Out of the Darkness

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Colonel,” Hajjaj said. “Would you care for tea and wine and cakes?”

“If you’re generous enough to give me the choice, sir, I’ll decline,” Mundhir said with a slightly sardonic smile. Hajjaj smiled, too. The ritual of tea and wine and cakes could easily chew up half an hour or an hour with small talk. Mundhir wanted to get straight to business. He continued, “If you’d be so kind as to accompany me back to headquarters, General Ikhshid would be most grateful.”

“Would he?” Hajjaj murmured, and Colonel Mundhir nodded. Hajjaj clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I know what that means: Ikhshid’s got something he doesn’t want to talk about on a crystal. Do you know what it is?”

Mundhir shook his head. “No, your Excellency. I’m sorry, but General Ikhshid didn’t tell me.”

“I’ll come, then.” Hajjaj’s joints clicked and crackled as he got to his feet. Mundhir looked capable and reliable. If Ikhshid didn’t want to tell such a man what was going on, it had to be important.

Colonel Mundhir escorted Hajjaj through the palace to army headquarters. The foreign minister could have found his way without help, but didn’t begrudge it. The sentries outside the headquarters stiffened to attention as he came up. Not having any military rank, he nodded back at them.

Ikhshid was a round, white-haired fellow-a man of nearly Hajjaj’s age. Normally good-natured, he greeted Hajjaj with the rise of a snowy eyebrow (before going off to study in colder, more southerly, lands, Hajjaj would have thought of it as a salty eyebrow) and said, “Good to see you, your Excellency. We have a bit of a problem, and we’d like your views on it before we try to straighten it out.”

“We as in Zuwayza, we as in the army, or have you assumed the royal we like King Swemmel?” Hajjaj asked.

“We as in Zuwayza,” Ikhshid answered, ignoring the raillery. That was unlike him; Hajjaj decided the problem had to be more serious than he’d first thought. Ikhshid gestured toward the doorway to his own office. “We can talk in there, if you like.” Hajjaj didn’t say no. Once they’d gone inside, Ikhshid shut the door behind them and barred it.

“Melodramatic,” Hajjaj remarked. Again, Ikhshid didn’t rise to the bait. He hadn’t so much as offered tea and wine and cakes, either. The Zuwayzi foreign minister took that as another sign something important had happened. He said, “You’d better tell me.”

Without preamble, Ikhshid did: “We had a sailboat come ashore not too far from Najran, but far enough so the Unkerlanters at the port don’t know anything about it-I hope. Because it’s a sailboat, mages wouldn’t have spotted it when it crossed a ley line or three. Marquis Balastro is aboard the fornicating thing, and so are a dozen or so other Algarvians with fancy ranks, and their wives-or maybe girlfriends-and brats. They’re all screaming for asylum at the top of their lungs. What do we do about ‘em?”

“Oh, dear,” Hajjaj said, in lieu of something stronger and more pungent.

“Do we get rid of ‘em on the sly?” Ikhshid asked. “Do we hand ‘em over to Swemmel’s men to show what good boys we are? Or do we let ‘em stay?”

“The first thing you’d better do is get them away from Najran,” Hajjaj replied. “If the Kaunians settled there find out they’ve landed, we won’t have to worry about this set of exiles for long.”

“Mm, you’re right about that,” General Ikhshid agreed. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What do we do with ‘em, or to ‘em?”

“I don’t know,” Hajjaj said distractedly. “By the powers above, I really don’t. If Ansovald finds out they’re in the kingdom, he’ll spit rivets, and so will King Swemmel. From their point of view, it would be hard to blame them.”

“I understand,” Ikhshid said. “That’s why I called you here.” He suddenly looked worried. “Or should I have gone straight to the king instead?”

“I’ll talk things over with him,” Hajjaj promised. “We won’t do anything final till he approves it.”

“I should hope not,” Ikhshid said. “But what do you think we ought to do?”

“I don’t like handing over fugitives. It goes against every clan tradition. I don’t like killing them, either,” Hajjaj said.

“Neither do I, but I also don’t like getting caught with them here,” Ikhshid said. “And we’re liable to. You know it as well as I do. They don’t speak our language, they aren’t brown, they are circumcised, they’ve got red hair, and they wrap themselves in cloth all the time.”

“Details, details,” Hajjaj said dryly, and startled a laugh out of the army commander. The Zuwayzi foreign minister went on, “My recommendation is to take them to some inland village-Harran, say-and do our best to keep word of them from blowing back here to Bishah. If we can stash them off to one side for a while, things may calm down before they’re discovered.”

“If.” Ikhshid freighted the little word with a great weight of meaning.

“General, if you have a better idea, I should be delighted to hear it,” Hajjaj said.