“And I am pleased to meet you, Your Majesty.” Berto spoke good Avornan, with only a slight guttural Therving accent. Like most of his countrymen, he was big and fair. He wore his hair long. That, with his wolfskin jacket and cowhide boots with the hair out, made him seem extraordinarily shaggy to Lanius. But his smooth-chinned face was open and friendly as he went on, “When I come here, I feel… closer to the gods than I do in Thervingia.”
“But Thervingia is full of mountains,” Lanius said. “You’re closer to the heavens there, closer to the gods.” Closer to all of them but the Banished One, anyhow, he thought uneasily.
Berto shook his head. “When I walked into the cathedral, I didn’t know if I was still on earth or up in the heavens myself. You’re so lucky, Your Majesty, to be able to worship there whenever you please.”
Lanius shot Arch-Hallow Bucco a hooded look. One of his earliest memories was of Bucco turning his mother and father and him away from the cathedral. Did Bucco remember? Did Bucco know Lanius remembered? Lanius made himself hide his thoughts—one more thing he’d learned. He said, “As long as there is peace between Thervingia and Avornis, Your Highness, you are welcome to come here and worship at the cathedral whenever you like.”
Prince Berto bowed very low. “This is a great boon you have given me, Your Majesty. I had heard you were wise beyond your years. Now I see with my own eyes it is true.”
“Do people talk about me in Thervingia, then?” Lanius asked. He might almost have said, Do people talk about me on the dark side of the moon? He’d read of many distant lands. For all his reading, though, the only place he really knew was the city of Avornis, and especially the royal palace.
But fierce King Dagipert’s son nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said, his eyes wide. “People talk about the King of Avornis everywhere. How could it be otherwise? Whoever rules Avornis is the great shield against the Banished One. That makes him very important, all by himself.”
“Prince Berto is a pious and wise young mail,” Arch-Hallow Bucco said in his own most holy tones.
Lanius had no idea how wise Berto was. But the Therving prince did strike him as pious. And what did King Dagipert think of that? Dagipert said he worshiped Olor, but the only things he really loved were himself and power. He wanted to be the one who ruled Avornis, the one people talked about. So Lanius’ tutor said, at any rate. Lanius knew Arch-Hallow Bucco had a different opinion of the King of Thervingia. From what Lanius had seen, his tutor seemed more likely to be right.
“We all fear the Banished One, and slay his spies whenever they reveal themselves,” Berto said.
“As all good men should do,” Bucco said.
Did King Dagipert really do that? Or did he bargain with them and try to get the most for himself, as he did with Avornis? Some said one thing, some another. Lanius wanted to ask Berto. If anyone would know, Dagipert’s heir would. But the question might not be what people called “polite.” Lanius’ tutor went on and on about politeness. Even Lanius himself could see the point of not offending King Dagipert when he stood with an army under the walls of the city of Avornis.
Besides, if Dagipert really did treat with the Banished One, he might want to lie about it afterward. He might lie even to his own son. If his own son was truly pious, like Berto, he might have special reason to lie.
After a while, Berto said, “Again, Your Majesty, it is a pleasure to meet you.” He bowed to Lanius. “Now I am bidden by my father to bring Arch-Hallow Bucco back to his tent so they can speak of peace.”
“I hope they find it, Your Highness,” Lanius said.
“I hope so, too.” Berto sounded as though he meant it.
Off Bucco went, riding on a white mule alongside Berto’s horse and those of the prince’s Therving bodyguards. The arch-hallow’s crimson robe made a bright spot of color that let Lanius see him for a long way. Lanius even thought he spied Bucco outside the walls as the arch-hallow went off to confer with Dagipert.
Maybe he won’t come back, Lanius thought. Maybe Dagipert does love the Banished One, and will do something dreadful to Bucco. At first, that brought Lanius a small stab of fear. But then he thought, If Dagipert hurts Bucco, my mother will come back to the palace. After that, he stopped worrying about what the king of the Thervings might do to the arch-hallow.
Night had fallen before Bucco returned. When he did, he was grinning from ear to ear. By then, Lanius was getting sleepy and cross. But he did want to hear what the arch-hallow had to say. “I have pledged presents to the king of the Thervings,” Bucco told him. “Men are taking them from the treasury even now, and he will withdraw his army back into his own country.”
