Through the Darkness

Eleven

Curse the Unkerlanters,” Brigadier Zerbino growled, slamming his fist down on the folding table inside his tent. “Curse the Lagoans and Kuusamans, too, for giving us such a hard time down here on the austral continent. And curse the Kaunians for doing everything they can to lay Algarve low.”

A chorus of, “Aye,” rumbled through the officers he’d assembled for this council of war. Colonel Sabrino didn’t join it. Instead, he leaned over to Captain Domiziano and murmured, “He doesn’t leave many people out, does he?” “He hasn’t cursed the Yaninans yet,” Domiziano whispered back. Just then, Zerbino did: “And curse our alleged allies, whose hands are cold in war and whose feet are swift in retreat.” The Algarvian brigadier had not invited any Yaninans to the council.

“Aye,” the officers chorused again. This time, Sabrino just sat silent. Sooner or later, Zerbino would come to the point. He probably wouldn’t take too long, either. He was by nature a hearty fellow, and usually said what he had to say without ornamenting it too much.

So it proved now. “We are surrounded,” Zerbino declared. “All our enemies aim to attack us at once, hoping we haven’t got enough men and behemoths and dragons to stand against the lot of them.”

For the first time, Sabrino found himself nodding. He’d been saying things like that all along, but nobody wanted to listen to him. Maybe Mezentio had decided not to pour a whole great army down into the land of the Ice People after all.

Sure enough, Zerbino said, “We shall not get all the men or beasts we’ve asked for. Our kingdom needs them more to fight in Unkerlant and to guard the southeastern coast of Derlavai against more raids like the one at Dukstas.” That massive, heavy-knuckled fist pounded the tabletop again. “But we will have the victory here. By the powers above, we will.”

Now Sabrino stuck up a hand. He couldn’t help himself. “How will we manage that, sir?” he asked. “Are you going to go out and wrestle General Junqueiro, best two falls out of three, for the austral continent?”

Zerbino grinned. “Myself, I’d be glad to,” he answered, and Sabrino believed him, “but I don’t think the Lagoan has the stones for it. No, that’s not what I meant, Colonel, however much I wish it were. We aren’t getting the big reinforcements people had been talking about-I already said that. I wish we were, but we aren’t. Instead, what we are getting is two squads of mages and a good-sized shipment of… special personnel, that’s what they’re calling them back in Trapani.”

For a moment, Sabrino hadn’t the faintest notion of what he meant. No doubt the people who’d come up with the bloodless phrase had that in mind. But it didn’t shield him from the truth for long. When he realized what had to lie behind it, he felt colder than the frozen ground on the far side of the Barrier Mountains. He spoke a single horrified word: “Kaunians.”

“Aye, Kaunians,” Zerbino agreed. “A whole great whacking lot of them just got shipped across the Narrow Sea to Heshbon. They’re on their way up here now, along with our mages. Once they get here, we’ll make a magic to squash the Lagoans like so many bugs. Then we mop up, and then most of us can go back to Derlavai and give the Unkerlanters what they deserve.”

Most of the assembled officers were nodding their heads. Several of them said, “Aye,” once more. Sabrino remembered King Mezentio coming out of the rain and into his tent the autumn before in Unkerlant to say like things in like words. We’ll do it once and it will take care of the enemy for good. Everything will be fine after that.

Had everything turned out fine, Algarve wouldn’t need to send men back to Unkerlant now. Sabrino asked the question that had to be asked: “What do we do if something goes wrong, sir?”

Zerbino tossed his head, as if trying to scare off an annoying gnat. “Nothing will go wrong,” he said. “Nothing can go wrong. Or are you saying our mages don’t know their business, Colonel?” His tone implied Sabrino had better not be saying that.

“Sir, this is the land of the Ice People,” Sabrino answered. “Don’t they say it’s easy for mages from the mainland of Derlavai to have their spells go wrong here?”

“I assure you, Colonel,” Zerbino said coldly, “that the men in charge of this necessary operation know everything that is required of them. Your task, and that of your dragonfliers, will be to keep the Lagoans and Kuusamans from flying over the encampment of the special personnel before they are committed to the necessary operation.” More bloodless words. “That is your sole task. Do you understand?”

“Aye, sir.” Sabrino got to his feet and left Zerbino’s tent. Captain Domiziano loyally followed. “Go back if you care to,” Sabrino told him. “You’ll do better for yourself staying than leaving. Besides, I know you think I’m wrong.”

“You are my commander, sir,” Domiziano said. “We guard each other’s backs, in the air and on the ground.” Sabrino bowed, touched.

He was gladder to see the dragons than he had been to stay in Brigadier Zerbino’s tent, a telling measure of his distress. The Algarvians and the handful of Yaninans still with them gave him curious looks as he stalked among the dragons. The beasts themselves glared and screeched at him in the same way they glared and screeched at one another: they weren’t fussy in their mindless hostility.

He wasted no time in ordering extra patrols into the air. Zerbino was bound to be right about that: if the enemy discovered Kaunians were being brought up to the front, they would know what was coming and might be able to take precautions against it. Since the army was several days’ march east of Heshbon, he had plenty of time to get the patrols as he wanted them before the Kaunians arrived.

On the day the blonds trudged wearily into camp, a clan of Ice People also came in, to sell camels to the Algarvians. The robed, hairy natives watched impassively as the Kaunians, covered by Algarvians with sticks, made a separate camp for themselves. The mages who’d come in with the Kaunians had ridden out from Heshbon instead of walking. They were fresh and smiling, unlike the men and women in trousers.

Sabrino didn’t want to hang around the Kaunians. In Zerbino’s eyes, he’d already given notice he was an obstructionist. Hanging around only made things worse. But he couldn’t help himself.

Though Zerbino didn’t say anything, Sabrino knew he’d drawn his notice. He also drew the notice of one of the Ice People. The old man-Sabrino assumed it was an old man, though it might have been an old woman-wore a robe covered with fringes and bits of dried plants and the skins of small animals and birds. That made him a shaman: what passed for a mage among the Ice People. As far as Sabrino could tell, though, the savages of the austral continent knew as little of sorcery as they did of everything else.

By his voice, the shaman did prove to be a man. He spoke in his own guttural language. Sabrino spread his hands to show he didn’t understand. The shaman tried again, this time in Yaninan. Sabrino shook his head. He turned away, not wanting to waste any more time on the barbarian. But the old man seized his arm in a grip of surprising strength, and surprised him again by speaking Lagoan: “You not want them to do this.”

Sabrino wasn’t fluent in Lagoan, but he could understand it and make himself understood. The shaman’s dark eyes bored into his. He was suddenly sure exactly what the old man was talking about. How did the savage know? How could he know? In whatever way, he did know. Maybe there was more to the Ice People’s sorcerous talents than most folk credited. Slowly, Sabrino answered, “No, I am not wanting that.”

“Make them stop,” the shaman said, squeezing his arm harder than ever. “They must not do this thing. The land will cry out against it. I tell you this- I, Jeush, I who know this land and its gods.” The last word was in his own tongue.

Gods, as far as Sabrino was concerned, were more laughable nonsense. Somehow, though, he didn’t feel like laughing at this Jeush. But he shook his head again. “I cannot be doing anything to be changing this. You must be talking to Brigadier Zerbino. He is commanding here, not I.”

Sadly, Jeush shook his head. “He will no hear me.” He spoke with great certainty.

