He hadn’t asked Ortalis to explain. He hadn’t wanted Ortalis to explain. But explain his brother-in-law did. “Curse it,” Ortalis said angrily, “it’s not adding pain the way a Menteshe torturer would. It’s different.”
“How?” Now Lanius did ask. The word escaped him before he could call it back.
“How? I’ll tell you how. Because while it’s going on, both people are enjoying it, that’s how.” Ortalis sent Lanius a defiant stare.
The king remembered Cristata again. Not naming her, he said, “That isn’t what … one of the other people told me.”
Ortalis knew who he was talking about without a name. The prince laughed harshly. “That may be what she said afterwards. It isn’t what she said while it was going on. By the gods, it’s not. You should have heard her. ‘Oh, Ortalis!’”
He was an excellent, even an alarming, mimic. And he believed what he was saying. The unmistakable anger in his voice convinced Lanius of that. Was he right? Lanius doubted it. Right or not, though, he was sincere.
How could he be so wrong about that, sincere or not? Well, even Cristata admitted she’d enjoyed some of it at first. And then, when it had gone too far for her, maybe Ortalis had taken real fear for the artificial fear that was part of the game. Maybe. Lanius could hope that was how it had been.
But he wanted to hunt girls for sport. How can I forget that? What would he have done once he caught them? Part of him, again, didn’t want to know. Part feared he already knew.
When Lanius didn’t say anything, Ortalis got angrier. “Curse it, I’m telling you the truth,” he said.
“All right. I believe you.” Lanius didn’t, but he couldn’t help believing Ortalis believed what he said. And he believed—no, he knew—arguing with Ortalis was more trouble than it was worth.
Limosa’s labor began a few days later. Netta, the briskly competent midwife who’d attended Sosia, went in with Ortalis’ wife. Lanius didn’t linger outside Limosa’s bedchamber, as he had outside the birthing chamber where Sosia had borne their son and daughter. That was Ortalis’ job now. The king did get news from women who attended the midwife. From what they said, everything was going the way it should. Lanius hoped so. No matter what he thought of Petrosus, he didn’t dislike the exiled treasury minister’s daughter.
The sun had just set when the high, thin, furious wail of a newborn baby burst from the bedchamber. Lanius waited expectantly. Netta came out of the room and spoke to Ortalis in a voice that could be heard all over the palace. “Congratulations, Your Highness,” she said. “You have a fine, healthy new daughter, and the lady your wife is doing well.”
“A daughter?” Ortalis didn’t bother keeping his voice down, either, or keeping the disappointment out of it. But then he managed a laugh of sorts. “Well, we’ll just have to try again, that’s all.”
“Not for six weeks,” the midwife said firmly. “You can do her a real injury if you go to her too soon. I’m not joking about this, Your Highness. Stay out of her bed until then.”
How long had it been since anyone but Grus had spoken to Ortalis like that? Too long, probably. The prince took it from Netta, saying nothing more than, “All right, I’ll do that.”
“Princess Limosa said you were going to name a girl Capella. Is that right?” Netta asked.
“Yes. It’s her mother’s name,” Ortalis answered.
“It’s a good name,” the midwife said. “I have a cousin named Capella. She’s a lovely woman, and I’m sure your little princess will be, too.”
What Ortalis said in response to that, Lanius didn’t hear. He went into his bedchamber and told Sosia, “It’s a girl!”
“Yes, I heard,” the queen said. “I don’t think there’s anyone for half a mile around who didn’t hear.”
“Well, yes,” Lanius said. “It’s still good news.”
“So it is,” Sosia said. “I do worry about the succession.” Lanius worried about it, too. What would happen when Grus died? He wasn’t a young man anymore. Lanius himself thought he ought to be sole king after that, but how likely was Ortalis to agree with him? Not very, he feared. At the moment, he had a son and Ortalis didn’t. Ortalis wasn’t happy about that, either; he’d just proved as much. If he had one, or more than one, too …
“It could be complicated,” Lanius said.
“It’s already complicated,” Sosia replied. “It could be a disaster.”
