The Bastard King tsom-1

by Dan Chernenko

  Alca shook her head. “I’m sorry, but wizardry won’t do. What you need is a miracle. The gods give those. You might get one from the Banished One. From me?” She shook her head again. “No.”

  “A pestilence,” Grus said. “I really need to know.” He explained why, finishing, “Whatever this is, it’s keeping people from wanting to marry their daughters to Ortalis.” It probably wasn’t the only thing keeping them from wanting to marry their daughters to Ortalis, but Grus preferred not to dwell on that.

  Alca’s eyebrows came down and together as she thought. “I can’t bring back the argument itself, Your Majesty. Maybe I could make your son remember it. Would that do?”

  “It might,” Grus answered. “Could you make sure he didn’t remember remembering it?”

  “I think so,” the witch said.

  “Could you do it here and now, or would you need fancy preparations?”

  “Here and now—somewhere off in a quiet room, anyhow— would do. It’s not that complicated.”

  “All right, then. I really need to find out.” Grus shouted for the servants. He pointed to several of them in turn. “Bring me Prince Ortalis. If he’s in the palace, I want him here as fast as he can get here. Understand me?”

  By the way they dashed off, they did. Alca ducked into a chamber close by. Ortalis came up to Grus only moments after the witch left the corridor. “What do you want?” Grus’ son asked, adding, “I didn’t do anything.”

  Not lately, anyhow, the king thought. “I want to talk with you,” he answered, and pointed to the room into which Alca had just gone. “Let’s do it in there.”

  “What do you think I’ve done now?” Ortalis asked. “You always think I’ve done something, and I haven’t, not this time. Not lately. I really haven’t.” He sounded as though he meant it.

  “Well, then, everything’s fine, isn’t it?” Grus said smoothly. “Come on. You’ll see.”

  Ortalis didn’t look happy, but he didn’t argue anymore, either. To Grus, that proved his son didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. Ortalis barely had time to notice Alca and start to turn toward her before the witch said, “Hold, Ortalis son of Grus son of Crex!” And Ortalis did hold—his feet might suddenly have frozen to the floor.

  His expression froze, too. Grus didn’t like that reproachful stare. He was glad his son wouldn’t remember this. “May I ask him questions?” he said in a low voice.

  “Go ahead,” Alca told him. “He will answer truthfully, and he will forget he’s done it.”

  “Thank you.” Grus turned to Ortalis. “Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you.” Ortalis’ voice was soft and dull.

  “All right, then. What was your quarrel with Anser about?”

  “Which quarrel with Anser?”

  After some thought, Grus said, “The bad one. The one you don’t want anybody to know about.”

  When the Prince was done, Grus knew much more than he wished he did. Quietly, Alca asked, “And did you truly mean this, or were you only joking?”

  Even with the magic driving him, Ortalis was a long time silent. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “It would have been fun, but”—a shrug—“people don’t seem to like that kind of thing.”

  “‘People don’t seem to like that kind of thing,’” Grus echoed bitterly. “Well, at least he’s noticed. Maybe that’s something. Maybe.” He gestured to Alca. “Wake him up. He’s given me what I wanted to find out.”

  The witch murmured a charm. She slipped out of the room through a back door before Ortalis stirred, blinked, and nodded to his father. “Well, what do you want to talk about?” he asked.

  “Never mind, Son,” Grus answered with a sigh. “It’s not important.”

  “See? I told you. I didn’t do anything.” Ortalis swaggered to the front door and out.

  As soon as that front door closed, Alca returned. “Well?” she asked.

  “Well,” Grus said, “I don’t suppose he has to get married right away.”

  The mustachioed monkeys looked out through the window at the swirling snow. A carefully screened fireplace kept their room warm. They didn’t know what the bad weather meant. It interested them just the same. Their black eyes swung to Lanius, as though asking what he had to do with it. “Sorry,” he told them. “I can’t make it go away.” By their expressions—so much more humanlike than those of the moncats—they didn’t believe him. He was in charge of their food and water. Why wasn’t he in charge of the weather as well?