“He is not hearing me, either,” Sabrino said, which was all too true.

“If this thing is done …” Jeush shuddered. The fringes on his robe swayed as they would have in a breeze. So did the defunct creatures and branches tied to them. In a horrid sort of way, it was fascinating to watch. Sabrino only shrugged. Had he thought Zerbino would listen to the shaman, he would have brought Jeush before the brigadier. But, as best he could guess, the old man was right: Zerbino would pay no attention to a barbarian who babbled of gods.

“What will happen?” Sabrino asked, wondering why he wanted the views of a babbling barbarian himself. Because you’re afraid, that’s why, he thought. And he was.

“Nothing good,” Jeush answered. “Everything bad. This is not your land. These gods is not your gods. You not understanding the hereness of here.” He waited to see if that would make Sabrino change his mind. When it didn’t, the old man turned his back with sad deliberation and slowly walked away.

He spoke to the leader of the band of Ice People. Whatever he said didn’t keep the nomads from selling camels to the Algarvians. Once the bargains were done, though, the Ice People rode south at once instead of hanging around the camp begging and stealing as they usually did. Sabrino seemed to be the only one who noticed or cared.

And he didn’t care for long. Getting ready for the attack on the Lagoans that would follow up the sorcerous onslaught took most of his time. During the rest, he was in the air making sure the enemy’s dragons didn’t sniff out the new camp full of Kaunians. By the time the Algarvian mages announced that all was in readiness, he’d almost forgotten about Jeush and his maunderings.

Standing before his wing of dragonfliers, he said, “This sorcery is supposed to knock the Lagoans into a cocked hat. But the mages are braggarts, remember, so we may have a little more work than they expect. Be smart. Be careful. Let’s win.”

With a great thunder of wings, the dragons leapt into the air one after another. The Algarvian army was already on the march. Only the mages and enough soldiers to guard and slaughter the Kaunians stayed behind. Every beat of his dragon’s wings took Sabrino farther from the camp that held the blonds, and he was thoroughly glad of it.

Though no mage himself, he knew when the massacre and the magecraft springing from it began. His dragon seemed to feel it, too, and staggered in the air for a moment before recovering. Maybe Jeush had known something of what he was talking about after all. “But the Lagoans are catching it worse,” Sabrino muttered.

Then he looked down at the advancing Algarvian army, looked down and cried out in dismay. He knew what sort of sorcery the mages wrought, and now he saw it visited not upon the Lagoans against whom it was aimed but upon his own countrymen. Crevasses yawned beneath them, holes closed upon them, flames seared soldiers and behemoths alike. In the blink of an eye, the Algarvians on the austral continent went from army to ruin.

Sabrino flew on for a little while, too numb for the time being to think of doing anything else. Somewhere down on that frozen waste, a hairy old shaman was saying, “I told you so.”

Once upon a time, Sergeant Leudast thought, Sulingen wouldn’t have been a bad town in which to live. Oh, it would get cold in the winter, he had no doubt of that; he came from the north of Unkerlant, which had a milder climate. But it would have been pleasant, sprawled as it was along the Wolter, with plenty of little patches of wood and parkland and with steeply sloping gullies to break up the blocks of homes and shops and manufactories.

But it wasn’t pleasant any more. Algarvian dragons had been plastering it with eggs for weeks, and many of those blocks of homes were nothing but rubble. Leudast, as a matter of fact, didn’t mind rubble as terrain in which to fight. It offered endless places to hide, and he knew how to take advantage of them. The soldiers who hadn’t learned that lesson were mostly dead by now.

Captain Hawart pointed north, though he was careful not to let the motion expose his arm to a beam from the enemy who lurked too close. “Let’s see the cursed Algarvians outflank us and run rings around us in this,” he said.

“Let’s see anybody do anything in this,” Leudast answered, which made his company commander laugh and nod. Men could move freely enough. The company had spent some time digging trenches through the rubble, which made them much less likely to get blazed if they scrambled from one stretch of wreckage to another. But even behemoths had a hard time going where no paths had been cleared among piles of brick and stone and broken boards.

Hawart said, “The only thing they can do now is come straight at us and slug. They’re quicker than we are. They’re more supple than we are. By the powers above, they’re more clever than we are, too. But how much good does any of that do them here?”

“Do you really think they’re more clever than we are?” Leudast asked.

“If we were more clever, we’d be attacking Trapani-they wouldn’t be here,” Hawart answered, and Leudast had a hard time finding a counterargument. But Hawart went on, “But that only takes you so far. If I hit you in the head with a big rock, how clever you are doesn’t matter anymore. And here in Sulingen, we can hit the redheads with lots of big rocks. If they were really clever, they would have made the fight somewhere else.”

Before Leudast could reply, the Algarvians started tossing eggs at the Unkerlanter front line. As usual, Mezentio’s men had made sure that their egg-tossers kept up with their advancing footsoldiers. Leudast cowered in his hole as the rubble around him got ground a little finer. It occurred to him, perhaps more slowly than it should have, that the Algarvians, regardless of whether or not they were clever, could hit the Unkerlanters with big rocks, too.

It also occurred to him that the Algarvians could pin the Unkerlanters in their holes by tossing eggs and then finish them with the horrific magic they made from the life energy of slaughtered Kaunians. He hoped they wouldn’t think of that along this particular stretch of the line.

Off to his right, someone shrieked. Maybe the redheads wouldn’t need to be clever to go forward. Maybe they could just go on killing the way they’d been doing for quite a while.

Another cry rose, this one alarm, not pain: “They’re coming!” Eggs kept right on landing. Maybe Mezentio’s men didn’t care if they killed a few of their own. Maybe they just figured it was a good bargain, and that getting rid of the Unkerlanters counted for more. And maybe they were right about that, too.

If they were coming, Leudast didn’t want-didn’t dare-to get caught in his hole. He popped up and started to blaze. An Algarvian tumbled down, and another. More dove for cover. Some kept coming. His mouth went dry-quite a few were coming, more than he thought he and his comrades could hold back. He’d already made himself expensive. Now he had to see how he could cost the redheads even more before they finally pulled him down.

And then, from the rear, he heard one of the sweetest sounds he’d ever known; officers’ whistles shrilling reinforcements into action. “Urra!” the soldiers shouted. “King Swemmel! Urra!” They rushed past Leudast, meeting the Algarvian charge with one of their own.

They were new men, unblooded, ferried north over the Wolter and thrown straight into the fight. Everything about them proclaimed as much, from their clean, unfaded tunics to the way they ran straight up rather than hunching forward to give the redheads smaller targets. A lot of them fell before they ever came to grips with Mezentio’s veteran troopers. But enough Unkerlanters lived to stop the Algarvian advance before it really got going.

Leudast was already moving forward when Captain Hawart shouted, “Come on-we’re not going to let the new lads have all the fun!”

It wasn’t fun. Only a madman would have reckoned it fun. It was combat at the close quarters of fornication, and hardly less intimate. The Algarvians were as determined to go forward as the Unkerlanters were to drive them back. Men fought one another with beams, with sticks swung like clubs, with knives, with feet and fists and teeth. No one on either side threw up his hands.

An Algarvian who had to be out of charges for his stick tried to brain Leudast with it. Leudast had no time to blaze him; he had all he could do to duck. The redhead threw the dead stick at him. He knocked it aside with his own stick as the Algarvian drew a knife and rushed. He knocked the wicked-looking blade aside, too. Then he could blaze, could and did. The Algarvian howled and toppled. Leudast blazed him again, and the howling stopped.

