The Scepter's Return (22 page)

“So you've said.” Tinamus looked as unhappy as he sounded. “You understand that drives me wild, I'm sure. If you tell a baker to make you one thin slice of cake, don't you think he'll wonder why?”

“If I paid a baker what I'm paying you, he wouldn't have any business asking questions,” Lanius answered.

“Well, maybe not,” the builder said. “But a baker's slice of cake would be gone in a hurry. What I'm doing here could last for the next five hundred years. People will look at it and say, ‘
This
is how Tinamus wasted his time?'”

“You're not wasting your time. Whatever else you're doing, you're not doing that,” Lanius assured him.

“What
am
I doing, then?”

“Do you really want to know?” Lanius asked. Tinamus nodded eagerly. The king smiled and said, “You're building a fancy run for one of my moncats.”

Tinamus gave him a stiff bow. “If you'll excuse me, Your Majesty, I'll go away now. Perhaps one day you'll be serious, or you'll decide that I am.” He bowed again and stalked off.

Lanius looked after him, then quietly started to laugh. Sometimes the worst thing you could do to someone was to tell him the exact and literal truth. Unless the King missed his guess, Tinamus wouldn't come troubling him with more questions for a long, long time—which was exactly what he'd had in mind.

Grus looked at the river with something less than delight. It was narrow and shallow, not really the sort of barrier between his men and the Menteshe that he'd had in mind. Mud by the riverside sent up a nasty smell as it dried in the sun. “I wonder how much farther we'll have to go to find a real stream.”

Hirundo took a more optimistic view of things than he did. “Oh, it won't be so bad, Your Majesty.”

“No? Why not? I could piss across this miserable thing.” Grus exaggerated, but not to any enormous degree.

Hirundo didn't lose his smile. “Yes, you could—now. But the Menteshe aren't going to try to hit us now. We've rocked them back on their heels. They'll need some time to regroup. If Korkut and Sanjar do decide to join forces against us, they'll need to do some dickering so one of them doesn't murder the other one anyhow. And pretty soon the fall rains will start. This is an ugly little excuse for a river now, but I think it'll fill out nicely once the rains get going.”

He might have been talking about a girl on the edge of womanhood. Grus eyed the valley through which the stream ran. He had at least as much experience gauging such things as his general did. More than a little reluctantly, he nodded. “Well, you're probably right about that.”

“Then let's stop here if we're going to stop,” Hirundo said. “Otherwise, you may decide not to stop at all.”

Grus didn't want to stop. He wanted to push on to Yozgat. Knowing it was impractical didn't make him want it any less.
Are your eyes bigger than your stomach? They'd better not be,
he told himself sternly. “All right,” he said. “We'll garrison this line, and we'll head home.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Hirundo said. “This is the right thing to do. The Banished One would thank you for going on.”

Would he? That was the question—or one of the questions, anyhow. The Banished One had tormented Avornis through the Menteshe for centuries. The nomads remained men, though, with wills of their own; they weren't thralls. And now they were a weapon that had broken in the Banished One's hands. Since Prince Ulash's death, his sons had cared more for fighting each other to lay hold of his throne than for raiding north of the Stura. And Korkut and Sanjar had kept right on going after each other despite the Avornan thrust south of the river.

If they kept on like that, they would have no principality left to rule even after one of them finally won their civil war. Neither prince seemed to care. Beating a brother was more important to both of them than turning back an invader. Grus would have scorned them more if he hadn't known a good many Avornans who thought the same way.

In the Argolid Mountains south of Yozgat, where he'd dwelled since being cast down from the heavens, the Banished One had to be beside himself with fury. What dreams was he sending to Ulash's unloving children? Having been on the receiving end of more of those dreams than he cared to remember, Grus almost pitied Korkut and Sanjar. No one, not even a Menteshe prince, deserved that kind of attention.

The king looked south again. Haze and clouds hid the mountains for now. If the exiled god couldn't use the Menteshe as he'd been accustomed to doing in days gone by, how could he strike at Avornis?

