The Bastard King

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

King Grus was laying his plans as well. He wondered how much good it would do. Turning to Hirundo, who’d come down from the north not long before, he said, “Fighting the Menteshe is like hitting a glob of quicksilver with a hammer. You don’t make the glob disappear. You just smash it up into a bunch of little globs.”

“Well, then we smash the little globs one at a time,” Hirundo answered, cheerful as usual. “You can get rid of them for good. It takes work, that’s all. You can’t do that with a real glob of quicksilver.”

“No, you can’t,” Grus admitted. “But with real quicksilver, the little globs don’t go running around trying to turn back into one big one again, either.”

“If you’re going to worry about everything…” Hirundo said. Grus laughed, though it wasn’t funny. One thing he’d found since becoming king was that he had to worry about everything. If he didn’t, who would?

The campfire crackled as a stick fell down when the smaller stick supporting it burned through. Off in the distance, an owl hooted mournfully. The Avornan army had extra sentries surrounding the encampment on all sides, and squadrons of horsemen ready to charge into battle at a moment’s notice. Grus felt only moderately safe even so.

He said, “The Menteshe are like foxes. They sneak through the night.”

“Foxes made of quicksilver,” Hirundo said helpfully.

“I didn’t order you down here for literary criticism,” Grus said. “I wanted you to help me figure out how to beat Prince Evren’s men.”

“Same way we always beat the nomads—when we do,” Hirundo said. “We need a bouncy young chap to drive them down to the river, and a clever captain of river galleys to make sure they don’t cross to the south bank.”

“Where would we find officers like that?” Grus asked. They both laughed. The days when Hirundo had driven the Menteshe down to the Stura and Grus had kept them from crossing seemed very far away.

As though to prove how distant they were, Grus had to climb onto the back of a horse the next day. He would have given a good deal to have the pitching, rolling deck of a river galley under him instead. He knew how to handle anything that might go wrong there. Even after all these years, his relationship with horses remained wary.

And the relationship between Avornis and the Menteshe remained one of passionate mutual loathing. Hirundo’s men managed to surround a band of the nomads, catching them by surprise around their campfires. By the time the Menteshe realized they were in danger, the Avornans had cut off any hope of escape.

For form’s sake, King Grus sent in an officer under flag of truce offering to spare the lives of Prince Evren’s men if they surrendered. For form’s sake, they sent him back alive. Then the killing started.

Grus himself had never made more than an indifferent rider, as he knew to his chagrin. Many Avornans, though, excelled on horseback. To them, horses were friends and comrades, not merely conveniences for getting from here to there faster than a man could walk. Next to the Menteshe, though, they might all have had Grus’ attitude and skill. People said the nomads were born in the saddle. After what Grus saw in that fight, he wouldn’t have argued for a moment.

The horses they rode were nothing much to look at: plains ponies that hardly reached the shoulders of the Avornans’ mounts. But those ponies were fast and strong and seemed never to tire. And what the nomads did from their backs… Grus was among the most sincere enemies the Menteshe had, but he knew better than to call them cowards.

When the Avornans came toward them from all sides, they must have known they probably wouldn’t escape. Instead of waiting to be slaughtered, though, they galloped forward— straight toward Grus, whether by design or by chance. Although outnumbered eight or ten to one, by the way they came they might have been the ones with numbers on their side. Then they started shooting, and for a dreadful little while Grus wondered whether they were right to be so confident.

He’d heard things about the archery of the Menteshe. He’d seen some of it in earlier fights here. But this… The nomads’ bows, backed with horn and sinew, outranged those of the Avornans. And the Menteshe shot faster than merely mortal men had any business doing. People told tales of clouds of arrows darkening the sun as they flew. As the volley from Evren’s men hissed through the air toward the Avornans, Grus understood for the first time how such tales were born. He threw his shield up to protect his face.