“Forward!” Captain Hawart shouted again.

Forward Leudast went-a handful of paces, till he spied a likely-looking hole in the ground. He jumped down into it without the slightest sense of shame or embarrassment. Aye, he wanted to drive the redheads out of Sulingen. But he also wanted to live to see them go. He didn’t think that was likely, not the way things stood, but it was what he wanted.

Hisses overhead and crashes behind and near the Algarvians’ lines announced that the egg-tossers on his own side weren’t so sleepy as usual. Captain Hawart had been right-the Algarvians lacked the room to maneuver and deceive here. Out on the plains, the Unkerlanters’ egg-tossers hadn’t always been able to get where they were needed while they were still needed there. In Sulingen, that problem didn’t arise. They were already where they needed to be. All they had to do was toss. They could manage that.

Little by little, the pressure from the redheads eased. Leudast let out a long, weary sigh. “Held ‘em again,” he said to no one in particular.

Soldiers dragged wounded men to the rear, to see what mages and surgeons could do for them. That held true no matter to which side the men at the front belonged, no matter whether they wore gray tunics or tan kilts. The Algarvians rarely blazed at soldiers helping wounded comrades; Leudast and his countrymen usually extended the redheads the same courtesy. It was one of the few courtesies both sides extended.

A runner came up with a big sack full of loaves of black bread. Leudast grabbed one and bit into it. It was heavy and chewy, bound to have more barley and rye flour in it than wheat. He didn’t care. It was food, and food for which he didn’t have to go foraging through the rubble. He didn’t mind taking what had been other people’s dainties; the real trouble was that he didn’t find them often enough to keep his own belly full.

One of the raw Unkerlanter soldiers-a lot less raw now than he had been a couple of hours before-spoke to Leudast: “Sergeant? Sir?”

He was raw. “I’m just a sergeant,” Leudast said gruffly. “You don’t call me sir. You call officers sir. Have you got that?”

“Aye, sir-uh, Sergeant.” Beneath his dirty, swarthy hide, the young soldier blushed like a girl. Leudast didn’t much blame him for being confused. He’d been doing an officer’s work himself, commanding a company, and he was far from the only sergeant who could say that. And not all the real officers in Unkerlant’s army were bluebloods these days, as they had been during the Six Years’ War. King Swemmel had killed off a lot of noblemen during and after the Twinkings War, and the Algarvians had killed off a lot more since.

“Well, what do you want, then?” Leudast asked, less of a growl in his voice this time. “And who are you, anyway?”

“Oh! My name’s Aldrian.. Sergeant.” The youngster beamed at doing it right. “What I want to know is, is it always going to be like this? His wave encompassed the battered, worthless stretch of ground the Algarvians hadn’t quite been able to seize.

Leudast considered. While he considered, he ate another big bite of bread. Slowly, deliberately, he chewed and swallowed. Then he said, “You figure it out. The redheads want Sulingen. King Swemmel says they can’t have it. If they keep throwing in soldiers and he keeps throwing in soldiers, what do you think will happen?”

By his accent, Aldrian came out of Cottbus. And, again by his accent, he was an educated young man. He really did furrow up his unwrinkled brow and think it over. Leudast could tell to the heartbeat when he reached his conclusion. He could also tell Aldrian didn’t much fancy the answer he got. Turning a stricken face toward Leudast, he asked, “Do you think any of us will be left alive by the time it’s over here, however it turns out?”

After eating some more bread, Leudast answered, “Well, it could be worse.”

“How?” Aldrian’s eyes widened.

“We could be Kaunians,” Leudast said, and drew his thumb across his throat; the nail rasped on whiskers he hadn’t had the chance to shave any time lately. “You know what Mezentio’s mages do to them, and why?” He waited for Aldrian to nod. Then, with deliberate brutality, he went on, “Or we could be old men and women King Swemmel’s inspectors can’t find any other use for any more. You know what our mages do to them, and why?”

“Aye.” Aldrian nodded again. Though his features were pinched as if at the smell of rotting meat-not that there wasn’t plenty of that stink around-he still managed to bring out Swemmel’s favorite catchword: “Efficiency.”

Leudast spat. “That for efficiency.” Back before the war heated up to its present boil, he never would have dared do such a thing, for fear of Swemmel’s inspectors. But they couldn’t condemn him to much worse than what he’d already had: something more than a year of fighting the Algarvians.

He’d shocked Aldrian-he could see as much. “Where would we be if everyone said that?” the youngster asked.

He’d intended it for a rhetorical question. Leudast wasn’t long on rhetoric, and so he answered it anyway: “Where would we be? About where we are anyhow, I expect.” He looked a challenge toward Aldrian, defying the recruit to disagree with him.

Aldrian opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Good fellow,” Leudast told him. “If you live, you’ll learn.”

Once upon a time, the neighborhood through which Bembo and Oraste strolled had been among the better ones in Gromheort. It still showed faint signs of that, as a desperately ill woman of fifty-five might show signs of having been a beauty at twenty. Nothing in Gromheort was very prepossessing these days. Bembo said, “I hate this place.”

Oraste yawned in his face. “So what? There are plenty of places where you’d do a lot more than hate ‘em. Sulingen, for instance. Set Gromheort next to Sulingen and it doesn’t look so bad, you know that?”

“Set anything next to Sulingen and it doesn’t look so bad,” Bembo said with a shudder. “That doesn’t make Gromheort look good. Nothing would make Gromheort look good.”

“Doesn’t seem like anything will make you quit bellyaching, either, does it?” Oraste said.

“Oh, shut up,” Bembo snarled, nettled enough to forget that Oraste wouldn’t have a lot of trouble breaking him in two. A Forthwegian-a middle-aged man, his neat beard going gray-was walking along across the street with his head turned toward the constables. “What’s so fornicating funny?” Bembo yelled at him.

“Nothing in Gromheort is funny these days,” the Forthwegian answered in Algarvian almost as fluent as the constable’s.

Bembo set hands on hips and sent Oraste a triumphant look. “There? You see? Even a Forthwegian can tell.”

The other constable gestured dismissively. “What does he know about it? He’s not going to want to give us a bouquet any which way.” He glowered at the Forthwegian. “What in blazes do you know about how things are, anyway?”

Bembo expected the local to duck his head and make himself scarce. That was what he would have done in the face of a couple of occupiers. It was what most sensible Forthwegians did. And, indeed, the fellow started to do just that.

But then, as if arguing with himself, he shook his head and strode across the cobbles toward Bembo and Oraste. “Do you want me to tell you what I know, gentlemen? I can do that, if you care to listen.”

“Is he nuts?” Oraste whispered to Bembo.

“I don’t know,” Bembo whispered back. The Forthwegian wasn’t acting strange, except for being willing to speak his mind. But, in Gromheort, that was pretty strange in and of itself. Bembo let his right hand fall to the stick he wore on his belt. He raised his voice a little. “That’s close enough, pal.”

The Forthwegian not only stopped, he bowed, almost as if he were an Algarvian himself. He laughed, and his laugh was harsh and bitter. “I am not a dangerous madman. It is a tempting role, but not one I can play. There are times I wish I could, believe you me.”

