The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  The cook glowered. He scowled. He swelled up like a puffer fish. Lanius stood there waiting. As he’d expected, the cook deflated. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said in a much smaller voice.

  “There. That’s much better. You see? You can talk like a normal human being when you want to. Well done,” Lanius said. “And now, what do you expect me to do about my willful, obnoxious, annoying, pestilential—but not, mind you, gods-despised—moncat?” Lanius was proud of himself for remembering all the nasty names he’d called Pouncer.

  By the way the cook gaped, the king’s memory impressed him, too. He said, “If you can make sure the beast never comes back to the kitchens, that would be nice. If you can get the spoon back, that would be, too.” He went out of his way to sound mild.

  “I don’t think I can stop Pouncer from getting in,” Lanius said. “I’ve tried, and I haven’t had much luck. I won’t lie to you about anything like that. But I already told you there’s a pretty good chance the spoon will turn up.”

  “All right, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty.” The cook turned around and headed back toward the kitchen, a meeker and more subdued man than the bellowing hysteric who’d come roaring up to Lanius.

  The king laughed a little as he made for the archives. Turning excitable people into calm ones wasn’t a skill most people thought of when they imagined things a sovereign ought to be able to do. That didn’t mean it wasn’t valuable, though. Oh, no—far from it.

  Lanius hoped he would find Pouncer in the archives with his prize. That would let him bring the spoon back to the kitchens in something approaching triumph. It would also let him feel virtuous for resisting the temptation to wallop the cook over the head with it—unless he yielded to the temptation instead, which offered pleasures of its own.

  But there was no sign of the moncat when Lanius got to the archives. He called Pouncer and even lay down on the dusty floor and thumped his chest, the way he did to summon Pouncer for a treat. Pouncer either was too far away to hear or didn’t feel like coming. Lanius only shrugged. So much for neat endings, he thought, and went back to sorting through documents.

  King Grus suspected some generals tried to storm cities for no better reason than that sitting around besieging them was boring. Sitting down outside of Trabzun was boring. He wasn’t inclined to complain even so. As long as dysentery didn’t break out in his army, he thought he could take the city far more cheaply by siege than by storm.

  Grus glanced toward the walls of Trabzun. Torches flared every few paces along them. By the flickering torchlight, the king could make out Menteshe archers and a few pikemen. The garrison wanted him to know—or at least to think—it was ready for anything. He let out a wry chuckle.

  “How long do you think the siege will last?” Pterocles asked.

  “I can’t tell you, not within months,” Grus said. “Depends on how much food the Menteshe have, on how much they want to starve ordinary people to feed the soldiers, on … oh, all sorts of things. It would have been over a lot sooner if you’d been able to shut off their water supply—I’ll tell you that.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I am sorry,” Pterocles said. “I can’t help the way the springs and wells are laid out, though. You have to blame the gods for that.”

  “I wasn’t blaming you,” Grus assured him. “I can see how you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. But I can wish it were different, though, too.” He looked over toward Trabzun again. “I can wish a lot of things were different.”

  “Your Majesty?” Pterocles made an inquiring noise.

  “Oh, nothing … nothing,” Grus repeated, a little annoyed that he’d shown so much of himself. Pterocles plainly didn’t believe him—which seemed only fair, since he wasn’t telling the truth. But he didn’t want to tell the wizard just how much he wished his one legitimate son had turned out to be a decent, hardworking man instead of … what he was. The older Grus got, the more he thought about what would happen after he wasn’t here to rule Avornis.

  When he first seized the throne, he’d expected Ortalis to succeed him. Lanius could go right on wearing the crown; he was, after all, the last twig of the old, familiar dynasty. If he had a son by Sosia, that boy could be called king, too. But real power would flow through Ortalis and his descendants.

  That wasn’t exactly how things looked anymore, however much Grus wished they still did. Lanius had proved more than Grus expected, Ortalis less. If I were to die now … Grus shook his head, shying away from the thought like a horse shying from a buzzing fly. Sooner or later, the fly would land. It would sting. Sooner or later—but please, King Olor, not yet.

