Unholy War (68 page)

Seth burst out laughing. ‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’

‘No, see! I colour my hair and shave my beard and suddenly I am the great General Korion, conqueror of Kesh.’ He leapt to his feet, struck a declamatory pose. ‘I order an advance! No, a retreat! Oh, what the Hel, I’ll just have another drink!’ And he swigged from an imaginary flask.

‘No, no! I am never drunk!’

‘So you say, but everyone knows the men of Yuros drink too much.’

Seth waved a dismissive hand. ‘True enough. It is our greatest vice.’ He looked fondly at Latif. ‘But really, you could never pretend to be me. Because of this.’

He kindled blue fire on the fingers of his right hand.

Latif stiffened at the sight of it. ‘I have some familiarity with your gnosis,’ he said, his eyes suddenly hungry. ‘Rashid Mubarak frequented the court in secret for many years. We took great precautions to ensure that he did not take control of us.’

‘Are you sure he didn’t?’

Latif frowned. ‘That is the question we always fear to ask ourselves,’ he said seriously.

Seth doused his gnosis-fire, regretful that he’d killed the mood. ‘The gnosis does set us apart,’ he admitted, ‘especially us pure-blooded magi. It is a trust, bequeathed to us from Kore Himself. We perpetuate that blessing to our heirs.’

‘And what is it like, to bear your god’s gift?’

‘It is a great responsibility. I mean, as children we are the same as anyone else, with no powers, but we’re raised knowing what will be. Then when you’re only twelve or thirteen, you suddenly gain the power to crush buildings, burn men alive, fly, summon spirits – whatever your affinities allow. Your slightest tantrum can destroy things or hurt people. So they send us to off to Arcanum – the mage-colleges – where tutors teach us and shape us, and when we emerge we have been taught to fight and kill, to protect others, and to serve the empire.’

‘So you are a brotherhood, dedicated to your emperor?’

‘Hardly,’ he snorted. ‘We are brought up to be fiercely competitive – we all know that there’s a world of difference between the best and worst, even if we have equal blood-strength. The Arcanum is a place where the best begin their dominance of those around them. We make alliances with those who might be useful to us in the future, but true friendships are rare and rivals are put firmly in their place. In truth, I feared my friends.’

‘I am told that your colleague – the devious one, Sensini – was also at your college?’

Seth blinked. ‘Who told you that?’

‘You are not my only visitor. The healer Lanna comes to check my wellbeing, your chaplain Gerdhart tries to convert me to your church and the old woman, Jelaska, plays tabula with me, formidably well. They speak of this and that.’ He waved a hand. ‘I am easy to talk to.’

The thought of others spending time here rankled somewhat. ‘Sensini is of low blood and low morals,’ Seth said crossly. ‘He only graduated because he was bonded to the legions.’

‘Yet he is clever. They tell me he is your strategist?’

Seth went to argue, then remembered, belatedly, that this charming man was still an enemy, and discussing the politics of the command tent was not a good idea. ‘He contributes. But I command.’

Latif inclined his head enigmatically, then gave him a thoughtful look. ‘So you magi are a people apart. Superior – God’s chosen. You are better than we mere men, yes?’

Seth coloured slightly because he’d expressed that sentiment himself many times, and always with utter sincerity. But when Latif said it, it felt like a slight. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to defend his kind. ‘When a person can do what we can, it makes us natural leaders – those with such a gift should control the world.’

‘Should they? For whose benefit?’

‘I don’t see what you are asking. When we magi are strong, the empire is strong and all is well.’

‘For whom?’

Seth threw up his hands. ‘Why, for the empire, of course! For everyone!’

‘Really? What benefit do your common people take from having magi rule them?’

Seth sat up, irritated now. ‘Not being conquered. Peace and security. Windships. Incredible buildings. Public works. Animagery-constructs. The list is endless. You don’t know what you are asking.’

Latif stroked his goatee. ‘Do your Earth-magi build for the poor? Do they create aqueducts to bring water to dry lands? Do your windships transport people for free? Are there gnosis-lamps in every street? Do your Healer-magi cure the illnesses of the poor without charge?’

‘The world doesn’t work like that,’ Seth started, but Latif waved his answer away.

‘The Ordo Costruo did as much, and more.’

‘They were idealistic fools and they’re all dead now – or fighting in your shihad!’

