The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  Every day that went by without word of trouble from the south, without word of pestilence or other natural disaster that might not be so natural, felt like a triumph to the king. He dared hope the Banished One was so weakened by everything that had gone wrong for him lately, he couldn’t hit back at Avornis the way he would have a few years earlier. Grus didn’t really believe that, but he dared hope. Hope marked progress, too.

  He didn’t need long to realize that Lanius and Sosia had reconciled. Neither his son-in-law nor his daughter said much about it, but their manner with each other spoke louder than words could have. Grus suspected Marinus’ arrival had a good deal to do with that, but whatever the reason, he hoped it lasted. And so it would—till Lanius found another serving girl attractive and Sosia found out about it. Grus didn’t know what he could do about that. Seeing trouble ahead didn’t always mean seeing any way to stop it.

  Grus had had that thought down south of the Stura, when Otus plucked his woman from a village of freed thralls and decided to bring her up to the city of Avornis. The king had nothing against Fulca, who seemed nice enough and very capable. He also had nothing against Calypte, with whom Otus had taken up while Fulca remained a thrall. And Otus himself was solid as the day was long. But when one of his women found out about the other one …

  When that happened, it proved as hard on Otus as it would have on anyone else whose two women suddenly discovered neither of them was his one woman. A lot of men, in a mess like that, would have lost both of them. Otus didn’t. While Calypte departed in a crockery-throwing huff, Fulca stuck by him. But she was furious, too.

  “What was I supposed to do, Your Majesty?” Otus asked plaintively after the dishes stopped flying. “Was I supposed to act like a dead man while I was far away from Fulca and I thought I would never see her again? Once I’d found she’d been freed and found her, was I supposed to pretend I’d never known her?”

  “I suppose not, and I suppose not.” Grus answered each question in turn. “But I didn’t think you would be able to keep both of them once they found out about each other. Things don’t usually work that way.”

  “Why not?” Otus said. “They should.”

  “Well, suppose Calypte had taken another lover while you were south of the Stura with me,” Grus said. “Would she have been able to keep two men?”

  “I don’t think so!” Otus sounded indignant.

  “There, then. Do you see?” Grus said. Otus didn’t, or didn’t want to. Few men wanted to when the shoe was on the other foot. Grus set a hand on the ex-thrall’s shoulder. “Be thankful Fulca is sticking by you. You don’t have to start over from the beginning.”

  “Even she wants to knock me over the head with something,” Otus said. “Shouldn’t she be glad I came looking for her and took her out of the village?”

  “Oh, I think she is,” Grus said. Otus hadn’t told her anything about his other woman when he took her out of the village. She’d thought—not unreasonably, as far as Grus could see—she was his only woman, and that he had no others. No wonder she was none too happy to discover she was wrong. “If the two of you really love each other, you’ll figure out how to patch things up.” And if you don’t patch them up, it wouldn’t be the first time things fell apart. Grus kept quiet about that. Otus wouldn’t appreciate it.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Otus said sorrowfully.

  A lot of that sorrow was no more than self-pity. Grus knew as much. Even so, he soberly answered, “Congratulations.”

  Otus stared at him. Grus hadn’t expected anything else. “Congratulations, Your Majesty?” the ex-thrall echoed. “I don’t understand.”

  “Not knowing what to do, not being sure, needing to figure things out for yourself—all this is part of what being a free man is all about,” Grus explained. “You wouldn’t have said anything like that when you were a thrall, would you?”

  “No, I don’t suppose I would.” Otus shook his head. “No, of course I wouldn’t. I knew everything I needed to know then. It wasn’t much, by the gods, but I knew it.” He spoke with a certain somber pride.

  “That’s about what I thought,” Grus told him. “You have more things to know and to try to figure out now that you’re on your own. Not all of it’s going to be easy. It won’t be much fun some of the time, especially when you get yourself into a mess like the one you’re in now. But this is part of what being free is all about. You’re free to make an idiot of yourself, too. People do it every day.”