  Things would only get more complicated if Ortalis had a son. Grus had heard from Lanius that Limosa was expecting another child. He hadn’t heard from Ortalis. He couldn’t remember whether Ortalis had ever written to him while he was in the field. Maybe a letter of justification or two, to try to put a good light on some palace scrape Ortalis had gotten into. Past that, no.

  It didn’t necessarily matter. Grus knew that. Being able to write an interesting letter—indeed, being able to write at all—was no prerequisite for kingship. If people would do what you told them to do, and would do it even when you didn’t watch over them to make sure they did, you had what you needed to be a king. And if what you told them to do worked most of the time, you had what you needed to be a fairly good king.

  “It isn’t magic,” Grus murmured.

  He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud till Pterocles asked, “What isn’t?”

  “Oh,” Grus said. “Being a king, I meant.”

  “Not the kind of magic I do,” the wizard agreed. “But a good king has magic of his own. A good king needs to have people like him and take him seriously at the same time. Plenty of people have one or the other. Having both at once isn’t so easy.”

  That wasn’t far from Grus’ thought. He said, “I wonder how you get them.” He was thinking of Ortalis and Lanius again. There was no doubt people took Lanius seriously. How much they liked him was another question. As for Ortalis …

  Grus was just as glad when Pterocles broke into his train of thought by saying, “I can’t tell you that, Your Majesty. I’m afraid nobody else can, either. Plenty of people besides kings wish they knew the answer there.”

  “I suppose so.” Grus did more than suppose it; he was sure it was true. He looked in the direction of Trabzun once more. “What could we do to make that place fall faster?”

  “Undermine the walls?” Pterocles suggested. “I’m no general, but I know besiegers often try that. It must work some of the time.”

  “It does—some of the time,” Grus said. “Times when it does, the men on the other side usually don’t know you’re doing it until things start falling down on their heads. With all this open country around the town, hiding the digging and getting rid of the dirt without the Menteshe noticing would be a neat trick.” His gaze sharpened. “Or do you think you could help bring it off?”

  “Maybe.” Pterocles made the word long and thoughtful. “It would depend on not letting the Menteshe sorcerers inside Trabzun know I was using a masking spell. Once they realize there’s something to see through, they will, and in a hurry.”

  “Try anyhow,” Grus urged. He wouldn’t just be sitting and waiting now, and that was—or at least felt—all to the good.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A bird sang in the gardens around the palace. Lanius wondered what sort of bird it was. Some people could tell one bird from another by the briefest snatch of song. The king wasn’t one of them. He knew a hawk from a heron, but not much more, not by note alone.

  I could learn, he thought. I could, if I had the time. But that was a formidable challenge. He already had hobbies—the moncats, the archives, serving girls every now and then. When he was younger, he’d taught himself to draw and paint, but he didn’t have the time to stay sharp at that. Being a king swallowed more hours than he wished it did.

  The bird went on singing. It didn�
��t care whether he knew what it was. It was singing for the joy of it, or maybe to find a mate—which involved a different kind of joy.

  Sosia looked across the breakfast table at Lanius. “I just asked you a question,” she said pointedly. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t. I’m afraid I was listening to the bird outside.”

  She gave him the withering glance wives reserve for husbands who aren’t all they might be. “I might have known,” she said. “How many times have I caught you with your head in the clouds?”

  “It wasn’t in the clouds,” Lanius protested. “Just in the garden.”

  “Better there than some places,” Sosia said. She knew about his occasional hobby, and didn’t like it. She also thought it more occasional than it was. She would have liked it even less if she’d known more about it. With exaggerated patience, she repeated herself. “I said, have you been paying attention to the company my brother’s been keeping lately?”

  Lanius shook his head. “I generally try not to pay attention to the company your brother keeps, unless you mean Anser. Wouldn’t you say it’s more Limosa’s worry than mine, anyhow?”

