The Scepter's Return (27 page)

“Isn't he handsome?” Ortalis said, proving all new fathers are blind.

“Congratulations.” Grus held out his hand not to his son but to his new grandson. Marinus' tiny hand brushed against his forefinger. The baby clung to the finger with a grip of sudden and startling strength. Grus laughed himself then. He'd seen that with other newborns. It faded after a little while.

Ortalis looked down at the tiny shape in his arms. “A boy. A son. An heir,” he said softly. Grus would have been happier if he'd left out the last two words.

Gossip about Limosa's back and the scars on it had quieted down in the palace. It revived even before the midwife left. Naturally, a couple of servants had been in there with Ortalis' wife and Netta. They blabbed about everything they'd seen. By the way the news sounded to Lanius, they blabbed about quite a bit they'd made up, too. He didn't think a person could have as many scars as they said Limosa did and go on living.

Naturally, the servants paid no attention to his opinion. The scandals of their superiors were more interesting and more entertaining than the possibility that a couple of their own number were talking through their hats. He'd seen that before. It didn't bother him. It was part of palace life.

That evening, Sosia said, “You can sleep in the bedchamber—if you feel like it.” Her voice held an odd note of challenge. She'd made it plain he wasn't welcome there ever since she found out about Oissa.

“I'm glad to,” Lanius answered. He paused. “Are you sure?” His wife nodded. She didn't hesitate before she did it. He found himself nodding, too. “All right.”

When he came to bed, she was already under the covers. That didn't surprise him; the night was chilly, and braziers did only so much to fight the cold. “Good night,” he said, and blew out the lamp on his night table. That was all he did—she'd invited him to sleep in the bed, not to sleep with her. But when she slid toward him, as though for a good-night kiss, he almost automatically reached out to take her in his arms. He jerked back in surprise when his hands found soft, bare flesh.

Sosia laughed a brittle laugh. “It's all right,” she said. “You can go on—if you feel like it.” The challenge rang stronger now.

“Why?” he asked. “What made you change your mind?”

“Two things,” Sosia answered. “If you don't do it with me, you will do it with somebody else. Even if you
do
do it with me, you may do it with somebody else—but you may not, too.” She clicked her tongue between her teeth; that might have been too bald even for her. After a moment, she went on, “And we really ought to have more than one son—especially now.”

She wasn't wrong. Marriages for reasons of state sometimes held love. Theirs had, on and off. Whether love was there or not, though, duty always was. Not getting out from under the covers, Lanius wriggled free of his nightshirt. “I'm glad to,” he said as he embraced her.

He wasn't even lying. He'd never stopped enjoying what the two of them did together, not through all his other liaisons. He didn't think she understood that or believed it, but it was true.

Now he took special care to please her, kissing and caressing her breasts and her belly for a long time before sliding down to the joining of her legs. If she was angry enough at him, of course, nothing he did would bring her pleasure. But she sighed and murmured and opened her legs wider. He went on until she gasped and quivered. Then he poised himself above her and took his own pleasure.

When they lay side by side again, she asked him, “Was that as good for you as it was for me?”

“Yes, I think so,” Lanius said, adding, “I hope it was good for you.”

“It was, and you know it was,” Sosia said, which was true. After a moment, she went on, “If it was good for you, why do you want to look anywhere else?”

“I don't know,” he answered, and muffled his words with a yawn. Sosia made a small, exasperated noise. Pretending he didn't hear it, he got up, used the chamber pot, and then lay down again. Before long, he was breathing deeply and regularly. Men had a reputation for rolling over and going to sleep afterwards.

But, reputation or not, Lanius wasn't asleep. He lay there on his side, not moving much. Sosia muttered again, more softly this time. Then
she
started breathing deeply and regularly. Maybe she was pretending, as he was. He didn't think so, though. He thought she really had dropped off.

Why do you want to look anywhere else?
He knew the answer, regardless of whether he felt like giving it to Sosia, which he didn't. He knew it wouldn't make sense to her, and would only make her angry.
Because I knew everything you were going to do before you did it.
The serving girls he bedded weren't that much prettier than his wife, if at all. They weren't that much better in bed, if at all. But they could surprise him. He liked that.