  “Freedom to get in trouble, I think I could do without,” Otus said.

  “I don’t know how you’re going to separate it from any other kind,” Grus said. “You’ve done a good job of getting the hang of being your own person. You didn’t have years and years to learn how, the way ordinary people do. You had to start doing it right away after Pterocles lifted the spell of thralldom from you. Now Fulca has to do the same thing, and do it just as fast as you did—maybe faster. Remember, it won’t always be easy for her, either.”

  “I suppose not,” Otus said, and then, “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “For what?” Grus said. “I don’t have any real answers for you. I’ve landed in this exact same trouble myself, and more than once.” So has Lanius, he thought. It’s something that happens, all right.

  “For listening to me,” the freed thrall said with a rueful smile. “Just for listening to me. That was something neither of my women wanted to do.”

  “Oh. Well, you’re welcome.” Grus fought hard to hide a smile. “Between you and me, when a man’s women find out about each other—or when a woman’s men find out about each other, which happens, too—they aren’t usually in a listening mood.”

  “Yes, I’d noticed that.” By the way Otus said it, it was for him some strange natural phenomenon, like the fogs that afflicted the Chernagor country or the tides that swept the sea in and back along Avornis’ coastline.

  “Good luck,” Grus told him. “Part of what makes being free, being a whole man, worthwhile is that it isn’t simple. You may not always believe that, or want to believe it, but it’s true.”

  Otus went on his way scratching his head. Grus hoped he would work things out with Fulca, for her sake as much as for his. She didn’t know enough yet to have an easy time as a free woman. If she had to, though, Grus suspected she would get along. Just how much would Avornis gain from the suddenly released talents of so many thralls? More than a little—he was sure of that.

  At the midwife’s suggestion, Limosa had nursed Marinus for the first few days after he was born. Lanius remembered Netta giving Sosia the same advice after she bore Crex and Pitta. She’d said babies whose mothers did that ended up healthier. That had persuaded Sosia, and it persuaded Limosa, too.

  After those first few days, Limosa let her own milk dry up and brought in a wet nurse. With Sosia as grumpy as she was, Lanius wondered how she would react to a woman who often bared her breasts in the palace. That turned out not to be an issue. The wet nurse Limosa hired was almost as wide as she was tall, and had eyes set too close together, a big nose, and a mean mouth. Maybe Limosa was taking no chances with Ortalis, too.

  Not long after Marinus’ birth, the winter turned nasty. Three blizzards roared through the city of Avornis one after another, snarling the streets, piling roofs high with snow, and making Lanius wonder whether the Banished One had decided to use the weather as a weapon after all. As the city began to dig out, several people were found frozen to death in their homes and shops. That happened after almost every bad storm, but it worried the king all the same.

  And then the sun came out. It got warm enough to melt a lot of the snow—not quite springlike, but close enough. Here and there, a few prematurely hopeful shoots of grass sprouted between cobblestones.

  Lanius laughed at himself. Plucking one of those little green shoots outside the palace, he held it under Grus’ nose. “This probably won’t be a winter like that dreadful one,” he said.

  He must have held the shoot too clo
se to Grus’ nose, for the other king’s eyes crossed as he looked at it. “I’d say you’re right,” Grus answered. “Of course, there’s still some winter left. Other thing is, just because he’s not sending snow and ice at us doesn’t mean he won’t do something.”

  “And here I wanted to be happy and cheerful,” Lanius said. “How am I supposed to manage that when you keep spouting common sense at me?”

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty.” Grus bowed almost double; he might have been a clumsy servant who’d dropped a pitcher of wine and splashed Lanius’ robe. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

  “A likely story,” Lanius said, laughing. “You can’t help being sensible any more than I can, and you know it.”

  “Well, maybe not,” Grus said. “Between us, we make a pretty fair pair—now that each of us knows he can trust the other one with his back turned.”

