The Bastard King

by Harry Turtledove

  “I’ll think about it,” Grus said, and no more.

  King Lanius thought that would prove nothing more than a polite dismissal. He wondered if he ought to be glad to get a polite one. Whenever Grus thwarted him, his first reaction was usually to get angry. His second reaction was usually to think, Well, that could have been worse. So it was here.

  And, a couple of days later, Grus came to him. Alca the witch meticulously made sure Grus was himself before the other King of Avornis strode up to Lanius. “I’ve made up my mind,” Grus said.

  “Yes?” Lanius braced himself for the rejection he was sure would follow.

  But Grus said, “All right, Your Majesty. Back to the city of Avornis you may go, if that makes you happy.”

  “Really? Thank you very much!” Only afterward did Lanius pause to wonder if he should have been so grateful. At the moment itself, glad surprise filled him too full to worry about such trifles.

  “Yes, really.” Grus seemed amused. “But you’ll do it my way. I’m sending Nicator back with you to command in the city till I get back.”

  “Ah?” Lanius said cautiously. If he had been thinking about rebellion, that would have made him think twice. Nicator was not only altogether loyal to Grus, he was popular with the men he would lead.

  “Yes,” Grus said. “I trust you don’t mind going back aboard a river galley full of marines?”

  Lanius said what he had to say. “No, I don’t mind in the least, as long as you haven’t told them to pitch me into the Enipeus as soon as we get out of sight of camp here.”

  “Sosia would have something to say if I did,” Grus remarked.

  Lanius wondered how true that was. Even more than most in Avornis, his had been a marriage made for reasons having nothing to do with any initial attraction between the two parties most intimately involved. But he’d done his best to please Grus’ daughter once they were joined. Thinking about it, he supposed she’d done the same for him. Maybe he’d succeeded better than he knew. He hoped so.

  When he didn’t answer, Grus asked, “Does it suit you, Your Majesty?”

  “Yes—very much so.” Lanius considered, and then added, “Thank you.” He said that seldom; as best he could recall, he hadn’t said it to Grus since the older man put the crown on his own head.

  Grus noticed that, too. “You’re welcome,” he answered, the same note of formality in his voice as Lanius had used. He hesitated, made a small pushing gesture, as though urging Lanius to be on his way, and then held up a hand to stop him from leaving. When he spoke again, he sounded uncommonly serious. “We can work in harness together, can’t we, Your Majesty?”

  “Maybe we can,” Lanius said. “Yes, maybe we can.” Now he did turn to go. A moment later, he turned back again. “I’ll see you in the city of Avornis … Your Majesty.”

  Grus had always been scrupulous about using Lanius’ royal title. Lanius had always been grudging about using Grus’, which he hadn’t reckoned—and still didn’t reckon—altogether legitimate. Grus had noticed. By the nature of things, Grus would have had to be a far duller, far blinder man than he was to keep from noticing. Now a broad smile spread over his face. “So you will, Your Majesty—and, with luck, sooner than you think.”

  “Really?” Lanius pointed an accusing finger at him. “You have some sort of plot in mind.”

  “Who? Me?” Grus’ smile turned into an out-and-out grin. For a moment, gray streaks in his beard or not, he looked hardly older than Lanius was. He asked, “Do you want to stay around awhile longer and see what it is?”

  Lanius thought it over. He hadn’t expected to be tempted, but he was. Tempted or not, he shook his head. His answer needed only one word. “No.”

  Grus and Alca walked along together at the base of the crag. The witch nodded. “Yes, I can do that, Your Majesty, or I think I can. You do understand that even if I manage it, it may not do everything you want? They may have other ways of solving the problem.”

  “Not from what the prisoners say,” Grus answered. He looked up at the sky, which was fine and blue and fair. Motion on the battlements caught his eye. Someone up there in the castle, implausibly tiny in the distance, was looking down at him. Was it Corvus? No way to tell, of course, any more than Corvus—if that was he—could recognize Grus down here at the base of the mountain whose peak was all the kingdom he had left. “With any luck at all, we can do this quickly and get back to the city of Avornis.”

