-masks as protection. Staenbridge was a little thicker through the shoulders, Raj slightly longer in the arm; both big men and hugely strong for their size, moving with the carnivore grace of those who had killed often with cold steel and trained since birth. Raj was drilling hard because it was a way to burn out the poisons of frustration that were worse with every passing week. Staenbridge met the fury of his attack with six extra years of experience. Sweat hung heavy on the dry hot air, slicking down torsos marked with the scars of every weapon known on Bellevue.

'Ahem.' Then louder: 'Ahem!'

They disengaged, leaped back and lowered their blades. Raj ripped the face-mask off and turned, chest pumping like a deep slow bellows. The salle d'armes of the Wager Bay commandants seemed frozen for a moment in time; Ludwig Bellamy practicing forms before a mirror, Kaltin Gruder on a masseurs table; Fatima on a bench keeping a careful grip on young Bartin Staenbridge, the three-year-old was supposed to be getting his first taste of training but showed a disconcerting tendency to run in wherever there was action. Outside in the courtyard Suzette wrote a letter at a table beneath a trellis of bougainvillea. Her pen poised over the paper. The slapping of the masseurs' hands ran down into silence.

Bartin Foley was sweating too, as if he had run some way in the heat.

'Far be it from me, Messers, to disturb this tranquil scene-'

Raj made a warning sound and snatched at the paper that the younger man pulled out of his helmet-lining. Everyone recognized the purple seal. Raj's hands shook very slightly as he broke it.

He looked up and nodded, then tossed the Gubernatorial Rescript back to Foley and accepted the towel from the servant

'The Brigaderos won some skirmish on the frontier,' he said. 'A regiment of their dragoons whipped on some tribal auxiliaries of ours. Forker is claiming that indicates who the Spirit of Man favors. The Governor has ordered me to reduce the Western Territories to obedience, commencing immediately. With full proconsular authority for one year, or the duration of the war.'

A sigh ran through the room. 'Everything but the men, the dogs and a change of underdrawers is on the ships,' Staenbridge said.

Raj nodded again. 'Tomorrow with the evening tide,' he said softly.

* * *

The main municipal stadium of Port Wager had superb acoustics; it was used for public speaking and theatre, as well as bullfights and baseball games. It was well into the morning when the last unit filed in; since there were so many This Earth cultists in the ranks now, Raj had held religious services by groups of units rather than for the whole force. And dropped in on every one of them personally, and be damned what the priests would say back in East Residence.

He knew what the Spirit of Man, of This Earth and the Stars, needed. What his men needed.

Silence fell like a blade as he walked out. The tiers of seats that rose in a semicircle up the hillside were blue with the uniform coats of the troops; the paler faces turned toward him like flowers towards the sun as he walked up the steps of the timber podium. The blue and silver Starburst backed it; beyond that was the harbor and the masts of the waiting ships. In front the unit banners of thirty battalions were planted in the sand.

Raj faced his men, hands clenched behind his back.

'Fellow soldiers,' he began. A long surf-wave of noise rose from the packed ranks, like a wave over deep ocean. The impact was stunning in the confined space. So was the response when he raised a hand; suddenly he could hear the blood beating in his own ears.

'Fellow soldiers, those of you who've campaigned with me before, in the desert, at Sandoral where we crushed Jamal's armies, in the Southern Territories where we broke a kingdom in one campaign-you and I, we know each other.'

This time the sound was white noise, physically painful. He raised his hand again and felt it cease, like