The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  The king nodded; it was unusual. Did it mean Limosa had scars she didn’t want anyone to see? Try as he would, he couldn’t think of anything else.

  “But Limosa hasn’t said anything about this?” he asked.

  “No.” Sosia shook her head. “She chased the maidservant away, and she’s been going on as though nothing happened ever since.”

  “I wonder if the maid was wrong, or if she was making it up,” Lanius said.

  “No,” Sosia repeated. “I know Zenaida. She wouldn’t. She’s reliable.”

  “Well, so she is,” Lanius agreed, his voice as expressionless as he could make it. He wondered what Sosia would have called the serving woman had she known he was sleeping with her. Something other than reliable, he was sure.

  He went through the palace the next morning looking for Limosa, and naturally didn’t find her. Then, after he’d given up, he came around a corner and almost bumped into her. She dropped him a curtsy, saying, “Hello, Your Majesty.”

  “Hello, Your Highness.” Lanius had almost gotten used to calling Limosa by the title. He’d also paid her a bigger compliment than that—he’d almost forgotten she was Petrosus’ daughter. “How are you today?”

  Her smile lit up her face. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but when she smiled it was easy to forget she wasn’t. “I’m very well, Your Majesty, very well indeed. I hope you are, too.”

  “Pretty well, anyhow,” Lanius said.

  “Good. I’m so glad to hear it.” That wasn’t, or didn’t sound like, simple courtesy alone; it sounded as though Limosa meant it. “If you’ll excuse me …”

  “Of course,” Lanius said. She smiled again, even more brightly than before. Fluttering her fingers at him, she hurried down the hall, her skirt rustling at each step.

  She was radiant. That was the only word Lanius could find. And she’s supposed to bear the mark of the lash on her back? The king shook his head. He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t believe it. He didn’t know what Zenaida thought she’d seen. Whatever it was, he was convinced she’d gotten it wrong.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Pelagonia’s iron-shod gates swung open. The Avornan defenders on the wall—soldiers of the garrison in helmets and mailshirts, armed with swords and spears and heavy bows, plus a good many militiamen in leather jerkins, armed with daggers and with hunting bows good for knocking over rabbits and squirrels but with no range or punch to speak of—cheered Grus and his army as he led it into the town.

  He waved back to the men who’d held Pelagonia against the Menteshe. He pasted a smile on his face. His heart pounded as though he were storming Yozgat and driving Prince Ulash from his throne. That had nothing to do with Pelagonia itself, so he didn’t want the people here noticing anything amiss. It had everything to do with one woman who’d come—been sent—to live here.

  He wanted to see Alca as soon as he got the chance. And yet, he would be quietly setting up housekeeping with Alauda while he stayed here. He recognized the inconsistency. Recognizing it and doing anything about it were two different beasts.

  A baron named Spizastur commanded in Pelagonia. He was a big, bluff fellow with gray eyes and a red face—an even redder nose, one that suggested he put down a lot of wine. “Greetings, Your Majesty!” he boomed. “Mighty good to see you, and that’s the truth!” Was he drunk? Not in any large, showy way, anyhow, though he did talk too loud.

  “Good to be here,” the king replied.

  “I’m not sorry to see the last of those thieving devils,” Spizastur declared, again louder than he needed to. “Been a long time since they came this far north. Won’t be sorry if I never see ’em again, either.”

  Grus knew it was far from certain Pelagonia had seen the last of the Menteshe. He didn’t say that to Spizastur. It would only have disheartened the noble and the soldiers who’d held Prince Ulash’s men out of the city. He did say, “I hope you have billets for my men—and a place for me to stay.”

  “Billets for some, anyhow,” Spizastur replied. “This isn’t the big city, where you can fit in a great host and never notice. For you yourself, Your Majesty, I’ve got rooms in the keep.”

  “I thank you.” Grus would sooner have stayed with some rich merchant—odds were that would have been more comfortable. But he couldn’t tell Spizastur no. “I have a … lady friend with me,” he murmured.

