“Aye,” Talsu said, and hoped he didn’t sound too eager.
Along with Talsu’s outfit, Traku was also working on his own—of somber black relieved by a white pleated shirtfront to be worn under an unbuttoned outer tunic like his son’s—and his wife’s and daughter’s. Laitsina had chosen pale peach linen, while Ausra would wear blue velvet like Talsu’s, though her tunic would flare at the hips and be buttoned, buttoned snugly, to show off her bust.
Traku turned down work to get all the wedding clothes ready for the day. He irked an Algarvian captain till the redhead found out why he couldn’t get a uniform tunic ready in a hurry. “Ah, a wedding,” the Algarvian said, kissing his bunched fingertips. “I am having in every town where I am stationed a wedding. This is making pretty girls happy. Is making me happy, too.” He leered.
Neither Talsu nor Traku said anything to that. It sounded like the sort of thing one of Mezentio’s men would do—maybe even worse than no weddings at all. The Algarvian bowed to each of them in turn and left the shop, whistling one of the intricate, ornate tunes that delighted his countrymen and baffled Talsu and every other Jelgavan he knew. If music didn’t have a strong, thumping beat, what good was it?
The hall where Talsu and Gailisa married was also the one in which, before the Derlavaian War, veterans of the Six Years’ War had been wont to get together and drink and tell one another lies about what heroes they’d been. Flowers and olive and almond and walnut boughs and crepe-paper streamers made it look a lot more cheerful than it had when the veterans congregated there. Even so, Talsu smelled, or imagined he smelled, the citrus-flavored wine the veterans had swilled down by the pitcherful. Maybe it was only the flowers. He noticed his father sniffing, too, though.
When he came into the hall, one of his cousins called to him, “Say, did you invite the redhead who stabbed you? Hadn’t been for him, there probably wouldn’t be a wedding now.”
That held some truth—just how much, Talsu didn’t know and, by the nature of things, would never be able to find out. His mother and sister bristled at the suggestion. If they hadn’t, he might have. As things were, he could laugh and shake his head and send his cousin a rude gesture. That made his cousin laugh, too.
Up at the head of the hall, an assistant to the burgomaster of Skrunda stood waiting, dressed in colorful baggy tunic and trousers from the days between the overthrow of the Kaunian Empire and the rise of the kingdom of Jelgava. For a few hundred years, Skrunda, like most of the towns of the Jelgavan peninsula, had been a power in its own right. The tradition lingered in ceremony, though nowhere else.
Traku murmured, “I’m glad the Algarvians don’t send their officials to do weddings and such.”
“So am I,” Talsu answered. “I wouldn’t really feel married if a redhead said the words over Gailisa and me.”
“Well, come on.” Traku took him by the elbow. “We’ve got to be waiting up there when your bride approaches—if she approaches.” He grinned at Talsu. “She’s got the right to call the whole thing off, you know.”
“So she does.” Talsu refused to let his father rattle him any more than he was already. Instead, he teased back: “And you’d be stuck with the bills for the feast.”
“Oh, I’d probably have a thing or two to say to her father about that,” Traku said. “Step lively now, son. We’ve got people to impress.”
Talsu didn’t know whether he stepped lively or not. He imagined himself on parade in dress uniform, and marched as impressively as he could. The men in the audience who’d been in the army—most of them, odds were—would surely recognize what he was doing. But nobody laughed at him, which was all that mattered in his eyes. A lot of them had probably gone up to wait for their brides at exactly the same slow march tempo.
After bowing to the burgomaster’s assistant, Talsu did a neat about-turn and stood waiting for Gailisa. Every once in a while, a bride didn’t come up and pledge herself with a prospective groom. People gossiped about scandals like those for months. Often, jilted grooms had to move away. Talsu was sure no such thing would happen here. He was sure, but . . .
He couldn’t help letting out a small sigh of relief when, escorted by her doughy father, Gailisa walked toward him in tunic and trousers of grass-green linen that made her golden hair shine like the sun. He also couldn’t help glancing toward the cousin who’d given him a hard time and who, at the moment, looked consumed with jealousy. That was exactly what Talsu wanted to see.