  “I wish I could change it,” he said. “Believe me, I would.” They didn’t believe him. He could tell. One of them turned its back, almost as though it were an affronted courtier. They both retreated closer to the fire. Remembering the warning from the Chernagor who’d given them to him, Lanius hoped he could bring them safely through the cold season of the year.

  A knock on the door made the monkeys’ ears twitch. “What is it?” Lanius called. Servants had stopped charging into the rooms where his animals lived. He’d persuaded them he was deadly serious about that. Grus might rule Avornis, but in these few chambers, at least, Lanius was king in fact as well as name.

  “Come quick, Your Majesty!” That was Bubulcus’ voice. If he’d learned his lesson, then surely they all had.

  Lanius didn’t feel like leaving. “What is it?” he repeated.

  “Come quick!” Bubulcus said again—that and no more.

  Muttering under his breath, Lanius left the monkeys. The hallway outside was noticeably chillier than their room. His voice was also chilly as he repeated himself once more. “What is it? And why didn’t you tell me what it was the first time I asked you?”

  “Why? On account of I didn’t want to yell it all over everywhere, is why.” As usual, Bubulcus was full of invincible self-righteousness. But before Lanius could lose his temper, the servant went on, “Prince Ortalis and Her Majesty the Queen— the queen your wife, I mean, not the queen your mother-in-law—are having a demon of a row. If you can help fix it—”

  “Oh, by the gods!” Lanius set off at a dead run. Ortalis hadn’t fought with Sosia for a while now, but Ortalis in a temper was dangerous to everyone around him. Of that King Lanius had no doubt at all.

  Sosia and her brother were shouting at each other when Lanius hurried into the chamber to which their racket had drawn him. Bubulcus prudently stayed several paces behind the king. To Lanius’ relief, it was just shouting; Ortalis didn’t seem to have struck out with open hand or fist. “What’s going on here?” Lanius demanded.

  Grus’ son rounded on him. “Maybe she’s not the liar after all,” he said. “Maybe you are.”

  “And maybe you’re a gods-cursed idiot,” Lanius snapped. Ortalis’ jaw dropped; Lanius was not in the habit of matching his rudeness. The king continued, “You’re certainly acting like one. What is all this senseless commotion about?”

  “Somebody blabbed,” Ortalis said sullenly. “Somebody told Father what everybody promised nobody would say.”

  “I keep telling you, I didn’t,” Sosia said.

  “Neither did I,” Lanius said. “That leaves Anser.”

  “He says he didn’t, either.” Ortalis’ eyes flashed furiously.

  “But somebody did, because Father sure knows now. I can tell. He’s been giving me these looks, and these little lectures, and I can’t stand it anymore. He hardly even knows he’s doing it, but he is, and I’m about ready to pop.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Sosia said.

  “I gave my oath I wouldn’t, as long as you kept your side of the bargain,” Lanius said, and then, “Have you kept it?”

  “Yes!” Ortalis said—all but howled. “I’ve kept my mouth shut, and I haven’t done—anything. But Father found out. I don’t know how. Somebody must have told him. And it had to be one of you three.” He glared at Lanius, then at Sosia. Had Anser been there, he would have glared at him, too.

  “We didn’t,” Lanius said, pointing first to himself, then to his wife. “
And if Anser says he didn’t, too, then he probably didn’t. He wouldn’t lie about something like that.”

  “Somebody did,” Ortalis repeated. “Somebody must have.”

  “Maybe he found out by magic,” Lanius suggested. “He could have done that all by himself.”

  Some—a little—of the rage faded from Ortalis’ eyes. “Maybe,” he said grudgingly. “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe it’s true. I can try to find out, anyway.” Some of the tightness and stiffness seeped from his spine. He no longer seemed on the point of throwing himself at his sister—or at Lanius. In fact, he gave Lanius a nod that seemed almost friendly. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” Lanius answered, but he was talking to Ortalis’ back.

  “I haven’t seen him have a spell like that for a long time,” Sosia said once the door had closed behind Grus’ son.