That was fancy talk. It did nothing for Oraste. He rumbled, “Come to the point or get lost.”

With another bow, the Forthwegian said, “I shall. My nephew beat my son to death with a chair, and nobody did a thing about it. Nobody will do a thing about it. I have no chance of getting anybody to do anything about it, either. Should I think all is well in Gromheort?”

His tunic was pretty clean and pretty stylish-not that Bembo thought the knee-length tunics Forthwegian men wore had much in the way of style. He spoke like an educated man. He had nerve and to spare-that he was speaking so openly to Algarvians proved that. With money, education, and nerve. . “Why can’t you get anybody to do anything about it?” Bembo asked in honest bewilderment.

“Why?” the Forthwegian said. “I’ll tell you why, by the powers above. Because my nephew, may the powers below eat him, was on leave from Plegmund’s Brigade when he did it. Have you any more questions, sir?”

“Oh, you’re that son of a whore,” Oraste said. “I heard about you.” Bembo nodded; he’d heard about this fellow, too. Oraste shrugged. “No, you can’t do anything about that. Go on, get lost.” The words stayed gruff. The tone, now, wasn’t. Had it come from another man, Bembo might even have called it sympathetic. From Oraste, that was hard to imagine.

“I didn’t expect you to do anything,” the Forthwegian answered. “But you asked why nothing was funny. Now I have told you. Good day.” With another bow, he strode off.

“Poor bugger,” Bembo said. “Once you’re in Plegmund’s Brigade, you can do whatever you bloody well please, as long as you don’t do it to an Algarvian.”

“That’s the truth, and that’s the way it ought to be, too,” Oraste said. “But it’s not how that fellow would see things-I can see that.” He shrugged. “Nobody ever said life was fair. Come on.”

On they went. When they turned a corner, Bembo’s gaze fell on a man walking along with the hood to his long tunic pulled up over the top of his head. On a warm summer’s day, that drew the constable’s eye almost as readily as a pretty girl would have. The features under that hood didn’t look particularly Forthwegian: fair skin, straight nose. And then Bembo realized those features did look familiar. “Powers above!” he exclaimed. “It’s that old Kaunian from Oyngestun.”

“What is?” Oraste asked. Bembo pointed. The other constable peered, then nodded. “Well, you’re right for once. He knows he’s not supposed to be out here, too. Now he’s fair game.”

“He sure is.” Bembo raised his voice. “Hold it right there! Aye, you, you ugly old Kaunian sack of manure!”

The old man-Brivibas, that was his name-looked as if he was thinking of bolting. Then his shoulders slumped; he must have realized that was a mistake all too likely to prove fatal. Instead, he turned toward Bembo and Oraste with a curious sort of fatalism. “Very well. You have me. Do your worst.”

Maybe he said something like that in the hope of softening the constables’ hearts. It might have worked with Bembo: not likely, but it might have. With Oraste, such an invitation was just asking for trouble.

Bembo tried to head off his colleague, though he couldn’t really have said why: he had no great use for Kaunians. “All right, what sort of excuse are you going to give us for sneaking out of your district this time?” he demanded of the old man.

“No excuse, only the truth: I am still trying to learn what has become of my granddaughter,” Brivibas answered.

“Not good enough, old man,” Oraste said, and pulled his bludgeon free. The Kaunian bowed his head, waiting.

“Hang on a minute,” Bembo told Oraste, who looked at him as if he were out of his mind. To Brivibas, Bembo said, “Why do you think she’s here? I mean, here in this part of town in particular?” If the Kaunian didn’t have a good answer, nothing Bembo could say would keep Oraste from having his sport.

Brivibas said, “I believe she ran off with a Forthwegian youth named Ealstan, who lives somewhere along this street.”

“I believe you’re a fool,” Bembo said. If the girl was living with a Forthwegian, she was bound to be better off than any of the Kaunians jammed into their crowded district. Nobody would throw her into a caravan car and send her west, or maybe east, to be sacrificed, either. Was the old fool too blind to see that?

To the constable’s surprise, tears glinted in Brivibas’ eyes. “She is all I have in the world. Do you wonder that I want to know what has become of her?”

“Sometimes you’re better off not knowing,” Bembo answered.

Brivibas stared at him as if he’d just declared the world was flat or there was no such thing as magecraft. “Knowledge is always preferable to ignorance,” he declared.

“Well, pal, here’s some knowledge you didn’t have before,” Oraste said, and hit Brivibas in the ribs with his club. The old Kaunian groaned and folded up like a concertina. Oraste hit him again. He went to one knee. Oraste hit him once more, then seemed to lose interest. “You understand now?” he barked.

“Aye,” Brivibas said, doing his best not to let his pain show.

“We catch you around here again, the mages’ll never get the chance to sacrifice you,” Oraste went on. “You understand that?”

“Aye,” Brivibas said again.

Oraste kicked him, not so hard as he might have. “Get out of here, then.” It wasn’t mercy, but was about as close as he came.

“Cursed old idiot,” Bembo said as the Kaunian staggered away. “You watch, you wait-sooner or later he’s going to come out once too often. Then he’ll either get blazed or get stomped or get shipped west, depending on who catches him and how much he frosts people. And it’ll be his own stupid fault, too.” Blaming Brivibas meant he didn’t even have to think about blaming Algarve for the Kaunian’s fate.

Oraste didn’t worry about such things. All he said was, “Good riddance.” Then his eyes, green as a panther’s, narrowed. “You know, I wonder if the old sod’s somehow connected to that other fellow we were talking with-the mouthy Forthwegian, I mean.”

Bembo took off his hat, fanned himself with it, and scratched his head. “How do you figure that?”

“Why would a soldier in Plegmund’s Brigade brawl with his kin?” Oraste asked, and provided his own answer: “Maybe on account of they’re Kaunian-lovers, and that makes him want to heave. We already know the old blond’s granddaughter ran off with a Forthwegian, right? Hangs together pretty good, you ask me.”

“Well, I’ll be a son of a whore,” Bembo said, staring at his partner as if he’d never seen him before. “That Forthwegian looked like he had money, too. He’d have to have money, or he couldn’t afford to live in this part of town. If you’re right, we can shake him down for a bundle.”

Oraste grunted. “Even if I’m wrong, we can shake him down for a bundle. He’s not going to want that story spreading no matter what.”

“That’s true.” Bembo’s head bobbed up and down in eager agreement. “Let’s go track down that murder he was talking about it. Somebody’ll know everything there is to know about it, and that’ll tell us who he is and how much he’s liable to have.” He grinned. “Constabulary work at its finest.” And so it was. That he’d be using it to fatten his belt pouch, not to run down some desperate criminal, bothered him not at all.

Once he and Oraste started asking questions back at the barracks, they got answers in short order. The only trouble was, Bembo didn’t much like the answers they got. Neither did Oraste. “You’re so cursed smart,” he said with a fine curl of the lip. “Sounds like this Hestan bugger’s already paying off everybody and his mother. We can’t touch him, not unless we want half the Algarvian bigwigs in town landing on our backs.”

“How was I supposed to know?” Bembo struck a pose of melodramatic innocence. “Besides, this was your brainstorm, not mine, so why are you blaming me?”

“Why not?” Oraste retorted. “You’re handy.” Bembo started to make a rude suggestion, but held his tongue instead. For one thing, he was nervous about getting Oraste too angry. And, for another, his partner had a point- blaming whoever looked handy was also constabulary work at its finest.