  Sosia made an exasperated noise. “Not that kind of company.” The hooded glance she sent him said she thought he knew too much about that kind of company himself. With an obvious effort, she made herself put that thought aside. She went on, “I meant some of the young officers he’s been drinking with.”

  “Ortalis?” Lanius said in surprise. His wife nodded. He took a sip of wine while he thought. “Three things occur to me.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Maybe they’re men with pretty sisters—or pretty wives. Maybe they’re men who like to hunt. Or maybe, knowing Ortalis, they’re men with, ah, peculiar tastes.”

  “I’d think he’s chatted up enough of them to make that last unlikely—although you never can tell.” Sosia’s mouth twisted in distaste. “The other two? Maybe. There’s something else, though—something you’re not seeing.”

  “What?” Lanius asked in real perplexity. He thought he’d thought of everything. He took pride in thinking of as many things as he could.

  But Sosia found something he’d missed. “Maybe he’s plotting with them.”

  “Ortalis?” Now Lanius all but squeaked in surprise. “He’s done a lot of nasty things, but they’re all nasty because he is what he is. They’re not nasty because he’s after the crown.”

  “Not yet,” his wife said grimly. “But if Limosa has a boy … He may care more on account of his children than he does for himself. Plenty of people are like that.”

  Lanius couldn’t tell her she was wrong, for he knew she wasn’t. He said, “Well, I’ll keep an eye on it.” He didn’t mean he’d spy on Ortalis himself. He had palace servants he trusted to take care of that for him. “If he’s talking with young officers, he can’t mean too much by it. He’d be talking with their superiors if he did.”

  “Maybe,” Sosia said again. Again, she didn’t sound as though she believed it. “Sometimes, though, if you get the junior officers on your side, they’ll bring the senior officers with them.”

  Once more, Lanius couldn’t tell her she was wrong. He said, “You can come up with things like that, because you’re as sly as your father.” He seldom praised Grus’ cleverness, but he knew he couldn’t ignore it. “But Ortalis?” He shook his head. “Say what you want about your brother, but nobody’s ever accused him of being subtle.”

  “If he were subtle, I wouldn’t know what he was doing, would I?” his wife retorted. “Even if he’s not subtle, that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”

  “We’ll see what’s going on, that’s all.” Lanius could easily imagine Ortalis as dangerous to him in a fit of temper. Imagining his brother-in-law as dangerous in a conspiracy was something else again.

  Sosia scowled at him. “You don’t believe me. You don’t want to believe me. You’d sooner pay attention to the stupid bird that was singing out there.”

  “I’ve lived in the palace my whole life,” Lanius answered. “I like to think I have some idea when trouble’s brewing and when it isn’t. Just because I don’t agree that Ortalis is doing something particularly bad doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention to you.”

  “You weren’t before,” Sosia reminded him. “Not very long before, either.”

  “I am now, though. I have been.” Lanius did his best to seem virtuous and innocent. He must have succeeded; his wife stopped nagging him.

  Flies buzzed through the Avornan encirclement of Trabzun. Grus ignored them when he could and slapped at them when he couldn’t. With all the garbage and sewage accumulating as his army besieged the town, he couldn’t be surprised the bugs were bad. If anything, they could have been worse.

  Grus made a point of appearing now here, now there, all around the encirclement. He wanted the Menteshe to notice him and to wonder what sort of scheme he was plotting. The only thing he didn’t want them to do was come up with the right answer.

  Shielded—Grus hoped—by Pterocles’ masking spell, sappers dug down toward the walls of Trabzun. The king showed himself to the Menteshe there as often as he did anywhere else. “Shouldn’t you stay away from this part of the line, Your Majesty?” Hirundo asked him after one of those appearances.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. If I show myself around four fifths of the circle but not right here, the garrison will start wondering why. If I show myself all the way around, they won’t care more about one stretch of the line than any other.”