Had one of those arrows bitten him, the shield probably would have done no good. The nomads’ bows gave their shafts not only great range but also great striking power. They pierced shields. They pierced chain mail. And they pierced flesh—the flesh of both men and horses. Men shrieked. Horses screamed and crashed to the ground, throwing or crushing their riders. Other horses tripped over them and went down, too.

An arrow buzzed past Grus’ head, so close that the fletching stroked his beard. He didn’t even have time to be horrified, for the Menteshe galloped toward him, intent on cutting their way out through the gap they’d shot in the Avornan line. As they neared, they drew their sabers. The blades glittered in the morning sun.

“We have to hold them!” Grus yelled. “We can’t let them break through!” Belatedly, he remembered to draw his own sword. He hoped enough men around and behind him remained to hold the Menteshe till the rest of his cavalrymen could close with them and finish them off.

He also hoped, again belatedly, that he would live through the encounter. On the deck of a river galley, he would have had the edge over any nomad ever born. On horseback, though, the tables were turned. Here came one of Evren’s men, shouting something in his own language. He cut at Grus. Grus beat the blade aside and slashed at the Menteshe’s mount. His sword scored a bleeding line across its croup, not far in front of its tail.

With the terrible cry of a horse in pain, the beast reared. The Menteshe clung to the saddle as burrs clung to the long hair of its tail. Grus cut at him from behind. The nomad wore a shirt of leather boiled in tallow—not as strong as chain mail, but much lighter. It proved strong enough to keep Grus’ blade from laying the fellow’s back open, though by his grunt of pain the blow still hurt. Grus understood that. He wore padding under his mail to keep swordstrokes from breaking ribs.

The Menteshe twisted, trying to keep his horse under control and fight back at the same time. He turned one more slash from Grus, but the next caught him in the side of the neck, above the boiled-leather shirt and below the iron-plated cap on his head. Blood spurted, improbably red. The Menteshe yammered in pain. Grus struck him again, this time across the face. The nomad’s saber slipped from his hands. He slid off his horse and tumbled to the ground.

King Grus had a moment to look around. A few of the Menteshe had managed to break out. Even as he watched, an arrow caught one of them in the back. More were still fighting, trying to get away. And even more were down. He rode forward to help slay the ones yet on their horses.

“Surrender!” he shouted when only four or five Menteshe were left alive. “Surrender and we’ll spare your lives.”

He didn’t really expect them to. More often than not, fights between Avornans and Menteshe were fights to the death. But these nomads surprised him. Deciding they would rather live, they took off their iron-faced caps and hung them on the points of their sabers in token of surrender. “You not make us into thralls?” one of them asked in bad Avornan.

“No, by the gods. We don’t do that,” Grus replied.

“So you say,” the Menteshe said. He spoke to his comrades in their own language. By their tone, they didn’t believe Grus, either.

With a sigh compounded of weariness and relief, he turned to his own men. “Take charge of them. And gather up the bows the horses haven’t stepped on. We’d be better off if our bowyers could make weapons like those.”

They hurried to obey. They also rounded up the horses whose riders had fallen, and put out of their misery the animals too badly hurt to live. Some of them slew Menteshe too badly hurt to live, too, and Grus watched one man quietly cut the throat of an Avornan who’d taken an arrow in the belly and then been trampled. No one said a word to the soldier. By what Grus saw of the hurt man’s injuries, the fellow with the dagger had done him a favor.

Hirundo was grinning when he rode up to Grus. “Well, Your Majesty, here’s one lump of quicksilver that won’t trouble us anymore. And we didn’t have to pay too high a price to get rid of it, either.”

“That depends,” Grus said.

“What do you mean?” Hirundo asked. “They made a nice little charge at us, yes, but we killed a lot more of them than they did of us.”

“Well, so we did,” Grus said. “When you’re talking about the fight just now, you’re right, and I can’t tell you any different. But how many farmers did those Menteshe kill? How many houses and barns and fields did they burn? How many cows and horses and sheep did they run off or slaughter? Avornis has been paying ever since they crossed the Stura. We got some of our own back now, but is it enough?”

