“Of course, your Excellency,” Tewfik replied; Hajjaj would have been astonished had he said anything else.
Once inside the library, Hajjaj pulled out a book of poetry by a Kaunian named Mikulicius, who’d lived in what the historians called Late Imperial times. Mikulicius had watched things fall apart all around him, and written about what he’d seen. With his kingdom’s Algarvian allies in headlong retreat, with the Unkerlanters massing against Zuwayza, the bitter verses seemed perfectly timely even if they were more than a thousand years old.
The door opened. The servant with the wine, Hajjaj thought. Without glancing up from the book, he said, “Just set the tray down, if you please.”
“Aye, your Excellency.”
That answer did make him look up, in surprise. It came in throatily accented Algarvian, not the Zuwayzi he’d expected. There with the tray and the wine jug and the cup stood Tassi. She wore no more than she had when she’d first knocked on the door to Hajjaj’s home. He looked her up and down; he could hardly help doing that. He switched to Algarvian—sharp Algarvian—himself to ask, “Who sent you here?” Minister Iskakis’ very estranged wife hadn’t learned much Zuwayzi yet.
“Why, Master Tewfik did,” she answered, her eyes perhaps too convincingly innocent. “He said you needed some wine.”
“Did he?” Hajjaj said. Tassi dipped her head, as Yaninans often did instead of nodding. “And did he say I needed anything else?”
“No.” Now she tossed her head, a gesture that gave birth to enchanting motions of other parts of her body. Curse it, she does look naked to me, not nude. Hajjaj had to think in Algarvian to have that make any sense to him; his own tongue lacked the distinction between the words. Tassi went on, “He did say you seemed unhappy.”
“Did he say why?” Hajjaj asked.
Tassi tossed her head again. “Why does not matter,” she replied, which went dead against a lifetime of experience for Hajjaj. She took a deep breath. Hajjaj admired that, too. She said, “I have been unhappy, too. I know what it is like. I know it is bad. I understand.”
Do you? he wondered. Does being unhappy because your husband likes boys more than he likes you let you understand a man who is unhappy because he sees his kingdom in mortal danger? Analytical as always, Hajjaj found the idea unlikely, but couldn’t quite dismiss it out of hand.
Tassi had not an analytical bone in her body. She got down on the carpet beside Hajjaj. “What are you doing?” he demanded, though he knew, and knew he could do what she obviously had in mind.
“Making you happy for a little while,” she answered. “Your senior wife said I should just do this, and not pay any attention to your grumblings.”
“Kolthoum said that, did she?” Hajjaj asked. Tassi dipped her head again. Her hair—she’d perfumed it—brushed over his chest and belly. “And Tewfik sent you?” he said. She didn’t bother responding to that; she’d already answered it once. Hajjaj took off his reading glasses and wagged a finger at her. “I sense a plot.”
Tassi didn’t respond to that, either—not with words, at least. But she didn’t need words to be very distracting. Hajjaj supposed he could have picked her up bodily and thrown her out of the library. But that would have been undignified, and a man would suffer almost anything before losing his dignity. Not, he thought as his arms went round her, that I’m suffering too much.
Fourteen
Every news sheet, every rumor, that came to the farm in southern Valmiera brought Merkela ferocious joy. “They’re losing,” she gloated. “They’re running. They’d running like whipped, bleeding dogs with their tails between their legs.” Then, suddenly, her grim delight faded. “Gedominu!” she exclaimed. “What did you just put in your mouth?”
The baby had started crawling not long before. That meant she and Skarnu had to keep a closer eye on him than ever. She reached down, grabbed him, and stuck a finger in his mouth. She got something out of there, then wiped her hand on her trousers. “What was it this time?” Skarnu asked with clinical curiosity.
“Just a dust bunny, powers above be praised,” Merkela answered. She glared at Gedominu with mock fury. “At least you didn’t swallow that dead cockroach a couple of days ago.” Gedominu laughed. He thought it was funny—though he’d squealed in outrage when his mother took the bug away from him. Merkela set him down once more. He started to crawl backwards, but then decided to go ahead instead.