  “Do you?” The local commander didn’t seem surprised. “I’ll see to it.”

  Grus didn’t pay much attention to Alauda until that evening. He was busy with Spizastur and Hirundo, planning where the army would go next and what it would try to do. And he kept hoping Alca would come to the keep.

  Alauda yawned as the two of them got ready for bed. She said, “I need to tell you something.”

  “What is it?” Grus, his mind partly on the campaign and partly on Alca, paid little attention to the widowed barmaid he’d brought along on a whim.

  But she found half a dozen words to make him pay attention. “I’m going to have a baby,” she said. Any man who hears those words, especially from a woman not his wife, will pay attention to them.

  “Are you sure?” Grus asked—the timeworn, and foolish, common response to such news.

  She nodded, unsurprised. “Yes, I’m positive. My courses should have come, and they haven’t. My breasts are tender”—Grus had noticed that—“and I’m sleepy all the time. I had a baby girl, but she died young, poor thing. I know the signs.”

  Are you sure it’s mine? But no, he couldn’t ask that. He didn’t think she’d played him false since they’d become lovers, and they’d been together long enough so the father couldn’t be anyone from before even if she hadn’t made it plain she’d slept alone since her husband died. Grus said, “Well, well. I’ll take care of you, and I’ll take care of the baby. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Alauda breathed. By the way she said it, she had worried. In her place, Grus supposed he would have, too.

  He shook his head. He might have been trying to clear it after a punch in the jaw. “I hope you’ll forgive me, but I still don’t intend to bring you back to the capital with me. I don’t think my wife would understand.” Actually, Estrilda would understand altogether too well. That was what Grus was afraid of.

  “I’m not worried about that,” Alauda said quickly. “You told me you wouldn’t once before.”

  “All right. Good.” He realized he needed to do something more, and went over and gave her a kiss. She clung to him, making her relief obvious without a word. He kissed her again, and patted her, and lay down beside her. She fell asleep almost at once. She’d said being pregnant left her sleepy. Lying awake beside her as she softly snored, Grus sighed and shook his head. He’d been thinking about saying good-bye to her. He couldn’t very well do that now.

  And he was drifting off to sleep himself when a new thought woke him up again. What would Alca think when she found out? After that, sleep took even longer to find Grus.

  Lanius studied Grus’ letters from the south with the obsessive attention of a priest trying to find truth in an obscure bit of dogma. Naturally, Grus put the best face he could on the news he sent up to the city of Avornis—what he said quickly spread from the palace out to the capital as a whole. Piecing together what lay behind his always optimistic words was a fascinating game, one made more interesting when played with a map.

  Just now, Lanius suspected his fellow king of cheating. Grus wrote of a night attack his army had beaten back, and then said, We have entered a town on the north bank of the Thyamis River, from which, as opportunity arises, we will proceed against the Menteshe.

  “Which town on the north bank of the Thyamis?” Lanius muttered, more than a little annoyed. It could have been Naucratis, it could have been Chalcis, or it could have been Pelagonia. Grus didn’t make himself clear. Depending on where he was, he could strike at the nomads several different ways.

  From the context, the Avornan army seemed most likely to be in Pe
lagonia. But why hadn’t Grus come out and said so? Up until now, he’d at least told people in the capital where he was, if not always why he’d gone there. Figuring out why was part of the game, too.

  And then, after one more glance from the letter to the map, Lanius said, “Oh,” and decided he knew where the army was after all. If Estrilda saw the name Pelagonia, she wouldn’t need to look at a map to know where it was. She already knew that, in the only way likely to matter to her—it was where Grus had sent his mistress. What was he doing there now? That was what she would want to know. Did it have anything to do with fighting Prince Ulash’s men, or was the king seeing the witch again?

  If Grus failed to send a dispatch up to the capital, everyone there would wonder what disaster he was trying to hide. But if he sent a dispatch that said, We have entered a town on the north bank of the Thyamis River—well, so what? If Estrilda saw the dispatch, would she realize a town on the north bank of the Thyamis River meant Pelagonia? Not likely.