When Gailisa came before the burgomaster’s assistant, she bowed as Talsu had done. Then she turned to her bridegroom. She and Talsu bowed to each other. Then she bowed to Traku while Talsu bowed to her father, who went very red returning the courtesy.
“We are gathered here today to celebrate in public what has been agreed upon in private, the wedding of Talsu and Gailisa,” the burgomaster’s assistant intoned. For all the excitement he showed, he might have been made of clockwork. Talsu wondered how many times he’d said these words. “For the town must recognize this union to make it true and binding. And the town is pleased to do so, confident that the two of you will live many happy years together and bring up many children who will be a delight to Skrunda and an asset to the Kingdom of Jelgava.”
What Kingdom of Jelgava? Talsu wondered. Mainardo’s kingdom, under the thumb of the Algarvians who set Mezentio’s brother on the throne? The words that solemnized the wedding neither asked nor answered any such awkward questions. That was probably just as well.
“By the power vested in me as representative of the independent community of Skrunda, I have the authority to make this wedding both true and legal, so long as that be the wish of those entering into it,” the burgomaster’s assistant said. The independent community of Skrunda had been a joke before the war; with Algarvian occupation, it was a worse joke, and a sadder one, now. Somehow, that didn’t matter. “Is it your wish, separately and conjointly?” the burgomaster’s assistant asked.
“Aye,” Talsu and Gailisa said together. Traku and the burgomaster’s assistant might have heard them. Talsu doubted anyone else did.
But that didn’t matter, either. The burgomaster’s assistant spoke loud enough for them both: “It is accomplished!” Everyone in the hall cheered. Talsu took Gailisa in his arms and planted a decorous kiss on her mouth. The cheering got louder. Several people shouted bawdy advice. At any other time, Talsu would have been furious. Now, he grinned at Gailisa. She smiled back. Was she waiting as eagerly as he was? He hoped so.
They had a while to wait. They ate and drank and danced and accepted money for luck (and to set up housekeeping on their own) and congratulations. All the men in the crowd wanted to kiss Gailisa, and none of the women seemed to mind if Talsu wanted to kiss them. He had an enjoyable time indeed.
The best advice came from his father: “Don’t get too drunk, boy. Tonight of all nights, you don’t want to fall asleep early.”
After the wedding, Gailisa would move in with Talsu for the time being, even though his room, crowded for one, would be desperately small for two. But none of that mattered the first night, either. They’d rented a room in a hostel not far from the hall. As they went into the hostel, some of the wedding guests gathered outside, calling out more lewd suggestions.
Inside the room waited a jar of wine and two glasses. Talsu opened the jar and poured the glasses full. He gave one to Gailisa and raised the other high. “To my wife,” he said, and drank.
“To my husband.” She drank, too. Not very much later, her fingers were exploring the scars on his flank. “I didn’t realize it was this bad,” she whispered.
“The healers left some of that. They opened me up while I was slowed down, so they could patch up what the cursed Algarvian did,” Talsu said. His fingers wandered and explored, too, and liked everything they found. He laughed. “The redhead didn’t hurt anything really important.” Gailisa lay back. He soon showed her he was right.
Sweat ran down Hajjaj’s face as he bowed low before King Shazli. The autumna
l equinox had come and gone, but that was a small thing in Bishah, as indeed it was in most of Zuwayza. The northern kingdom’s capital often had its hottest days in early fall, and this year looked to be no exception. Not even the thick clay walls of Shazli’s palace could hold all the heat at bay.
“What is your judgment, your Excellency?” Shazli asked. “Will our allies strike south over the Wolter and carry all before them?”
“Just in getting to the Wolter, your Majesty, they have carried all before them,” Hajjaj replied. “The Algarvians are a bold and formidable people; anyone who thinks otherwise does so at his peril. They have come a long, long way from their own border—well, from the Yaninan border—to Sulingen on the Wolter.”
“But they haven’t come far enough, not if they’ve come to Sulingen,” Shazli replied. “What they want, what they need, lies on the far side of the river. Can they get it?”