  “I wouldn’t be sorry never to see another one,” Lanius said. “You can’t tell what he’s going to do when he’s in a temper.” To him, nothing was more damning than lack of predictability.

  “If I were Father, I’d try to arrange it so that Ortalis didn’t find out about any magic he worked,” Sosia said.

  “If I were your father, I wouldn’t have let Ortalis know I knew anything out of the ordinary,” Lanius replied. Then he shrugged. “Something like that, though… If you know, how can you help showing you know?”

  “I wish we didn’t know.” Sosia grimaced. “I wish there weren’t anything to know. I wish—I wish Ortalis were just like everybody else.”

  “Too much to hope for,” Lanius said.

  “He has been better,” Sosia said. Lanius nodded, for that was true. She went on, “Even here, he didn’t lose all of his temper. And he calmed down when you gave him an explanation he hadn’t thought of.” Lanius nodded again. His wife sounded like a woman lavishing praise on a poor child that finally stammered out “Mama” at six or seven. He started to say as much, but then noticed Sosia’s eyes were bright with tears.

  He kept quiet.

  Crex came in a few minutes later. Pitta pattered after him. He was tossing a leather ball stuffed with feathers up into the air and catching it—or, more often, dropping it. When he did, Pitta would grab it. Crex got it back and threw it in Lanius’ direction. The king reached for it but missed. Before Crex could run after it and pick it up, Sosia grabbed him and gave him a fierce hug. She didn’t seem to want to let him go.

  “Put me down!” the little boy squawked.

  “In a little while,” Sosia told him.

  “Now!” Crex said.

  Sosia gave him a last squeeze. He twisted free, got the ball away from Pitta, and threw it to his father. Lanius missed it again. The king laughed anyway. Sosia hugged Pitta. Lanius tickled Crex as he went by. Crex squealed. Lanius laughed louder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Petrosus didn’t look happy. The treasury minister pointed out through the windows at the drifts of snow surrounding the royal palace. He said, “Winters like this, Your Majesty, make your legislation concerning the purchase of smallholders’ land by the nobility more difficult to implement.”

  “I’m not sure I follow that,” said Grus, who was sure he didn’t. “What’s the weather got to do with whether laws get followed or not?”

  To his surprise, Petrosus had not only an answer but one that made sense. He said, “Hard winters make smallholders more likely to fail, and to fall into debt. Because of that, they are more likely to wish to sell their property. And, when they do sell it, who is more likely to buy than the local nobles?”

  “Hmm.” Grus plucked at his beard. “Maybe we ought to add to those laws—something to the effect that they have to try to sell to relatives and neighbors before they’re allowed to take money from nobles.”

  “That may do some good,” Petrosus said judiciously. “I’m not sure how much it will do, though—their relatives and neighbors are liable to be looking at the same sort of trouble, don’t you think?”

  “I wish you made less sense than you do,” Grus said. “Draft the revisions anyhow, though, if you’d be so kind. Maybe they won’t work so well. But we’ll never know if we don’t try, will we?”

  “No, Your Majesty,” the treasury minister replied. “I do admire your optimism, I must say.”

  “We have to try,” Grus said again. “If things don’t work out the way we hope, we’ll try something else, that’s all.” His laugh wasn’t in the least self-conscious. “I’m a tinker and a tinkerer, Petrosus. I’ll keep fiddling with something till I get it right or till I see it won’t work no matter how much tinkering I give it.”

  “I have noticed that, yes.” By the way Petrosus said it, he didn’t mean it as praise.

  “Draft the revisions,” he said once more. “Draft them, and I’ll issue them.” Petrosus nodded. At Grus’ gesture, the treasury minister left the room. He would do as he’d said, and he’d do a good job of making the new laws as likely to be obeyed as he could. He might think Grus a few bricks short of a wall, but he followed the king’s commands simply because they were the king’s commands.

  Under a bad king, a man like that would be very dangerous, Grus thought. He hoped he wasn’t a bad king. He didn’t think he was, but what bad king ever did? Even Scolopax, a bad king if ever there was one, had surely believed he was doing the best job he could.

