He went upstairs (the hostel was one of a handful of buildings in town to boast a second story) and walked down the hall to the chamber where, he’d been told, the man he was to meet awaited him. He knocked once, twice, then once again. After a moment, the latch clicked. The door swung open.
A short, squat, swarthy man--swarthy, but far from black--wearing a knee-length cotton tunic looked him up and down. “Powers above, you’re a scrawny old bugger,” he remarked in Algarvian.
“Thank you so much, my lord Ansovald. I am so glad to see you again, your Excellency,” Hajjaj answered in the same language. Speaking Algarvian to the former--and perhaps future--Unkerlanter minister to Zuwayza tickled his sense of irony, which needed little tickling. But it was the one speech they truly had in common. His own Unkerlanter was halting, Ansovald s Zuwayzi as near nonexistent as made no difference.
If Ansovald noticed the irony, he didn’t let on. “Well, come in,” he said, and stood aside. “If you want to put on a tunic and hide that bag of bones you call a carcass, I’ve got one here for you.”
That was the usual practice for Zuwayzi diplomats. Hajjaj had grown resigned to wearing a long tunic when calling on envoys from Unkerlant and Forthweg, a short tunic and kilt when seeing a minister from an Algarvic kingdom, a tunic and trousers when meeting with Kaunians, and clothes of some sort, at any rate, when dealing with lands like Kuusamo and Gyongyos, where style of apparel carried less political weight. But growing resigned to it didn’t mean he loved it. He shook his head and answered, “No, thank you. This is unofficial, which means I can be comfortable if I please, and I do.”
He’d thought about wearing a tunic to this meeting too, thought about it and rejected the notion. Nothing would have drawn stares like a clothed Zuwayzi strolling through Jurdhan--nothing except a naked Unkerlanter strolling through Cottbus. And maybe his nudity would disconcert Ansovald.
If it did, the Unkerlanter diplomat didn’t show that, either. “Come in, then,” he said. “I told you that already. I’d sooner you were a woman half your age, but I don’t suppose King Shazli would.”
“No, in a word.” Hajjaj walked into the chamber. Ansovald closed the door behind him, closed it and barred it. From any other kingdom’s minister, Ansovald’s words would have been monstrously rude. From the Unkerlanter, they were something of a prodigy. This was the first time Hajjaj could remember him caring in the slightest for what King Shazli thought.
The room was furnished Zuwayzi-style, with carpet piled on carpet and with cushions large and small a guest could arrange to suit his own comfort. Hajjaj wasted no time doing that. Ansovald followed suit rather more clumsily. He did not offer Hajjaj wine and cakes and tea, as any Zuwayzi host would have done. Instead, very much an Unkerlanter again, he bulled straight ahead: “We aren’t going to settle the war between us this afternoon.”
“I never expected we would,” Hajjaj replied.
“And you can’t tell me you’re able to make the cursed Algarvians pack up and go home, either,” Ansovald growled. “Aye, you and the redheads are in bed with each other, but I know which one’s the tail and which one’s the dog.”
Despite the mixed metaphor, Hajjaj followed him. The Zuwayzi foreign minister said, “If Unkerlant hadn’t come up and ravaged us by force, we would likely be neutral now, not allied to King Mezentio.”
“Oh, aye--tell me another one,” Ansovald jeered. “You’d kick us when we were down, just like everyone else.”
That held a grain of truth, or more than a grain. But what was true and what was diplomatic often had only a nodding relationship, or sometimes none at all. Hajjaj said, “Wouldn’t you be better off if you had fewer foes to fight?”
“What’s your price?” Ansovald was an Unkerlanter, all right: no subtlety to him, no style, no grace. Hajjaj vastly preferred dealing with Marquis Balastro, Algarve’s minister to Zuwayza.
On the other hand, the urbane and dashing Algarvians had been the ones who’d started murdering Kaunians for the sake of advantage in the war. By all accounts, King Swemmel of Unkerlant had wasted not a moment in imitating them, but Algarve went first. Try as he would, Hajjaj couldn’t forget that.
“Your Excellency, Unkerlant went to war with us because the Treaty of Bludenz no longer suited your sovereign,” he said.
“Kyot the traitor signed the Treaty of Bludenz,” Ansovald said, which was true: like Forthweg, Zuwayza had used the chaos reigning in Unkerlant after the Six Years’ War to regain her freedom.
But Hajjaj said, “And King Swemmel always adhered to it afterwards. He got good results when he did, and bad results when he decided not to any longer and invaded us. Isn’t it efficient to do what works well and inefficient to do the opposite?” Swemmel and, because of him, his countrymen prated endlessly of efficiency, but the talk came easier for them than the thing itself.
Ansovald’s heavy features were made for scowling, and he scowled now. “You black thieves have stolen more land now than the Treaty of Bludenz ever gave you, and you know it cursed well, too.”
Hajjaj breathed heavily through his arched nose. “One reason we have is that you tannish thieves stole so much of what you’d honestly yielded in the treaty. Give us the border we had before, give us guarantees that you mean to give what you say you’re giving, and I may persuade King Shazli to be satisfied.” Since the slaughters to power sorcery had started, the Zuwayzi foreign minister kept casting about for ways to get out of the war. He had some hopes for this one, the more so as Unkerlant had requested the meeting.
Ansovald proceeded to dash them, saying, “King Swemmel will give you the borders you agreed to in Cottbus and not another inch of ground.”
“I agreed to those because Unkerlant invaded my kingdom,” Hajjaj exclaimed indignantly. “I agreed to them because we stood alone, without a friend in the world. Things are different now, and King Swemmel had better recognize it.”
“Oh, he does,” Ansovald said. “By even offering so much, he admits--unofficially, of course--Zuwayza has a right to exist. That is more than you have had from him before. Take it and be thankful.”
The worst of it was, he had a point of sorts. But only of sorts. In tones far more frigid than Zuwayzi weather ever got, Hajjaj said, “It cannot be. Unkerlant got that border after beating us in war. We are not beaten now, as you yourself have said. And if King Swemmel did not recognize that Zuwayza has a right to exist, why were you his minister in Bishah for so long?”
“He treated with you. You Zuwayzin are here, after all.” Ansovald sounded like a man admitting something he didn’t care for but couldn’t deny. “But being here is not the same as being a kingdom.”
“This is the bargain for which I spirited myself out of Bishah? This, and nothing more?” Hajjaj asked. When Ansovald nodded, the Zuwayzi foreign minister felt betrayed. He said, “I cannot take it back to my own sovereign--who is King of Zuwayza, whether Swemmel recognizes him or not. I had hoped you might have some room to dicker, considering how much of Unkerlant Algarve holds these days.”
“Less today than yesterday,” Ansovald said, drawing himself up with touchy pride. “Less tomorrow than today. We will whip them out of our kingdom altogether before spring--and when we do, your turn comes next.”
Hajjaj did not think that would happen. “It was only weeks ago that Cottbus was on the point of falling,” he pointed out.