  That had taken a while for Lanius. After Grus took more than his share of the crown, Lanius had feared the other king would dispose of him and rule on his own. Odds were Grus was strong enough and well enough liked to have gotten away with it. But it hadn’t happened. For his part, Grus had taken even longer to learn to trust Lanius. Grus had kept him nothing but a figurehead for years. Little by little, though, when Grus went on campaign, Lanius began handling things in—and from—the capital.

  “Here we are, getting along … well enough.” Try as Lanius would, he couldn’t make his agreement any warmer than that. Wanting to lighten things with a joke, he added, “And all we have to worry about is the Banished One.”

  Grus laughed—not the sort of laugh that says something is really funny, but more the kind that comes out when the choice is between laughter and a sob. The other king said, “I’m not worried about that. After all, you’ve got things all figured out, don’t you? As soon as we get to Yozgat, the Scepter of Mercy falls into our hands.” He laughed again.

  “I wish things would be that simple,” Lanius replied. “Still, though, there’s no denying that some of the things we’ve both done have made the Banished One sit up and take notice.”

  He waited to see if Grus would try to deny that, or would try to deny him any credit for it. The other king didn’t. He just said, “To tell you the truth, Your Majesty, I could do without the honor.”

  “So could I,” Lanius said. “I’ve come awake in my bed too many times with the memory of … him staring at me.” Grus nodded. As anyone who’d known them could testify, dreams from the Banished One seemed more vivid, more real, and certainly more memorable, than most things in the waking world. Lanius went on, “If he didn’t worry about us, about what we’re doing, he wouldn’t trouble us so. That is an honor of a kind.”

  “Of a kind,” Grus agreed. “Or we tell ourselves it is, anyhow. We don’t know much about the Banished One for certain. Maybe he doesn’t send dreams to some other people because he can’t, not because he doesn’t think they’re important.”

  “Maybe.” Lanius was usually polite. But he didn’t believe it. If someone worried the Banished One in any real way, the exiled god threatened that person. Who the victim was—king or witch or animal trainer—didn’t seem to matter.

  Before they could take the argument any further—if that was what Grus had in mind—someone in the palace started calling, “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

  Lanius and Grus looked at each other. They both smiled. Lanius said, “I don’t know which one of us he wants, but I think he’s going to get both of us.”

  They went toward the noise until a servant coming out from it ran into them and led them back to a weather-beaten courier who smelled powerfully of horse. Bowing, the man said, “Sorry it took me so long to come up from the south, Your Majesty—I mean, Your Majesties—but the weather’s been beastly until a couple of days ago.” He took a waxed-leather message tube off his belt and thrust it at the two kings—at both of them, but not quite at either one of them.

  They both started to reach for it. At the last instant, Lanius deferred to Grus—things coming out of the south were the older man’s province, and he’d earned the right to know of them first. With a nod and a murmur of thanks, Grus took the waterproofed tube and worked off the lid. He pulled out the letter inside, unrolled it, and began to read. His face got longer and longer.

  “What is it?” Lanius asked. “Something’s gone wrong—I can tell. Where? How bad is it?”

  “Down south of the Stura,” Grus told him. “And it’s not good. Thralls and freed thralls … they’re dying like flies.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Like almost every wizard Grus had ever known, Pterocles normally rode a donkey or a mule. He was on horseback now, on horseback and apprehensive at how high off the ground he perched and how fast he was going. The king showed him no mercy. “By Olor’s beard, we need to get there as fast as we can,” Grus growled.

  Pterocles sent him a piteous stare. “What good will I be to you if I fall off and break my neck long before we get near the Stura?”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Grus said, or perhaps something stronger than that. He waved at the snowdrifts to either side of the road. “If you fall off, you’ll go into the snow here, see? It’s nice and soft—just like your head.”

  “Thank you so much, Your Majesty,” the wizard said stiffly.