He did love Sosia, as much as he could in their arranged marriage. Would he have chosen her if he could have picked from all the girls in the kingdom? He had no idea. For one thing, the idea of marrying for love and only for love was an absurdity. Most of him accepted that. The part that slept with maidservants didn't.

His deep, regular breathing became shallower and less regular for a moment. No doubt he had as much trouble surprising Sosia as she did surprising him. She'd threatened to take a lover now and again. He hadn't believed her or taken her seriously. He didn't think she was looking for variety, as he was.

Revenge? That might be a different story. He knew too well that it might.

But she could no more keep it a secret in the crowded world of the palace than he could. Servants always talked. It might take a while, but it always happened. He'd never heard anything that made him think she was doing anything of the sort.

A good thing, too. She was angry at him. He would have been much more angry at her. Maybe that wouldn't have been fair. He didn't care. It was how he would have felt.

Another child? He smiled and yawned, this time genuinely. Another child wouldn't be so bad, especially if it was a boy. He yawned again. If he had another son, what would he name him? He fell asleep before he found a name he liked.

Grus kept a wary eye on Ortalis. If his son was going to show signs of plotting, having Marinus to plot for might start him off. But he seemed no more than a new father happy at the birth of a son.
Maybe I misjudged him,
Grus thought.
Or maybe he's just sneakier than I figured.

Every day that went by without word of trouble from the south, without word of pestilence or other natural disaster that might not be so natural, felt like a triumph to the king. He dared hope the Banished One was so weakened by everything that had gone wrong for him lately, he couldn't hit back at Avornis the way he would have a few years earlier. Grus didn't really believe that, but he dared hope. Hope marked progress, too.

He didn't need long to realize that Lanius and Sosia had reconciled. Neither his son-in-law nor his daughter said much about it, but their manner with each other spoke louder than words could have. Grus suspected Marinus' arrival had a good deal to do with that, but whatever the reason, he hoped it lasted. And so it would—till Lanius found another serving girl attractive and Sosia found out about it. Grus didn't know what he could do about that. Seeing trouble ahead didn't always mean seeing any way to stop it.

Grus had had that thought down south of the Stura, when Otus plucked his woman from a village of freed thralls and decided to bring her up to the city of Avornis. The king had nothing against Fulca, who seemed nice enough and very capable. He also had nothing against Calypte, with whom Otus had taken up while Fulca remained a thrall. And Otus himself was solid as the day was long. But when one of his women found out about the other one …

When that happened, it proved as hard on Otus as it would have on anyone else whose two women suddenly discovered neither of them was his one woman. A lot of men, in a mess like that, would have lost both of them. Otus didn't. While Calypte departed in a crockery-throwing huff, Fulca stuck by him. But she was furious, too.

“What was I supposed to do, Your Majesty?” Otus asked plaintively after the dishes stopped flying. “Was I supposed to act like a dead man while I was far away from Fulca and I thought I would never see her again? Once I'd found she'd been freed and found her, was I supposed to pretend I'd never known her?”

“I suppose not, and I suppose not.” Grus answered each question in turn. “But I didn't think you would be able to keep both of them once they found out about each other. Things don't usually work that way.”

“Why not?” Otus said. “They should.”

“Well, suppose Calypte had taken another lover while you were south of the Stura with me,” Grus said. “Would she have been able to keep two men?”

“I don't think so!” Otus sounded indignant.

“There, then. Do you see?” Grus said. Otus didn't, or didn't want to. Few men wanted to when the shoe was on the other foot. Grus set a hand on the ex-thrall's shoulder. “Be thankful Fulca is sticking by you. You don't have to start over from the beginning.”

“Even she wants to knock me over the head with something,” Otus said. “Shouldn't she be glad I came looking for her and took her out of the village?”