He started to smile and laugh and to say it couldn’t be as bad as all that. He started to, yes, but he didn’t. For months now, he’d been reading all the news about the civil war between Prince Sanjar and Prince Korkut. Would some Menteshe prince one day read letters about the civil war raging among the contenders and pretenders to the throne of Avornis? It could happen, and he knew it.
Sosia read his face. “You see,” she said. “We dodged an arrow this time. We may not be so lucky a year from now, or two, or three.”
“You’re not wrong,” Lanius said with a sigh. “By Olor’s beard, I wish you were. Oh!” He stopped, then went on, “And there’s something else you weren’t wrong about.”
“What’s that?” Sosia asked.
“Ortalis and Limosa.” Lanius told her what Ortalis had said, and what he thought it meant, finishing, “The other thing is, Limosa’s head over heels in love with your brother in spite of—maybe even because of—this.”
“You mean you think she does like the horrible things he does?” Sosia made a face. “That’s disgusting!” But her pause was thoughtful. “Of course, you’re right—somebody may like what somebody else thinks is disgusting.” Lanius nodded at that. A moment later, he wished he hadn’t, for her look said she had his sporting with the serving girls in mind. He turned away so he could pretend he didn’t know what she was thinking. She laughed. She knew he knew, all right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Avornan soldiers scoured the countryside for timber and oil to make Prince Vsevolod the most magnificent funeral pyre anyone had ever seen. They built the pyre just out of bowshot of Nishevatz, and laid the body of the white-bearded Prince of Nishevatz atop it.
Beloyuz advanced toward the grim gray walls of the city-state behind a flag of truce. He shouted in his own language. Prince Vasilko’s men stared down at him from the battlements. They said not a word until he finished, and let him go back to the Avornan lines without shooting at him in spite of that flag of truce.
To King Grus, that was progress of a sort. Beloyuz seemed to think the same. Well, Your Majesty, I told them His Highness has passed from among men,” the Chernagor noble said. “I told them I would rule Nishevatz in his place once Vasilko was driven from the city. I told them—and they heard me! They did not hate me!”
“Good.” Grus meant it. A small fire burned not far from the pyre. “Light a torch, then. Send Vsevolod’s spirit up toward the heavens with the smoke, and then we’ll get on with business here on earth.”
“Yes.” Beloyuz took a torch and thrust it into the flames. The tallow-soaked head caught at once. The Chernagor raised the torch high—once, twice, three times. Grus almost asked him what he was doing, but held back. It had to be some local custom Avornis didn’t share. Then Beloyuz touched the torch to one corner of the pyre.
The blast of flame that followed sent him and Grus staggering back. “Ahh!” said the watching Avornan soldiers, who, like their king, had seen a great many pyres in their day and eyed them with the appreciation of so many connoisseurs. When Grus watched an old man’s body go up in smoke, he always thought back to the day when he’d had to burn his father. Crex, who’d come off a farm in the south to the city of Avornis and found a position as a royal guardsman, was gone forever. But in the blood of that Crex’s great-grandson, another Crex, also flowed the blood of the ancient royal dynasty of Avornis. And that younger Crex would likely wear the crown himself one day.
Grus wondered what his father would have to say about that. Some bad joke or other, probably; the old man had no more been able to do without them than
he’d been able to do without bread. He’d died before Grus won the crown, died quickly and quietly and peacefully. Days went by now when Grus hardly thought of him. And yet, every so often, just how much he missed him stabbed like a sword.
He blinked rapidly and turned away from Vsevolod’s pyre. The heat and smoke and fire were enough to account for his streaming eyes. He wiped them on the sleeve of his tunic and looked toward Nishevatz. The burly, bearded warriors on the wall were watching Vsevolod’s departure from this world as intently as the soldiers Grus commanded. He saw several of them pointing at the pyre, and wondered what they would be saying.
“Tell me,” he said to Beloyuz, “do your people have the custom of reckoning one pyre against another?”
“Oh, yes,” the Chernagor answered. “I think it must be so among every folk who burn their dead. Things may be different among those who throw them in a hole in the ground, I suppose. But a pyre, now, a pyre is a great thing. How could you not compare one to the next?”
“Prince Vsevolod will be remembered for a long time, then.” Grus had to raise his voice to make himself understood above the crackling of the flames.
