"I don't understand it," Cabot muttered, half to himself. "One minute he's trying to buy their favor, and then. . He works them like peons right after they've won a battle; he keeps the strictest discipline I've ever seen, flogs and hangs for minor offenses against peasants-"
"He make them win," Fatima said.
"Yes," Cabot said; again to himself. "He's got guts and he knows his trade, I'll grant him that. And he wins. That's what makes him dangerous."
"General who lose is not dangerous to his Sultan?" Fatima asked. Cabot shot her a sharp glance, then relaxed at her palpable innocence.
"Yes, Fatima," he said. "That's the problem, you see. Bad generals may ruin you; good ones may overthrow you. Now, a Governor who was a successful general. ."
"Besides," Fatima went on, frowning, "I think-thought-Lady Whitehall have the idea for the weddings."
"Oh, Lady Suzette," Cabot said, the throttled anger in his voice vanishing. "Suzette. She's an angel. I'm sure she didn't have anything in mind but helping-"
"Excuse me, Messer Clerett," Gerrin Staenbridge said. "I've come to collect my mistress."
"Of course," Cabot said, bowing. "And I complement you on your taste, Messer Staenbridge. . in this at least."
Gerrin's grin was toothily insincere as he bowed the other man on his way. "No style at all," he murmured to himself after the Governor's nephew had moved out of earshot. "Bottom like a peasant, to boot. Very boot-able, in fact."
Fatima was thinking over Cabot's last remark to her. "Gerrin," she said, "tell me: why smart young man stupid about a woman?" My lady Suzette is a djinni, not a houri, she thought in her mother tongue.
"What was that?" Bartin Foley said, coming up on her other side.
"I ask why all young men so stupid," Fatima said, taking his arm as well.
"Imp," he said. She stuck out her tongue at him.
* * *
"Are you sure you will not need me more here, saaidya?" Abdullah said.
Suzette looked around her sitting room; while she did, her hands straightened the pile of papers before her. The punkah overhead made a languid attempt to stir the air, and hot white light speared in through the slats of the shutters. A cat on a pile of silk cushions beneath writhed in its slumber, spreading a paw. From the courtyard garden came the sound of splashing water and a rake slowly, very slowly, gathering leaves.
"We won't be here much longer, my faithful one," she said.
"Now: here is the report from Ndella. Read and destroy it."
"Ah, that one," Abdullah said with professional appreciation.
Ndella cor Whitehall had been born in the Zanj city of Liswali and trained as a physician, before being captured by Tewfik's men and sold north to Al Kebir. As a freedwoman of Suzette Whitehall she plied her old trade and a more discreet one among the servants of the Gubernatorial Palace.
"Men tend to ignore women and servants," Suzette said judiciously.
"Fools do," Abdullah conceded. "But then, most men are fools. Even the wise among us can be led into folly by the organ of generation. Or so my wife claims."
"So I've found," Suzette agreed. "Now, there are some juicy details in there on just how far along Forker went toward surrender at one point. Use them with extreme discretion, but anyone who knows him will probably believe it.
"Here," she went on, "are ayzed and beyam." Zanj, an abortificant and poison respectively; brewed from native Bellevue herbs known only in the far south and utterly untraceable in the western Midworld. Suzette sighed: "I only wish there were two of you, Abdullah."
The Druze smiled. "Am I not multitudes, saaidya?"
Right now he was a Spanjol-speaking merchant of Port Murchison; down to the four-cornered hat with modest plume, green linen swallowtail jacket with brass buttons, striped cravat and natty chiseled-steel buckles on the shoes below his knee-breeches. He made a flourish with the hat, bowing and letting his hand rest on the hilt of a plain sword.
"I shall be welcome in Lion City." Particularly bringing a sloop with a cargo of Stern Isle sulfur and Southern Territories saltpeter. Both restricted cargoes in time of war, of course, but a few hundred pounds would make no real difference.
"Less so in Carson Barracks," she said. More briskly:
"Now: unless I miss my woman and your reports are false, Marie Welf is well aware that she's the sheep at the carnosauroid's congress. Forker and half the nobles in the Brigade want to murder her, the other half to marry her and father an heir to the Seat-and once she's had a male child, she's an inconvenience and danger. None of the prospects pleases, and most of the men are vile.
"You will approach her only when she's desperate. This isn't a girl who waits for a rescuer, but she's inexperienced. She'll jump at a way out. Forker keeps her isolated, but she has friends, and the Welfs have partisans. Investigate them also."
"Ah, saaidya," Abdullah said, tucking the small case of vials into an inside pocket of his tailcoat. "Were you a man, what a ruler you would be!"
"Were I a man," Suzette said tartly, "I'd have better sense than to want to be a ruler."
"As I said, my lady."
She extended a hand, and Abdullah bent over it in the style of the Civil Government. Suzette dropped back into Arabic:
"Go, thou Slave of God," she said, which was what his name meant. "May my God and thine go with thee."
"May the Beneficent, the Lovingkind, be with thee and thy lord."
Alone, Suzette picked up a packet of letters-they were copies of Cabot's reports to his uncle-and put them down again. Raj was out with most of the Expeditionary Force, on maneuvers again. Cabot and she were to meet at a little cove, where the swimming was safe. Quite respectable, since several of her women would be along; the Civil Government had a nudity taboo but not during bathing.
"Some men," she murmured, stroking the cat, "are governable by the fulfillment of their desires, and some by their frustration." For the present, Cabot Clerett wanted to worship from afar; his concubine was probably sitting down rather carefully these days.
How long he could be controlled that way was another matter, of course. A man who knew himself able, but also knew he owed everything to his uncle's preferment. Wild to accomplish something of his own. . and dangerously reckless in his hate, from the evidence in the letters. Far too dangerous to Raj to be tolerated.
* * *
"That Bureaucrat's Bottom is slowing you down, Whitehall," Gerrin Staenbridge taunted, and lunged.
Clack. The double-weight wooden practice sabers met, touched. Lunge, parry from the wrist, feint, cut-stamp-cut. They advanced and retreated across the carefully uneven gravel-rock-earth floor of the salle d'armes. The scuff of feet and slamming clatter of oak on oak echoed from the high whitewashed walls. For a moment they went corps-a-corps.
"Save your breath. . old man," Raj grunted. A convulsive heave sent them to blade's length again.
In fact, neither man was carrying an ounce of spare flesh, something fully apparent since they were stripped to the waist for the exercise, with only face-masks as protection. Staenbridge was a little thicker through the shoulders, Raj slightly longer in the arm; both big men and hugely strong for their size, moving with the carnivore grace of those who had killed often with cold steel and trained since birth. Raj was drilling hard because it was a way to burn out the poisons of frustration that were worse with every passing week. Staenbridge met the fury of his attack with six extra years of experience. Sweat hung heavy on the dry hot air, slicking down torsos marked with the scars of every weapon known on Bellevue.