“All right. We don’t seem able to fight him right now, so all right,” Lanius said. “How long did he promise to keep his soldiers in Thervingia and out of Avornis?”
Some of Bucco’s grin slipped. “Ah… he did not name any set period of time, Your Majesty.”
“That’s not so good,” Lanius said. “Now he can invade again whenever he pleases, and we can’t even say he’s breaking a treaty.”
“True. Or it would be true.” Bucco patted Lanius on the shoulder. Lanius glanced down at his own hand, to make sure the arch-hallow hadn’t stolen it. Bucco went on, “It would be true, but I gave him excellent good reason to stay his bloody hand and remain at peace with us.”
“What sort of reason?” Lanius asked, as he was plainly meant to do.
“Why, the best sort, Your Majesty.” Bucco’s smile got broad again. “The Therving has a daughter of not far from your years. Her name is Romilda. When the two of you come of age, a union between the royal house of Avornis and that of Thervingia will make the two kingdoms one and ensure eternal peace between them.”
“But I don’t want to marry any little Therving princess!” Lanius exclaimed in horror. He had no more use for girls than any other boy his age, and if the girl in question was a Therving princess…
Arch-Hallow Bucco’s smile became indulgent. “By the time you marry, you will be a young man, and Princess Romilda will be a young woman. You’ll feel differently about such things then, I promise you.”
“No, I won’t,” Lanius said. He believed Bucco no more than any boy his age would have. “I’ll hate her. And I hate you for making the bargain with the Therving. Get out!”
“Really, Your Majesty! I was simply—”
Lanius wouldn’t let him finish. “Get out!” he shouted, and then, “Guards! Guards! The arch-hallow is bothering me!”
Bucco left before the bodyguards could come. He might command the army as a whole, but the royal bodyguard was loyal to the person of the king. Still grumbling, Lanius went to bed. After what seemed a very long time, he went to sleep.
“Here we are on horses again,” Nicator said. “By the gods, I wish we’d get back on a ship.”
“Oh, we will,” Grus said. “We’ll go on patrol against the Thervings—now that the Thervings have gone back to Thervingia. Isn’t it grand?”
“It would’ve been even grander if we were patrolling against ’em before they invaded,” Nicator said.
“You expect the arch-hallow to think of something like that? Perish the thought,” Grus said. “Regulus might have—if he had any brains, and if he hadn’t been angling for the throne. And once he fell, nobody paid any attention to the Thervings.”
“Why are people such idiots?” Nicator asked.
“Good question,” Grus told him. “Awfully good question. You’d be better off asking somebody like Turnix, though, or else a priest. I haven’t got any answers for you.”
“I wouldn’t ask a priest,” Nicator said scornfully. “Why should a priest know anything about why people are idiots? It’s the arch-hallow who got us into this mess in the first place. Far as I can see, that makes him the biggest idiot of all. He’s just lucky Dagipert didn’t pull the walls of the capital down around his ears. Then we wouldn’t have anyplace to come back to, and wouldn’t that be a fine kettle of trout?”
“Trout,�
� Grus echoed. He opened and closed his mouth several times, suggesting a fish out of water. Nicator laughed. So did Grus, though he didn’t think it was really funny. He doubted Nicator did, either.
He and the veteran captain rode round a bend in the road, then they had to rein in. Several peasant families clogged the dirt track. A couple of the men pushed handcarts in front of them; the others had great packs strapped to their backs, as though they were beasts of burden. Some women wore packs; some carried bundles in their arms; some carried babies, instead. All the children bore burdens that fit their size, down to those just past being toddlers.
Slowly, awkwardly, wearily, the peasants made way for the men on horseback. “Where are you bound?” Grus asked them.
“City of Avornis,” answered one of the men hauling a handcart.
Crex, Grus’ father, had come off a farm and headed for the capital. He’d managed to land a place in the royal guards, and had done well enough for himself. But most peasants weren’t so lucky. Grus said, “Why don’t you stay on your own plots of land?”
A few minutes before, Nicator had called Arch-Hallow Bucco the biggest idiot in the world. Now all the peasants— men, women, and children—looked at Grus as though the title belonged to him. “Haven’t got ’em anymore,” said the fellow with the handcart.