“Yes. It is so.” Beloyuz nodded. “You have served him better in death, perhaps, than you did in life.”
Grus sent him a sour stare. “Do you think so, Your Excellency? Excuse me—I mean, ‘Your Highness.’ Do you truly think so? If I did not care what became of Vsevolod, why did I spend so many of my men and so much of my treasure to try to restore him to the throne of Nishevatz?”
“Why? For your own purposes, of course,”. Beloyuz replied, with a shrug that could have made any world-weary Avornan courtier jealous. “To try to keep the Banished One from gaining a foothold here in the Chernagor country. I do not say these are bad reasons, Your Majesty. I say they are reasons that have nothing to do with Vsevolod the man—may the gods guard his spirit now. He could have been a green goat, and you would have done the same. We are both men who have seen this and that. Will you tell me I lie?”
However much Grus would have liked to, he couldn’t. He eyed Beloyuz with a certain reluctant respect. Vsevolod had never shown much in the way of brains. Here, plainly, was a man of a different sort. And would different mean difficult? It often did.
A difficult Prince of Nishevatz, though, would be a distinct improvement. Vasilko, Vsevolod’s unloving son, wasn’t just difficult. He was an out-and-out enemy, as much under the thumb of the Banished One as anybody this side of a thrall could be.
“Let the Chernagors in the city know where you stand about this and that,” Grus told him. “Let them know you’re not Vsevolod, and let them know you’re not Vasilko, either. That’s our best chance to get help from inside the walls, I think.”
“Your best chance, you mean,” Beloyuz said.
Grus exhaled in some annoyance. “When you’re Prince of Nishevatz—when you’re Prince inside Nishevatz—I want two things from you. I want you not to bow down to the Banished One, and I want you not to raid my coasts. Past that, Your Highness, I don’t care what you do. You can turn your helmet upside down and hatch puffin eggs in it for all of me. Is that plain enough?”
Beloyuz sent him an odd look, and then the first smile he’d gotten from the Chernagor noble. “Yes, Your Majesty. That is very plain. The next question will be, do you mean it?”
Difficult, Grus thought. Definitely difficult. “You’ll see,” he told Beloyuz.
Lanius had almost gotten used to rustling noises and meows in the archives. He put away the diplomatic correspondence between his great-great-grandfather and a King of Thervingia and got to his feet. “All right, Pouncer,” he said. “Where are you hiding this time, and what have you stolen from the kitchens?”
No answer from the moncat. Difficult, Lanius thought. Definitely difficult. He made his way toward the place from which he thought the noise had come. Pouncer was usually pretty easy to catch, not least because he didn’t care to drop whatever he’d carried off. He would have been much more agile if he’d simply gotten rid of whatever it was this time when the king came after him. He hadn’t figured that out; Lanius hoped he wouldn’t.
“Come on, Pouncer,” Lanius called. “Where are you?” How many hiding places the size of a moncat did the vast hall of the archives boast? Too many, the king thought. If Pouncer didn’t make a noise or move when he was close enough for Lanius to see him, he could stay uncaught for a depressingly long time.
There! Was that a striped tail, sticking out from behind a chest of drawers stuffed full of rolled-up parchments? It was. It twitched in excitement. What had Pouncer spotted in there? A cockroach? A mouse? How many important documents had ended up chewed to pieces in mouse nests over the centuries? More than Lanius cared to think about—he was sure of that.
Pouncer … pounced. A small clunk said it hadn’t put down its prize from the kitchens even to hunt. Half a minute later, it emerged from concealment with a spoon in one clawed hand and with the bloody body of a mouse dangling by the tail from its jaws. Seeming almost unbearably pleased with itself, it carried the mouse over to Lanius and dropped it at his feet.
“Thank you so much,” Lanius said. Pouncer looked up at him, still proud as could be. Lanius picked up the mouse and then picked up the moncat. As soon as the mouse was in Lanius’ hand, Pouncer wanted it back. Since the king was carrying the moncat, it had, essentially, three hands with which to try to take the dead mouse away from him. Lanius didn’t try to stop it; he would have gotten clawed if he had.