Adventures with Gedominu notwithstanding, Skarnu hadn’t forgotten what Merkela was saying. Every news sheet, every rumor, that came to the farm brought him nothing but frustration. “Aye, they’re losing,” he said. “Aye, they’re running. They’re running in the west. They’re running in Jelgava. But what are they doing here? Not bloody much, powers below eat them.”
“That’s not true,” Merkela said.
And, in fact, it wasn’t true, or it wasn’t strictly true. The Algarvians occupying Valmiera had sent a lot of men west to fight the Unkerlanters, and a few north to fight the Lagoans and Kuusamans in Jelgava. Their grip on the countryside had loosened. Skarnu worried much less than he had before about an Algarvian patrol swooping down on the farm here.
But the redheads still held the southern coast strongly against invasion from across the Strait of Valmiera. They still held the kingdom’s towns— with no small aid from the Valmieran constabulary and from the many traitors they’d recruited to do their dirty work for them. True, the underground could strike more readily than it had. Still, its strikes remained pinpricks, and everywhere else, or so it seemed, Mezentio’s men were taking hammer blows.
“I want to smash the Algarvians,” Skarnu said. “I want to smash them till they can’t get up again. Our army fell to pieces. I was there. I watched it happen. We never knew what hit us. We need revenge for that now if we’re ever going to be able to hold our heads up once this war finally ends.”
“Ends?” Merkela stared at him as if she’d never heard the word before. She pursed her lips. “Do you know, I never thought about the war ending. Never once. Either the Algarvians would have us down, or we’d have them down. Having them down is what I look forward to. … Gedominu!” She grabbed their son. This time, she got whatever was in his hand before he could stick it in his mouth.
“I look forward to having them down, too,” Skarnu said. “But I also look forward to knocking them down. It won’t be the same if a pack of foreigners does it all for us.”
“I don’t care how it happens,” Merkela said. “I just want it to happen.”
“I want to have something to do with it,” Skarnu said stubbornly. “I want to march into Priekule at the head of an army and go back to my mansion and clean out my sister and every sign the Algarvians were ever there. I want to do that myself, with my countrymen. I don’t want a bunch of foreigners telling me, ‘All right, little boy, it’s safe to go home now.’ “
“Priekule. Mansion.” Merkela spoke the words as if they were foreign to her. And so they were, even if they were in Valmieran. Skarnu had discovered that the capital and what went on there didn’t seem real to a lot of Valmierans from the countryside. As for the other… Merkela murmured, “Most of the time, I forget what blood you bear.”
Before the war, being a marquis had mattered more to him than almost anything else. Now he said, “Our son bears my blood, and he bears yours, too. And when the war is over, I intend to wed you and set you up in that mansion … unless you decide you’d sooner dwell somewhere else. In that case, wherever it is, I’ll live there with you.”
She shook her head. “It’s like something out of a fairy tale. Nobles don’t come to farms and want to marry peasant girls, not in real life they don’t.”
“No, they don’t get that lucky,” Skarnu said, which brought a smile to her face. He went on, “Having the Algarvians swallow up the whole kingdom isn’t something out of a fairy tale, either. It’s out of a nightmare.”
Merkela nodded. Before she could say anything, someone knocked on the door. At a good many times over the p
ast couple of years, that would have brought panic to Skarnu. No more. Merkela walked to the door and opened it. “Raunu!” she exclaimed, real pleasure in her voice. “Come in. Let me pour you a mug of ale.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Skarnu’s veteran sergeant said. “Don’t mind if you do, either.” He looked down at Gedominu, who had drool on his chin—he was cutting a tooth. “He’s just about big enough to march.”
“Seems that way,” Skarnu agreed. Merkela came back with not one but three mugs of ale on a wooden tray, and a pitcher from which to refill them, too. Skarnu eyed Raunu. “But you didn’t come here to tell me what a big boy I’ve got, not unless I miss my guess.”
“No.” Raunu took a pull at his ale, then nodded to Merkela. “Now this is your own brewing—I can taste it.”
