Through the Darkness

Shazli’s arched nostrils flared; his lip curled in scorn. “If Mezentio told Tsavellas to send his virgin daughter to a soldiers’ brothel, Tsavellas would do it. I do not want Zuwayza so beholden to Algarve.”

“Geography makes that less likely for us than for the Yaninans, but I see what you are saying, your Majesty, and I agree,” Hajjaj said. “Geography makes us worry about Unkerlant, worse luck.”

“We are free of King Swemmel,” Shazli said. “If this war ends with us free of Swemmel and of Mezentio both, we shall not have done too badly, whatever else happens. I know you will continue working toward that end.”

“With all my heart,” Hajjaj said, and rose to his feet: he recognized a dismissal when he heard one. Shazli nodded. Hajjaj bowed and left the royal presence.

He hadn’t taken more than half a dozen paces out of the king’s audience chamber before a steward sidled up to him and asked, “And what is his Majesty’s will, your Excellency?”

“I am sure he will make it known to you at the time he deems proper,” Hajjaj replied. The steward’s face fell; he hadn’t looked to be so smoothly rebuffed. Hajjaj smiled, but only on the inside, where it didn’t show. He’d been fending off inquisitive courtiers for as long as the steward had been alive.

When the Zuwayzi foreign minister returned to his own office, his secretary asked, “Anything new, your Excellency?”

Now Hajjaj did smile for the whole world, or at least for Qutuz, to see. “Not very much,” he said. “We go on, and we do the best we can as one day follows another. What else is there?”

With a saucy grin, Qutuz set those last two sentences to the tune of a traditional Zuwayzi song about a camel herder longing for the lover he could not visit. “And may we have better fortune than he did,” the secretary finished.

“That would be good,” Hajjaj agreed. “You are, of course, every bit as much a wandering son of the desert as I am.” Relatively few Zuwayzin were nomads these days. More lived in Bishah and other urban centers, and lived lives more like those of other settled Derlavaians than those of their wandering ancestors.

Qutuz understood that, too. “Oh, indeed, your Excellency. I spend my every free moment riding my camel from one waterhole to the next.”

“Since your moments here are not free,” Hajjaj said, “pray be so good as to find out whether General Ikhshid is at liberty to see me for a few minutes, either here or in his own office.”

“Just as you say, your Excellency, so it shall be.” Qutuz’s flowery language might have come straight from the desert, too. Hajjaj bent over and rubbed his backside, as if he’d been riding a camel much too long. Laughing, Qutuz activated his crystal and spoke with one of General Ikhshid’s aides. He turned to Hajjaj. “The general says that, if you don’t mind going over there, he can see you directly.”

“I don’t mind,” Hajjaj said. “We’re old men, Ikhshid and I; he wouldn’t make me walk without good cause.”

Soldiers bustled in and out of Ikhshid’s headquarters, which was certainly a busier-looking place than the foreign ministry. The stocky, grizzled general bowed Hajjaj into his own office and closed the door behind them. “Sit-- make yourself comfortable,” he said, and waited till Hajjaj had arranged a mound of pillows on the floor. Then, with military abruptness, Ikhshid came to the point: “Well, your Excellency, what won’t you talk about over the crystal now?”

“You know me well,” Hajjaj said.

“I’d better, after all these years,” General Ikhshid replied. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“I shall, never fear,” Hajjaj said. “His Majesty and I were discussing the Algarvians’ chances of taking Glogau either with or without our aid.”

“Were you?” Ikhshid’s eyebrows rose. “And what were your views on the subject?”

Hajjaj did his well-honed best to keep his face from showing anything. He said, “I would sooner have your unvarnished opinion, if you please.”

Ikhshid’s grunt might have been laughter or anger. “Afraid I’ll turn weather-vane on you? Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.” Hajjaj shrugged and held his face still. After a wordless grumble, Ikhshid said, “They can’t do it this campaigning season, that’s certain sure. They’ve stripped the north and center bare as a Zuwayzi to free up dragons and behemoths and egg-tossers for the push to the Mamming Hills.”

“They’ve made Unkerlant do the same, too,” Hajjaj pointed out.

“I don’t deny it,” Ikhshid said. “But the Unkerlanters are just trying to hold on in Glogau. They aren’t trying to break out. You don’t need as much to hang on, because the country fights with you, if you know what I mean.”

“All right,” Hajjaj said, more than a little relieved to find Ikhshid’s judgment confirming his own. “Another question: will the Algarvians take Sulingen?

“They’ve already taken it, or taken most of it, anyhow,” Ikhshid answered.