Hirundo gave him a curious look. “You think about all sorts of things, don’t you, Your Majesty? If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was talking to Lanius.”

“He does think about all sorts of things, doesn’t he?” Grus smiled, but soon grew serious again. “Do you know something, General? The longer I sit on the throne, the more I think that’s not such a bad thing to do.”

King Lanius was thinking of throwing something at Iron. He was trying to paint a portrait of the moncat, and Iron didn’t feel like holding still. Had Lanius wanted Iron to run around, the miserable beast undoubtedly would have frozen in place. As things were, the king couldn’t persuade the moncat to assume anything even close to the attitude it had held the day before, when he’d started the picture.

Instead of throwing something, he snapped his fingers. The sound made Iron look his way for a moment, but only for a moment, before scrambling up toward the ceiling. Lanius, for once, didn’t much care. “Bribery!” he said, a sudden grin on his face. “What kind of a king am I if I don’t think of bribery?”

He left Iron’s chamber and hurried to the kitchens. A cook gave him several chunks of mutton and, after some rummaging, a length of twine. “It’s something to do with those miserable foreign creatures, isn’t it, Your Majesty?” the man said.

“Don’t be silly, Colinus,” Lanius answered, his voice grave. “I just want to have fun with my food before I eat it.” Since the mutton was raw. what he’d said was most unlikely. On the other hand, he’d sounded altogether serious. Leaving the cook scratching his head, Lanius went back to Iron’s room.

All of a sudden, the moncat was much friendlier than it had been a few minutes before. The road to its heart definitely ran through its stomach. Lanius tied one of the pieces of mutton to the end of the twine and hung it so that, to reach it, Iron had to stretch into something close to the posture he wanted.

Stretch Iron did. While the moncat stretched, Lanius sketched. Before long, Iron finished the chunk of mutton. The beast turned toward Lanius and meowed pitifully. It was, no doubt, self-pity for not having more mutton; Iron could smell the meat Lanius hadn’t yet given.

Lanius doled out the mutton one piece at a time. By the time Iron finished all of it, the king had finished his sketch. He could add color and shading at his leisure, and work on them whenever he wanted. He was doing just that in the bedchamber when Sosia looked over his shoulder. “That’s very good,” she said.

He would have been happier if she hadn’t sounded so surprised, but he didn’t show that. “Thanks,” he said shortly.

His wife leaned down for a closer look. Her hair tickled his cheek. “That’s very good,” she repeated. “You can practically see him moving.”

“Thank you,” Lanius said again, this time in warmer tones. “That’s what I was trying to show.”

“Well, you’ve done it,” Sosia said. “If anyone wants to know what a pouncing moncat is like, all he has to do is look at this picture.”

Now Lanius smiled. In fact, he almost purred. “Do you really think it’s good?” he asked. He didn’t hear praise very often. When he did, he wanted to make the most of it.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Sosia told him. “Anybody who’d never seen a moncat and wanted to would pay good money for a painting like that.”

“Do you really think so?” Lanius knew he was repeating himself again, but couldn’t help it.

“I’m sure of it,” Sosia said firmly. She gave him a kiss, which somehow seemed to make what she said much more persuasive.

It might have ended as nothing but the sort of friendly praise a good wife would give to a husband she loved. It might have, but it didn’t. Lanius suddenly snapped his fingers and exclaimed, “Allocations!”

“What?” Not surprisingly, Sosia had no idea what he was talking about.

“Allocations.” And there he went, repeating himself yet again. “Remember when Petrosus wouldn’t give us any more money, and we had to let people go? If I can sell paintings, who cares what Petrosus gives us? He may be trying to keep me poor, but that doesn’t mean I have to let him.”

When he said Petrosus was trying to keep him poor, he meant Grus was trying to keep him poor. He didn’t say that, to keep from wounding Sosia’s feelings. Petrosus wouldn’t have denied him, though, without specific orders from King Grus. Lanius was as sure of that as of his own name.