  Alca gave him a sidelong look. “Are you really so worried about Lanius?” she asked.

  “Among other things, yes,” Grus told her. “Some more than others, I grant.” He sighed. “Now that I’m King of Avornis, I worry about everything. The only way I have of taking care of the worries is deciding which one to fret about first.”

  That made Alca smile, though he hadn’t been joking. She said, “Well, Your Majesty, I will do what I can to make sure you need not worry about Corvus anymore. I think I can find everything I need.”

  “If it turns out that you can’t, say the word,” Grus replied. “Whatever it is, I’ll get it for you.”

  “I thank you, Your Majesty,” the witch said.

  “Believe me, you’re welcome,” Grus said. “This is for my advantage, after all. And for the kingdom’s advantage,” he added, but he didn’t think he was dishonest in putting his own first.

  Alca began her magic the next day at noon, when the sun stood highest in the sky. She took from a silk sack a curious red and white stone, all branched like a tree. “This is coral,” she told Grus. “It washes up on seaside beaches.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” he answered. “Up till now, though, I haven’t seen it more than once or twice in all my days.”

  “Coming out of the sea, it naturally has power over water,” the witch said. Grus nodded. From everything he knew about sorcery—admittedly, not much—what she said made good sense.

  Alca held the coral up high over her head and began to chant in an ancient dialect of Avornan. Grus recognized a word here and there in what she said, but no more than that. Lanius would probably follow every bit of it, he thought. After a moment’s resentment, he shrugged. Yes, Lanius had more education than he, but so what? I’m the one who makes things happen.

  Just then, after a sharp word of command, Alca took her hands off the coral. It kept on floating in midair, above the level of her head. The shadow it cast on the ground was of a hue different from ordinary shadows—it was reddish, like the coral stone itself. Grus muttered to himself when he saw that. Power might command knowledge, but a powerful man didn’t necessarily know things himself.

  In that scarlet shadow, Alca set a basin of water. Then, moving swiftly, she mixed lime and olive oil and wax and some strong-smelling substance—“Naphtha,” she said, seeing the question on Grus’ face—and shaped them into the form of a man. On the image’s chest, she placed a pinch of earth from beside the basin. “This is the land Corvus claims as his own. With it, I will make the image stand for him.”

  Grus nodded again. Even he recognized such correspondences, such links, between the everyday world and that in which magic worked.

  Alca held up the image as she’d held up the coral stone. Her chant, though, was different this time, harsh and angry and insistent. When she finished, she cast the image into the basin of water instead of letting it float in the air.

  It burst into flames. Grus exclaimed and took a quick step back. Whatever he’d expected, he hadn’t expected that. The image burned and burned, with a sputtering blue-white flame painful to the eyes. A great cloud of steam rose from the basin.

  Alca smiled at his surprise. “Sometimes, sorcery should be interesting, don’t you think?” she remarked.

  “Interesting? By King Olor’s beard, that almost made my beard turn white,” Grus answered. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Corvus go up in flames the same way.”

  Now the witch frowned. “That is not the purpose of this wizardry,” she said severely.

  “No, I suppose not,” Gru
s admitted. “Magic’s almost killed me twice. I don’t really have any business wishing that sort of death on anybody else, do I?”

  “I would think not, Your Majesty.” Alca still sounded offended. As one skilled in sorcery should have, she took its limits seriously, and expected everybody else to do the same.

  Respecting that, Grus changed the subject by asking, “The magic you worked did what it should have done?”

  “Oh, yes.” Alca nodded. “The spell is accomplished.”

  “Will Corvus’ wizards be able to reverse it?”

  “They will try. I have no doubt of that,” the witch answered. “But some things are easier to do than to undo once done. This is one of those, or so I believe.”

  “May I ask one last question?”

  Amusement glinted in Alca’s eyes. “You are the King of Avornis. You may do whatever you please.”

  “Ha!” Grus said. “That only goes to show you’ve never been king. Here’s my question, then: How long before we know what we’ve done up there?”