Vanai stared out the window of her flat and worried. Down in the street, Forthwegian rioters hurled rocks and bricks and anything else they could lay their hands on at an outnumbered band of Algarvian constables. A constable went down, clutching at his bleeding head. His pals wasted no time after that, but started blazing into the crowd.

Screams rose. The Forthwegians scattered, leaving wounded men writhing on the cobblestones and one woman who wasn’t moving at all. Before long, the rioters would attack some other Algarvians somewhere else.

“And I hope they get some more of them, too,” Vanai muttered. But that wasn’t why she worried. Ealstan had left the flat to cast accounts bright and early in the morning. This latest round of riots had broken out a couple of hours later. Vanai had no idea why. Maybe the Algarvians had committed another outrage. Maybe, too, the long, hot summer days were making the people of Eoforwic irritable. Whatever the cause-if there was a cause-how was Ealstan supposed to get home through the chaos?

As always when things went wrong, Vanai wondered, What would I do without Ealstan? She depended on him far more than she ever had on Brivibas. She also cared for him far more than she’d cared for her grandfather. If Brivibas had fallen over dead one morning, she could easily have gone on with her life. Without Ealstan …

How could I even go out and buy food? How could I make money to buy food? That second question, unfortunately, had an obvious answer. Having sold, or rather traded, her body to keep her grandfather out of a labor gang, she couldn’t dismiss the notion of prostituting herself out of hand. But if the redheads caught her and flung her into the tiny Kaunian quarter or simply shipped her west, even that wouldn’t do her any good.

“Curfew!” an Algarvian shouted in Forthwegian down below. “Sunset curfew! Anyone on streets after sunsetting, we blazing!” He walked along, then shouted his warning-threat? promise? — again.

Ealstan hadn’t come back to the flat by the time the sun went down. Dully, mechanically, Vanai went through the motions of getting supper ready. She made enough for two. She always did. Then she lowered the fire in the stove to next to nothing, put some extra water in the stew to keep it from drying out, and settled down to wait.

Without looking to see what she grabbed, she pulled a book out of one of the cases in the front room. When she found she was holding You Too Can Be a Mage, she made a horrible face and started to thrust it back onto the shelf. If its spell had been worth anything, she could have made herself look like a Forthwegian. Then she wouldn’t have had to worry about going out on the street.

But instead of putting away the book, she carried it over to the sofa and sat down. She opened it to the spell that had betrayed her. Most of it still looked as if it should have worked. That part that had gone wrong was plainly a botched translation from Kaunian into Forthwegian.

“All right, then,” she said under her breath. “I know what it’s supposed to do. To do that, how should it have read in Kaunian?” She was using that language; it was hers-where it obviously wasn’t the author’s. If she could reconstruct the original, maybe she could do her own translation into Forthwegian.

She decided to try. Whether she could or not, it would help keep her from thinking-too much-about where Ealstan might be. She quickly realized she couldn’t get away with rebuilding just the garbled section. She would have to start from the beginning if she was ever going to get anywhere.

She’d just reached the part that had brought her to grief on trying the spell when she heard the knock she’d been waiting for, the knock she’d feared she wouldn’t hear again. She sprang up from the sofa, sending You Too Can Be a Mage flying one way and her translation another. Only when she reached for the bar on the door did she discover she was still holding her pen.

“Where have you been?” she exclaimed as Ealstan walked into the flat. Because of her translating, she spoke in Kaunian, not the Forthwegian they used more often. “Are you all right?”

“I am fine,” Ealstan answered, also in Kaunian. “I am tired and hungry and thirsty, but I am fine. I had to move carefully, to stay away from trouble and also to stay away from the redheaded barbarians.” He brought that phrase out with considerable relish.

“Powers above, I’m so glad to hear it,” Vanai said. “Come on, sit down, and I’ll get you supper.” Her own belly rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten anything, either. She took the stew off the fire. It wasn’t what it would have been had Ealstan got home on time, but she didn’t care. She poured big cups of rough red wine for both of them.

“This is all splendid. Thank you,” Ealstan said. When he spoke Kaunian, he did so with a slow seriousness that made everything he said more earnest, more important, than it would have in casual Forthwegian. Only a starving man would have called the overcooked stew splendid in any language, but, by the way he shoveled it down, he came pretty close.

“Do you know what made things burst this time?” Vanai asked.

Ealstan shook his head. “I heard four different tales as I was going through the streets. One person says one thing, another something else.” He got all his case endings right there, and grinned in modest triumph.

“The Algarvians are blazing to kill out there,” Vanai said. “I saw them. I was frightened for you.”

“I was a little frightened myself, once or twice,” Ealstan said-no small admission from him. “I took a long time coming home because I did not want to run into the redheads. I already told you that.” Ealstan hesitated, then added, “I saw several bodies in the street.”

“There was one right outside this block of flats-a woman,” Vanai said, “and some wounded men, too.”

“That woman’s body is gone. I saw others.” Ealstan changed the subject, and changed languages with it: “What were you doing there when I got home?”

“Trying to make sense out of You Too Can Be a Mage.” Vanai switched to Forthwegian, too. “I was seeing if I could figure out where that idiot went wrong in translating his transformation spell out of Kaunian and into Forthwegian. If I can figure out how the Kaunian really ran, I can do a better job of turning it back into Forthwegian.”

“Why bother?” Ealstan asked. “If you’re sure you’ve got the Kaunian right, leave it alone and use it. I guess the next question is, how sure are you?”

“Pretty sure,” Vanai said, and felt the corners of her mouth turn down.

Ealstan frowned, too. “You can get into all sorts of trouble using a spell you’re pretty sure is good. Last time, you made me look Kaunian instead of doing anything to yourself. We don’t want that to happen again, and we don’t want anything worse to happen, either.”

“I know,” Vanai said, “but if only I were free to move around in Eoforwic-well, after things calm down again, anyhow. Earlier today, I was thinking that being caged up here wasn’t so bad. I haven’t thought anything like that for a long time. I don’t think I ever thought anything like that before.”

Ealstan nodded. “I don’t blame you. It’s.. pretty bad out there. Some of the fighting came right up to Ethelhelm’s block of flats, and that sort of thing doesn’t usually go on in the fancy parts of town.”

“What did your singer friend have to say?” Vanai asked. “Was he cheering the rioters on? Anybody with Kaunian blood ought to be.”

“I don’t quite know.” Ealstan sighed. “He doesn’t like the redheads- we’ve seen that-but he doesn’t want to lose what he’s got, either. To hang on to it, he has to play along with them, at least some. And when he plays along with them, he starts …” He groped for a phrase.

Vanai suggested one: “Forgiving things?”

“No, that goes too far.” Ealstan shook his head. “Not seeing things, maybe.” He held up a hand before Vanai could say anything. “Aye, I know that’s just about as bad. Maybe not quite, though.”

“Maybe.” Vanai didn’t believe it, but didn’t feel like starting an argument.

Again, Ealstan seemed to want to change the subject: “If you can get the magic to work, that would be wonderful. It would mean we’d be safe moving out of this flat, since. .” He shook his head. “We could move out.”

What hadn’t he said there? Not since you wouldn’t look like a Kaunian anymore. If he’d meant that, he would have said it. What then? Another possibility sprang into Vanai’s mind: since Ethelhelm knows where we live and might blab to the Algarvians. Ealstan wouldn’t want to say that out loud. He probably didn’t even want to think it. But maybe he hadn’t changed the subject after all.