  From being annoyed at Grus, Lanius went to admiring him. The other king had had a problem, had seen it, and had solved it in a way that caused him no more problems. If that wasn’t what being a good king was all about, Lanius didn’t know what would be.

  Back in the palace, Lanius had problems of his own. He might have known rumors about Limosa would race through it like a fire through brush in a drought. He had known it, in fact. And now it had. Servants gossiped and joked, careless of who heard them. He didn’t want the royal family mocked. He was touchy about his own dignity—after people had called him a bastard through much of his childhood, who could blame him for that? And he was touchy about the dignity of the family.

  “What can we do?” he asked Sosia. “I don’t believe it, but people still spread it.”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t really think we can do anything about it. And I’m not so sure I don’t believe it. Why would Zenaida lie about something like that?”

  “How could Limosa seem so happy if it’s true?” Lanius retorted. “We’ve seen what happens when Ortalis starts abusing serving girls. You can’t tell me that’s happening now.”

  His wife shrugged. “Maybe not. Whether the stories are true or not, though, all we can do is ignore them. If we say they’re lies, people will think we have reasons for hiding the truth. If we pretend we don’t hear, though, what can they do about it?”

  “Laugh at us.” To Lanius, that was as gruesome as any other form of torture.

  But Sosia only shrugged again. “The world won’t end. Before long, some new scandal will come along. Some new scandal always does. By this time next month, or month after at the latest, people will have forgotten all about Limosa.”

  Things weren’t quite that simple, and Lanius knew it. Limosa was part of the royal family now. People would always wonder what she was doing and gossip about what they thought she was doing. Yet Sosia had a point, too. When new rumors came along, old ones would be forgotten. People didn’t shout, “Bastard!” at him anymore when he went out into the streets of the city of Avornis. His parentage had been a scandal, but it wasn’t now. People had found other things to talk about. They would with Limosa, too.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Lanius said with a sigh. “But I don’t think it will be much fun until the rumors do die down.”

  Grus looked south across the Thyamis River from the walls of Pelagonia. Clouds of smoke rising in the distance showed the Menteshe had no intention of leaving Avornis until he threw them out. As he’d known, this wasn’t a raid; this was a war. The king had been eager to come into Pelagonia for reasons of his own. Now, for different reasons, he was just as eager to leave the town.

  His bodyguards stirred and stepped aside. Pterocles was one of the men who could come—limp, these days—right up to him without a challenge. At Grus’ gesture, the guardsmen moved back so Pterocles and he could talk in privacy.

  “I owe you an apology, Your Majesty,” the wizard said.

  “You do?” That wasn’t something Grus heard every day. “Why?”

  “Because I thought Alca the witch was a sly little snip who was clever without really knowing what she was doing,” Pterocles answered. “I was wrong. I admit it. She’s really very sharp.”

  “Oh? How do you know that?”

  The look Pterocles gave him said the wizard wondered whether he was very sharp. “Because I’ve been working with her ever since we got here, of course. Do you think I’d say that about somebody I didn’t know?”

  “No, I don’t suppose you would,” Grus admitted. “But I wondered, because I haven’t seen her since we got here.”

  “Do you want to?” Pterocles sounded surprised. “Uh, meaning no disrespect, Your Majesty, but you’ve got another woman with you, and Alca knows it.”

  “Oh,” Grus said. “Does she?” Pterocles nodded. The king wondered whether Alca knew Alauda was pregnant. She wouldn’t be very happy about that if she did. Even so, Grus went on, “I would like to see her, yes. Not because … because of what we used to be, but because she’s a powerful witch.”

  Pterocles nodded again, enthusiastically this time. “She really is. You know how you’ve been nagging me about spells to cure thralls?”

  “I know I’ve been interested in that, yes.” Grus’ voice was dry. “I also know you made a point of telling me Alca’s ideas were worthless.”

