“He’ll see me when it’s convenient for me.”
Tjiimpuu looked up in surprise and annoyance as the door to his sanctum came open. So did the man with him: a solidly built Skrelling of middle years, dressed in a richer version of the gray-brown uniform the ministry guards wore. The two men stood over a map table; the maps, Park saw, were of the area in dispute with the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb.
“Judge Scoglund, you have no business intruding uninvited,” Tjiimpuu said coldly.
“No? By your companion, I’d say I have every business. If you are talking with a soldier at the same time you talk with me, that tells me something of how serious you are about my mission.” Unlike Da’ud’s, Park’s nose was not really long enough to stare down, but he did his best.
The soldier said, “I will handle this.” Then he surprised Park by shifting to English: “ ‘Let him who wants peace foreready himself for war.’ Some old Roman wrote that, Judge Scoglund, in a warly book. It was a rick thock then, and rick it stays in our ain time. Vinland regretted forgetting it last year, nay?”
“You have a point,” Park admitted; with any sort of decent army to overawe potential rebels, the Bretwaldate would not have gone through a spasm of civil war. “But still, ah-”
“I am Kwiismankuu, apuu maita — marshal, you would say in your tongue — of Tawantiinsuuju.” Kwiismankuu returned to Ketjwa: “Now I will leave this matter in the hands of you two gentlemen, so learned in the arts of peace. If you fail, I will be ready to make good your mistakes.” Bowing to both Tjiimpuu and Park, he tramped out of the foreign minister’s office.
Park walked over to the table and examined the map Tjiimpuu and Kwiismankuu had been using. Little kiipuu figures, with knots drawn in different ways, were scribbled by towns. Park suspected they stood for the sizes of local garrisons, but could not be sure. To the uninitiated, kiipuus were worse than Roman numerals.
He noticed how far east the Tawantiinsuujan map put the border: well into what he thought of as Venezuela. Clicking tongue against teeth, he said, “Not even Tjeroogia or Northumbria recognizes your claim to so much territory, and they’re the best friends Tawantiinsuuju has.”
“We won the land; we will keep it,” Tjiimpuu declared, as he had at the reception a few days before. If this was what he thought negotiating was all about, Park thought gloomily, the upcoming sessions would be long, boring, and fruitless.
He tried another tack. “How many folk in the land you conquered in your last war with the Emirate are still Muslims?” he asked.
“A fair number,” Tjiimpuu said, adding, “though day by day we work to convert them to the true faith of Patjakamak and the sun.”
Thereby endearing yourselves both to the locals and to the Emirate, Park thought. He didn’t know whether the Tawantiinsuujans had borrowed the idea of one exclusive religion from Christianity and Islam or thought of it for themselves. Either way, they had their own full measure of missionary zeal.
“Dakotia is neutral in this dispute,” Park said, “not least because it borders no state that has a boundary with yours. Dakotian maps”-he drew one out of his leather briefcase to show to Tjiimpuu-“show your border with the Emirate running so. This might be a line from which you and Da’ud could at least begin talks.”
“And abandon everyone east of it to the Muslims’ savagery and false faith?” The foreign minister sounded appalled.
“They feel the same way about your worship of Patjakamak,” Park pointed out.
“But they are ignorant and misguided, while we possess the truth.”
Park resisted a strong temptation to bend over and pound his forehead against the top of the table. That Tjiimpuu was sincere made matters no better. If anything, it made them worse. A scoundrel was much more amenable to persuasion than someone honestly convinced of the righteousness of his cause.
Sighing, Park said, “I had hoped to sound you out before we began face-to-face talks with Da’ud ibn Tariq. Maybe this will work out better, though. If he is as stubborn as you, the whole world will see neither side is serious about ending your life of war after war.”
Tjiimpuu’s face turned a darker shade of bronze. “I will speak with you again when these talks begin. Till then, I want nothing to do with you. You are dismissed.”
Let the Moors try to claim I’m biased toward Skrellings now, Park thought as he walked out to the street. On the whole, he was more pleased than not over his confrontation with Tjiimpuu. He would have been happier yet, however, had the Tawantiinsuujan foreign minister shown even the slightest sign of compromise.
Kuuskoo’s streets, nearly deserted an hour before, now swarmed with life. The locals, quiet and orderly as usual, all seemed to be going in the same direction. “What are you doing?” Park asked a man walking by.
The man turned, stared in surprise. For all Park knew, he had never seen a pink-cheeked, sandy-haired person before; neither travel nor communication between distant lands was as easy here as in the judge’s native world. Still, the Kuuskan’s answer was polite enough: “We go to the festival of Raimii, of course.”
“Raimii, eh?” That was the most important religious festival in Tawantiinsuuju, the solemn feast of the sun. Curiosity got the better of Park, though he knew the original inhabitant of ex-Bishop Ib Scoglund’s body would not have been caught dead attending such a pagan rite. Too bad for old Ib, he thought. “Maybe I’ll come with you.”
The local beamed, shifted the big cud of coca leaves in his mouth. “I always thought foreigners were too ignorant and depraved to understand our religion. Perhaps I was wrong.”
Park only grunted in response to that. He walked with the crowd now, instead of trying to cut across it. The Skrellings’ low-voiced talk grew louder and more excited as they filed into a large plaza near the center of Kuuskoo. The square was as big as two football fields side by side, maybe bigger. Park tried to work out how many people it could hold. Let’s see, he thought, assuming each person needs a little more than a square foot to stand in, if thisplace is, say, 400 feet by 300-
He gave up the arithmetic as a bad job, for he suddenly saw that the walls of two sides of the square had a golden chain stretched along them, a little above man-high. Each link was thicker than his wrist. Instead of figuring out people, he started reckoning how many dollars, or even Vinland crowns, that chain would be worth. A lot of them, for sure.
The Tawantiinsuujan who had told him of the festival was still beside him. He saw Park staring at the chain. “This is as nothing, stranger. This is but the common people’s square; we call it Kuusipata. The Son of the Sun and his kin worship one square over, in the plaza called Awkaipata. There you would see gold and silver used in a truly lavish way.”
“This is lavish enough for me,” Park muttered. Just one link of that chain, he thought, and he wouldn’t have to worry about money for the rest of his life. For the first time, he understood what Francisco Pizarro must have felt when he plundered the wealth of the Incas back in Park’s original world. He’d always thought Pizarro the champion bandit of all time, but the sight of so much gold lying around loose would have made anyone start breathing hard.
Several men strode out onto a raised platform at the front of the square. Some wore gold and silver wreaths, and had plates of the precious metals adorning their tunics. Others used the hides of pumas and jaguars in place of robes, with their own faces peering out under the big cats’ heads. When one man held his arms wide, others had to step aside, for his costume included huge condor wings, feathered in black and white.
One of the priests, for such they were, raised his hands to the sky. All the people in the square somehow found room to squat. Park was a beat late, and felt rather like an impostor trying to pretend he belonged in a marching band. His knees creaked as he held the squat. He grumpily wondered why the Tawantiinsuujans couldn’t kneel when they worshiped, like everyone else. That would have been a lot more comfortable.