Getting the mouse back, though, seemed much less important to Pouncer than trying for it. As soon as it belonged to the moncat and not to the king, Pouncer let it fall to the floor of the archives. Then the beast twisted in Lanius’ arms, trying to get away and recover the mouse again. Moncats and ordinary cats were alike in perversity.
Lanius held on to Pouncer. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. The moncat bared its teeth. He tapped it on the nose. “And don’t you try to bite me, either. You know better than that.” Pouncer subsided. The king had managed to convince the beast that he meant what he said. If the moncat had decided to bite, it could have gotten away easily enough. But, having made its protest, it seemed content to let the king carry it back to the chamber where it lived.
It did show its teeth again when Lanius took away the serving spoon it had stolen. That was a prize, just like the murdered mouse. Lanius tapped the moncat on the nose once more. Pouncer started to snap at him, but then visibly thought better of it. He unbarred the door and put Pouncer inside.
“I’m going to take this back to the kitchens,” he told the animal. “You’ll probably get loose again and steal another spoon, but you can’t keep this one.” Then he closed the door in a hurry, before Pouncer or any of the other moncats could get out.
He was walking down the corridor to the kitchens when Bubulcus came around a corner and started bustling toward him. He wondered if the servant had been bustling before spying him. He had his doubts; Bubulcus, from what he’d seen, seldom moved any faster than he had to.
Bubulcus pointed to the spoon in Lanius’ hand and asked, “Which the nasty moncat creature has stolen, Your Majesty?” When the king nodded, Bubulcus went on, “Which I had nothing to do with, not a thing.” He struck a pose that practically radiated virtue.
“I didn’t say you did,” Lanius pointed out.
“Oh, no. Not this time.” Now Bubulcus looked like virtue abused. “Which you have before, though, many a time and oft as the saying goes, and all when I had nothing to do with anything.”
“Not all,” said Lanius, precise as usual. “You’ve let moncats get loose at least twice, which is at least twice too often.”
Bubulcus’ long, mobile face—his whole scrawny frame, in fact—became the image of affronted dignity. He seemed insulted that the king should presume to bring up what were, after all, only facts. “Which wasn’t my fault at all, hardly,” he declared.
“No doubt,” Lanius said. “Someone held a knife at your thro
at and made you do it.”
“Hmp.” Bubulcus looked more affronted still. Lanius hadn’t thought he could. “Since you seem to have nothing better to do than insult me, Your Majesty, I had better be on my way, hadn’t I?” And on his way he went, beaky nose in the air.
“You don’t need to look for me in the moncats’ chambers—I’m not there,” Lanius said. Bubulcus stalked down the corridor like an offended cat. The king had all he could do to keep from laughing out loud. He’d won a round from his servant. Then the impulse to laugh faded. He wondered what sort of atrocity Bubulcus would commit to get even.
When Lanius walked into the kitchens, spoon in hand, the cooks and cleaners all exclaimed. “I saw it, Your Majesty!” a chubby woman named Quiscula exclaimed. She had a white smear of flour on the end of her nose, and another on one cheek. “That funny beast of yours came out right there. He grabbed the spoon from a counter, and then he disappeared again.” She pointed.
Right there was what seemed like nothing more than a crack between wall and ceiling. Lanius tried to get up there for a closer look, but none of the stools or chairs in the kitchens raised him high enough. He sent a cleaner out to have a ladder fetched. He might not command everything in Avornis, but he could do that.
He could also wait close to half an hour for the ladder to get there. When it finally did, it proved old and rickety, anything but fit for a king. He went up it anyway, though not before saying, “Hang on tight down there. If this miserable thing slips, I’ll land on my head.”
He’d gone up several rungs before he thought to wonder whether his subjects wanted him to land on his head. That made him pause, but only for a moment. He couldn’t very well ask them. That was liable to give them ideas they might not have had before. If he acted as though an accident weren’t possible, that might at least make it less likely.
The ladder creaked, but the cooks and cleaners held it steady. And it was tall enough to let Lanius get a good look at the crack. It was wider than it had appeared from the ground—certainly wide enough for a moncat’s head to go through it. And where the head would go, the rest of the moncat could follow.
The Chernagor Pirates Page 42