Sosia said, “Could you really sell pictures like that? Has a King of Avornis ever done such a thing?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Lanius answered. “But then, I don’t think a King of Avornis has ever been poor before, either.”

He didn’t see how a King of Avornis could have been poor. A king, after all, controlled the tax revenues and customs duties his officials collected. He could spend what he wanted on himself. Or most kings could. Grus certainly could now, even if he was moderate in personal habits. Lanius? He laughed. He knew better. He lived on whatever Grus doled out to him.

Or he had. Now… Maybe things would be different. Maybe. “If I sell any paintings,” he said, “I want to sell them as paintings by an artist, not as paintings by the King of Avornis. Plenty of men would buy them in the hope they would be buying influence along with the canvas.”

“You’d get more money if people knew the King of Avornis painted them.” Sosia spoke with firm practicality.

“Well, maybe I would,” Lanius admitted. “The next question is, how much do I care?”

“I can’t answer that—you have to,” his wife said. “How much do you want to make What’s-his-name—Petrosus—look like a fool?”

That was the right question to ask. How much do I want to make Petrosus look like a fool? Lanius wondered. He remembered the haughty smile on the treasury minister’s face, and how much the fellow had enjoyed telling him no. How much do I want to make Petrosus look like a fool? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll sell them under my own name.”

“Them?” Sosia raised an eyebrow. “You’ll do more?”

Lanius nodded. “If I’m going to do this, I’m not going to do it halfway. And besides”—he wanted to show he could be practical as well as proud—“we need the money.”

King Grus, naturally, made sure he kept up with what went on in the city of Avornis while he campaigned in the south. Lanius might get ideas, or Ortalis, or old Lepturus, or even Anser, or perhaps some other ambitious soul who saw the throne empty and thought his own backside ought to fill it.

When he read in a letter what sort of ambition Lanius was showing, he blinked in bemusement. It must have been a pretty obvious blink, for Hirundo noticed it and asked, “What’s interesting, Your Majesty?”

“That’s the word, all right,” Grus answered. “It seems King Lanius is setting up as an artist.”

“An artist?” Hirundo blinked, too. “I didn’t know he had it in him. I mean to say, he’s a bright fellow and all, but… What kind of artist?”

“A painter. A painter of moncats, of all things,” Grus said. “And he’s sold three pictures, now, for… preposterous prices.” He wasn’t sure he believed the sums his informant in the city of Avornis claimed. Who would pay that kind of money for a picture of an animal?

Hirundo made him realize he’d asked himself the wrong question. “No price is too preposterous,” the general observed, “if you’re paying it to the King of Avornis. Well, to a King of Avornis, anyhow.” He inclined his head to Grus, an oddly courtly gesture when they were sitting in front of a fire roasting chunks of mutton on sticks after another long day chasing Menteshe.

“Yes,” Grus said. “That’s so, isn’t it? I wonder how much influence changes hands with the money. I thought Lanius was above that sort of thing, but maybe I’m wrong.”

“How good are the paintings?” Hirundo asked. “That will tell you something.”

“Good question.” Grus looked down to the letter. “From what it says here, they’re quite good. Who would have thought it?” He wondered if he ought to order Petrosus to cut back on Lanius’ allocation again. After some thought, he decided against it. It would be mean-spirited. If Lanius wanted to supplement what the treasury gave him—and if he’d found a way to do it—he could.

Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf howled. Grus hoped it was a wolf, anyhow. For all he knew, it might have been a Menteshe signal. Or, as Hirundo put it, “There go Evren’s men, baying at the moon again.”

“If they’re sensible, they won’t come north over the Stura for quite a while after this,” Grus said. “But who knows if they’re sensible?”

“Who knows what the Banished One will have them do?” Hirundo said.