Weather was one obvious weapon. The Banished One had afflicted Avornis with at least one dreadful winter in the recent past. He'd tried to make the capital starve—tried and failed. Probably because he'd failed, he'd hesitated to use that ploy since. But it still remained not only possible but dangerous, deadly dangerous. No ordinary wizard could do much with the weather, either for good or for ill; it was beyond a mere man's strength. Such restrictions meant little to the Banished One, who was neither ordinary wizard nor mere mortal.

Lanius had done a good job of laying in extra stocks of grain before that harsh winter came down. Grus thought it would be wise to do the same thing again. Suppose the Banished One didn't choose to repeat himself. What else might he do?

Feeling his own imagination failing, Grus looked around for Pterocles. When he didn't see the sorcerer close by, he sent horsemen out to hunt him down. Before long, Pterocles rode up on his mule. “What can I do for you, Your Majesty?” he asked.

“Come aside with me a little ways.” The king rode off until no one could hear what he and the wizard had to say to each other. Pterocles followed. The royal guards stationed themselves to ensure that no one approached the two of them. Grus said, “If you were the Banished One, what would you do to Avornis now?”

“Why ask me?” Pterocles said, his indignation at least partly genuine.

“Because whatever he does, it will probably be through magic,” Grus replied. “Who here knows more about magic than you? The answer had better be
nobody
, or I'm putting my trust in the wrong man.”

The wizard's shrug was altogether fatalistic. “I can't tell you anything about that, Your Majesty. All I can tell you is, the Banished One has noticed some of what I've done, and he's decided he doesn't like me.” He spread his hands, palms up. “That's really about all. Believe me, he knows more about me than I do about him.”

Grus looked south again. Reluctantly, he found himself nodding. He had also felt the futility of trying to outguess a being far older, far wiser, and far stronger than himself. “All right.” He explained his own reasoning, such as it was, and went on, “So I was trying to figure out what he might do if he didn't decide to give us another hard winter, or maybe what he might do on top of another hard winter.”

“Ah. I see. Well, that makes more sense than asking what I would do if I were the Banished One.” Pterocles' voice was tart. “Put that way …” He didn't look south. He looked up to the heavens, his eyes far away. Was he asking the gods for guidance, or was he just making his own calculations, as a man will? Grus couldn't tell and didn't want to ask. At last, the wizard came out of his reverie. “Hunger. Disease. Fire. Fear,” he said. “Those are the weapons he has, it seems to me. Which one will he use? How will he use it? Will he use more than one?” He shrugged. “I don't know. I have no way of knowing. Before too long, I expect we'll find out.”

Grus expected the same thing. Hunger? Hunger went hand in hand with bad weather. Anyone to whom the Banished One had appeared in a dream learned more than he ever wanted to know about fear. Disease? Fire? Now the king was the one who nodded. Yes, those were surely possible. “What can you do against him? What can any of our wizards do against him?”

“What can I—what can we—do?” For a man who was cheerful most of the time, Pterocles smiled a peculiarly bleak smile now. “Why, the best I can, of course, Your Majesty.”

“I see.” Grus almost asked the wizard how good he thought that best would be. But part of him feared Pterocles didn't know. Another part feared Pterocles
did
know, and would tell him. With a heavy sigh, he said, “Well, we'll do what we can to hold on here, and then we'll go home, and then … then we'll see what happens next.”

“That's right, Your Majesty,” Pterocles said with another of those bleak smiles. “Then we'll see what happens next.”

Ortalis didn't say anything to Lanius about the king's latest quarrel with Sosia. Lanius hadn't really thought he would, but was glad to be proved right. Ortalis never had gotten along very well with his sister; he made no bones about that. Then again, Ortalis never had gotten along very well with anybody.

A moment after that thought crossed the king's mind, he shook his head. Ortalis and Anser managed to stay on good terms, not least because sunny Anser stayed on good terms with everyone. And Ortalis seemed genuinely devoted to Limosa—and she to him.

He eyed Limosa's swelling belly with the same anxious pride most new fathers showed. He had more reasons for pride than most prospective fathers did, too. “I hope it's a boy,” he told Lanius one day when they met in a corridor. “I want a son of my own.”

“I know,” Lanius said, as politely as he could. Ortalis had never figured out much about politics. If he had a son, it would complicate the succession. It would endanger the place Lanius' son Crex held now. The smartest thing he could have done was keep his mouth shut about what he wanted when he was talking to Lanius. Ortalis seldom did the smartest thing.