‘It appears to me that those who benefit from having magi present in your society are those magi themselves,’ Latif said. ‘The mighty, enriching themselves further.’

‘Don’t you talk,’ Seth snapped. ‘I’ve seen how your nobility live in their marble palaces, with beggars scrabbling for alms in the dust outside! You’re no better than us!’

Latif raised his palm as if to calm him. ‘No better, my friend, but no worse, perhaps?’

His words stopped Seth in his tracks and suddenly he felt angry at himself for arguing with his only friend in this whole miserable continent. ‘Maybe,’ he said, then added, ‘I can’t help what I am. Let’s talk about something else.’

Latif smiled softly, his brilliant eyes shining, but he wouldn’t let the matter go. ‘We each are given gifts, Seth Korion, to do our best with. For myself, I do not believe that your gnosis comes from Kore or Shaitan. I cannot afford to believe either, when I have both allies and enemies with your gift. I am’ – he grinned ruefully – ‘by which, of course, I mean “the sultan is” – at loggerheads with the Godspeakers because men and women they condemn as devils are aiding the shihad. Rashid Mubarak tells us that the gnosis comes not from divine beings but from man ourselves, and this gives me hope. Perhaps one day every man will have the gnosis, as naturally as breathing – and where would your Rondian superiority be then? You would have to treat us all as equals.’

Seth looked away. Such a vision of the world sounded positively threatening. Equality was just a dream, a muse for poets. Then he coloured, because all his heroes were poets. ‘You give me a lot to think about.’ He looked up at Latif slyly. ‘You did say “I”. Have I caught you out? Are you really Salim after all?’

‘All of us brother-impersonators are taught to say “I” so that we do not refer to another man as Salim when impersonating him.’

‘You must live closely with the sultan then?’

‘We share everything.’

Seth raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you even share Salim’s wives?’

Latif laughed. ‘That, no! That is the one restriction, that the wives must be for the true ruler only.’

‘Ha! So tell me about your wives!’

‘I cannot, for they are not mine. I do have a woman, though. Her name is Imuz, and she is skinny with buck teeth. We impersonators are always given the least pretty ones,’ he laughed.

‘Do you love her?’

‘Love her? No! What is there to love? She has no interests except in producing children and wearing clothes. She has no conversation, sings like a strangled parrot and eats too much. You can’t talk to her, not as we do.’

‘Do you have a mistress then?’

Latif shook his head. ‘Women do not interest me,’ he said airily. ‘Noble girls are boring. They have no education; all they learn is how to groom themselves, and how to gossip and plot about trivial things, like who will sit where at banquets. They’re dull, dull, dull.’

‘They sound like our women. Pure-blood magi girls are brought up to breed, preferably sons. They get enough gnosis-training to prevent them from damaging themselves, then they’re farmed out for marriage.’

‘Exactly my point. Have you ever had a conversation such as we have every day with a woman?’ Latif raised his wine goblet. ‘Every day I thank Ahm that I am a man.’

‘Ha! So do I.’ They drank to that thought, though it made Seth a little sad. ‘You know, there are always a few woman-magi who devote themselves to the gnosis, like Jelaska and Lanna. They say they have to work twice as hard as a man to be considered half as good. I sometimes wonder how much talent and skill we miss out on by treating them that way.’

‘You think educating women makes the nation stronger?’ Latif frowned. ‘Now, see, you have given me something to think on also.’

Seth smiled. Then at last he remembered the main reason for today’s visit. ‘Latif, we are going to move the army.’

‘Where to? How? You are trapped here.’

Seth shook his head. ‘Sensini has come up with something devious.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes, I know, Sensini again. The thing is, do we take you with us?’

Latif’s smile drained away. He got up and walked to the little brazier. ‘Or what?’ He looked back over his shoulder. ‘I am told that Arkanus and Hecatta were executed.’

Seth put his cup down, and stood up. ‘We are not going to execute you! Kore’s Blood, man, you’re a hostage! We’re not barbarians!’

‘The two Dokken were also hostages.’

‘They were creatures condemned by Scripture. You’re a political hostage – that’s completely different. And you’re not even you.’

Latif bowed ironically. ‘Then of what value am I?’

‘We learn from you, just as you learn from us.’ He walked to Latif’s side, patted his upper arm. ‘Since we captured you, your army doesn’t attack.’

