"Dropping an egg on his palace in Cottbus off have some effect," Hajaj said dryly. "Past that, we are, as your Majesty must know, in some thing less than the best position."

"As I must know. Aye, so I must." Shazli's [..weit-th..] twisted. "Finding allies would be easier if we were of the same [..] as most of the other folk of Derlavai. If you were a tow-headed, [..Pir-skinned Ka'Umaj H aj aj..] "

The foreign minister presumed to interrupt his sovereign (not mu( of a presumption, not with an easygoing king Shazli: "If I were Kaunian, your Majesty, I'd long since be dead in Mes climate of ours. I no wonder the old Kaunian Empire traded with [..ARmayza but never tri, han me an for him eone . I I ing..] were ffect," some inding the other Kaunian, [..] much were a urs. It's er tried planting colonies here. Even more to the point, the only kingdom with whom we share a border is Unkerlant."

"Aye." Shazli looked at Hajaj as if that were his fault - or perhaps Hajaj was feeling the strain from continued Unkerlanter pressure, to imagine such a thing. "This also makes the search for allies more difficult than it might be otherwise."

"No one will ally with us against Unkerlant," Hajaj said. "Forthweg might have, but Forthweg, as we have seen, as we have just discussed, is no more.

"And, as we have seen, Unkerlant and Algarve had divided the king dom between them as smoothly as two butchers chopping up a camel's carcass," Shazli said discontentedly. "I had hoped for better - better from our point of view, worse from theirs."

"So had I," Hajaj said. "Given half a chance, King Mezentio can be as headstrong as King Swemmel. But, with Algarve so sorely beset from so many sides at once, Mezentio almost has common sense forced upon him."

"What an unfortunate development." Shazli paused, looking thought full. "Of course, Mezentio no longer has to fret about his western frontier, which may leave him more room to maneuver."

"If I may correct your Majesty, King Mezentio no longer has a war on his western frontier," HaJjaj said. "With Unkerlant as his new neighbor, he would be a fool indeed did he not fret about it."

"You have the night of it there, Hajaj, without a doubt," King Shazli admitted. "See how delighted we are, for instance, to have Unkerlant for a neighbor. And Unkerlant and Algarve are by no means enamored of each other. Have we any hope of exploiting that to our advantage?"

"As your Majesty will know, I have had certain conversations with the Algarvian minister here in Bishah," Hajaj answered. "I fear, however, that Marquis Balastro has not been encouraging."

"What ofJelgava and Valmiera?" Shazli asked.

"They are sympathetic." Hajaj raised an eyebrow. "Sympathy, however, is worth its weight in gold." King Shazli pondered that for a moment, then laughed. It was not a happy laugh. HaJjaJ went on, "Also, the Kaunian kingdoms are not only warring against Algarve but very far away.

Shazli sighed and drained his second goblet of wine. "We are truly in a desperate predicament if King Mezentio offers our best hope of aid."

"It is not a good hope," Hajaj said. "It is, if anything, a very faint hope. Balastro has made it clear Algarve will not anger Unkerlant while the war goes on in the east and south."

"A faint hope is better than no hope at all," Shazli said. "Why don't you pay another call on the good marquis today?" Seeing the foreign minister's martyred expression, the king laughed again, this time with something approaching real amusement. "Spending an afternoon in clothes will not be the death of you."

"I suppose not, your Majesty," Hajaj replied in a tone that supp anything but. King Shazh laughed again, and gently clapped his hands together to show the meeting with the foreign minister was over.

While Hajaj's secretary spoke on the crystal with the Algarvian ministry to arrange a time for the appointment, Hajaj himself went through his meager wardrobe. He did have some Algarvian-style tunics and kilts, just as he kept tunics and trousers - which he truly loathed - for consultations with envoys from Jelgava and Valmiera. After donning a blue cotton tunic and a pleated kilt, he examined himself in the mirror.

He looked as he had in his student days. No - his clothes looked as they had then. He'd grown old since. But Marquis Balastro would be pleased.

Hajaj sighed. "What I do in the service of my kingdom," he muttered.

His secretary had set up the meeting with the Algarvian minister for midafternoon. Hajaj was meticulously on time, though the Algarvian set less stock in perfect punctuality than did the folk of Unkerlant or the Kaunian kingdoms. Outside the ministry, clothed and sweating Algarvian guards stood watch, as their Unkerlanter counterparts did outside the residence of King Swemmel's envoy. The Algarvians, though, were anything but still and silent as they watched good-looking Zuwayzi women saunter by. They rocked their hips and called lewd suggestions in their own language and in what scraps of Zuwayzi they'd learned.

The women kept walking, pretending they hadn't heard. Such public admiration was anything but the style in Zuwayza. Hajaj had been shocked the first time he'd heard it when he'd gone off to Algarve for college. It didn't start clan feuds there, though. Algarvian girls giggled and sometimes gave back as good as they got. That had shocked him, too.

He was harder to shock these days. And the Algarvian minister's secretary was a polished man by any kingdom's standards. Escorting [..lic ter's ing..] Hajaj past the guards and into the nuinistry, he murmured in fluent [..].

Zuwayzi: "I do beg your pardon, your Excellency, but you know how the soldiers are."

"Oh, aye," Hajaj answered. "I have learned to make allowances for the foibles of others, and hope others will make allowances for mine."

"What an admirable way to look at things," the foreign minister exclaimed. He ducked into a doorway and returned to his own native tongue: "My lord, the Zuwayzi foreign minister."

"Send him in, send him in," Marquis Balastro said. He did not speak

Zuwayzi, but, since Hajaj knew Algarvian well, they had no trouble talking with each other. Balastro was in his early forties, and wore a little stripe of hair under his lower lip and mustaches waxed till they were as straight and sharply pointed as the horns of a gazelle. Such adornments aside, he had as little of the fop in him as any Algarvian, and was, for a diplomat, forthright.

He - or his secretary - also knew not to plunge too abruptly into business with a Zuwayzi. A tray of cakes and wine appeared as if by magic.

Balastro made small talk, waiting for Hajaj to open: another nice courtesy. At length, Hajaj did begin, saying, "Your Excellency, it is surely destructive of good order among the kingdoms of the world when the large can with impunity bully and oppress the small for no better reason than that they are large."

"With Algarve so grievously beset, I could hardly fail to admit the principle," Balastro said. "Its application, though, will vary according to circumstances.

Algarve was hardly a small kingdom. Hajaj refrained from saying as much. What he did say was, "As you will have heard from me before, King Swemmel of Unkerlant continues to make unreasonable demands on Zuwayza. Since Algarve, from its own experience, understands such extortion-"

Balastro held up a hand. "Your Excellency, let me be plain about this.

Algarve is not at war with Unkerlant. King Mezentio does not now desire to make war on King Swemmel. This being so, Algarve cannot reason ably object to whatever King Swemmel chooses to do on frontiers distant from her. King Mezentio may privately deplore such deeds, but he will not - I repeat, will not - seek to hinder them. Do I make myself clear?"

"You do, ummistakably so." Hajaj did his diplomatic best to hold disappointment from his voice. Balastro had not been encouraging before. Now he was blunt. Zuwayza would have no help from Algarve.