Hajjaj allowed himself a small smile. The blonds had learned how some Zuwayzi customs worked, sure enough. “As you wish,” he said, and waved to the pillows piled here and there on the carpeted floor. “Sit down. Make yourselves comfortable. And then, please, tell me what I can do for you.”
His guests had got used to making do with pillows instead of chairs and couches, too. They all made nests for themselves. Nemunas, who seemed to be their spokesman, said, “Sir, you know we’ve been sailing east out of Najran back to Forthweg, to hit the cursed redheads a lick or two.”
“Officially, I do not know this,” Hajjaj replied. “Had I known it officially”- he wondered if he’d correctly used the subjunctive there-”Zuwayza’s former allies, the Algarvians you mentioned, would not have been pleased with me.”
Kaudavas said, “We never did understand how anyone could ally with Mezentio’s whoresons, if you don’t mind my saying so.” He was stamped from the same mold as his comrades; if anything, he was bigger and burlier than either of them, burly enough to make Hajjaj wonder if he had a little Forthwegian blood.
“Considering what the Algarvians did to you, I know why you say that,” Hajjaj replied. “Still, we had our reasons.”
“Now we’ve had something to do with the Unkerlanter navy men at Najran,” Vitols said. “Maybe we can figure out what some of those reasons are.”
“Ah?” Hajjaj leaned forward. “Dealing with Unkerlanters is often less than enjoyable. Does this have to do with your reasons for coming to Bishah to see me?”
“Aye,” the Kaunians said as one, loudly and angrily enough to make Qutuz look in to see that the foreign minister was all right. Hajjaj waved him back. Nemunas went on, “The thing of it is, we want to keep right on sailing back to Forthweg. Swemmel’s men haven’t driven the redheads out of all of it yet. We can do some good there.”
“And besides, we want revenge,” Kaudavas added.
“Indeed,” Hajjaj said. “Rest assured, I do understand this.” Among the Zuwayzin, vengeance was a dish to be savored. No other Derlavaian folk thought of it in such artistic terms, though the Algarvians came close.
Vitols said, “But the Unkerlanter navy men won’t let us go out. They say they’ll sink us if we try, and they mean it, curse ‘em.”
“Can you do something about that, sir?” Nemunas asked. “That’s why we came here, to find out if you could.”
“I … see. I do not know.” Hajjaj made a sour face. Najran was a Zuwayzi port, not one that belonged to King Swemmel. For the Zuwayzin not to be in full control of what happened there was galling. But Zuwayza, these days, kept only such sovereignty as Unkerlant chose to yield to her. Hajjaj drummed his fingers on his knee. “Let me ask a question. Are you loyal to this new king, this King Beornwulf, the Unkerlanters have named?” Forthweg, these days, kept even less sovereignty than Zuwayza did.
In almost perfect unison, the Kaunians from Forthweg shrugged. “Don’t care about him one way or the other,” Nemunas answered.
“He’s just a Forthwegian,” Vitols agreed.
This time, Hajjaj hid his smile. The blonds might be a persecuted minority, but they kept a haughty pride of their own. He said, “Let me ask it a different way: would you swear loyalty to King Beornwulf if that let you be loosed against the Algarvians still in Forthweg?”
Nemunas, Vitols, and Kaudavas looked at one another. They all shrugged again, more raggedly than before. “Why not?” Nemunas said at last. “When the war’s finally over, we’ll be living under him if we go back to Forthweg.”
“He can’t be much worse than that vain fool of a Penda,” Kaudavas added.
His opinion of the former King of Forthweg closely matched Hajjaj’s. The foreign minister also noted that some Kaunian refugees looked to be thinking about staying in Zuwayza. After the Six Years’ War, the kingdom had taken in some Algarvian refugees. The blonds might also fit in.
None of that, though, had anything to do with the business at hand. “I shall speak to Minister Ansovald for you,” Hajjaj promised. “I do not know what he will say, but I shall speak to him.” The blonds were effusive in their thanks. They bowed themselves almost double as they left Hajjaj’s office. No matter how much gratitude they showed, though, they had no idea of the size of the favor Hajjaj was doing for them.
Qutuz did. “I’m sorry, your Excellency,” he said.
“So am I,” Hajjaj answered bleakly. “Some things can’t be helped, though.” But he couldn’t stay that calm, however much he tried. “Every time I talk to the Unkerlanter barbarian, I want to go take a bath right afterwards. And he has the whip hand now, powers below eat him.”
Ansovald didn’t deign to grant him an audience for three days. The Unkerlanter minister no doubt thought he was humiliating and angering Hajjaj. Hajjaj, however, was just as well pleased with delay here. At last, though, he had to don an Unkerlanter-style tunic and travel over to the ministry. He alighted from his carriage with a sigh. The Unkerlanter sentries looked through him as if he didn’t exist.
By all the signs, Ansovald would also have loved to pretend Hajjaj didn’t exist. He and the Zuwayzi foreign minister had never got on well. These days, Ansovald-a tough, beefy man with a permanent sour expression-not only had the whip hand, he enjoyed using it. “Well, what now?” he demanded in Algarvian when Hajjaj came before him.
“I have a petition to present to you,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister replied, also in Algarvian. It was the only language they shared. Using it with the Unkerlanter had an ironic tang that usually appealed to Hajjaj. Today, though, he wondered at the omen.
“Go ahead,” Ansovald rumbled, and fiddled with a fingernail as if more interested in that than in anything Hajjaj was likely to say. No doubt he is, Hajjaj thought unhappily. Nevertheless, he went on with the request the Kaunians from Forthweg had made. Ansovald did start to listen to him; he gave the Unkerlanter minister to Zuwayza that much. And, when he finished, Ansovald wasted no time coming to a decision. He looked Hajjaj straight in the eye and said, “No.”
Hajjaj hadn’t really expected anything else. Ansovald was here not least to thwart Zuwayza. But he asked, “Why not, your Excellency? Surely you cannot believe these Kaunians would prefer King Mezentio to King Swemmel? Why not loose them against the enemy you both hate?”
“I don’t have to tell you a cursed thing,” Ansovald answered. Hajjaj just inclined his head and waited. Ansovald glared at him. At last, patience won what anger-or anger openly revealed, at least-wouldn’t have. “All right. All right,” the Unkerlanter minister said. “I’ll tell you why, curse it.”
“Thank you,” Hajjaj said, and wondered whether he was more pained to say those words or Ansovald to hear them.
Ansovald might have bitten into a lemon as he went on, “Because these Kaunians are a pack of cursed troublemakers, that’s why.”
“Don’t you want Mezentio’s men to have trouble?” Hajjaj asked.
“They’ve got trouble. We’re giving it to them.” Ansovald’s glare settled on the Zuwayzi foreign minister. “If we weren’t, I wouldn’t be here yattering with you, would I?” Hajjaj spread his hands, yielding the point. Ansovald bulled ahead: “But that isn’t the kind of troublemakers I meant. Aye, they’d give the redheads a hard time, as long as there are any redheads left in Forthweg. There won’t be, though, not for very much longer. And after that-troublemakers make trouble, you know what I mean? Pretty soon, they’d start giving us trouble, just on account of we were there. Why let ‘em? You’ve got yourself some blonds, and you’re welcome to them. My orders on this one come from Cottbus, and Cottbus knows what it’s talking about.”
Hajjaj considered. Ansovald’s words did have a certain ruthless logic behind them-the sort King Swemmel came up with on one of his good days. Troublemakers were fond of making trouble, and against whom didn’t always matter. Hajjaj had told the blonds he would try, and he’d tried. “Let it be as you say,” he murmured.