Part 18 (2/2)

”Aye.” Saadun bowed again. ”Come with me, then.”

As Hajjaj followed him through the streets of Najran, the local Zuwayzin came out of their shops to stare. Till the war, few strangers had come to their hamlet. Who would have wanted to, so long as he had other choices? The folk in the camel-hair tents had none. Had they not come to Najran, Hajjaj wouldn't have, either.

Somebody in one of those tents stuck out his head. His unkempt golden beard gleamed in the merciless sunlight. When he saw Saadun and Hajjaj approaching, he exclaimed and came all the way out of the tent. More blonds--men, women, and children--spilled from the rest of those makes.h.i.+ft shelters. They still wore whatever clothes they'd had on when they got to Zuwayza. Most of those clothes were tattered, but they'd been mended and were almost painfully clean.

As one, the Kaunian refugees bowed low when Hajjaj walked up to them. The Zuwayzi foreign minister glanced over toward Colonel Saadun. Saadun nodded back, unabashed. ”They know who you are, your Excellency. Is it not fitting that they should show their grat.i.tude?”

”I do not see that I did anything particularly requiring grat.i.tude--only what any decent man would do,” Hajjaj said. Saadun's mouth narrowed as if he were about to speak, but he didn't. After another few steps, Hajjaj sighed. ”With things as they are in the world these days, maybe common decency does rate grat.i.tude. But the world's a sorry place if it does.”

”The world's a sorry place, all right,” Saadun said, and said no more.

Before Hajjaj could find an answer, the Kaunians streamed toward him. Despite their clothes, despite the wide straw hats they'd got here in Najran, many of them were badly sunburned. No wonder that, in the days of the Kaunian Empire, the ancestors of these blonds had traded with the dusky nomads who roamed Zuwayza, but had never tried to make it into an imperial province.

”Powers above bless you, your Excellency!” exclaimed the man who'd first peered out of his tent and spied Hajjaj.

He spoke his own tongue, but Hajjaj understood. Any cultured man learned cla.s.sical Kaunian, but only the Kaunians of Forthweg used it as their milk speech. The accent sounded odd to Hajjaj's ears, but only a little. ”I am glad to see you here and safe,” he replied. He spoke slowly, carefully--though fluent in written Kaunian, he seldom had occasion to use it orally.

”You've saved us,” the blond said. ”You've kept us alive when no one would have cared if you'd killed us.” All the other Kaunians gathered around Hajjaj, even the boys and girls, nodded at that.

Another man said, ”We'd join your army and fight your foes for you, if only ...” His voice trailed away; he didn't know how to go on and be polite at the same time.

A woman filled in the blank, saying what had to be in everyone's mind: ”If only you weren't friends with the Algarvians. You are a good man, your Excellency. You must be a good man. How can you stand to be friends with the Algarvians?” As she asked the question, bewilderment filled her voice and her face.

”Algarve helps my kingdom right wrongs done against us,” Hajjaj answered. ”No one else could--no one else would--give us that help.”

”And you help us when no one else could or would,” the first Kaunian man said. ”Doing that might turn your friends into your foes.”

Hajjaj shrugged. ”It has not happened. I do not think it will happen. Here in the north, Algarve needs us.”

The Kaunians stirred and muttered among themselves. The woman who'd been forthright before was forthright again: ”No one needed us in Forthweg-- not the barbarians we lived among, and not the barbarians who overran the land, either.”

If the blonds in Forthweg hadn't reckoned their far more numerous Forthwegian neighbors barbarians, the Forthwegians might have been less enthusiastic about watching them get s.h.i.+pped off to destruction. Or, on the other hand, the Forthwegians might not have. From the clan struggles among his own people, Hajjaj knew neighbor did not necessarily love neighbor even when they looked alike.

A young woman asked, ”Your Excellency, what will you do with us now?”

Her voice was husky and sweet. Before she'd suffered on the sea voyage to Zuwayza, she might well have been quite a beauty. Even gaunt and drawn as she was, she remained striking. Hajjaj thought of a thing or two he would have liked to do with her, even if age kept him from doing such things as often as he once had. She was hardly in a position to refuse him. And he'd needed a third wife, a wife for amus.e.m.e.nt, ever since he'd sent greedy Lalla back to her clan-father.

He shook his head, angry at himself, and ashamed, too. If he took advantage of her weakness, how was he any different from an Algarvian? ”For now,” he answered, ”you will stay here. No one will molest you. You will have food and water. After the war is over, we shall decide your permanent fate.”

”If the redheads win, we can all go and throw ourselves back into the sea,” a man said.

He was probably--in fact, he was almost certainly--right. But Hajjaj countered, ”If Unkerlant wins, what will become of us Zuwayzin? Much the same, I fear. We shall protect ourselves, and we shall do our best to protect you as well.”

”We thank you,” the striking young woman said, and the rest of the blonds, three or four dozen of them, solemnly nodded. She went on, ”We feared you would sink our boats or give us over to King Mezentio's men. Anything this side of that seems a miracle of kindness.”

Again, all the Kaunians nodded. If common decency seemed a miracle . . . ”What will be left of everything we've spent so long building up by the time this cursed war finally ends?” Hajjaj asked. No one answered him. He hadn't thought anyone would.

