The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  Lanius tried his best not to show his excitement whenever a courier came into the palace, and not to show his disappointment when the couriers would hand him messages that had nothing to do with what was going on around Yozgat. It wasn’t easy, and got harder as day followed day with no news from the south.

  Whatever I hear doesn’t really matter, he told himself. It will only be word of what’s already happened, and I won’t be able to do anything about it one way or the other. That was true, but it was cold consolation. He wanted to feel, he wanted to know, that what he’d done made a difference.

  If it made a difference. That was the other side of the coin, the side he didn’t want to think about. One way or the other, he’d find out.

  When Grus finally did send a letter, it told him less than he wished it would have. Grus gave a good reason for that, but still left Lanius frustrated. After the usual greetings, the other king wrote, You will be pleased to hear that your two intrepid animal trainers and the animal they trained have gotten here safely. This is after adventures that put to shame those of your recent letter and sketch. He described some of them, then went on, However dangerous the journey, they did arrive safely, which I take as a good sign. Maybe the gods in the heavens are paying a little attention, a very little, to the material world after all. I dare hope.

  We now wait for a moonless night. Once we have it, we will find out if we are smarter than we think or only better at fooling ourselves—or letting ourselves be fooled. His signature followed.

  Looking at the date on the letter, Lanius saw Grus had written it two weeks earlier. Then, the moon had been swelling toward full. Now it was shrinking toward new. Grus had his moonless nights, if he wanted them.

  Maybe Grus had already done what needed doing. Maybe word was on the way. Lanius hoped it was. He also hoped Olor and Quelea and the rest were paying attention to what went on down here, as the other king suggested. The Banished One pretty plainly hadn’t wanted Lanius’ letter and sketch or Collurio, Crinitus, and Pouncer to make it to Yozgat. Just as plainly, they had made it. If the gods in the heavens hadn’t helped them, who had? No one at all? Lanius couldn’t believe that, not with the Banished One trying to stop them.

  Again, he wasn’t sure what the gods could do here. The material world wasn’t their proper sphere. Of course, the gods hadn’t intervened directly. Olor hadn’t hurled a thunderbolt. Quelea hadn’t spread flowers over the landscape to distract the Menteshe. What did seem to have spread was confusion—and confusion wasn’t material.

  “Exciting times ahead,” Lanius murmured. He hoped they would be exciting. After a moment, he shook his head. He hoped they would be exciting in the right way. Even if the Banished One triumphed, there would be plenty of excitement. But it wouldn’t be the kind Avornis wanted to know.

  We’ll find out soon, the king thought. He wondered whether he would be able to sense the change if things went well. Then he wondered whether he’d be able to sense the change if they went dreadfully wrong. We’ll find out, he thought again. Or maybe he’d already found out, and the answer was no.

  “I’ll find out if I find out,” he said, and laughed. When he found out, he’d know how much he really had to laugh about—if he had anything at all.

  “Black as the inside of a sheep,” Collurio muttered.

  “Not quite that bad,” Grus said. But then, the animal trainer had lived almost his entire life in the city of Avornis, where torches and lamps and candles always burned to hold night at bay. This was dark enough, and more than dark enough. Only stars shone in the sky. No campfires burned anywhere near the king and his comrades. A few torches shone up on Yozgat’s walls, but the Menteshe didn’t use their light to peer out. The city’s defenders just wanted to be sure they could see any Avornans unexpectedly joining them on the walls.

  Grus laughed almost inaudibly. They would have company up there for a little while, all right. But it wouldn’t be the kind of company they were looking for—Grus hoped with all his heart it wouldn’t be, anyhow—and it wouldn’t hang around for long.

  “Everything ready?” the king whispered. When no one told him no, he nodded to himself and said, “Let’s try it, then.”

  Soldiers quietly moved sharpened timbers aside to make a gap in the palisade. Other soldiers laid a gangplank over the ditch surrounding the fence of stakes. Grus, Collurio, Crinitus, and Pterocles waited before crossing. Looking over at Yozgat, Collurio said, “The other king really did know this slice of the city, didn’t he? The towers he drew in the sketch are just in the same place as the ones in Yozgat.”