  “Any time.” Grus couldn’t have been less sympathetic. He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “Look at me, why don’t you? I didn’t know what to do on a horse for years—I was a river-galley captain, remember? But I managed. I’m still not what you’d call pretty on horseback, but even Hirundo hardly bothers teasing me anymore, because I got the job done.” He did some more glowering. “I get the job done—and so will you.”

  “You’re a cruel, hard man.” Pterocles sounded like a convict who’d been denied clemency.

  Grus bowed in the saddle. “At your service.” He paused, then shook his head. “I may be a hard man, but I hope I’m not cruel.” He pointed south. “There’s the cruel one, killing off people because he thinks he can get some good out of it.”

  Pterocles chewed on that for a little while. Grus waited to see whether he would keep arguing. The king wouldn’t have minded much if he did; it gave them both something to do as they rode along. A troop of guards rode in front of them and another in back of them to make sure no Menteshe raiders sneaked north over the border and struck at them, but the soldiers were all business. And so, for the moment, was Pterocles. Grus decided he’d won his point.

  The snow would get thicker as they rode through the low, rolling hills separating one of the valleys of the Nine Rivers from the next. Then, when they came down out of herding country and into better farmland once more, the weather would warm up a little. Bare dirt would show through here and there, more and more of it with each valley farther south. Even in most years with bad blizzards up in the city of Avornis, the valley of the Stura saw more rain than snow. What things would be like south of the Stura … Grus shrugged. For hundreds of years, no Avornan had personally known what things were like south of the Stura. Now his countrymen were getting the chance to find out.

  This proved a year like most years. Grus cursed when snow gave way to rain. Up until then, he and the unhappy Pterocles and their escorts—about whose opinions no one had asked—made fine time. The road was frozen hard, and there wasn’t even the usual summer annoyance of dust rising in choking clouds. But the horses had to slow down slogging their way through mud.

  Every so often, Pterocles—and Grus—had to dismount to get their beasts through the worst stretches. Mud was no respecter of rank or of person. A king riding through it got as filthy as a farmer or a wandering tinker.

  Afterwards, though, a king could do more about it than a farmer or a tinker. When Grus and Pterocles got to Cumanus, the city governor whisked them to his residence. He had a big copper tub, which his servants filled with hot water. First Grus and then Pterocles soaked away the dirt and the chill of the road. A blazing fire in the room with the tub kept Grus comfortable
as he sat wrapped in a thick robe of soft wool. He sipped warm wine as he sat with Pterocles, who seemed ready to stay in the tub until he either grew fins or came out wrinkled as a prune.

  “How much do you think you’ll be able to do against this plague or curse or whatever it is?” he asked, not for the first time.

  Not for the first time, Pterocles shrugged. This time, though, the motion threatened to send waves slopping over the edge of the tub and out onto the slate floor. The wizard had warm wine, too, the cup resting on a stool within easy reach. He took a sip before answering, “Your Majesty, I’ll do the best I can. Until I know more, how can I say more?”

  That was reasonable. Grus was usually a reasonable man, one who craved reasonable answers. Even Lanius had said so, and he was reasonable to a fault. Tonight, though, despite not being soaked and shivering anymore, Grus craved reassurance more than reason. He said, “You have to find a cure, you know. Everything will unravel if you don’t. It’s already started hitting soldiers along with the thralls.” That unwelcome bit of news had come to him only a couple of days before; he’d intercepted it on its way north to the capital.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Now Pterocles sounded patient.

  Grus was in no mood for patience, either. “What happens if—no, what happens when—it spreads to this side of the river?”

  “We do the best we can, Your Majesty,” Pterocles said again, patient still. “Maybe you shouldn’t have come south yourself.”

  The same thing had occurred to Grus. He’d been fighting the Banished One for years, so he’d naturally assumed that fighting the pestilence required him to be here in person. Would the Banished One mind killing him by disease instead of more directly? Not a bit—the king was sure of that. He was also sure of some other things. “If the plague crosses the Stura, it will get all the way to the city of Avornis,” he said. “Or am I wrong?”