Into the Darkness (44 page)

King Swemmel chose to put Hajjaj up in a hostel near his palace. The rooms were large enough to suit him, though by Zuwayzi standards very indifferently clean. The bed boasted heavy wool blankets and fur coverlets; a stove sat in a corner of the bedroom. Hajjaj heartily approved of all that, and of the enormous hot bowl of beef-and-barley soup the servants fetched him. He thought—he hoped—he wouldn’t freeze to death before morning after all.

Nor did he. Another servant brought in an enormous omelette—eggs and ham and sausage and onions and cheese—for his breakfast. Eating such a thing down in Bishah, he might have keeled over on the spot. In Cottbus’s ghastly climate, he gobbled up every crumb and wished for more.

As soon as he’d finished eating and robed and caped himself against winter, Zaban took him downstairs for the journey to the palace. He traveled in an enclosed carriage, for which he was thankful. He peered out through foggy windows at Unkerlanters taking the cold in stride. Some of them paused to look back at him, and at his carriage. Most went about their business. People didn’t stop to greet one another and chat, as they would have on the streets of Bishah. That had nothing to do with the cold, as at first he thought it might. Unkerlanters simply seemed less outgoing than his own folk.

It was decently warm inside the palace. Before he could go in to meet with Swemmel, the bodyguards began to feel him up as if he were a ripe maiden, not a skinny old man. “Tell them to wait,” he said to Zaban, who was enduring the same sort of search. Hajjaj got out of his clothes and stood unconcernedly naked while the guards, when they weren’t gaping at him, went through the garments till they were satisfied. Then he dressed again and accompanied Zaban into King Swemmel’s audience chamber.

Zaban prostrated himself before his sovereign. Hajjaj bowed low, as he would have done with King Shazli. King Swemmel spoke in Unkerlanter. Hajjaj followed fairly well, but waited to respond till
Zaban
translated his words into Algarvian: “You are insolent. All Zuwayzin are insolent, we think.”

“We have our own opinion of Unkerlanters,” Hajjaj replied. He intended to yield as little as he could, here or anywhere else. “Our opinion is lower now that Unkerlant has broken the Treaty of Bludenz.”

“Kyot made that treaty,” Swemmel said. His eyes bored into Hajjaj. “Kyot is dead, slowly dead, horribly dead. Less than he deserved. And Zuwayza is beaten. Would you be here, were Zuwayza less than beaten?”

He might well have been mad. Mad or not, he was right. Hajjaj did his best not to acknowledge it, saying, “We have hurt you. If you press us too hard, we can hurt you more, much more. Your ultimatum was too harsh. If your demands now are too harsh, we will go on fighting. You may, perhaps, eventually gain all of what you want, but you will pay an enormous price for it. Would you not rather settle for a bit less, knowing you do not have to pay so much?”

That was sensible, rational, reasonable. Glancing at King Swemmel, Hajjaj realized with a shiver that none of those words was apt to apply to him. Swemmel’s eyes seemed made of obsidian, with the thinnest layer of glittering Unkerlanter ice above. The king said. “We do not care what we pay. We want what is ours.”

I will not give way to despair,
Hajjaj thought, and then wondered why. He started to form another polite, diplomatic reply. He rejected the words before they passed his lips. Whatever Swemmel responded to, it was not polite diplomacy. Hajjaj tried a different tack: “Your Majesty, it is even so with us of Zuwayza. Were it not, why would we have risen against Unkerlant so often, even with little hope of victory?”

He watched Swemmel carefully. The king’s eyes narrowed, then widened. The ice, or some of it, melted. The hard, shiny stone beneath remained. But Hajjaj had got through to him, at least to some degree, for he said, “Aye, you arc a stubborn folk,” and said it in the tones of a man doling out a grudging compliment. He stabbed out a forefinger at Hajjaj. “You may be stubborn, but you
are
beaten. Else you yourself would not be here.”

“We are beaten.” The Zuwayzi foreign minister conceded what he could hardly deny. “We are beaten badly enough to have to yield you some of what you demand of us. We are not beaten so badly as to have to yield it all.”

“Shall we treat Shazli the pretender as we treated Kyot the usurper?” Swemmel asked.

“Zuwayzi lords know how to die,” Hajjaj said, as steadily as he could. Again, he gave the king the directness Swemmel did not look to get from his own subjects: “Unkerlant has given them much practice in the art.”