He cocked his head to one side. “I wonder what you’d look like as a Forthwegian. Would you feel different, too?” He used his hands to sketch figures in the air, contrasting her slimness to his own more solid build, which was typical of Forthwegians.

“I don’t know,” Vanai answered. “I’m not really a mage, remember.” Her grandfather would have been able to say. She was sure of that. Brivibas knew a lot about magecraft, especially the history of magecraft. He’d used sorcery in his own historical research. She wondered how much else he might use if he wanted to. A good deal, she suspected. But would he ever think to do so? That was another question altogether.

Ealstan’s thoughts had been running along another, and a distinctively masculine, ley line. With a small chuckle, he said, “If you look different and feel different, too, it would almost be like making love to somebody else.”

“Would it?” Vanai eyed him from under lowered brows. “And do you want to be making love to somebody else?”

He was bright enough to recognize the danger in that one, and hastily shook his head. “Of course not,” he answered, and Vanai had to hide a smile at how emphatic he sounded. But he didn’t quite back away from everything he’d said: “It would just be like choosing a different posture, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Vanai said. Ealstan was fonder of different postures than she was, for Major Spinello had forced them on her. But Ealstan didn’t know about Spinello, for which Vanai was heartily glad. She gave her lover the benefit of the doubt. “All right, sweetheart.”

And then, while Ealstan worked on columns of figures (“Powers above only know when I’ll be able to get these to my clients,” he said, but kept working anyhow), Vanai went back to picking the Forthwegian spell to pieces and rebuilding it in classical Kaunian. When she noticed her new version had a partial rhyme scheme, her hopes lifted: the original surely would have rhymed, to make memorizing it easier. She tried alternative words to give more rhymes. Some she discarded; others fit as well as a snug pair of trousers.

“I have it, I think,” she told Ealstan. “Shall I try it?”

“If you want to,” he answered, “and if you think you can reverse anything that goes wrong.”

Vanai studied her new text. She wasn’t sure of that, and Ealstan, she had to admit, showed good sense in asking her to be. She sighed. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and then, “Can you bring me some books on magecraft?”

“Tomorrow? No,” Ealstan said. “When things settle down? Of course.” Vanai sighed again, but then she nodded.

Cornelu didn’t like walking through the streets of Setubal. For one thing, he still had trouble reading Lagoan, which reminded him how much a stranger he was in the capital of Lagoas and how much a stranger he’d remain. He had never wanted to be a Lagoan; what he wanted was to be a free Sibian in a free Sibiu.

But walking through Setubal also reminded him that even a free Sibiu could never hope to measure itself against Lagoas again. That hurt. Setubal alone held as many people, did as much business, as all the five islands of his native kingdom. And, while Setubal was the greatest city in Lagoas, it was far from being the only Lagoan city of consequence.

How do people live here without going mad? Cornelu wondered as Lagoans streamed past him, every one of them moving faster than he cared to. More ley lines came together at Setubal than anywhere else in the world; that was why the city had blazed into prominence over the past couple of hundred years. And the sorcerous energy seemed to fill the people as well as the place. Cornelu knew that couldn’t be literally true, but it felt as if it were.

A hawker waved a news sheet in his face and bawled something half comprehensible. He caught the words Ice People, and supposed the headline had to do with the Lagoans’ continuing advances on the austral continent. He was all for those advances, as he was all for anything that hurt the Algarvians, but he didn’t care to spend money on a sheet he could barely puzzle out. The news-sheet vendor said a couple of uncomplimentary things that weren’t much different in Lagoan from what they would have been in Sibian.

A few blocks later, Cornelu turned the corner and strode up to the ornate neoclassical headquarters of the Lagoan Guild of Mages. No one stopped him from approaching the great white marble pile, and no one stopped him from going inside, either. It wasn’t so much that he looked like a Lagoan; he could have been as hairy as a man of the Ice People and no one would have stopped him. Business was business.

He knew the way to Grandmaster Pinhiero’s offices. He’d been there before. He hadn’t got what he wanted, but he did know the way. The grandmaster’s secretary, a portly fellow named Brinco, looked up from the papers he was methodically going through. He beamed. “Commander Cornelu! Good to see you again!” He spoke Algarvian, which he knew Cornelu understood.

“Good day,” Cornelu answered. Brinco had met him only once, and that months before. But the mage remembered him right away. That bespoke either some unobtrusive sorcery or a well-honed recollection.

When Cornelu said no more, Brinco asked, “And how may I serve you today, your Excellency?”

He sounded as if nothing would delight him more than doing Cornelu’s bidding. Cornelu knew that to be untrue, but couldn’t decide whether it flattered or irked him. He decided to stick to the business on which he’d come: “I have heard that the mage Fernao, whom I once brought back from the land of the Ice People and who had the misfortune to go there again, was wounded. Is it so?”

“And where did you hear this?” Brinco asked, nothing in his face or voice giving any sign about whether it was so. Cornelu stood mute. When it became clear he wouldn’t answer, Brinco shrugged, said, “Good to see you again,” once more, and returned to his papers.

Curse you, Cornelu thought. But Brinco had power and he had none; that was part of what being an exile meant. His stiff-necked Sibian pride almost made him turn on his heel and walk out. In the end, though, he growled, “I was in a tavern with the dragonflier who brought in a man he thought to be Fernao.”

“Ah.” Brinco’s nod was almost conspiratorial. “Aye, dragonfliers will run on at the mouth. I suppose it comes from being unable to talk with their beasts, the way you leviathan-riders do.”

“It could be.” Cornelu waited for the Lagoan to say more. When Brinco didn’t, Cornelu folded his arms across his chest and fixed the grandmaster’s secretary with a cold stare. “I answered your question, sir. You might have the common courtesy to answer mine.”

“You already have a good notion as to that answer, though,” Brinco said. Cornelu looked at him. It wasn’t a glare, not really, but it served the same purpose. A slow flush mounted to Brinco’s cheeks. “Very well, sir: aye, that is true. He was wounded, and is recovering.”

Cornelu took from his tunic pocket an envelope. “I hope you will do me the honor of conveying this to him: my best wishes, and my hope that his health may be fully restored.”

Brinco took the envelope. “It would be my distinct privilege to do so.” He coughed discreetly. “You understand, I trust, that we may examine the note before forwarding it. I intend no personal offense in telling you this: I merely note that these are hard and dangerous times.”

“That they are,” Cornelu said. “Your kingdom trusted me to join in the raid on Dukstas, so of course you would assume I am engaged in sending your mage subversive messages.”

Grandmaster Pinhiero’s secretary flushed again, but said, “We would do the same, sir, were you his Majesty’s eldest son.”

“You are-” Cornelu broke off short. He’d been about to call Brinco a liar, but something in the mage’s voice compelled belief. With hardly a pause, Cornelu went on, “-saying Fernao is involved in work of some considerable importance.”

“I am not saying any such thing,” Brinco replied. Now he sent Cornelu a look as chilly as the one the Sibian leviathan-rider had given him. “Will there be anything more, Commander?”

His clear implication was that there had better not be. And, in fact, Cornelu had done what he’d come to do. Bowing to Brinco, he answered, “No, sir,” and turned and strode away. He was not a mage, so he couldn’t possibly have sensed Brinco’s eyes boring into his back. He couldn’t have, but he would have taken oath that he did.