  “I can’t tell you—not exactly,” Alca said. “That depends on several things—just how many men are shut up in the fortress, what all they can broach, and so on. But I don’t think it will be long—not unless Corvus’ wizards manage to surprise me. By the nature of things, I don’t see how it could be. Do you?”

  “No. I don’t.” Grus sighed. “On the other hand, I’ve been wrong before. Maybe Corvus’ wizards will work something out, or maybe he’ll find some other way to hang on up there. I have to stay ready, don’t I?”

  “If you stay ready for all the uncertain things, the things that may happen but may not, you will make a better king than if you let them take you by surprise,” Alca said.

  Grus shrugged. “I don’t know about that. What I do know is, I’m likely to stay on the throne longer if I’m ready for anything. Maybe that amounts to the same thing.”

  The witch nodded. “Yes. Maybe it does.”

  For several days, nothing happened up in the castle on the crag—nothing the army surrounding it could see, at any rate. Grus wondered whether Alca’s wizardry had worked as well as she thought. He said nothing about that. If his worries turned out to be right, the time to talk about them would come later. If he turned out to be wrong, he would have made a fool of himself by needlessly showing them.

  Eight days after Alca worked her magic, a soldier came down from the castle carrying a flag of truce. “In the names of the gods, Your Majesty,” he said when Grus’ men disarmed him and brought him before the king, “give me something to drink, I beg you!”

  “So I’m ‘Your Majesty’ now, am I?” Grus asked, hiding the exultation that leaped in him. Corvus’ soldier nodded, as eagerly as he could. With a smile, Grus said, “Well, that’s earned you a little something, anyhow.” He nodded to one of his own troopers, who ceremoniously poured a cup of wine and handed it to the man just down from the stronghold.

  Corvus’ soldier gulped it down so fast, a little spilled out of his mouth, trickled through his beard, and dripped down onto the dry, dusty ground on which he stood. He wiped his lips and chin on his sleeve, saying, “Ahhh! That’s sweeter than Queen Quelea’s milk, Banished One bite me if it isn’t!”

  “I’m glad my wine makes you happy,” Grus said dryly. “I do have to ask, though, if you came down just to guzzle it, or for some other reason, too.”

  That seemed to remind the fellow of the white flag he still carried in his left hand. “Oh.” He grimaced. “Count Corvus would yield himself and his garrison and his keep to you, and begs you to spare their—our—lives.”

  “Would he? Does he?” King Grus whispered. His own soldiers grinned and murmured and nudged one another. Alca, who stood not far away, smiled a small, weary smile. Grus asked, “Why did he suddenly decide to give up?”

  “Why?” Corvus’ man echoed. “I’ll tell you why, Your Majesty. On account of our stinking spring failed, that’s why. You can fight a long time without food, even without hope. But you can’t go on without water.”

  “Why shouldn’t I let the lot of you parch to death up there?” Grus demanded. “Why shouldn’t I take Corvus’ head the instant I’ve got him?”

  “Here’s why: Because if you tell me no, we’ll sally from the keep and fight as hard as we can as long as we can,” the soldier answered. “You’ll be rid of us, but we’ll hurt you, maybe hurt you bad, going down. What have we got to lose?”

  Why shouldn’t I promise Corvus his life and then take his head? Grus wondered. But that had its own obvious answer. If he swore an oath here and then broke it, who would ever trust him the next time he swore one? He scowled but nodded. “Agreed. Come forth with no weapons, with only the clothes on your backs. Tell Corvus he’ll tend a shrine in the heart of the Maze till they lay him on his pyre. Tell him he will die if he ever sets a toe outside that shrine. Make sure he understands, for I’d sooner kill him than look at him.”

  “He … thought you might say something like that, Your Majesty,” Corvus’ man replied. Grus gestured—away. The soldier started back up the crag.

  Going uphill took longer than coming down. Before too very long, though, a long column of soldiers came out of the main gate and marched into captivity. Grus’ men hurried up to make sure they were obeying the terms the king had set them. Waves and whoops and joyful shouts announced they were.

  Grus had Corvus brought before him. The count looked disgusted. “If you hadn’t struck at our spring, we’d’ve held out a lot longer,” he snarled. Then, remembering where he was and who held the power, he grudgingly added, “Uh, Your Majesty.” The title seemed to taste bad to him.