  “Is everything inside this part of the city the same as it is in the slice he had Tinamus build?” Crinitus asked.

  “Good question,” Grus said. “I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t think King Lanius knew the answer to that. He hoped things hadn’t changed too much, and so do I. Before much longer, we’ll see.”

  As though his words were a cue, Avornan archers and siege engines far around the line started shooting at Yozgat. Grus’ men had been doing that almost—but not quite—at random for several days now. The Menteshe responded much as the king hoped they would. They sent men to the threatened stretch and didn’t worry much about any other part of the wall.

  “Now,” Grus said. He and the trainers and the wizard crossed the gangplank and hurried toward the moat. Collurio carried Pouncer’s cage. Crinitus and Pterocles were in charge of a long, thin pole. Carpenters had made it up in sections in the capital, and other woodworkers had joined the sections together once the animal trainer brought it down to Yozgat.

  When they got to the edge of the moat, Grus stared up toward the wall. No one up there seemed to be paying any attention to what was going on outside the city. Pterocles noted the same thing, saying, “Looks quiet enough.”

  “Yes.” Grus nodded. “We’re going to try it. Gentlemen, if you’d be so kind …”

  Crinitus and Pterocles angled the pole up toward the top of the wall. At last, after what seemed much too long, the far end of the pole tapped against the crenellations up there. “Anyone hear that, do you think?” Crinitus asked anxiously.

  No shouts came from the wall. No Menteshe came over to grab the other end of the pole. “Everything seems all right,” Grus murmured. “Why don’t you let the moncat out of the cage, Collurio?”

  “I’ll do it,” the animal trainer answered, also in a low voice. He fiddled with the door to the cage. As it swung open, he said, “I hope the trip down here hasn’t made the beast forget what it’s supposed to do. That happens sometimes, and we had an awfully long trip.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Grus said.

  Pouncer let out a musty meow. It wasn’t quite like the noises ordinary cats made, but was closer to those than anything else. The moncat poked its head out of the cage as though unsure such liberties were allowed. When no one shouted at it or poked it to make it withdraw, it came all the way out of the cage, stretched—and settled down on the ground to lick its backside. “Miserable thing!” Crinitus exploded, and made as though to prod it with his foot.

  His father stopped him. “Let the beast be,” he said. “It has to tend to itself before it can tend to what we want of it.”

  Pouncer stopped grooming itself. Grus could tell the moment when the moncat noticed the pole. The animal made a small, interested noise. The moment Collurio heard that, he made a small, pleased noise. Pouncer went up the pole. With what were essentially hands on all four limbs, the moncat was less graceful than ordinary cats on the ground. As soon as it started climbing the pole, though … The moncat gripped with forefeet and hind feet, and rose faster and more skillfully than Grus would have imagined possible.

  “Gods be praised!” Collurio breathed. “It still knows what it’s supposed to do.”

  No wonder he sounds relieved, Grus thought. If the animal balked, who would have gotten the blame? That wouldn’t have fallen on Pouncer. After all, a moncat was only a moncat. It would have landed on Collurio and Cri
nitus.

  “Up to the top and on the wall,” the younger trainer said. “I can’t feel its weight on the pole anymore.”

  “Up to the top and into Yozgat,” Grus said. He hoped Pouncer went into Yozgat, anyhow. If the moncat chose to amble along the wall instead, who could say what would happen? Maybe one of the Menteshe up there would find a new pet. Or maybe, since the city was under siege, one of the plainsmen would find supper. But Grus couldn’t do anything about that now. It was up to Pouncer—and, maybe, to Pterocles. Grus turned to the wizard. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” The wizard gave Grus an ironic bow. “You need me for this spell about as much as you need to break an egg by dropping the great cathedral on it.”

  “That’s nice,” Grus said placidly. “You told me something like that before. I’ve got you, this way I don’t have to tell anybody else about what we’re doing, I know you’re up to it, and you’ll do a good job of breaking that egg.”