Outside the Guild building, he paused and considered. He knew, or thought he knew, which ley-line caravan would take him back to the harbor, back to the leviathan pens, back to the barracks where he and his fellow exiles had painfully built a tiny, stuffy re-creation of Sibiu in this foreign land.

But that satisfied him hardly more than Setubal itself did. Unlike some of his countrymen, he recognized how artificial their life inside the barracks was. He wanted the real thing. He wanted to go back to Tirgoviste town and have everything the way it was before the Algarvians invaded his homeland. Wanting that and knowing he couldn’t have it ate at him from the inside out.

Instead of lining up at the caravan stop, he tramped down the street, looking for… he didn’t know what. Something he didn’t have-he knew that much. Would he even recognize it if he saw it? He shrugged, almost as if he were an Algarvian. How could he know?

Plenty of Lagoans seemed to have trouble figuring out what they wanted, too. They paused in front of shop windows to examine the goods on display- even now, in wartime, goods richer and more various than Cornelu would have found in Tirgoviste town before the fighting started. Cornelu wanted to shout at them. Didn’t they know how much hardship was loose in the world?

Here in Setubal, it showed in only one place: the menus of the eateries. Local custom was to post the bill of fare outside each establishment, so passersby could decide whether they cared to come in and buy. Cornelu approved of the custom. He would have approved of it more had he made easier going of the menus. Lagoan names for domestic animals-cows, sheep, swine-came from Algarvic roots, so he had little trouble with them. But the words for the meats derived from those animals-beef, mutton, pork-were of Kaunian origin, which meant he had to pause and contemplate them before he could figure out what was supposed to be what. Similar traps lurked elsewhere.

These days, though, he had fewer things to contemplate. Almost every eatery’s menu had several items scratched out, generally those involving things imported from the mainland of Derlavai. Beef dishes were also fewer than they had been, and more expensive. Cornelu sighed. That didn’t seem to be enough acknowledgment of the war.

When he saw an eatery offering crab cakes, though, he went inside. For one thing, the Lagoan name was almost identical to its Sibian equivalent, so he had no doubt what he’d be getting. For another, he liked crab cakes, and couldn’t remember the last time they’d served them at the barracks.

Inside, the place looked anything but fancy, but it was clean enough. A cook with red hair going gray cracked crabs behind the counter. Cornelu sat down. A young woman with a family resemblance to the cook came up to him. “What’ll it be?” she asked briskly.

“Crab cakes. Rhubarb pie. Ale.” Cornelu could get along in Lagoan, especially on basics like food.

But the waitress cocked her head to one side. “You’re from Sibiu.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t scornful, either, which rather surprised Cornelu: most Lagoans thought well of themselves, not so well of anyone else. At his nod, the woman turned to the cook. “He’s from the old kingdom, Father.”

“It happens,” the cook said in Lagoan. Then he switched to Sibian with a lower-class accent he wouldn’t have learned in school: “My father was a fisherman who found he was making more money in Setubal than back on the five islands, so he settled here. He married a Lagoan lady, but I grew up speaking both languages.”

“Ah. I got out when Mezentio’s men overran Tirgoviste town,” Cornelu said, relishing the chance to use his own tongue. He nodded to the waitress, really noticing her for the first time. “And you-do you speak Sibian, too?”

“I follow it,” she answered in Lagoan. “Speak a little.” That was Sibian, a good deal more Lagoan-flavored than her father’s. She returned to the language with which she was obviously more familiar: “Now let’s get your dinner taken care of. I’ll bring the ale first off.”

It was strong and nutty and good. The crab cakes, when they came, reminded Cornelu of home. He ate them and the sweet, sweet rhubarb pie with real enjoyment. And speaking Sibian with the cook and his daughter was indeed enjoyable, too. The man’s name was Balio, which might almost have been Sibian; his daughter was called Janira, a name as Lagoan as any Cornelu could imagine.

“This is all wonderful,” he said. “You should have more customers.” He was, at the moment, the only one in the place, which was why he could go on speaking Sibian.

“It’ll get livelier tonight,” Balio said. “We have a pretty fair evening crowd.”

Janira winked at Cornelu. “You just have to come back here and eat up everything we’ve got. Then we’ll get rich.”

She spoke Lagoan, but he could answer in Sibian: “You’ll get rich, and I’ll get fat.” He laughed. He didn’t laugh very often these days; he could feel his face twisting in ways it wasn’t used to. “Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.” Janira laughed, too.

Qutuz said, “The Marquis Balastro is here to see you, your Excellency.” His nostrils twitched. He ached to say more; Hajjaj could tell as much.

And, since his visitor was the minister from Algarve. . “Let me guess,” Hajjaj said. “Has he come to call in what we Zuwayzin would reckon proper costume?”

“Aye,” his secretary answered, and rolled his eyes. “It’s not customary.”

“He’ll do it now and again anyhow,” Hajjaj said.

“I wish he wouldn’t,” Qutuz said. “He’s very pale, the parts of him his clothes usually cover. And-he’s mutilated, you know.” For a moment, the secretary cupped a protective hand over the organ to which he was referring.

“Algarvians have that done when they turn fourteen,” Hajjaj said calmly. “They call it a rite of manhood.”

Qutuz rolled his eyes again. “And they reckon us barbarians because we don’t drape ourselves in cloth!” Hajjaj shrugged; that had occurred to him, too, every now and again. With a sigh, his secretary said, “Shall I show him in?”

“Oh, by all means, by all means,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister answered. “I must admit, I’m not broken-hearted about avoiding tunic and kilt myself. It’s a hot day.” In Bishah, home of hot days, that was a statement to conjure with.

Having seen Balastro’s portly, multicolored form undraped before, Hajjaj knew what to expect. Zuwayzin took nudity for granted. Balastro wore bareness as theatrically as he wore clothes. “Good day, your Excellency!” he boomed. “Lovely weather you’re having here-if you’re fond of bake ovens, anyhow.”

“It is a trifle warm,” Hajjaj replied; he wouldn’t admit to a foreigner what he’d conceded to Qutuz. “You will of course take tea and wine and cakes with me, sir?”

“Of course,” Balastro said, a little sourly. The Zuwayzi ritual of hospitality was designed to keep people from talking business too soon. But, since Balastro had chosen Zuwayzi costume, or lack of same, he could hardly object to following the other customs of Hajjaj’s kingdom.

In any case, Balastro seldom objected to food or wine. He ate and drank- and sipped enough tea for politeness’ sake-and made small talk while the refreshments sat on a silver tray between him and Hajjaj. Only after Qutuz came in and carried away the tray did the Algarvian minister lean forward from the nest of cushions he’d constructed. Even then, polite still, he waited for Hajjaj to speak first.

Hajjaj wished he could avoid that, but custom bound him as it had bound Balastro. Leaning forward himself, he inquired, “And how may I serve you today?”

Balastro laughed, which mortified him; he hadn’t wanted his reluctance to show. The Algarvian minister said, “You think I’ve come to give you a hard time about the cursed Kaunian refugees, don’t you?”

“Well, your Excellency, I would be lying if I said the thought had not crossed my mind,” Hajjaj replied. “If you have not come for that reason, perhaps you will tell me why you have. Whatever the reason may be, I shall do everything in my power to accommodate you.”