  Hirundo thought that over. He overacted thinking it over, in fact; he grunted and stroked his chin and stared up into the sky. At last, reluctantly, he nodded. “You’ve got a complicated way of looking at the world, haven’t you?” he said.

  “It’s a complicated place,” Grus answered. “Making things as simple as you can is good. Making them too simple isn’t.”

  “How do you tell the difference?” The general sounded genuinely curious.

  “Well, if you start making a lot of mistakes, you probably think things are simpler than they really are,” Grus said.

  Hirundo started to say something else. Before he could, a soldier ran toward Grus and him shouting, “Your Majesty! General! Your Majesty!”

  “I don’t know that I like the sound of that,” Hirundo said.

  “I do know that I don’t like it a bit. Something’s gone wrong somewhere.” Grus raised his voice and waved to the soldier. “We’re here. What is it?”

  “Your Majesty, there’s a good-sized Menteshe army coming up from the south,” the man replied.

  “Well, we knew that was liable to happen,” Hirundo said.

  “So we did,” Grus agreed. “We’ve done what we could to get ready for it, too. Now we get to see how good a job that was.”

  “I’d better go out to the outer works and have a look for myself,” Hirundo said.

  “I’ll come, too,” the king told him. “If I start joggling your elbow, don’t be shy about letting me know.”

  “Everyone knows how shy and retiring I am, Your Majesty,” Hirundo replied. “People have been talking about it for years.” He didn’t even try to pretend that Grus should take him seriously. He knew better. Grus didn’t say anything. He just rolled his eyes and went along with the general.

  He made sure trumpeters came with them, too. He didn’t know what orders Hirundo would give, but he had a pretty good notion. Trumpeters would spread the word far faster than runners could.

  The outer works, by now, were head-high, with a rammed-earth step for archers, pikemen, and observers. Grus got up on the step and peered south. Hirundo had gotten up there ahead of him. The approaching army was close enough to let the king see individual riders under the cloud of dust the mass of them kicked up.

  “I wonder how serious they are,” he said.

  “Well, I doubt they came here for a holiday,” Hirundo observed.

  “Oh, so do I. But whether they make an attack and go away w
ith their honor satisfied or really press it home … That makes a lot of difference,” Grus said. “What sort of sally the garrison inside Trabzun makes will be interesting, too.”

  “There’s one word for it.” Hirundo looked back over his shoulder toward the walls of the besieged city. “I think I’d better order the men into back-to-back. The other interesting question—that word again!—is whether we really do have enough men to hold the outer ring and the inner at the same time. Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?” He sounded lighthearted. If he’d sounded as worried as he felt … he probably would have sounded as worried as Grus felt, too.

  The king made himself nod. He made himself seem calm while he did it, too. He said, “Yes, that seems to be what needs doing, all right.” Hirundo spoke to the trumpeters. They blared out the command. Other musicians all around the Avornans’ ring took it up.

  Swearing soldiers sprinted to their stations. Grus looked back toward Trabzun, as Hirundo had before him. He didn’t see any sudden burst of activity from the defenders atop it. Of course, if the Menteshe commander inside the town had any brains, he wouldn’t. The warriors in there would open a gate and storm out fighting without giving anything away beforehand. Grus knew that perfectly well. He eyed the town anyway. Not all commanders had brains. That, unfortunately, was just as true for Avornans as it was for Menteshe.

  Something else occurred to him. He did some swearing of his own, then hurried off to find Pterocles. The wizard, as he’d expected, stood near the hole in the ground where the miners worked. “We may need your magic against the nomads outside,” Grus said. “Will your masking spell hold up for a while if you aren’t there to keep an eye on it every minute?”

  “Nomads outside?” Pterocles peered around in surprise. Up until that moment, the horn calls and the soldiers running back and forth had escaped his notice. He sent Grus an accusing stare. “Something is going on, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, you might say so,” the king answered. Since Pterocles plainly had no idea what, Grus filled him in with a few sentences, finishing, “Can you leave this by itself, or at least to a junior wizard?”