Zaban looked at him with a face the color of whey. No, no one in Cottbus spoke to King Swemmel so. Hajjaj gestured harshly. The man from the Unkerlanter foreign ministry did translate accurately; Hajjaj knew enough of his language to be sure of that. He waited on Swemmel. The Unkerlanter king might want to find out how well
he
died. That violated every law of diplomacy, but King Swemmel was a law unto himself.

Swemmel hunched forward on his high seat, like a hawk about to spring into the air from a falconer’s wrist. In a voice harsh as a hawk’s, he said, “We shall dicker.” Hajjaj breathed again, but tried not to let the king of Unkerlant see him do it.

Krasta was angry. Krasta was frequently angry, but most often at people she knew, not at whole kingdoms. Now her outrage stretched far enough to encompass all of Valmiera.

“Will you look at this, Bauska?” She waved the news sheet in the serving woman’s face. “Will you
look
at it?”

“I see it, milady.” Bauska kept as much of herself from her voice as she could, leaving Krasta next to nothing to seize on.

But Krasta needed next to nothing. “Unkerlant has won another war,” she snarled. “The western barbarians have won two wars now, against Forthweg and against this Zuwayza place, wherever it may be. The Unkerlanters have won two wars. Has Valmiera won even one war?
Has
it, Bauska?”

“No, milady,” the servant answered. But then, no doubt rashly, she added, “Unkerlant hasn’t fought the Algarvians, though.”

Krasta tossed her head. A golden curl escaped the pins Bauska had put in her hair earlier in the morning and slid under her nose, as if she’d suddenly grown a mustache. Sniffing, she brushed it aside. Sniffing in a different way, she said, “The Algarvians are barbarians, too. They should have stayed in their forests a long time ago, and not come out to bother civilized people.” By that, of course, she meant people of Kaunian blood, her notion of civilization extending no further.

“No doubt, milady,” Bauska said. Having got away with one additional comment, she tried another: “They may be barbarians, but they’re monstrously good at war.”

“We’ve beaten them before,” Krasta said. “They didn’t win the Six Years’ War, did they? Of course they didn’t. Valmiera won the Six Years’ War. Oh, we had a little help from Jelgava, but
we
won it.” Jelgavans were of Kaunian stock, too; she acknowledged their existence. Sibian? Lagoans? Unkerlanters? They’d fought side by side with Valmiera, too. As far as she was concerned, they might as well have stayed out of the war. How it would have ended had they stayed out never entered her mind.

“Powers above grant we win this war, too, milady,” Bauska said. “And powers above grant that your brother comes home safe from it.”

“Aye,” Krasta said; the serving woman had hit on a way of mollifying her, at least for the moment. “As of his last letter, Skarnu was well.” She paused. She might have let it go there, but she still held the news sheet. Seeing it rekindled her anger. “Skarnu is well, but we have not broken through into Algarve. How can we hope to win this miserable, inconvenient war if we can’t break through?” Her voice rose to a shout once more.

“Milady, I know not. How can I know? I am a maidservant, not a warrior.” Bauska bowed her head. In a barely audible voice, she asked, “Have I your leave to go, milady?”

“Oh, very well,” Krasta said in some annoyance; she usually got more sport out of baiting her servant. Bauska retreated much faster than the Algarvian army had fallen back before Valmiera’s foes. But she did not retreat fast enough. Krasta snapped her fingers. “No. Wait.”

“Milady?” Bauska froze near the doorway. Her voice might have been a fragment of winter wind let loose within the mansion.

“Come here. I have a question for you,” Krasta said. The serving woman came much more slowly than she had gone. Krasta went on, “I’ve been meaning to ask you this for some little while now, but it keeps slipping my mind.”

“What is it, milady?” Bauska still looked alarmed, which was good, and also curious, which was acceptable.

“When you are with your sweetheart, do you ever pleasure him by taking his member in your mouth?” Krasta asked her question as matter-of-factly as she would have asked a farmer about stockbreeding. In her mind, the differences between livestock and servants were not large.

Bauska’s fair skin flushed bright red. She coughed and turned away, but she did not dare flee the chamber again, not unless Krasta told her she might. When at last she spoke, it was in a prim near-whisper: “Milady, I have not got a sweetheart, so I do not know what to say to you.”

Krasta laughed in her face, knowing a servant’s evasions when she heard them. “Curse it, have you ever pleasured a man so?” she demanded.