  “Well, they were. She didn’t understand. But now she does,” the wizard said. “When I get back to the capital, I’ll have all sorts of good ideas—hers and mine—to try out.”

  “Good. We can use all the good ideas we can find,” Grus said. “And if you’d be so kind, tell her I can see her this afternoon.”

  “I’ll do that.” Pterocles went on his way.

  Grus wondered if he’d just been clever or very foolish. Alca was a powerful witch—and he’d sent her away from the city of Avornis. Now he came to Pelagonia not with his wife, which would have been bad enough, but with a new mistress, and one who would have his child. Would it be surprising if Alca felt like turning him into a dung beetle?

  The real irony was that he didn’t love Alauda. He never had and never would. He enjoyed her in bed, and that was about as far as it went. She had the outlook of a peasant girl who’d become a barmaid, which was exactly what she was. Alca, on the other hand, he’d liked and admired long before they slept together. That wasn’t a guaranteed recipe for falling in love, but it was a good start.

  He waited more than a little nervously in a small, bare room in the quarters in the keep Spizastur had given Alauda and him. He didn’t know what Alauda was doing. He hoped she was napping.

  A guardsman stuck his head into the room. “Your Majesty, the witch is here.” He had tact. He’d served Grus back in the palace. He had to know all the lurid gossip about the king and Alca. What he knew didn’t show in his voice.

  Gratefully, Grus answered, “Send her in.”

  Alca came into the chamber slowly and cautiously. Until Grus saw how she moved, how her pale, fine-boned face was set to show as little as it could, he hadn’t realized she was at least as nervous as he was. She brushed a lock of black hair back from her forehead. “Your Majesty,” she said, her voice not much above a whisper.

  “Hello, Alca,” Grus replied, and he wasn’t much louder. “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” Alca said. “I wasn’t sure it would be, but it is, in spite of everything.”

  “How have you been?” he asked.

  “This place is an even bigger hole than I thought it would be, and most of the men here ought to be horsewhipped,” she answered. “I didn’t much care for watching the Menteshe burn our fields, either.”

  “Oh.” Grus winced. “I’m sorry. Curse it, I am sorry—about everything. When we started, I didn’t think it would end up like … this.”

  “I did,” Alca said bleakly. “I did, but I went ahead anyhow—and so it’s partly my own fault that this happened to me. Partly.” She cocked her h
ead to one side and eyed him in a way he remembered painfully well. “Will you tell this latest woman of yours that you’re sorry about everything, too?”

  Pterocles had said she knew about Alauda. Grus wondered if the wizard had told her, or if she’d found out by magic, or maybe just by market gossip. Any which way, a king had a demon of a time keeping secrets, especially about himself. However Alca knew, her scorn burned. Gruffly, Grus answered, “I hope not.”

  Alca nodded. “Yes, I believe that. You always hope not. And when things go wrong—and they do go wrong—you’re always surprised. You’re always disappointed. And that doesn’t do anybody any good, does it?”

  “Is that why you came here? To rail at me?”

  “What will you do if I say yes? Exile me to some no-account town in the middle of nowhere? I take it back, Your Majesty”—the way Alca used the royal title flayed Grus—“I’m not so glad to see you after all.”

  They glared at each other. After a long, furious silence, Grus asked, “Have you been glad to see Pterocles?”

  Alca’s face changed. “Yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes, indeed. That is a clever young man. He needs to be kicked every so often—or more than every so often—but he’ll do great things if—” She broke off.

  “If the Banished One doesn’t kill him first,” Grus finished for her.

  “Yes. If.” The witch nodded again. “He’s dreamed of the Banished One. Did you know that?”

  “It’s one of the reasons I made him my chief wizard aft—” Now Grus stopped short. After I sent you away was what he’d started to say, but he decided not to say it. “One of the reasons I made him my chief wizard,” he repeated. “It’s a sign the Banished One takes you seriously, I think.”