“Aye.” She looked pleased, but not for long. “Skarnu’s right. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need him to do something. A while ago, you would have needed us both to do something. That’s not so simple anymore.” Her glance toward Gedominu was fond, but also wistful. She missed the days when she could easily go forth against the redheads, too.
“Well, I’m always glad to come here,” Raunu said, “but you’re right—it’s got to do with business.” He nodded to Skarnu. “We’ve had some practice wrecking the redheads’ ley-line caravans, you and me—and you to, milady,” he added, as if Merkela were already a marchioness. “But you’ve got other things on your mind for a spell.” She nodded. Her eye kept going back to Gedominu.
“Where?” Skarnu asked. “What needs doing?”
“Up in the north,” Raunu answered. “They’ll be moving a good many caravans before long, using the ley lines through that rugged country to get soldiers to Jelgava by the shortest way. It’d be nice if some of ‘em didn’t get there.”
“It would be nice if a lot of them didn’t get there,” Skarnu said, and both Raunu and Merkela muttered agreement. He added, “Fitting if we give them a hard time up in the north, too.” That puzzled his lover and the sergeant. He didn’t try to explain, but still thought he was right. Four years earlier, Mezentio’s men had moved footsoldiers and, more important still, masses of behemoths through country Valmiera had thought too rough for such maneuvers. The Valmierans, full occupied with another Algarvian attack down in the south, hadn’t noticed the stroke till it had already slipped between their ribs and into their heart. Revenge, even a small measure of revenge, would be sweet.
“You’ll come, then?” Raunu asked. He meant it seriously; the underground wasn’t like the army, even if most of its members had been soldiers.
“Of course I will,” Skarnu answered.
As he’d gone down to the southern seacoast, so he rode the ley-line caravan from the little town of Ramygala up to the wooded hills and gullies of northern Valmiera. He felt like a stranger there, half a foreigner, wary of opening his mouth: the local dialect was a long way from the brand of Valmieran he spoke. “Don’t worry about it,” Raunu told him when he worried out loud. “The cursed Algarvians can’t tell the difference between how they talk here and the right way.”
“No, the Algarvians can’t,” Skarnu agreed, “but there are bound to be traitors here. There are traitors everywhere.” If he’d seen one thing in occupied Valmiera, that was it.
“Some of them have had accidents,” was all Raunu said to that. “The rest of the whoresons … they’re thoughtful, you might say.” Skarnu hoped he was right.
Right or wrong, they both had work to do. The locals had got them papers showing they were foresters, and other papers—which they were not to display—that gave them enough jargon to pass as the real article unless questioned by someone who really knew what he was talking about. With luck, that wouldn’t happen. The papers gave them the excuse they needed for going out into the woods.
As Skarnu tramped those hills and valleys, as he eyed the narrow, winding roads—in the stretches of the landscape where there were any roads at all—he grew to admire more and more what the Algarvians had accomplished by making a thrust through such terrain. “No matter how much you hate them, you can’t ignore them,” he told Raunu.
“No. They’re too dangerous for that—like any other snakes,” Raunu said. Skarnu laughed and nodded, though the veteran underofficer hadn’t been joking.
In all that contorted country, the only straight lines were the ley lines.
The world’s energy grid ran where it would. Once mages learned to exploit the ley lines, men had to hack down trees if caravans were to glide where they needed to go. And so many long, narrow stretches of cleared ground marked the ley lines’ paths through the woods. Algarvian patrols marched along the ley lines, too. The redheads were no fools; they knew the underground would try to disrupt their movements.
But knowing and being able to do anything about it were liable to prove two different things. Here as elsewhere in Valmiera, as elsewhere throughout the east of Derlavai, Mezentio’s men were stretched too thin to do everything that wanted doing. They couldn’t patrol all the ley lines all the time, or even most of them most of the time.
“I think this seems a likely spot,” Skarnu said at last. “The ley-line caravan will be just coming over that rise”—he pointed—”and won’t have the time to stop even if the conductor should notice anything wrong about the line. What say you?”
Raunu considered briefly. “Aye, it suits me.”
