Darkness Descending

A moment later, Hajjaj and Balastro were clasping hands. “Good day, good day,” Balastro said. He was stocky, middle-aged, vigorous, and much smarter than he looked. Reaching out to pat Hajjaj’s tunic, he said, “If you were a pretty young wench, I’d be disappointed you were wearing this. As is”--he shrugged a grandiloquent Algarvian shrug--”I can live with it.”

“Your reassurances do so ease my mind,” Hajjaj said dryly, and the redheaded Algarvian noble threw back his head and laughed out loud. Balastro would have laughed out of the other side of his mouth had Hajjaj told him Ansovald of Unkerlant had said something similar not so long before. Foreigners always thought of Zuwayzi nudity in terms of pretty young wenches. In one sense, Hajjaj understood that. In another, the ways it missed the point never failed to amuse him.

Balastro made himself comfortable with the cushions that did duty for chairs in Hajjaj’s office. So did the Zuwayzi foreign minister. Unlike most of his countrymen, he had a desk, but a low, wide one, one he could use while sitting on the carpet: another compromise between Zuwayzi usages and those of the rest of Derlavai.

The secretary came in with a silver tray that held the ritual tea and cakes and wine. Unlike Ansovald, Balastro appreciated the ritual. As long as he and Hajjaj nibbled and sipped, he stuck to small talk. He had an abundant store of it; Hajjaj enjoyed listening to him and fencing with him. He said as much--tea and cakes and wine were also a time for frank praise.

Darkness Descending

Balastro gave back a seated bow. “I rejoice at pleasing you, your Excellency,” he replied. “I do my best to ‘treat my friend as if he might become an enemy,’ and I hope that precludes inflicting boredom.”

When he quoted the proverb, he did so in the original classical Kaunian. Hajjaj sipped at his cup of wine to keep from showing what he thought of that. Balastro was, and was proud to be, a man of culture. But he was also a man of Algarve, a man whose kingdom was tormenting the Kaunians who had shaped so much of the culture he displayed. Somehow, Balastro and his countrymen saw no contradiction there. Algarvians always wanted everything at once.

While partaking of tea and cakes and wine, Hajjaj could not say anything so serious without, by his own lights, becoming a boor. That he would not do. Presently, Qutuz took the tray away. Balastro smiled and said, “Well, shall we get on with it?”

“I am at your service, my lord Marquis,” Hajjaj replied. “As you must know, I am always pleased to see you, and I am always curious to learn what is in your mind.”

“Even when you don’t like it,” Balastro said, without much malice.

Hajjaj gravely inclined his head. “Just so, your Excellency. Even when I don’t care for what you say, how you say it never fails to fascinate me.” The Kaunian proverb crossed his mind again.

He won a chuckle from Balastro, but the Algarvian minister quickly sobered. “I can only speak simply here, for my message is of the plainest--Algarve needs your help.”

“My help?” The Zuwayzi foreign minister raised an eyebrow. “Truly your kingdom is in desperate straits if you expect a skinny old man to shoulder a stick for you.

“Heh,” Balastro said. “I thought we were coming to grips with things. I mean Zuwayza’s help, of course.”

“Very well, though my reply changes little,” Hajjaj said. “Your realm is also in difficulties if you expect a skinny young kingdom to shoulder many sticks for you.”

“Of course we are in difficulties,” Balastro said--he could, sometimes, be refreshingly frank. “If we weren’t, we would have taken Cottbus before winter froze us in our tracks.”

He could, sometimes, also be disingenuous. “Winter did rather more than freeze you in your tracks,” Hajjaj pointed out.

“Well, so it did,” Balastro said. “We had misfortunes; I can hardly deny it. But we have the Unkerlanters checked now, all along the line. And this year . . . this year, by the powers above, we’ll beat them once for all.” He sat up very straight, as if making his bearing serve as proof for his claims.

From what the Zuwayzi generals said to Hajjaj, and from what he could gather for himself, Balastro was telling the truth about what had happened: the Unkerlanters were no longer advancing against Mezentio’s men. How much the spring thaw had to do with that, Hajjaj wasn’t sure. He suspected no one else was, either. As for the future . . . “You said last summer that you would beat Unkerlant then. Since you were wrong once, why should I not think you’re wrong twice?”

“Because of everything we did to Unkerlant last year,” Balastro answered--he had answers for everything, as most Algarvians did. “If you hit a man once, he may not fall right away. But if you hit him again and keep hitting him one blow after another, he will go down.”