Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [206]
‘The story we got,’ Nicholas said, ‘was that Jordan de Ribérac temporarily couldn’t afford it, and Simon was abroad and didn’t know about it. Presumably he’s come home and found out.’
‘Well, like enough. But he can still hardly blame you if it was his father’s fault. Unless –’
‘Unless Jordan de Ribérac put the blame on me, as of course he has done. One day,’ Nicholas said, ‘I must introduce you to Jordan de Ribérac. No problem of tunnelling, sapping or metal-casting will ever seem difficult to you again. Meanwhile, we have his son thinking of coming here. I think I really must find a way of getting rid of Katelina van Borselen soon. I can manage a war, a dyeworks and a sugar business, but with Simon as well, I’d have to work to a sand-glass.’ He stopped. His voice, it seemed to him, had grown a little shrill. He lowered it. ‘Right. I’d better tell Tobie I’m leaving, if I can find him. Whose piss is he drinking this morning?’
‘You put him on to it,’ John le Grant said. ‘Anyway, I’ve seen him already. Why didn’t you tell us about the Emperor David? We were in Trebizond too.’
‘I forgot,’ Nicholas said. He kept his voice resolutely down. ‘I thought you would be upset. I got confused after my wound. Zorzi begged me never to remind him of it.’
‘He remembered to bring out your camel,’ John le Grant said. ‘The Emperor might as well have stuck to his palace and fought on to the end. Or at the very least let Uzum Hasan and the White Sheep have Trebizond. That way, we could have stayed and gone on with the business.’
‘So we could,’ Nicholas said. ‘But that way, we should have missed Tzani-bey and Zacco and Cropnose and Valenza and Fiorenza and Katelina and Simon and Zorzi and laughter-loving Aphrodite herself. That black bloody cone out there, splitting its sides.’
They gazed at him like nurses. His head throbbing, Nicholas swore, and got to his feet, and went off to look at madder.
Four days later, he was at the opposite end of the island in the camp surrounding Kyrenia, engaged in long conciliatory sessions with Zacco inside his tent, and boisterous ones outside it, followed by other carefully orchestrated exchanges with Astorre and Thomas, Crackbene and Umfrid, and all his opposite numbers in the different sections of the army now investing Kyrenia.
The interviews with Zacco were not difficult: the King had quite enough intelligence to know that what John le Grant had told him was true. He merely wished to hear it from Nicholas, and to dispute with him, and perhaps frighten him, and then please him. Encounters with Zacco now took a certain pattern, with an occasional wild foray into the dangerous and the unexpected. Nicholas always enjoyed them.
Since the last occasion, however, he had had a taste of something he had almost forgotten. The day – the evening, the one rather full evening with the princesses of Naxos – had brought back, in its earlier part, the light, the swift, the allusive conversation of Trebizond where, among other luxuries, the Emperor had surrounded himself always with the best minds. Setting the black cone apart, Nicholas had long understood Urbino, who fought in order to buy for his library. On the other hand, there was wisdom to be acquired outside books, as Zacco had shown him. By Urbino’s age, perhaps, he himself might have discovered a balance that satisfied him. He wondered if such an idea might pass for another purpose, and decided that it would not, and he had better go and do something practical, such as reminding his men that they were supposed to be colleagues of the emir Tzani-bey.
It was, when you came to think of it, a tribute to Zacco’s skill that after eight months, Tzani-bey and he were in the same encampment, on the same campaign together. Of course the emir remembered, as he did, what had happened at the monastery of the cats, and afterwards. Those (including Primaflora) who knew of it would be entitled, he supposed, to regard the present armistice with astonished contempt. Then, four months