“Why not?” Grus asked. They all looked tired, but otherwise hale enough. “You don’t seem too lazy to keep them up.”
That got him more than he’d bargained for. All the peasants shouted indignantly. The man who seemed more willing to talk than the others said, “Count Corvus pitched us off our land so he can raise cows and sheep on it. And what can we do about that? Not a gods-cursed thing, that’s what we can do.”
“Oh.” Grus kicked his horse up into a trot. However little he liked the motion, he wanted to get away from those irate peasants. Nicator stuck by his side like a burr. At last, Grus said, “How are we going to stay strong if we throw all the peasants off the land? Where will we get our soldiers?”
“Beats me,” Nicator answered. “How can anybody keep nobles from grabbing up land? That’s half of what being a nobleman’s all about.” He sighed wistfully. “I always thought it sounded pretty good—buying land out to the horizon, I mean.”
“It may be good if you’re doing the grabbing.” Grus jerked a thumb back toward the dispossessed peasants. “What about them? They’re Avornans, too.”
“If I’m a noble, I just give ’em the back of my hand,” Nicator said. Grus laughed again, though that wasn’t so funny, either.
Before he got to the royal capital, Grus heard a rumor so strange, he refused to believe it. But when he repeated it after coming into the city of Avornis, his wife only nodded. “Yes, that’s true,” Estrilda said.
“They’ve betrothed King Lanius to a Therving princess?” Grus said.
Estrilda nodded again. “That’s right.”
“But that’s madness,” Grus said. “Once they’re wed, who’s the real power in Avornis? Dagipert of Thervingia, that’s who.”
“That’s right.” This time, his father spoke before his wife could. Crex sounded revoltingly cheerful about it, too.
“Who arranged it? Arch-Hallow Bucco?” Grus asked. Estrilda and Crex both nodded. After a moment, so did Grus. “Yes, in a way it must make sense for him,” he said. “It keeps the Thervings quiet for the time being, and I don’t think Bucco sees or cares about anything past that.”
“Stupid bastard doesn’t need to,” Crex said. “Stupid bastard isn’t king. He just gets to play at the job till he’s buggered it up for everybody else.” A long string of such cracks might have been what helped him get called Crex the Unbearable.
Before Grus could answer, a dog yelped in pain in the next room. A moment later, so did a boy. “Ortalis!” Grus called. His son came in, an apprehensive look on his face. He was holding one hand in the other. “Let me see,” Grus said. His son plainly didn’t want to, but had no choice. Grus nodded to himself, then asked, “Why did Rusty bite you?”
“I don’t know,” Ortalis mumbled, looking down at the floor. “Because he’s mean.”
“Because you hurt him?” Grus suggested. Ortalis didn’t say anything. Grus pointed to the doorway. “Go to your room. No supper for you tonight.”
“You ought to give him a good walloping,” Crex said as Ortalis suddenly departed. “I gave you a good walloping whenever I thought you needed it, and you didn’t turn out too bad.”
Grus didn’t argue with his father. What point? But he didn’t agree, either. The way he remembered it, Crex had walloped him whether he needed it or not. Before his beard began to grow, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t treat his own son the same way if he ever had one. He wondered whether it would have made any difference if he had decided to whack Ortalis at the first sign of misbehavior. He doubted it. Nothing except help from the gods could have turned Ortalis into a good-natured boy.
To keep from thinking about that, he went back to what they’d been talking about before. “How can Bucco stay head of the Council of Regents when he’s gone and sold us to Dagipert and the Thervings?” Sold us to the Banished One, he almost said. But no one had ever proved that about the King of Thervingia, and the Avoman peasants who now lived under Thervingian rule weren’t the soulless thralls the Menteshe treated like cattle.
Crex said, “Pack of spineless swine in the palace, that’s how.”
Estrilda added, “Lanius isn’t old enough to rule on his own, and won’t be for years. Who else can do the job? Queen Certhia?”
“How could she do it worse than Bucco has?” Grus demanded.
Crex loosed a long, loud, sour laugh. “If she gets the chance, sonny, maybe she’ll show you how.”