  “I did, though,” Grus answered. “And you would be wise, very wise, to give me no tiniest excuse to slay you.”

  “You swore you wouldn’t,” Corvus exclaimed.

  “Maybe I lied,” Grus said. The defeated rebel looked as appalled as he’d hoped. He went on, “Or maybe, if you push me, you’ll make me lose my temper, and I’ll forget about what I promised. I’d be sorry afterward.”

  “That wouldn’t do me much good,” Corvus muttered.

  “No, it wouldn’t, would it?” Grus agreed with a smile.

  Corvus kept very quiet after that. He gave Grus no excuse for anything at all. Grus gestured, and his men took Corvus away.

  He put a garrison of his own in the keep from which Corvus had dominated the countryside for so long. Then he turned back toward the city of Avornis. He still had to worry about the Menteshe and the Thervings, but he wouldn’t have to fear civil war as well as his foreign foes—not for a while, anyhow.

  But for how long? he wondered. When will some other nobleman decide he ought to be King of Avornis? Half the counts in the kingdom turn the peasants on their lands into their own private armies. Have to do something about that one of these days. He wondered what he could do. He wondered if he could do anything but beat the rebels one by one as they arose. There has to be a better way than that. There has to be, if only I can find it.

  When the army encamped that night, he asked Alca to supper with him. She raised an eyebrow when she found she was the only one he’d invited. “Your Majesty, is this proper?” she asked.

  “You just helped me put down a civil war,” Grus answered. “What’s improper about celebrating that?”

  “Nothing,” Alca admitted, and stayed in the pavilion. Over supper, he asked whether she had any ideas about keeping other nobles with wide estates from imitating Corvus and Corax. She didn’t, not on the spur of the moment. He swallowed a sigh.

  Over the course of the meal, he also swallowed a good deal of wine. So did Alca. Before long, he tried to kiss her. She twisted away. “Your Majesty, I’m married,” she reminded him.

  “So what? So am I,” he said grandly—yes, he’d had a lot of wine.

  “And what would Queen Estrilda say if she found out about this?” Alca asked.

  “She’d say it was how I fathered my bastard boy,” Grus answered. She would also say quite a fe
w other things, most of them at the top of her lungs. Grus was sure of that. He didn’t mention it to Alca.

  The witch got to her feet. “I did not come here for that, Your Majesty. I’m not angry—not yet. Being noticed is always flattering, up to a point. If someone goes past that point when you don’t want him to …”

  She didn’t say what might happen then. But Grus, wine or no wine, abruptly remembered she was a witch. Unpleasant things might follow if he pushed too hard. “All right,” he said grumpily. “Go on, then.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” Alca hesitated, then added, “If neither of us were wed, that might be different. But as things are?” Shaking her head, she slipped out of the tent. Grus poured his goblet full again and finished the job of getting drunk.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  For the most part, Lanius was glad to get back to the royal palace. He had, after all, lived there his whole life. Coming back to the moncats and the forays into the archives meant returning to comfortable routine. Coming back to Sosia was pleasant, too. But, as day followed day and routine submerged him, he did wonder if he’d lost a chance he might not see again.

  Even finding an answer was far from easy. When Lanius asked the question in the privacy of his own mind, that was one thing. But when he asked it out in the world, that was something else—something more dangerous. Asking the wrong person could prove deadly dangerous. Who was the right person? Was anyone the right person?

  After some thought, he arranged to see Lepturus. The commander of the royal bodyguards had always been loyal to the dynasty of which Lanius was the last survivor. Even if Lepturus gave an answer he didn’t like, he doubted the older man would pass his words on to Grus.

  Lepturus heard him out in thoughtful silence. The officer plucked at his beard. It was white these days. It had been iron gray when Lanius first knew him. How had Lepturus gotten so old without his noticing? At last, the guards commander said, “Me, I think you did just the right thing by sitting tight and not starting a fight here when you got back from the field, Your Majesty. If you’d risen against Grus, you would have lost.”