Out of the Darkness

“I should hope so,” Pekka exclaimed. “If the demonstration does what we want it to, it might even end this war.” The very words tasted strange to her. The Derlavaian War had gone on for almost six years (though Kuusamo had been in the fight for only a little more than half that time): long enough for death and devastation and disaster to seem normal, and everything else an aberration. It had cost Pekka as much as she’d feared in her worst nightmares, and, a couple of times, all but cost her life.

“When the war is over . . .” Fernao didn’t sound as if he really believed in the possibility, either. “May it be soon, that’s all--and may we never have another one.”

“Powers above, make that so!” Pekka said. “Another war, starting from the beginning with everything we’ve learned during this one? With whatever else we learn afterwards, too? I don’t think there’d be anything left of the world once we got through.”

“You’re probably right,” Fernao said. “And do you know what else? If we’re stupid enough to fight another war after everything we’ve seen these past few years, we don’t deserve to live: the whole human race, I mean.”

“I don’t know that I’d go quite so far.” But then Pekka thought about it for a little while. Deliberately inflict these horrors again, with the example of the Derlavaian War still green in memory? She sighed. “On the other hand, I don’t know that I wouldn’t, either.”

Hajjaj stepped into the crystallomancers’ chamber down the hall from the foreign ministry offices in the royal palace. The crystallomancer on duty sprang to his feet and bowed. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said.

“Good day, Kawar,” Hajjaj replied. The crystallomancer beamed. Hajjaj had long since learned how important knowing and recalling the names of underlings could be. He went on, “What is the latest word from the south?”

“That depends on whose emanations you’re listening to, your Excellency,” Kawar said.

“I wouldn’t have expected anything else,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “Give me both sides, if you’d be so kind, and I expect I’ll be able to sort them out for myself.”

Bowing, Kawar said, “Just as you require, sir, so shall it be. By what the Unkerlanters say, Trapani is surrounded, cut off from the outside world, and sure to fall in the next few days. Fighting in the rest of Algarve is dying down as the redheads realize resistance is suicide, and useless suicide at that.”

“And the Algarvian response to this is?”

“Your Excellency, by what the Algarvians put out over the ether, they still think they’ve got the war as good as won--although none of their reports comes from inside Trapani anymore,” Kawar answered. “They say their capital will stay Algarvian. They say Gromheort and the Marquisate of Rivaroli will be Algarvian again, and they say their secret sorceries will smash Swemmel’s savages. That’s what they say, sir.”

By that, Kawar no doubt meant he didn’t believe a word of it. Hajjaj understood such skepticism. He didn’t believe a word of it, either. The Algarvians’ claims reminded him of the last ravings of a man about to die of fever. They had no connection to reality that he could find. He sighed. Mezentio’s men had been Zuwayza’s cobelligerents against Unkerlant--though the redheads, with some reason, would have taken that the other way round.

None of those reflections was anything a crystallomancer needed to hear. Hajjaj said, “Thank you, Kawar. It sounds as though things will be over there before too long.”

Kawar nodded. With another word of thanks, Hajjaj left the crystallomancers’ chamber. What might happen after the fighting finally stopped worried him a good deal. King Swemmel had given Zuwayza relatively lenient terms for getting out of the Derlavaian War--he’d been shrewd enough not to provoke Hajjaj’s kingdom to desperate resistance while the bigger battle with Algarve still blazed. But would he keep the terms of the peace he’d made after he didn’t have to worry about Algarve anymore? Swemmel was not notorious for keeping promises.

That raised the next interesting question: if Swemmel tried to take a firmer grip on Zuwayza, what should--what could--the Zuwayzin do about it? Not much was the answer that immediately occurred to Hajjaj. He didn’t think King Shazli would like it. He didn’t like it himself. But liking it and being able to do anything about it were liable to be two different things.

When he walked back to his own offices, his secretary greeted him with, “And the latest is?”

“About what you’d expect, Qutuz,” Hajjaj replied. “The death throes of Algarve, except the Algarvians refuse to admit they’re any such thing.”

Qutuz grunted. “What will it take, do you suppose? The very last of them dead, and their last house knocked flat?”

“It may take something not far from that,” Hajjaj said sourly. “No one would ever claim the Algarvians are not a stubborn folk.”

“No one would ever claim they’re not a stupid folk, for fighting on when all it does is get more of them killed,” Qutuz said.