"Every word you say there is true," Hajjaj agreed. "I'll do what I can." He nodded to Qutuz. "To the crystallomancers." His secretary nodded and followed.
One of the thick mud-brick walls of the crystallomancers' office had a new, yard-wide hole in it. Some of their tables were overturned; some of their crystals were bright, jagged shards on the floor; some of them were bleeding. But one of the men who hadn't been hurt quickly established an etheric connection with the Algarvian ministry. Balastro's image stared out of a surviving crystal at Hajjaj. "Good to see you in one piece, your Excellency," the redhead said.
"And you," Hajjaj answered. "King Shazli expects the Unkerlanters to pay us more such calls."
"I shouldn't be surprised," Balastro said. "They missed me this time, so they'll have to come back and try again."
Hajjaj smiled at his self-importance, which was partly an act and partly typical of a lot of Algarvians. The Zuwayzi foreign minister said, "Any help you can give us, we'll be grateful for and put to good use. We have the men to serve heavy sticks and the men to fly dragons, if only we could get them. Then the Unkerlanters wouldn't have such an easy time of it."
"I'll pass that along," Balastro said. "When we haven't got enough of anything ourselves, I don't know what they'll say about it back in Trapani. But I'll pass it on with my recommendation that they give you all they can." His eyes narrowed. He was shrewd, was Balastro. "After all, we have to keep you fighting Swemmel, too."
"You and King Shazli see things much alike here," Hajjaj said. "I am glad of it." And I hope it does some good. But will it? Will anything?
Captain Orosio stuck his head into Colonel Sabrino's tent. "Sir, the field post is here," the squadron commander said.
"Is it?" Sabrino rose from his folding chair. He winced. The blazed shoulder he'd taken escaping the Unkerlanters after his dragon was flamed out of the sky still pained him. He wore a wound badge along with his other decorations now. He knew how lucky he was to be alive, and savored survival with Algarvian gusto. "Let's see what we've got, then."
He wore the furs and leather in which he would have flown into the frigid upper air. It was frigid enough down here on the ground in the Kingdom of Grelz. The third winter of the war against Unkerlant, he thought with a sort of dull wonder. He'd never imagined, not that first heady summer when the Algarvians plunged ahead on their western adventure, that the war against King Swemmel could last into its third winter. He'd found a lot of things here that he'd never imagined then.
The postman, who wasn't a dragonflier, looked cold, but Algarvian soldiers who stayed on the ground weren't always freezing, as they had that first dreadful winter, for which they'd been so woefully unprepared. The fellow saluted as Sabrino came up to him. "Here you go, Colonel," he said, and handed the wing commander an envelope.
"Thanks." Sabrino recognized the handwriting at once. To Orosio, he said, "From my wife."
"Ah." Orosio stepped back a couple of paces to give him privacy to read it.
Opening the envelope with gloved hands was a clumsy business, but Sabrino managed. Inside were two pages closely written in Gismonda's clear, precise script. As was her way, she came straight to the point. I have good reason to believe that your mistress has taken up with another man, she told him. Fronesia has been seen too much with an infantry officer- some say a major, others a colonel- to leave any doubt that he has seen too much of her. That being so, I suggest you let him pay for her flat and her extravagances.
"And so I shall," Sabrino muttered.
"What's that, sir?" Oraste asked.
"Cut off my mistress' support," Sabrino answered. "My wife tells me some colonel of footsoldiers, or whatever he may be, is getting the benefits from her these days. If he's getting the benefits, by the powers above, he can bloody well pay the freight, too."
"I should say so." But Orosio's rather heavy features clouded. "As long as you're sure your wife's telling the truth, that is."
Sabrino nodded. "Oh, aye, without a doubt. Gismonda has never given me any trouble about Fronesia. I should hope she wouldn't. My dear fellow, do you know a proper Algarvian noble who hasn't got a mistress or two? -aside from the handful who have boys on the side instead, I mean."
"Well…" Captain Orosio hesitated, then said, "There's me."
Sabrino slapped him on the back. "And we know what your problem is: you've been here fighting a war and serving your kingdom. You get back to civilization, you'll need to carry a constable's club to beat the women back."
"Maybe." Orosio kicked at the frozen dirt like a youth just beginning to think about girls. "It'd be nice."
Sabrino slapped him on the back again. "It'll happen," he said, wondering if it would. Orosio was a nobleman, all right, or he'd have had an even harder time making officer's rank than he had, but you needed to squint hard at his pedigree to be sure of it. He'd have risen further and faster otherwise, for he was a first-rate soldier. There were times when Sabrino was glad Orosio hadn't been in position to hope for a wing of his own to command; he was too useful and able a subordinate to want to lose.
"Well, maybe," Orosio said again. He knew what held him back. He could hardly help knowing. After another kick at the dirt, he went on, "The way our losses are these days, we're getting more out-and-out commoners as officers than we probably ever did in all our history till now."
"It could be," Sabrino agreed. "The Six Years' War was hard on our noble families, too. Put it together with this one, and…" He sighed. "When the war is over, the king will have to grant a lot of patents of nobility, just to keep the ranks from getting too thin."
"I suppose so." Orosio's laugh sent fog spurting from his mouth. "And then the families who were noble before the war will spend the next five hundred years looking down their noses at the new ones."
"That's the truth." Sabrino laughed, too. But, as happened so often these days, the laughter didn't want to stick. "Better that than having some other king tell us who our nobles will be and who they won't be."
In centuries gone by, Valmiera and Jelgava and Forthweg and even Yanina had meddled in Algarvian affairs, backing now this local prince, now that one, as puppet or cat's-paw. Once upon a time, Sibiu had ruled a broad stretch of the coastline of southern Algarve. Those bad days, those days when a man was embarrassed to admit he was an Algarvian, were gone. Algarve had taken its right place in the sun, a kingdom among kingdoms, a great kingdom among great kingdoms.
But Algarve didn't hold Sibiu anymore. And, not far away, eggs burst, a quick, hard drumbeat of noise. Sabrino's head swung in that direction as he gauged the sound and what it might mean. So did Orosio's. "Unkerlanters," Orosio said.
"Aye." Sabrino hated to nod. "They didn't even let the mud slow them down this autumn. Now that the ground's hard again, I don't know how we're going to hold them out of Herborn."
"Neither do I," Orosio said. "But we'd cursed well better, because we'll have a demon of a time hanging on to the rest of Grelz if we lose it."
"Oh, it's not quite so bad as that, I wouldn't say- not good, mind you, but not so bad as that," Sabrino said. Orosio looked glum and cold and disbelieving and said not a word. Sabrino had been hoping for an argument. Silence, skeptical silence, gave him nothing to push against.
A crystallomancer hurried over to his tent and stuck his head inside. Not seeing him, the fellow drew back in confusion. "Here I am," Sabrino called, and waved. "What's gone wrong now?" He assumed something had, or the fellow wouldn't have been looking for him.
With a salute, the crystallomancer said, "Sir, the wing is ordered to attack the Unkerlanter ground forces now pushing their way into map square Green-Three."