“Oh, I think she is,” Grus said. Otus hadn't told her anything about his other woman when he took her out of the village. She'd thought—not unreasonably, as far as Grus could see—she was his only woman, and that he had no others. No wonder she was none too happy to discover she was wrong. “If the two of you really love each other, you'll figure out how to patch things up.”
And if you don't patch them up, it wouldn't be the first time things fell apart.
Grus kept quiet about that. Otus wouldn't appreciate it.

“I don't know what to do,” Otus said sorrowfully.

A lot of that sorrow was no more than self-pity. Grus knew as much. Even so, he soberly answered, “Congratulations.”

Otus stared at him. Grus hadn't expected anything else. “Congratulations, Your Majesty?” the ex-thrall echoed. “I don't understand.”

“Not knowing what to do, not being sure, needing to figure things out for yourself—all this is part of what being a free man is all about,” Grus explained. “You wouldn't have said anything like that when you were a thrall, would you?”

“No, I don't suppose I would.” Otus shook his head. “No, of course I wouldn't. I knew everything I needed to know then. It wasn't much, by the gods, but I knew it.” He spoke with a certain somber pride.

“That's about what I thought,” Grus told him. “You have more things to know and to try to figure out now that you're on your own. Not all of it's going to be easy. It won't be much fun some of the time, especially when you get yourself into a mess like the one you're in now. But this is part of what being free is all about. You're free to make an idiot of yourself, too. People do it every day.”

“Freedom to get in trouble, I think I could do without,” Otus said.

“I don't know how you're going to separate it from any other kind,” Grus said. “You've done a good job of getting the hang of being your own person. You didn't have years and years to learn how, the way ordinary people do. You had to start doing it right away after Pterocles lifted the spell of thralldom from you. Now Fulca has to do the same thing, and do it just as fast as you did—maybe faster. Remember, it won't always be easy for her, either.”

“I suppose not,” Otus said, and then, “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“For what?” Grus said. “I don't have any real answers for you. I've landed in this exact same trouble myself, and more than once.”
So has Lanius,
he thought.
It's something that happens, all right.

“For listening to me,” the freed thrall said with a rueful smile. “Just for listening to me. That was something neither of my women wanted to do.”

“Oh. Well, you're welcome.” Grus fought hard to hide a smile. “Between you and me, when a man's women find out about each other—or when a woman's men find out about each other, which happens, too—they aren't usually in a listening mood.”

“Yes, I'd noticed that.” By the way Otus said it, it was for him some strange natural phenomenon, like the fogs that afflicted the Chernagor country or the tides that swept the sea in and back along Avornis' coastline.

“Good luck,” Grus told him. “Part of what makes being free, being a whole man, worthwhile is that it isn't simple. You may not always believe that, or want to believe it, but it's true.”

Otus went on his way scratching his head. Grus hoped he would work things out with Fulca, for her sake as much as for his. She didn't know enough yet to have an easy time as a free woman. If she had to, though, Grus suspected she would get along. Just how much would Avornis gain from the suddenly released talents of so many thralls? More than a little—he was sure of that.

At the midwife's suggestion, Limosa had nursed Marinus for the first few days after he was born. Lanius remembered Netta giving Sosia the same advice after she bore Crex and Pitta. She'd said babies whose mothers did that ended up healthier. That had persuaded Sosia, and it persuaded Limosa, too.

After those first few days, Limosa let her own milk dry up and brought in a wet nurse. With Sosia as grumpy as she was, Lanius wondered how she would react to a woman who often bared her breasts in the palace. That turned out not to be an issue. The wet nurse Limosa hired was almost as wide as she was tall, and had eyes set too close together, a big nose, and a mean mouth. Maybe Limosa was taking no chances with Ortalis, too.

Not long after Marinus' birth, the winter turned nasty. Three blizzards roared through the city of Avornis one after another, snarling the streets, piling roofs high with snow, and making Lanius wonder whether the Banished One had decided to use the weather as a weapon after all. As the city began to dig out, several people were found frozen to death in their homes and shops. That happened after almost every bad storm, but it worried the king all the same.