Ortalis probably wasn't thinking about the succession right this minute, for he asked, “Do you have your boy crawling around in the archives with you? I know that's your favorite sport. I can't see why, but I know it is.”

“Crex … hasn't shown much interest in it yet,” Lanius answered. That his son hadn't was a grief to him. He kept telling himself that there was time, that Crex might yet see how important and how fascinating state papers could be. He kept telling himself, yes, but he had a harder and harder time making himself believe it.

Ortalis laughed. Why shouldn't he? It wasn't his worry. Lanius came close to hating him in that moment. Then Ortalis said, “Maybe he'd rather get out to the woods and see what he could do with a bow in his hands.”

“He's still a little young for that, I think,” Lanius said, and went on his way before his brother-in-law could find some other way to make him feel bad. Ortalis had jabbed at exactly what Lanius feared most—that Crex might sooner have a good time than gain the knowledge he needed to make a proper ruler. Lanius wondered what he could do about that. He wasn't sure he could do anything—another grief, one that wouldn't go away.

A royal guardsman tramping stolidly up the corridor sketched a salute as the king walked by. His mailshirt jingled. He smelled of leather and stale sweat. Lanius stopped and looked after him, a thoughtful expression on his face.

If I order the guards to seize Ortalis and take him to the Maze
—
and Limosa with him
—
will they obey?
The king plucked at his beard. These days, he was the effective ruler of Avornis, or at least of the city of Avornis, when Grus went out on campaign. Most of what he did, though, was as close to what Grus would have done as he could come. That was how Grus had let him accrue bits of power little by little—Lanius had made sure that what he was given wouldn't be threatening.

Grus would not send his legitimate son to the Maze, not for complicating the succession. After all, Ortalis' son would be as much Grus' grandson as Crex was. If Lanius banished Ortalis, would Grus let it stand? Lanius sighed. He didn't think so. And he didn't think he had a prayer of resisting or defeating Grus, especially not when his father-in-law would be coming back from the first successful Avornan campaign south of the Stura in centuries.

“Too bad,” Lanius murmured. “Too bad, too bad, too bad.”

He wondered what Sosia thought. If she believed he could get away with it … He shook his head. He couldn't trust her judgment in this. She was biased, too. But—another interesting problem—which way was she biased? Against Ortalis, for threatening Crex's succession? Or against Lanius himself, for his choice of amusements? He still thought the former, but the latter was a long way from impossible, and he knew it. He would have to decide for himself.

And he did. He decided he couldn't take the chance of getting rid of Ortalis like that. Chances were, he wouldn't get away with it. He would have to hope Limosa had another girl. Plenty of people did, he thought optimistically.

As King Grus rode north toward the Stura, he had one of the few experiences that made him really and truly glad he'd taken his share—or, as Lanius no doubt would have seen it, more than his share—of the Avornan crown. Again and again, freed thralls came running up to him. “King Olor bless you!” they would shout. “Queen Quelea bless you! All the gods bless you!”

Guardsmen kept the thralls from coming too close. You never could tell, not till too late. One of them was liable not to be a freed thrall at all, but a thrall still guided and controlled by the Banished One. An assassin was as easy to hide among others who looked and acted just like him (or, perhaps even more dangerous, just like her) as a poisoned needle in a haystack.

Grus understood that. He didn't argue with it. It left him sad even so. Doing his best to smile, he said to Hirundo, “I was never so popular up in Avornis proper.”

“Well, maybe not,” the general allowed. “But you never did so much for the proper Avornans as you have for these people.”

Slowly, Grus nodded. He thought he'd made a pretty good King of Avornis. He didn't think even Lanius could argue with that, though the other King of Avornis might—would—look down his nose while grudgingly admitting Grus hadn't been so very bad. Grus had done his best to keep the peasants out of the rapacious nobles' grasp. He'd won enough civil wars against the nobles to persuade them that rebellion was a bad idea. He'd held the Thervings at bay. He'd beaten back the Chernagor pirates. And he'd fought the Menteshe to something that was, at the moment, better than a draw.