The Scepter's Return (65 page)

The maidservant came in with the wine then—a large cup, as Lanius had asked of her. He thanked her less warmly than he might have if Sosia weren't standing there watching him. His wife's upraised eyebrow said she knew that perfectly well. The maidservant made haste to disappear. Lanius took a long pull at the cup. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Still doesn't get the taste of Limosa out of my mouth.” He tried again with a longer pull yet.

“She made a nuisance of herself, all right,” Sosia agreed, which was one of the larger understatements Lanius had heard lately. Sosia hesitated, then said, “May I ask you something?”

By her tone of voice, Lanius knew exactly what her question would be. He raised the winecup to his lips yet again. When he lowered it, it was empty, and he still found himself wishing for more. He did his best to keep that from his voice as he replied, “What is it?”

“What are you going to do about Father?”

He looked down into the cup. Despite his wishes, it stubbornly stayed empty. “I don't know,” he said at last. “I don't have to do anything right away. He'll just have found out Ortalis isn't king anymore. Let's see what happens, all right?”

“You
are
the king,” Sosia said. “In the end, it will be as you please.”

Why don't you feel that way about serving girls?
Lanius wondered. But serving girls, unlike this, weren't a matter of state.
Too bad,
he thought.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It was a day like any other day since Grus came to the monastery. Along with the other monks, he was called out of bed early for dawn prayers. Then he ate breakfast. As usual, it was filling but bland. Neophron and the other cooks had either never heard of spices, didn't like them, or couldn't afford to put any in the barley mush. After breakfast, Grus went into the kitchens to wash earthenware bowls and mugs and horn spoons.

Prayer and work alternated through the day, work predominating. After what seemed not so very long, it was time for supper. As usual, a little sausage did go into the mush for the evening meal. So did some beans and peas. The mug of ale that washed things down was larger than the one at breakfast—not enough to get drunk on, but plenty to take the edge off a bad day. Grus' hadn't been bad, but it too got better.

Most of the time, Ortalis stayed as far away from Grus as he could in the dining hall. That suited Grus as well as it did his son. This evening, though, Ortalis chose to sit across from him. “We ought to eat better than this,” Ortalis complained.

Grus shrugged. “It's enough. Even if it weren't, why are you telling me about it? I can't change things one way or the other.”

“But I can, by Olor's prong!” Ortalis said—perhaps a dubious oath for a monastery. “I never wasted my time in the archives, or in the forest, come to that. When I went hunting, I went out to kill things, and I did. I could do it again.”

“Maybe you could,” Grus said. Anser had never complained about Ortalis' talent, only about his judgment in when to be bloodthirsty. With another shrug, Grus went on, “I'm not the one to tell you you can or you can't, though. If you want to convince somebody to let you go out, the abbot is your man.”

“He won't listen to me,” Ortalis said scornfully. “He'll think I'm trying to get away.”

“He might,” Grus agreed. “The same thought crossed my mind, you know.”

“Why should it? You told me yourself—I'm in here for good,” Ortalis said. “We all are. I'm used to it by now.”

He didn't sound used to it. He sounded suspiciously hearty, like a man saying what he thought people around him wanted to hear. Grus sipped from his ale. That was good; the monks who brewed it did know what they were doing. He said, “The other thing I told you was, it's not in my hands. And it's not. The only one who can tell you yes—or even no—is Pipilo.”

“I
will
talk to him, then. He'll see sense,” Ortalis said.
He'll do what I want him to do,
was what he likely meant by that. He'd never been able to tell the difference between what he wanted at the moment and what was right.

Grus was not unduly surprised when Pipilo came up to him a few days later and said, “Your son has approached me about the possibility of going out and hunting for the larder. Is he as good an archer and stalker as he says he is?”

“I don't know how good he said he was, but he's pretty good, yes,” Grus answered.

“He did sound as though he knew what he was talking about,” the abbot allowed. “That is, of course, only one part of the issue at hand. The other is, were he to go beyond the walls, would he be tempted to abandon his monastic robe and try to return to the secular world?”