“Good enough, then. See how simple it is?” Skarnu suspected—indeed, he was sure—Raunu could have found the spot as readily as he had. But he was here. He took a crystal from his trouser pocket, activated it, and spoke briefly, using code phrases to give the bearings of the stretch of ley line they’d chosen while not calling it that. Then he and Raunu left in a hurry. He didn’t know the redheads had overheard him, but had to act as if they were tracking every emanation around.
“Pity we can’t be here when they do the job,” Raunu remarked.
“Aye.” Skarnu nodded. Somewhere not far away, a team of his countrymen had assuredly heard what he’d said. He didn’t know where; what he didn’t know, Mezentio’s men couldn’t pry from him. “But knowing we helped, knowing we told them where to bury the egg—that counts for something, too.”
“Reminds us we’re still in the war, like,” Raunu said.
“That’s it,” Skarnu agreed. “That’s just it. In fact, when you knocked on my door, I was complaining to Merkela that the Algarvians were going to the powers below everywhere but in Valmiera. It’s still true, more or less, but we’ve helped make it not quite so true.”
“Sooner or later, the redheads’ll get what’s coming to era,” Raunu said.
“I don’t just want them to get it,” Skarnu said. “I want to be the one who gives it to them, and now I am—at least a little.”
Back when the Unkerlanter attack on Algarve in the north was new, Major Scoufas had called it a catastrophe and Colonel Sabrino had told the Yaninan dragonflier he didn’t think it was quite so bad as that. Since then, King Swemmel’s men had pushed the Algarvians out of the north of Unkerlant. They’d pushed them out of western Forthweg and had fought their way to the line of the Twegen River, the river that ran by Eoforwic. If that wasn’t a catastrophe, Sabrino didn’t know what would be.
But catastrophe or no, the wing of dragonfliers he commanded remained here in the south. He had even gone so far as to send a written petition to King Mezentio, begging his sovereign to send him into the urgent fighting. Mezentio hadn’t told him no. Mezentio hadn’t deigned to reply at all. More than anything else, that told him in how bad an odor with the king he really was.
Major Scoufas had stopped twitting him about it. Yaninans were politer, or at least more formal, people than his own countrymen. The officers in his wing hadn’t stopped grumbling about their fate.
At last, Sabrino took aside Captain Orosio, who’d been with him longer than anyone. He said, “If you want to transfer, I won’t stand in your way. I don’t blame you for wanting to go where the action i
s. I want to go up north myself, but nobody will listen to me. Nobody will listen to you, either, as long as you serve under me. But if you don’t, I have the feeling you’ll get what you want.”
To his surprise, Orosio shook his head. “No, thank you, sir,” he said. “I don’t know anyone who wants to leave the wing, sir. That’d just be another slap at you. We want the wing to get what it deserves, and we want to give the Unkerlanters what they deserve.”
Touched, Sabrino set his hand on Orosio’s shoulder. “One thing Algarvians are, by the powers above, is loyal to their friends.”
The squadron commander nodded. “Well, of course, sir,” he said, though in the world at large it was anything but of course. “And the king bloody well ought to be loyal to you, too. You gave him the best advice you knew how, and not only that, you were right, too.”
“And much good it did me,” Sabrino said. “I told that to Scoufas: You can get in every bit as much trouble with a king for being right as you can for being wrong. Maybe even more trouble.”
“Scoufas.” Orosio looked around before continuing. The two of them stood off to one side of the dragon farm; from the beginning, this hadn’t been the sort of conversation for which they wanted eavesdroppers. Satisfied no Yaninans were in earshot, Orosio went on: “I wish we were by ourselves and not tied to Tsavellas’ people. It’s like being married to a dead woman.”
“I know,” Sabrino answered, “but I don’t know what to do about it. If we were here by ourselves, we’d be here by ourselves, if you know what I mean: no Algarvian footsoldiers for miles around. Out here in the west, we’re stretched too thin. We’ve got to use whatever allies we can scrape up.”
“Yaninans.” Captain Orosio rolled his eyes. “Forthwegians. Powers above, do I hear right? Is there really a Kaunian regiment somewhere down here?”
“I’ve heard that, too,” Sabrino answered. “Kaunians from Valmiera, I think.”
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