Harry Turtledove & L. Sprague De Camp Down In The Bottomlands

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The handful of guards outside the building had been replaced by a platoon of
troopers. A good many of them were standing in a tight circle around someone.
They waved their arms and shouted at whoever it was.
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At the moment, Park disliked shouting on general principles. "What's going on
here?" he said. Then he saw for himself. The man in the midst of the angry
Tawantiinsuujan soldiers was Da'ud ibn Tariq.
Heads turned his way. "Another foreigner," one of the troopers growled. He
lifted his air rifle, not quite pointing it at Park.
His headache made Park even more irascible than usual. "Go ahead," he said
scornfully. "Shoot me and the emirate's ambassador both, why don't you? See if
Tawantiinsuuju has a friend left in the world the moment after you do."
The officer who had noted and knotted Park's previous arrival on the kiipuu
recognized him now. "It is the judge of the International Court," he said.
"Stand aside. Let him by."
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"Let Da'ud ibn Tariq come too," Park said. "I think the minister Tjiimpuu will
be interested in seeing him."
"Exactly what I've been trying to tell them," Da'ud said. "I was summoned here
by the minister himself."
"Maybe we don't care about that, murderer," a soldier said. "Maybe we'd sooner
cut out your guts with a tuumii-knife
."The Tawantiinsuujans' ceremonial knife had a half-moon blade on a long
handle. They did not practice human sacrifice any more (even Aztecia had given
it up), not officially, anyhow. But they remembered.
"Stop that!" Park yelled, and flinched at the sound of his own voice. "You are
not at war with the
Emirate of the Dar al-Harb. Even if you were, your own embassy in Ramiah may
answer for how you treat Da'ud. So let him come with me, and stop acting like
dog-eating Wanka fools."
Park's gibe struck home. All the other tribes in the Tawantiinsuujan empire
mocked the Wankas for their addiction to cynophagy. The officer said
grudgingly, "The judge may be right. Our overlords will treat the wretch as he
deserves. Let him through."
Sullenly, the soldiers obeyed. One of them slammed the big trapezoidal double
doors behind the two foreigners, so hard that Park thought the top of his head
would come off. He rather hoped it would.
"I am in your debt, Judge Scoglund," Da'ud said in English, bowing deeply.
"It's nothing. I was just trying to get them to shut up."
The Moor glanced at him. One elegant eyebrow rose. "Perhaps I should backpay
the debt by talking you into ontaking Islam. That I would seek to do anyhow,
for the good of your ghost. Now, though, it strikes me your body would also be
the better for having wine-bibbing forbidden it."
"It wasn't wine, and it's not your dealing," Park snapped.
"Seeking to win a good man to Islam is the dealing of any Muslim," Da'ud said.
Park was about to snarl at him when he went on smoothly, "But here we are at
Tjiimpuu's door, so let us backturn to Ketjwa and perhaps speak of this
another time."
"You were not bidden to come here, Judge Scoglund," the foreign minister's
secretary said when he saw
Park.
"Yes, I know, but here I am, and what are you going to do about it?" Park
followed Da'ud ibn Tariq into
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Tjiimpuu's private office. Having failed once already, the secretary didn't do
anything about it.
To Park's surprise, Tjiimpuu didn't fuss about his walking in. In fact, a grim
smile briefly lit the foreign minister's face. "Well met, Judge Scoglund," he
said. "Now the world will have an impartial account of the latest outrage the
Emirate of the Dar al-Harb has visited upon us."
"The Emirate has done nothing against Tawantiinsuuju," Da'ud said. "I presume
you are referring to yesterday's explosion here."
"And the gunmen who set it off and took advantage of the terror it caused to
kill even more," Tjiimpuu said. "Ninety-one people are dead at last count,
more than three hundred wounded. Two of the murderers survived being captured.
Both are Muslims; both say they and the rest wanted to strike a blow against
the true holy worship of Patjakamak and the sun."
"Heaven will receive our dead, as it receives all who fall in the jihad
,"Da'ud replied, "but they did not act by the will of the Emir, Allah's peace
be upon him. The Emirate is blameless."
"I do not believe you," Tjiimpuu ground out. "Nor does the Son of the Sun.
This looks to be this is
all of a piece with the murder and banditry your people engage in throughout
the border provinces.
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