Balastro laughed again, this time louder and more uproariously. He wiped his eyes on his hairy forearm. “Forgive me, I beg, but that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time,” he said. “You’ll do whatever suits you best, and then you’ll try to convince me it was for my own good.”

“You do me too much honor, sir, by giving me your motives,” Hajjaj said dryly, which made Balastro laugh some more. Smiling himself, the Zuwayzi foreign minister went on, “Why have you come, then?”

Now the jovial mask dropped from Balastro’s face. “To speak plainly, your Excellency, I have come to ask Zuwayza to get off the fence.”

“I beg your pardon?” Hajjaj raised a polite eyebrow.

“Get off the fence,” Balastro repeated. “You have fought this war with your own interest uppermost. You could have struck Unkerlant harder blows than you have, and you know it as well as I do. You’ve fought Swemmel, aye, but you’ve also looked to keep him in the fight against us. You would sooner we wear each other out, because that would mean we’d leave you alone.”

He was, of course, perfectly correct. Hajjaj had no intention of admitting as much. “Did we not hope for an Algarvian victory, we should never have cooperated with King Mezentio’s forces in the war against Unkerlant,” he said stiffly.

“You haven’t cooperated any too bloody much as is,” Balastro said. “You’ve done what you wanted to do all along: you’ve taken as much territory as you wanted to, and you’ve let our dragons and our behemoths help you take it and help you hold it. But when it comes to giving us a real hand-well, how much of a hand have you given us? About this much, it seems to me.” He thrust out two fingers in a crude Algarvian gesture Hajjaj had often seen and almost as often used in his university days back in Trapani.

“It is as well we have been friends,” Hajjaj said, his voice even more distant than before. “There are men with whom, were they to offer me such insult, I would continue discussions only through common friends.”

Balastro snorted. “We’d be a fine pair for dueling, wouldn’t we? We’d probably set the notion of defending one’s honor back about a hundred years if we went after each other.”

“I was serious, sir,” Hajjaj said. One of the reasons he was serious was that the Algarvian minister had once more spoken nothing but the truth. “His Majesty has lived up to the guarantees he gave you through me at the beginning of this campaign, and has done so in every particular. If you say he has not, I must tell you I would consider you a liar.”

“Are you trying to get me to challenge you, your Excellency?” Balastro said. “I might, except you’d probably choose something like camel dung as a weapon.”

“No, I think I’d prefer royal proclamations,” Hajjaj answered. “They are without question both more odorous and more lethal.”

“Heh. You’re a witty fellow, your Excellency; I’ve thought so for years,” the Algarvian minister said. “But all your wit won’t get you out of the truth: the war has changed since it began. It is not what it was when it began.” Corpulence and nudity didn’t keep him from striking a dramatic pose. “Now it is plain that, when all is said and done, either Algarve will be left standing or Unkerlant will. You have sought middle ground. I tell you, there is none to be had.”

“You may be right,” said Hajjaj, who feared Balastro was. “But whether you are right or wrong has nothing to do with whether King Shazli has met the undertakings he gave to Algarve. He has, and you have no right to ask anything more of him or of Zuwayza than he has already delivered.”

“There we differ,” Balastro said. “For if the nature of the war has changed, what Zuwayza’s undertakings mean has also changed. If your kingdom gives no more than it has given, you are more likely to be contributing to Algarve’s defeat than to our victory. Do you not wonder that we might want something more from you than that?”

“I wonder at very little I have seen since the Derlavaian War began,” Hajjaj replied. “Having watched a great kingdom resort to savagery that would satisfy the barbarous chieftain of some undiscovered island in the northern seas, I find my capacity for surprise greatly shrunken.”

“No barbarous chieftain faces so savage and deadly a foe as Algarve does in Unkerlant,” Balastro said. “Had we not done what we did when we did it, Unkerlant would have done it to us.”

“Such a statement is all the better for proof,” Hajjaj observed. “You say what might have been; I know what was.”

“Do you know what will be if Unkerlant beats Algarve?” Balastro demanded. “Do you know what will become of Zuwayza if that happens?”

There he had the perfect club with which to pound Hajjaj over the head. He knew it, too, and used it without compunction. With a sigh, Hajjaj said, “What you do not understand is that Zuwayza also fears what may happen if Algarve should beat Unkerlant.”

“That would not be as bad for you,” Balastro told him.

Hajjaj didn’t know whether to admire the honesty of the little qualifying phrase at the end of the sentence or to let it appall him. He wanted to call for Qutuz to bring more wine. But who could guess what he might say if he got drunk? As things were, he contented himself with a narrow, rigidly correct question: “What do you seek from us?”

“Real cooperation,” Balastro answered at once. “Most notably, cooperation in finally pinching off and capturing the port of Glogau. That would be a heavy blow to King Swemmel’s cause.”

“Why not just loose your magics against the place?” Hajjaj said, and then, because Balastro had well and truly nettled him, he could not resist adding, “I am sure they would serve you as well as they did down in the land of the Ice People.”

Algarvian news sheets, Algarvian crystal reports had said not a word about the disaster that had befallen the expeditionary force on the austral continent. They admitted the foe was advancing where he had been retreating, but they never said why. Lagoas, on the other hand, trumpeted the botched massacre- or rather, the botched magecraft, for the massacre had succeeded-to the skies.

Balastro glared and flushed. “Things are not so bad there as the islanders make them out to be,” he said, but he didn’t sound as if he believed his own words.

“How bad are they, then?” Hajjaj asked.

The Algarvian minister didn’t answer, not directly. Instead, he said, “Here on Derlavai, magecraft would not turn against us as it did in the land of the Ice People.”

“Again, this is easier to say than to prove,” Hajjaj remarked. Even if it did prove true, slaughtering Kaunians still repelled him. He took a deep breath. “We have done what we have done, and we are doing what we are doing. If that does not fully satisfy King Mezentio, he is welcome to take whatever steps he finds fitting.”

Marquis Balastro got to his feet. “If you think we shall forget this insult, I must tell you you are mistaken.

“I meant no insult,” Hajjaj said. “I do not wish you ill, as King Swemmel does. But I do not wish quite so much ill upon Unkerlant as Algarve does, either. If only one great kingdom thrives, as you say, what room is there for the small kingdoms of the world, for the Zuwayzas and Forthwegs and Yaninas?”

“In the days of the Kaunian Empire, the blonds had no room for us Algarvians,” Balastro answered. “We made room for ourselves.”

Somehow, in the person of a plump, naked envoy, Hajjaj saw a fierce, kilted barbarian warrior. Maybe that was good acting from Balastro-or maybe the barbarian warrior never lay far below the surface in any Algarvian. Hajjaj said, “And now you condemn Zuwayza for trying to make a little room for ourselves? Where is the justice in that?”

“Simple,” Balastro said. “We were strong enough to do it.”

“Good day, sir,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said, and Balastro departed. But, watching his broad retreating back, Hajjaj nodded and smiled a little. For all Balastro’s bluster, Hajjaj didn’t think the Algarvians would abandon Zuwayza. They couldn’t afford to.

But then Hajjaj sighed. Zuwayza couldn’t abandon Algarve, either. Hajjaj would have been willing to make the break, provided he could have got decent terms from Swemmel. But Swemmel didn’t care to give decent terms. Hajjaj sighed again. “And so the cursed war goes on,” he said.