Bauska got even redder. Her eyes down on the floor, she said, “Aye.” Krasta had to watch the way her lips shaped the word, for she could not hear it. Then, more loudly, the servant repeated, “Have I your leave to go?”

“No, not yet.” Krasta’s voice was sharp. Valnu, curse him—curse him horribly—had not lied to her after all. She wanted to go clean her teeth yet again. Instead, probing the depths of commoners’ iniquity, she asked, “And your friends—I suppose servants have friends—do they do likewise?”

“Aye, milady, or I know of some who do, or who have,” Bauska answered, still looking down at the intricate pattern of birds and flowers on the thick, handwoven carpet beneath her feet.

Krasta made an angry noise, back deep in her throat. Like most of her class, she’d always assumed commoners just fornicated, as animals did, and that other, related, delights were beyond them. Discovering she’d been wrong disgusted her. She wanted to share as little with those below her as she could.

Something else occurred to her. “And your sweethearts—when you have them—do they pleasure your secret places with their tongues?”

“Aye, milady,” Bauska answered in a resigned whisper. But then, in what seemed a sudden access of spirit, she added, “Not likely we’d do for them if they didn’t do for us, is it? Fair’s fair.”

Fairness was something about which Krasta rarely had to worry, especially when dealing with servants. Her elegantly sculpted nostrils flared in exasperation. “Go on, get out of here,” she said. “What
are
you doing, hanging about like this?”

Bauska left. Bauska, in fact, all but flew. Krasta hardly noticed; having dismissed the serving woman, she forgot about her till she might need her again. She thought about going into Priekule for a tour of the shops, but in the end decided not to. Instead, she had her coachman drive her to the royal palace. If she was going to complain about the way the war against Algarve was going, venting her spleen at a servant would do no good. She wanted to talk to a soldier.

Finding the war ministry took her a while. She couldn’t simply bark demands in the palace, as she could on her estate; too many of the people going through the corridors were nobles, and they were often hard to tell from servitors in fancy dress. To avoid giving offense, Krasta had to ask polite questions, an art for which she had little inclination and scant practice.

At last, she found herself standing in front of a desk behind which sat a rather handsome officer; a placard identified him as Erglyu. “Please sit, milady,” he said, waving her to a chair. “Will you drink tea? I regret that I am not permitted to offer you anything stronger.”

She let him pour her a cup; she would let anyone serve her at any time, reckoning it no less than her due. As she sipped, she asked, “And what is your rank?”

“I am a captain, milady.” Some of Erglyu’s smiling urbanity slipped. “You may read as much on the placard there.”

“No, no, no,” Krasta said impatiently, wondering whether the war ministry wasn’t doing a better job against Algarve because it hired idiots. “What is your
rank,
Captain?”

“Ah.” Erglyu’s face cleared.
Maybe he’s not an idiot,
Krasta thought with what passed for charity from her.
Maybe he’s only a moron.
The captain went on, “I have the honor to be a marquis, milady.”

“Then we are well met, for I am a marchioness.” Krasta smiled. Erglyu might be a moron, but he was of her class. She would give him the same courtesy she granted any member of her circle, courtesy a commoner, no matter how clever, would never know. With a vivacious gesture, she said, “I want to tell you, we are going about this war altogether wrong.”

Captain Erglyu leaned forward, his face the picture of polite, even fascinated, interest. “Oh, milady, I do so wish you would show me how!” he exclaimed. “All our best generals have been wracking their brains over it for weeks and months, and the results have not been perfectly satisfactory.”

“I should say they have not,” Krasta said. “What we need to do is strike the redheaded barbarians such a blow, they will flee before us as they did in the ancient days. I can’t imagine why we haven’t done it yet.”

“Neither can I, not when you put it so clearly.” Erglyu reached into his desk and pulled out several sheets of paper, a pen, and a squat bottle of ink. “If you would but give the kingdom the benefit of your insight, I am certain all Valmiera will soon hail you as its benefactress and savior.” He pointed to a table and chair—both of severely plain make—set against a side wall of his office. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to set forth your strategic plan in as detailed a form as you can, that I may share it with my superiors.”

“I will do that.” Krasta took the writing tools and went over to the table. Once there, though, she stared down at the first blank leaf with the same angry despair she’d always known in the women’s finishing academy. After gnawing on the end of the pen, she wrote,
We need to hit the Algarvians as hard as we can. We need to do it where they do not expect it.