Of course he would,
Grus thought. All he said was, “The two of us, I fear, are estranged. I cannot be just in judging him, and so I will not try. You have to decide that yourself.”

“You're honest, anyhow,” Pipilo told him.

“Most of the time, anyhow—when it looks like a good idea,” Grus said. “Were you a married man before you came here?”

“I was.” Pipilo nodded.

“Well, then.” Grus stopped, as though no more needed to be said. By the way Pipilo laughed, he
had
said enough.

In the end, the abbot decided not to let Ortalis go out hunting. If Grus had been in his sandals, he would have decided the same thing. Ortalis blamed him for it. Grus had expected that, though not the full force of his son's fury. Storming up to him in the monastery courtyard, Ortalis shouted, “You're keeping me locked up in this stinking jail!”

“I had nothing to do with putting you here.” Grus looked down his nose at Ortalis—not easy when his son was taller. “You can't say the same about how I got here. Do you hear me complaining about it?”

“No, but you're soft in the head or something.” Mere truth wasn't going to dent Ortalis' outrage. “You told the warder—”

“The abbot, and you'd better remember it, or he'll make you sorry.”

Ortalis rolled his eyes. “Who cares what you call him? The point is, the old blackguard won't let me go out. I know he talked to you about it. What other reason would he have for keeping me in here except that you told him to?”

“Maybe he has eyes of his own to see with?” Grus suggested.

“What do you mean?”

“Anyone who does have eyes knows you'd take off in a heartbeat if you got outside the walls,” Grus said, more patiently than he would have thought possible. “Pipilo doesn't need me to tell him that. You tell him yourself, every time you breathe. If you want to know what I said to him, ask him yourself. I'm sure he'll give you the truth.”

“Suppose
you
tell me, before I knock some teeth loose,” Ortalis growled.

Grus had given his son a few beatings. They hadn't done what he'd hoped they would. Maybe he should have started sooner and given more. On the other hand, maybe he never should have started at all. If he and Ortalis fought now, Ortalis probably could beat him. “You won't believe me even if I do,” he said.

“Try me,” Ortalis said. Grus recounted the conversation with the abbot as exactly as he could. Ortalis snorted and rolled his eyes again. “You're right. I don't believe you.” Instead of swinging at Grus, he stormed off.

Petrosus came up to Grus. “He
is
a charming fellow, isn't he?” said the former treasury minister.

“He's my son,” Grus answered. “I'm tied to him however he is. You yoked your daughter to him when you didn't have to. What does that say about you?”
And she fell in love with him, where nobody else in the world could. What does that say about
her?

Petrosus glared at him. “You're still as charming as you were when your backside warmed a throne, aren't you?”

“No doubt,” Grus said. “And you're still as ambitious as you were when you dreamed of a throne. Don't you see how foolish that is when you're
here?”

“Not if I don't have to stay here,” Petrosus said.

“Do you think Lanius will let you out? Don't hold your breath,” Grus said. “You were the one who held back his allowance while I was campaigning. He's never forgotten that, you know.”

“You told me to. I did it at your order!” Petrosus exclaimed.

He was right, of course. Back in those days, Grus had worried about any power coming into Lanius' hands. He'd kept the other king weak every way he could, including not giving him enough money. And what had that gotten him? At the time, it won him security on the throne. In the end? In the end, power came into Lanius' hands anyhow. Grus looked down at his own hands, and at the coarse brown wool on the sleeves of the robe he wore now.

“The difference between us is, I don't mind being here, and you do,” Grus said.

“The difference between us is, you're out of your mind and I'm not,” Petrosus retorted.

Grus shook his head. “The reason I don't mind being here is that I did everything I wanted to do, everything I needed to do, out in the world. Because of what I did, people will remember me for years after I'm gone, maybe even forever. Who will remember you, Petrosus?”

“After I'm dead, what difference does it make?” Petrosus said, which also held some truth. But it held only some, and Petrosus proved as much by snarling curses at Grus and storming away. Grus looked after him and shook his head. The monastery wasn't as calm as he wished it were.