  Along with his usual sorcerous paraphernalia, Pterocles had several small chunks of raw mutton wrapped in cloth in his belt pouch. He held one of them in the palm of his left hand. In his right hand he held an arrowhead shot from the walls of Yozgat. “Same trick I used outside of Trabzun, only with a new twist,” he remarked. “The law of contagion means the arrowhead that had been inside Yozgat is still connected to the place.”

  He began to chant in a low voice no one on the walls could have heard. When he broke off, the bit of mutton vanished from his hand. “It’s inside the city?” Grus asked. “It’s where it’s supposed to be?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty—right where the moncat is supposed to find it,” Pterocles answered patiently. “I told you, a hedge-wizard could move this meat around as well as I can.”

  “Just keep doing it,” the king said. “If it’s so easy it offends your dignity, well, maybe I’ll have you do something harder next time, that’s all.”

  Pterocles repeated the spell again and again. Piece after piece of mutton disappeared. By the wizard’s murmured comments, Grus gathered that each one was going deeper into Yozgat. Collurio and Crinitus knew just where in the model of the city Pouncer was accustomed to getting his rewards as he went through his routine. As closely as Pterocles could, he was putting mutton in spots that corresponded to those.

  The wizard started the spell yet again, then paused. “Your Majesty, this one will go close to the citadel. There are sorcerous wards in place. If I penetrate them, I may alert the wizard who set them. Shall I put the meat there anyhow?”

  “No!” Grus wasn’t sure he was right, but he didn’t hesitate. “The moncat will go on anyhow, I think, and I don’t want to alert the Menteshe. No matter what, I don’t want to alert the Menteshe. We may have to try this again, and surprise will help if we do.”

  “As you wish.” Pterocles accepted his decision. A big part of what made a king a king was getting people to accept his choices. Of course, if they accepted too many that were wrong …

  “I think this is good. I hope it is,” Collurio said. “The moncat is a clever beast. Even if some rewards are missing, it will usually go on, expecting to find the rest. I have seen as much.”

  “Thank you,” Grus told him. But he’d made his choice for reasons mostly different from the one the trainer had given. He thought he would have made it even if Collurio had told him something else.

  “I’ll place these other bits on the way back, then,” Pterocles said. “I wish I knew just where in Yozgat Pouncer is now.”

  “Nothing we can do but wait,” Grus said. However true that was, he didn’t like it. Sooner or later, the Menteshe were bound to notice his companions and him, to say nothing of the pole that led up to the wall … weren’t they? Alert men should have noticed them already. Maybe, just maybe, the gods were helping to keep the defenders from noticing what was going on under their noses. Or maybe the Menteshe weren’t alert because they didn’t think the Avornans could put men on the walls without their knowing it.

  And they were right. The Avornans couldn’t sneak men up onto the walls of Yozgat. But the Menteshe hadn’t thought about moncats. They’d probably never heard of them. What they didn’t know … might give them a surprise.

  Off on the other side of the city, the sounds of skirmishing went on. Grus heard a sharp thud as a stone smacked into the wall. Distant shouts said the Menteshe didn’t like that. But the walls were well made. Stone-throwers could pound them for a long time—maybe forever—without knocking them down.

  Bats and nightjars came into sight every now and then when they swooped close to torches to snatch insects out of the air. They paid the fighting no attention; it meant no more to them than the taste of a moth meant to Grus. He wondered whether he ought to envy them.

  It was the dark of the moon. Nothing but starlight would be in the sky until the sun came up. Even though Grus knew as much, he found himself looking toward the east. That was nothing but foolishness; if his senses hadn’t told him dawn was still far away, the positions of the stars as they wheeled through the sky would have.

  “How much longer?” Crinitus asked.

  “However long it takes,” Grus answered. “Until the moncat comes back, or until we’re sure it won’t.”

  Collurio pointed not east but south. “What’s that?”

  For a moment, Grus thought it was a red star he hadn’t spied before, throbbing down there just above the southern horizon. As he’d moved from the Stura to Yozgat, northern constellations hung lower in the sky, while southern ones climbed higher and a few stars he’d never seen before came into view. But then he realized this wasn’t a star. He thought of a great leaping flame, but that didn’t seem quite right, either. “I don’t know what it is,” he said at last.