Hajjaj bowed again; Shazli had found the right question to ask, which was certainly the beginning of wisdom. “If they are going to do it in this campaigning season, they had better do it soon,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “I’ve seen Cottbus in the wintertime. Sulingen is a long way south of Cottbus. I wouldn’t care to try a winter campaign in those parts, not against the Unkerlanters.”
“What happens if they fail?” Again, Shazli found the right question.
“The less cinnabar they have, the less good their dragons do them,” Hajjaj said. “They made their own disaster down in the land of the Ice People. If the Unkerlanters make one for them in Sulingen . . .” He shrugged his scrawny naked shoulders. “The war gets harder for them.”
“Which also means the war gets harder for us,” King Shazli said, and Hajjaj could only incline his head in agreement. The king said, “And what do we do under these circumstances, your Excellency?”
Hajjaj spread his hands. “If you have a better answer than the ones I’ve found, your Majesty, I beg you not to be shy with it. Believe me, as things are now, I am looking for any answers I can find.”
Shazli said, “Waiting and seeing, playing Unkerlant and Algarve off against each other . . . What else can we do?”
“I see no other choice,” Hajjaj said. “Unkerlant has raised this false Reformed Principality against us. And if we cast ourselves altogether into Algarve’s arms, if we expel the Kaunian refugees and do everything we can to help Mezentio’s men finally seize the port of Glogau . . .”
Shazli made a sour face. “I am not going to expel the refugees,” he declared, and Hajjaj had all he could do to keep from clapping his hands. The king went on, “With the Algarvians fighting so hard down in the south, could they take Glogau now, even with our help?”
“You would do better asking General Ikhshid than me,” Hajjaj replied.
“Perhaps I shall,” the king said. “But I also want your opinion. You are not a warrior, but you may well know more about the workings of the world than any other man alive.”
“If that be so, the world is in worse shape than even I imagined,” Hajjaj said, on the whole sincerely. His sovereign raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. After a moment’s thought, he did: “In my unprofessional opinion, the Algarvians have put their whole striking force in the south. If they win there and have anything left after the victory, we may see them moving again here in the north come spring. I doubt very much they can do anything before then.”
“Whatever we end up doing, then, we need not decide at once,” King Shazli said, and Hajjaj nodded. Shazli smiled. “Good.”
“Aye,” Hajjaj said. “We have fought Unkerlant, and we have also fought Algarve, fought to stay cobelligerents and at least somewhat masters of our own fate and not helpless cat’s-paws like the Yaninans. At this stage of things, can you imagine King Tsavellas refusing Mezentio anything?”
Shazli’s arched nostrils flared; his lip curled in scorn. “If Mezentio told Tsavellas to send his virgin daughter to a soldiers’ brothel, Tsavellas would do it. I do not want Zuwayza so beholden to Algarve.”
“Geography makes that less likely for us than for the Yaninans, but I see what you are saying, your Majesty, and I agree,” Hajjaj said. “Geography makes us worry about Unkerlant, worse luck.”
“We are free of King Swemmel,” Shazli said. “If this war ends with us free of Swemmel and of Mezentio both, we shall not have done too badly, whatever else happens. I know you will continue working toward that end.”
“With all my heart,” Hajjaj said, and rose to his feet: he recognized a dismissal when he heard one. Shazli nodded. Hajjaj bowed and left the royal presence.
He hadn’t taken more than half a dozen paces out of the king’s audience chamber before a steward sidled up to him and asked, “And what is his Majesty’s will, your Excellency?”
“I am sure he will make it known to you at the time he deems proper,” Hajjaj replied. The steward’s face fell; he hadn’t looked to be so smoothly rebuffed. Hajjaj smiled, but only on the inside, where it didn’t show. He’d been fending off inquisitive courtiers for as long as the steward had been alive.
When the Zuwayzi foreign minister returned to his own office, his secretary asked, “Anything new, your Excellency?”
Now Hajjaj did smile for the whole world, or at least for Qutuz, to see. “Not very much,” he said. “We go on, and we do the best we can as one day follows another. What else is there?”