“Good day, Your Majesty.” Lepturus bowed to King Lanius.
“And a good day to you.” Lanius gave back the bow to the commander of his bodyguards.
To his surprise, Lepturus pulled out a sheet of parchment from the gold-embroidered pouch he wore on his belt. “Read this,” he said, his lips hardly moving. “Read it, then get rid of it.”
No less than any other boy, Lanius delighted in intrigue for its own sake. He unrolled the parchment. The note was short and to the point. Do you want to see your mother back in the palace ? it asked. If you do, help Lepturus.
“Well, Your Majesty?” the dour guards commander asked gruffly.
Before answering, Lanius tore the parchment into tiny scraps, then went to a window and scattered the scraps to the wind. As he came back, Lepturus nodded approval. The young King of Avornis whispered, “You know I want her back. How can we do it?”
“That depends,” Lepturus said quietly. “Do you really want to marry this Therving princess?”
Lanius made a horrible face. “I don’t want to marry anybody. Who’d want to have anything to do with girls?” A world of scorn filled his voice.
Lepturus’ furry eyebrows twitched. So did his mouth—about as close as he could come to a smile. “Oh, they have their moments,” he observed. Lanius, who would argue about anything, was more than ready to quarrel over that. Lepturus didn’t give him a chance. He held up a hand and said, “Never mind. Call Bucco to the palace and tell him you won’t marry Princess What’s-her-name no matter what.”
“Will he pay any attention?” Lanius asked. “He’s head of the Council of Regents, after all. He runs Avornis. I don’t. He won’t let me.”
“He may run Avornis,” Lepturus answered. “He doesn’t run you. If you say you won’t marry this girl, what can he do except try to talk you into it?”
“I don’t know.” Lanius wasn’t so sure he wanted to find out, either. But he decided he would, if that meant Bucco left and his mother came back.
When he nodded, Lepturus clapped him on the shoulder, hard enough to stagger him. “Good lad,” he said. “Do you want someone to write the words for you, or would you sooner do it yourself?”
“I’d sooner do it.” Lanius drew himself up, though he still rea
ched only the middle of Lepturus’ chest.
The guards commander nodded. “All right. By all the signs, you’ll do a better job than a secretary’s liable to. Tell him to come tomorrow, in the middle of the morning. The rest will be taken care of. Easier and neater here than at the cathedral.”
“Taken care of how?” Lanius asked. Lepturus just looked at him, and Lanius realized he wouldn’t get any more answer than that. He started to get angry, but checked himself. “Never mind. I’ll write the letter.”
He did, and sent it off by a servant he trusted more than most of the others. The man brought back a reply from Bucco. I shall be there, Your Majesty. You may rely on it, the arch-hallow wrote. I trust I shall be able to persuade you to reconsider.
“Ha!” Lanius said. “I trust you won’t.”
Bucco came at the appointed hour. Lanius received him in as much state as he could. He had no formal power in Avornis, but he had rank, and rank could look like power. Arch-Hallow Bucco wore his most ornate crimson robe, shot through with gold thread and encrusted with pearls and rubies and sapphires. He played the same game as Lanius, but he had power to go with his rank.
He’d just launched into his speech to Lanius when Queen Certhia strode into the audience chamber, backed by Lepturus and two squads of royal bodyguards. “Mother!” Lanius exclaimed, and ran to her.
“Halt!” Bucco commanded. Lanius, to his own astonished dismay, halted just beyond the reach of his mother’s arms. Bucco stabbed a forefinger at Certhia. Had he worn a sword on his belt, he might have stabbed with that, instead. The arch-hallow said, “You were banned from the palace, madam.”
“And now you are, sir.” Certhia laced the title with cold contempt. She beckoned to Lanius. He realized he didn’t have to obey the arch-hallow, and threw his arms around his mother.
“On what authority?” Bucco demanded.
“Mine,” Queen Certhia said.
“And mine,” Lepturus added. The guards commander had a sword on his belt, and didn’t seem likely to be shy about using it.
Certhia went on, “And the other regents have voted you off the council for daring to propose this marriage alliance. They agree with me that it would do nothing but deliver Avornis into Dagipert’s bloodstained hands. Here is the notice of their vote.”
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