  Pterocles looked at the pulsing point of scarlet light, too. “Isn’t that about where … he’s supposed to have his lair in the Argolid Mountains?”

  Grus considered. “Yes, I think it is,” he said at last. “But why can we see it now? It’s never lit up like that before.”

  “Maybe he’s never had anything much to worry about up until now,” Pterocles said. “Maybe …”

  “Olor’s beard,” Grus whispered, awe in his voice. If Pouncer had penetrated the defenses that would have stopped the boldest human thief far from his goal … Oh, if Pouncer had …!

  No sooner had the thought crossed Grus’ mind than Yozgat went wild. It seemed as though all the Menteshe in the town started shouting at one another at once. All Grus could see was the top of the wall. That made him grind his teeth in frustration, for it meant he could get only the vaguest idea of what was going on down in Yozgat itself.

  Things on the wall were lively enough. Menteshe ran this way and that. They were all yelling at the top of their lungs. Some of them carried torches; others didn’t. He got to see one spectacular pratfall, as a plainsman with a torch tripped over someone or something. The man fell with a splat. His torch flew out and down and hissed into extinction in the moat.

  That, luckily, was some way down the wall from where the King of Avornis, the animal trainers, and the wizard stood. Not even the falling torch threw much light on them. None of the Menteshe seemed to have any idea they were there. None of the plainsmen seemed the least bit interested in what was happening outside of Yozgat. All their attention focused on whatever had gone wrong within the walls. That the commotion inside might be connected to the Avornans outside didn’t look to have crossed their minds.

  “I wish somebody had told me the city would go crazy while the moncat was inside it,” Collurio said worriedly. “I would have trained the beast to be used to the noise and the fuss. This way, it may scare him out of doing what he’s learned.”

  That was the last thing Grus wanted to hear. Lanius, you thought of everything else. Why didn’t you think of this, too? But he didn’t—he couldn’t—really blame the other king. Lanius had taken an idea no one else would have come up with and made it real. And so have I, by the gods. So have I, Grus thought. “
We’ve come this far,” he said. “With any luck at all, we’ll be able to go as much further as we need.”

  More shouts rang out inside Yozgat. Somebody bellowed what was plainly an order. Someone else yelled what was just as plainly defiance. Iron clanged on iron. Wounded men shrieked. Did they have any idea why they were fighting one another? Grus wouldn’t have bet on it.

  That wasn’t his worry. It was theirs—and the Banished One’s. His worry was Pouncer. Where was the moncat? What was it doing? Was it doing anything past hiding from the chaos all around or maybe chasing a tasty-smelling southern mouse? Grus didn’t know. He couldn’t know, even if he could guess and hope. Not knowing gnawed at him.

  The base of the pole stirred, there in the dirt by the edge of the moat. Pterocles and Crinitus both grabbed it, both steadied it. Either the Menteshe had found the other end at the edge of the wall and were starting to pull it up or …

  Grus peered toward the top of Yozgat’s works. “There’s Pouncer!” he said—as joyous a whisper as he’d ever used.

  Down came the moncat, quick and graceful as ever. Was it holding something in one of its clawed hands? Lanius had grumbled when it stole spoons from the kitchens in the palace. What had it stolen now, and from where?

  “Mrow,” the moncat said as it left the pole for solid ground. It glared at Collurio. He took a piece of mutton from Pterocles.

  “No, let me,” King Grus said, and solemnly handed out the last reward. And, as Pouncer ate, Grus took the Scepter of Mercy into his own hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “You!” The Banished One’s bellow was full of rage and desperation and despair. “You thief! You bandit! You brigand! You have taken that which is mine, that to which you have no right. Do you think you can flout me so?”

  In Lanius’ dream, he looked at the exiled god. As always, the Banished One’s countenance seemed perfectly beautiful, perfectly calm … or did it? Wasn’t that the faintest trace of a frown line by the side of his mouth? It marred his inhumanly cold magnificence as a broken window might have marred a building.