With a saucy grin, Qutuz set those last two sentences to the tune of a traditional Zuwayzi song about a camel herder longing for the lover he could not visit. “And may we have better fortune than he did,” the secretary finished.
“That would be good,” Hajjaj agreed. “You are, of course, every bit as much a wandering son of the desert as I am.” Relatively few Zuwayzin were nomads these days. More lived in Bishah and other urban centers, and lived lives more like those of other settled Derlavaians than those of their wandering ancestors.
Qutuz understood that, too. “Oh, indeed, your Excellency. I spend my every free moment riding my camel from one waterhole to the next.”
“Since your moments here are not free,” Hajjaj said, “pray be so good as to find out whether General Ikhshid is at liberty to see me for a few minutes, either here or in his own office.”
“Just as you say, your Excellency, so it shall be.” Qutuz’s flowery language might have come straight from the desert, too. Hajjaj bent over and rubbed his backside, as if he’d been riding a camel much too long. Laughing, Qutuz activated his crystal and spoke with one of General Ikhshid’s aides. He turned to Hajjaj. “The general says that, if you don’t mind going over there, he can see you directly.”
“I don’t mind,” Hajjaj said. “We’re old men, Ikhshid and I; he wouldn’t make me walk without good cause.”
Soldiers bustled in and out of Ikhshid’s headquarters, which was certainly a busier-looking place than the foreign ministry. The stocky, grizzled general bowed Hajjaj into his own office and closed the door behind them. “Sit—make yourself comfortable,” he said, and waited till Hajjaj had arranged a mound of pillows on the floor. Then, with military abruptness, Ikhshid came to the point: “Well, your Excellency, what won’t you talk about over the crystal now?”
“You know me well,” Hajjaj said.
“I’d better, after all these years,” General Ikhshid replied. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”
“I shall, never fear,” Hajjaj said. “His Majesty and I were discussing the Algarvians’ chances of taking Glogau either with or without our aid.”
“Were you?” Ikhshid’s eyebrows rose. “And what were your views on the subject?”
Hajjaj did his well-honed best to keep his face from showing anything. He said, “I would sooner have your unvarnished opinion, if you please.”
Ikhshid’s grunt might have been laughter or anger. “Afraid I’ll turn weathervane on you? Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.” Hajjaj shrugged and held his face still. After a wordless grumble, Ikhshid said, “They can’t do it
this campaigning season, that’s certain sure. They’ve stripped the north and center bare as a Zuwayzi to free up dragons and behemoths and egg-tossers for the push to the Mamming Hills.”
“They’ve made Unkerlant do the same, too,” Hajjaj pointed out.
“I don’t deny it,” Ikhshid said. “But the Unkerlanters are just trying to hold on in Glogau. They aren’t trying to break out. You don’t need as much to hang on, because the country fights with you, if you know what I mean.”
“All right,” Hajjaj said, more than a little relieved to find Ikhshid’s judgment confirming his own. “Another question: will the Algarvians take Sulingen?”
“They’ve already taken it, or taken most of it, anyhow,” Ikhshid answered. “That’s not what you want to ask. What you want to ask is, will they have anything left to throw across the Wolter once they’ve finished clearing the town, and will Swemmel’s men have anything left to throw at ’em while they’re trying to do it?” He waited. Hajjaj obediently asked him those two questions. Ikhshid gave him a wry grin. “Your Excellency, I haven’t the faintest idea. If we knew ahead of time how a war was going to turn out, we usually wouldn’t have to fight it.”
“I thank you.” Hajjaj inclined his head to the general. “Truly you are a font of wisdom.”
Ikhshid waggled a forefinger at him. “You’re so cursed smart all the time, Hajjaj—did you know who would win when the redheads took on Valmiera? They tried going east in the last war, too, and it bloody well didn’t work. The Valmierans didn’t think it would work this time, either. Turned out they were wrong.”
“So it did.” After some thought, Hajjaj nodded again. “Very well. I take your point. Since we cannot know what happens till it happens, we had best be as ready as we can for all the possibilities.”
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