Out of the Darkness

“There’s some truth in that, I shouldn’t wonder,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister admitted. “But I think rather more of it comes from a bad conscience. They know what they’ve done in this war. They know what all their neighbors, and especially the Unkerlanters, might to do them once they surrender. Compared to that, dying in battle may not look so bad.”

“Hmm.” Qutuz bowed. “I daresay you’re right, your Excellency. If Swemmel wanted to stick his hooks in me, I might think hard about taking a long walk off the roof of a tall building.”

“Even so,” Hajjaj said. “Aye, even so.”

He sat down on the carpet behind his low desk and got to work. Reestablishing ties to kingdoms that had been Algarve’s foes--and to kingdoms the Algarvians had occupied for years--produced a flood of paperwork. King Beornwulf of Forthweg had just formally accepted the envoy King Shazli had sent to him, and had named a certain Earl Trumwine as Forthwegian minister to Zuwayza. Hajjaj had never heard of Trumwine, and didn’t know anyone who had. What would he be like? The Zuwayzi foreign minister shrugged, thinking, He can’t be worse than Ansovald. King Swemmel’s minister to Zuwayzi set a standard for irksomeness by which all envoys from other kingdoms were judged.

After writing a brief letter of welcome for Trumwine--I’ll see soon enough how big a hypocrite I am--Hajjaj tended to a couple of other matters even more trivial. He was just sanding a memorandum dry when Qutuz came in from his outer office and said, “Excuse me, your Excellency, but an officer from the army high command is here. He’d like to speak with you for a moment.”

“From the army high command?” Hajjaj said in surprise. Since Zuwayza yielded to the Unkerlanters, the army high command hadn’t had a great deal to do. Hajjaj nodded. “Send him in, by all means.”

The officer was a generation younger than Hajjaj. He had a colonel’s emblem on his hat, and also painted on the bare skin of his upper arms. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said. “My name is Mundhir.”

“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?”