The excitement of going up to Yliharma was dead inside Pekka. It had been since the Algarvians, with their brutal sorcery, almost leveled the capital of Kuusamo. But, like it or not, research called her out of the south. She was sure she wasn't the only nervous pa.s.senger on the ley-line caravan.

When the caravan pulled into the depot in Yliharma, Pekka grimaced at the cracked walls patched with pale new cement. She also wondered how well the patches would hold if the Algarvians renewed their sorcerous a.s.sault on the city. With all her heart, she hoped she wouldn't have to find out.

Siuntio stood waiting for her on the platform. ”Here, let me take your bag,” the old theoretical sorcerer said, reaching for it.

”I'll do no such thing, Master,” Pekka said indignantly. ”I can carry it myself.” Siuntio had aged visibly since they'd started working together. Maybe the strain of the sorcery was telling on him, or maybe the aftermath of the shock from the attack on Yliharma ... or maybe he was simply drawing toward the end of his time. Wherever the truth lay, he looked as if a strong breeze would blow him off the platform. Pekka knew she was stronger than he.

He had to know it, too; his sigh was wistful, not angry. ”Well, come along, then,” he said. ”I trust the Princ.i.p.ality will suffice?”

”Oh, no. I want something grander.” Pekka sounded even more indignant than she had a moment before. Then she laughed. So did Siuntio. Yliharma had no hostel grander than the Princ.i.p.ality. Setubal might. On the other hand, it might not, too. Pekka went on, ”You'll spoil me, you know.”

”I doubt it,” Siuntio said. ”And even if we should manage it, running around after that scamp of an Uto should unspoil you pretty soon.”

”Hard to be spoiled when you're exhausted,” Pekka agreed. She gave the senior mage a sidelong glance. ”We both have to run around after that scamp of an Ilmarinen, don't we?”

Siuntio wheezed laughter. ”I've been running around after Ilmarinen longer than you've been alive. I take a certain amount of pride in noting that I've made him run around after me a few times, too.” He waved to a horse-drawn cab. The driver descended from his perch and held the door open. ”The Princ.i.p.ality,” Siuntio said as he handed Pekka up into the cab.

”Aye, sir,” the driver said respectfully. Pekka didn't think he knew who Siuntio was, but anyone who wanted to go to the fancy hostel had to be a person of more than a little consequence.

The hostel lay only a few blocks from the depot. That was true of most newer hostels, which were sensibly close to the greatest source of travelers. Older ones stood near the hill on which the palace stood and along the road west to Lagoas.

Almost as if they were so many Algarvians, the servitors at the Princ.i.p.ality bowed and sc.r.a.ped and fussed over Pekka when she came into the lobby. It wasn't because she had Siuntio walking by her side, either. To her mind, that would have been reason enough to bow and sc.r.a.pe and fuss. But the folk who worked at the hostel neither knew nor cared who Siuntio was. They fussed over Pekka for no better reason than that she had money. Had she been a trollop rich enough to afford the Princ.i.p.ality, they would have treated her the same way. The idea made Pekka angry.

”Money shouldn't count for more than quality,” she said to Siuntio.

He took her ire in stride. As best she could tell, he took everything--except occasionally Ilmarinen--in stride. ”Money is easier to measure,” he replied-- and what else was a working theoretical sorcerer likely to say?

Pekka stuck out her chin and looked stubborn. ”Sometimes the easy measurement isn't the important one.” She was a working theoretical sorcerer, too.

Instead of answering right away, Siuntio leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She spluttered in surprise. The old mage's smile was saucy. ”Go on upstairs. Order yourself a fancy supper the Seven Princes are paying for. Enjoy the steam room and then sluice yourself down with cold water. Some people used to think being a sorcerer meant depriving yourself of everything that made life worth living. Do you still?”

”You know better,” she answered.

”Aye, I do, for I've seen your home,” Siuntio said. ”You have no home in Yliharma, so you're doomed to enjoy yourself here. I'll see you in the morning.” He turned and went out to the waiting cab. Pekka stared after him with mingled exasperation and affection. Then, seeing no other good choice, she went on upstairs and did exactly what Siuntio had suggested.

The mattress in her little suite was wider and sorter and altogether more inviting than the one she used at home. Even so, she didn't sleep well. For one thing, she didn't have Leino lying there beside her stealing the coverlets and doing his best to make sure she froze. For another, no matter how inviting the bed was, it was also unfamiliar. Pekka tossed and turned and laughed at herself. I'm too comfortable to doze off, she thought. However absurd it sounded, it was true. Eventually, she did fall asleep.

After an extravagant breakfast of smoked salmon and delicate onions on rye bread, she went downstairs. Siuntio and Ilmarinen waited for her in the lobby. Siuntio looked not much different from the way he had the night before. When she saw Ilmarinen, though, her first thought was that he'd had too much to drink and was suffering on account of it.

”So you're here to join the vultures' feast, eh?” he said, and she realized it was fury, not a hangover, that reddened his eyes and made the wrinkles in his cheeks and on his forehead seem deeper and more eroded-looking than she'd ever seen them.

”I'm here, aye,” she said. ”As for feasts, I don't know about any except the one I just finished in my room.”

Ilmarinen rounded on Siuntio. ”Powers above, you quack, didn't you tell her?”

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