  Having finished his business with Petrosus, Grus went back to the royal chambers. Playing with his grandchildren was more fun than talking about taxation policy with the treasury minister. Or it would have been, if he’d gotten the chance to do it. But the first person he saw there was Estrilda.

  They’d been married a long time—long enough for him not even to notice the hard, set expression on her face. That turned out to be a mistake. Without preamble, she said, “I hear—later than I should have, but I do hear—Alca the witch’s husband has left her.”

  “Do you?” Grus said, hoping he could evade disaster.

  He couldn’t. “I certainly do,” Estrilda said. “And I hear why he left her, too.”

  “Do you?” Grus said again. He wished something—the announcement of an invasion from Thervingia, for instance— would let him escape, but no such luck.

  “Yes, I do.” Estrilda walked—stalked—up to him. “And I’ll tell you exactly what I think about it, too.”

  “What?” Grus asked. She sounded calm and reasonable, which gave him some cause to hope.

  That also proved misplaced. “This!” she shouted, and slapped him in the face, a roundhouse blow that snapped his head back. Then—but only then—she burst into tears.

  She started to swing on him again. Though his ears were ringing, he caught her wrist. “That’s enough,” he said. “It was… just one of those things.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet it was,” Estrilda said. “Let go of me, you—” She called him a few names he wouldn’t have expected from Nicator, let alone his own wife.

  When he did let her go, she tried to slap him again. He managed to grab her wrist once more. “Stop that!”

  “Why should I? You didn’t.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Grus protested.

  “Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t,” Estrilda said. “You were away for a long time, you got lonely, and there she was…”

  In another tone of voice, the words might have been sympathetic. As things were, the sarcasm flayed. Grus’ face heated. He raised a hand and cautiously touched his cheek. It already felt on fire. “But—” he tried.

  “No buts.” Estrilda effortlessly overrode him. He might have tried harder to argue back if he hadn’t known all too well he was in the wrong. She went on, “I might believe that if I hadn’t heard it all before. But I have, gods curse you. That’s what you told me after your other little slut went and had Anser. I could believe it once. Once, I tell you. If you try to give me the same tired lies twice, you’re a fool, and I’d be a bigger one to pay any attention to you.”

  “But it’s true,” Grus said—the ancient and useles
s cry of wandering husbands (and wives) through the ages when they were found out. And he even meant it. Would I have gone to bed with Alca if we’d stayed here in the city of Avornis? he asked himself. Of course not.

  He didn’t stop to think that was, not least, because they would have been found out even sooner than they had been. And he didn’t stop to think that he would have wanted to take her to bed even if he hadn’t done it.

  Nor did his excuses help him a bit. “I don’t care whether it’s true or not,” Estrilda snarled. “You did what you told me—what you promised me—you wouldn’t do again. That’s what I care about.”

  “I’m sorry,” Grus said—another ancient and useless cry.

  He had no luck with that one, either. “I’ll bet you’re sorry,” Estrilda said. “You’re sorry you got caught. Why else would you be sorry? You were down there in the south having yourself a fine old time. You always have yourself a fine old time down in the south, don’t you?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Grus said.

  “Oh, I’m sure. Tell me how it was.” His wife shook her head. “No, don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “But I love you,” Grus said. It was true. He’d never stopped caring for Estrilda. How much good it was likely to do him was a different question.

  It did him none at all. “You picked a wonderful way to show it, didn’t you?” Estrilda said acidly.

  “You don’t understand,” Grus protested.

  “I’m sure you told that to What’s-her-name, the witch,” Estrilda said with a scornful laugh. “ ‘My wife doesn’t understand me.’ How many liars have lured women into bed with that one? But I understand you, all right. I understand you just fine.” She spat on the floor at Grus’ feet. “And that’s what I think of you.”

  “Estrilda—”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to hear it. Whatever it is, it’ll only be another lie.” She stabbed out a finger at him; he supposed he should have been glad she didn’t have a knife. “What would you say, what would you do, if I’d been screwing one of your handsome bodyguards? Well? What do you have to say about that, Your Majesty?” She laced the royal title with revulsion.