Lanius was grateful to Sosia for not nagging him about releasing Grus. Ever since they wed, she'd inclined more toward him than toward her father. She understood the reasons why he wouldn't want Grus to come back to the palace. Whether she agreed with them or not, she respected them enough not to be difficult over them.

But she didn't—or perhaps couldn't—talk her mother out of asking Lanius to order Grus out of the monastery. “Don't you owe him that much?” Estrilda said with the peculiar certainty older people often show when talking to younger ones. “Don't you, after everything he did for the kingdom? If he hadn't done all that, you wouldn't be on the throne now, you know.”

“No, I suppose not,” Lanius said. If Grus hadn't become king, if he himself had had to marry King Dagipert's daughter instead of Grus', the fearsome old King of Thervingia probably would have shoved him aside more violently and more permanently than Grus had.

“Well, then,” Estrilda said, as though that were the only thing that mattered. “Don't you have any sense of gratitude?”

“Shall I be grateful that he put my mother in a monastery and never let her out?” Lanius inquired acidly.

“Certhia tried to kill him,” Estrilda said, which was also true. “He never tried to kill her.”

“Well, I'm not going to try to kill him, either. On that you have my word,” Lanius said. If his gratitude ran no further … then it didn't, that was all.

“You're not listening to me.” Estrilda sounded surprised—almost astonished. As wife to the more powerful king, she'd gotten used to people following her slightest whim.

“I am listening,” Lanius said politely. “But I decide what to do now—no one else.”

She stared at him. Plainly, he was sole King of Avornis now. If he weren't, why would she ask him to let Grus go? Just as plainly, the idea that nobody could tell him what to do now hadn't fully sunk in until this moment. Shaking her head, Estrilda walked out of the audience chamber.

As Lanius and Sosia were going to bed that night, she said, “I am sorry about what happened earlier today. I told Mother I didn't think that would be a good idea, but she went ahead and did it anyhow.”

By then, Lanius had had the chance to gain a little perspective on things. “It's all right,” he said. “It could have been worse, anyhow.”

“Oh?” Sosia raised an eyebrow. “How?”

“She could have asked me to let your brother out, too, or instead.”

“Oh,” Sosia said again, this time on an altogether different note. “That would have been awkward, wouldn't it?”

“No.” He shook his head.
“This
was awkward, because there could be reasons to let Grus out of the monastery. If she'd asked the other, I would have said no and then thrown her out if she asked me again.” To keep Ortalis from coming out of the monastery, he was ready to be as rude and stubborn as he had to. That went against his usual nature, but so did what he felt about his brother-in-law.

At least he wasn't afraid of offending his wife about Ortalis. Except for Limosa, Ortalis seemed to have alarmed everyone who ever knew him. That included Sosia. She'd never made any great secret of it, either. All she said was, “It's over. You don't need to worry about it anymore.”

But she was wrong. The next morning, a servant came up to Lanius just as he and Sosia were finishing breakfast. “Excuse me, Your Majesty, but Arch-Hallow Anser would like to speak with you.”

“Of course,” Lanius said. “I'm always happy to see him. Bring him in, and then fetch some wine for him, too.” The servant bobbed his head and hurried off.

Anser came in a moment later. Lanius blinked when he did. Anser was wearing his red formal robes, something he hardly ever did when not conducting services in the great cathedral. “Your Majesty,” he said, and bowed to Lanius. Turning to Sosia, he repeated the words. He also bowed to his half-sister, not quite as deeply.

“Sit down,” Lanius urged. As Anser did, the king went on, “I've got a servant bringing you wine. What can I do for you? You're not usually out and about so early if you aren't hunting.”

Anser looked faintly embarrassed, which startled Lanius almost as much as the ceremonial regalia did. “I have a favor to ask of you, Your Majesty,” the arch-hallow said. “I haven't asked many, have I?”

“You've asked so few, it almost makes me suspicious,” Lanius answered. “Go ahead and ask, and we'll see what happens then.” He wasn't foolish enough to promise to grant favors no matter what. Kings had gotten themselves in a lot of trouble with promises like that.