‘The causeway is a slaughterhouse: I am sure that is the reason for the lack of attacks, not me.’

Up close, Latif’s eyes were like gems. Seth found the courage to meet his gaze. ‘Latif, we’re not invaders, not any more. We’re just trying to get home. To reach home we must leave here and cross the Tigrates River and march back to Dhassa. If we can, you’ll not see us again.’

‘What has this to do with me?’

He gripped Latif’s left arm. ‘My friend, I want you to return to your court and speak to Salim. Explain our goal – tell him we just want to go home. Surely the sooner we are gone, the sooner you can go north and fight the real war against my father’s army.

‘I could speak for you,’ Latif said after a moment. ‘Salim would listen.’

‘If we set a date by which we pledged to cross the river, then you would know our sincerity. Pursue if you must, attack us if we fail to meet that pledge.’

Latif searched his face. His own right hand was clasping Seth’s upper arm as they unconsciously mirrored each other’s posture. ‘There are bridges over the Tigrates at Vida, about five weeks’ march from here.’

‘We can make it, as long as we can escape from Ardijah.’

‘I doubt Salim could control his men enough to let you leave via the northern causeway,’ Latif warned. ‘Any troop movement would be seen as an attack.’

‘We’re planning to leave in the night. We’ll travel on the Khotri side of the Efratis – our windskiff pilot found a ford lower down. We could leave you there, with a horse.’

Latif said slowly, ‘If you can manage all that, then I will willingly be your ambassador to Salim.’

*

Ramon stood on a balcony of the inner gatehouse of the northern isle of Ardijah, overlooking the bridge where two columns of men were marching past each other. His rankers were marching out of the keep while a line of Khotri soldiers marched in, and as they passed every Rondian swapped his red cloak for the white cloak the opposite man held as they passed: a crude but effective disguise from a distance.
Sometimes it is the simple plans that work best.

Beside him stood a slender woman wrapped in a jewel-encrusted bekira-shroud. The Calipha Amiza al’Ardijah’s big eyes took in everything, her shrewish mouth pursed as she assessed all she saw. They had just returned from the cellars, where a third of the army’s gold had been left in payment for the supplies and equipment the calipha had arranged via the Emir of Khotri.

In the end it all comes down to money.

The cost of doing business with the calipha was not cheap, but she had done well by the army. The gold had been used to purchase vital supplies: not just food, but leather, timber, iron, coal, even complete sets of chainmail and thousands of spears and swords, as well as more than a thousand desert-bred Khotri horses. The calipha’s prices were extortionate, but if they were going to get out of Ardijah undetected, it’d be worth it, Ramon was convinced of that.

‘You will all be gone by dawn, yes?’ Calipha Amiza asked in her thickly accented Rondian.

Ramon glanced sideways at her. He might admire her ruthless avarice but he didn’t trust her.
Good thing she thinks that’s the last of our gold
, he thought, o
r she’d turn on us to claim the rest, of that I’m positive
. But he still kind of liked her. ‘Well gone,’ he assured her.

‘Good. Life can return to normal here.’

‘Provided Salim doesn’t try and cross anyway.’

‘Salim does not need a war with Khotri,’ the calipha replied, a faint smile on her face. ‘He will pursue you, but he will respect the border. Of this I am confident.’

‘I trust you are happy with all of the deal?’

The calipha glanced over her shoulder towards the room inside. ‘Renn is precisely the sort of husband I need. Powerful, but easily led.’ She smiled smugly. ‘Though I enjoyed your comfort in the aftermath of my previous husband’s unfortunate demise.’

Ramon flushed. ‘Er, about that …’ The mental image he’d been trying to ignore sprang to his mind: her pulling him into her sitting room with her husband’s body still warm, and he’d been powerless to do other than what she wanted. She was a magician too, in her own way. Not conventionally beautiful, but fully aware of her best assets and how to use them – possibly far more than the cloistered wife of a caliph should. Even so, he wasn’t proud of that encounter. Sevvie was carrying his child and deserved better. ‘I don’t—’

Amiza waved a hand dismissively. ‘We shared a moment, nothing more. Something we can both fondly remember, yes?’ She caressed the back of his hand, smiling secretively. ‘You will henceforth be faithful to your wife, yes?’

He shifted awkwardly. ‘Si.’

‘Anyway, Renn is very nearly the perfect man: he has powerful magic, a large phallus and a small intellect.’