Grus sighed. “Yes, there’s that, too, of course. They don’t always do what they want to do. They do what he wants them to do, or what suits his purposes.” He wondered what Alca could have learned about freeing thralls from the dark spells that clouded their lives if Evren’s invasion hadn’t made her turn her attention to helping protect the kingdom. He wouldn’t know for some time, if he ever did.

Hirundo’s smile showed sharp teeth. “I hope his purposes include getting lots of them killed, because that’s what’s happening to them.”

“I know,” Grus said. “And I don’t see how Evren can help knowing, too. What I wonder is why he keeps fighting for the Banished One—why all the Menteshe princes keep fighting for him—when that only brings trouble down on their heads.”

With a laugh, Hirundo answered, “Well, if they didn’t line up with the Banished One, they’d have to line up with us instead, and they probably think that’s worse.”

He might have been joking. No, he was joking. Even so, Grus thought he’d hit on an important truth. Like any men, the Menteshe assumed their enemies were wicked just because they were enemies. “They’re going to hate us,” he said, “but let’s make sure they’re afraid of us, too. We need to give them something to howl about.”

They got their chance the next morning. Scouts came galloping in, reporting a large band of Menteshe not far away. At Grus’ shouted orders, horns blared in the Avornan camp. Whooping men flung themselves into the saddle. Before throwing them at the foe, though, Grus sent out more scouts in all directions.

“That’s good,” Hirundo said. “That’s very good. We don’t want any nasty surprises.”

“We certainly don’t,” Grus agreed. “Count Corvus was a first-class bastard, but he taught me a good lesson there. If he’d paid attention to what he was doing against the Thervings, odds are he’d be King of Avornis today.”

“Good thing he didn’t, then,” Hirundo said, which made Grus grin.

He grinned again a few minutes later, when a scout came back with news that the Menteshe had hidden a couple of hundred horsemen in an almond grove not far from the plain where most of them camped. “Did they see you?” Grus asked.

“I don’t think so, Your Majesty,” the scout answered.

“All right,” Grus said. “We’ll go on with the attack on their main body, just as though we didn’t have the slightest idea that outflanking party was around. But when they come out of the trees to give us a surprise, we’ll give them one instead. Hirundo!”

“Yes, Your Majesty?” the general said.

“See that our men on that flank know Evren’s riders are going to burst out and try to throw them into disorder. I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. But I also want to make sure we don’t make things too obvious over there. Do you understand me?”

“I think so.” Hirundo said. “You want them to try to bring off their ambush, and you want to smash them when they do.”

“That’s it exactly.” King Grus slapped him on the back. “Now let’s go see if we’re as smart as we think we are.”

Grus was starting to feel a little more comfortable on horseback, which he found alarming—it proved he was spending too much time in the saddle. He scarcely noticed the weight of chain mail anymore. As long as he rode a horse that wasn’t too spirited—this one was the gelding he’d used while fighting the rebellious baron, Pandion—he did reasonably well.

His men shouted when the Menteshe came into sight. The nomads shouted, too. They were already in a loose line of battle; they must have spotted the dust the Avornan cavalry kicked up. The Menteshe started shooting before the Avornans came close enough for their bows to bite. And then, instead of rushing forward to mix it up with swords, Evren’s men rode away, shooting over their shoulders as they went.

That struck Grus as unfair and unsporting. Ineffective? He wished it were. Avornans tumbled out of the saddle one after another. Hardly any Menteshe went down. The nomads weren’t doing enough damage to make Grus worry about his army, but they weren’t taking any damage at all.

And then, with wild whoops and shouts, the Menteshe who’d hidden in the almond grove burst from cover and thundered after the Avornans. At the same time, the nomads ahead stopped retreating before their foes and charged at them, also shouting in their hissing, incomprehensible language.

If the Avornan scout hadn’t spotted the Menteshe lurking in the grove, it might have gone hard for Grus and his men. As things were, Grus shouted, “Forward! Now we have the chance to close with them!” and spurred toward the Menteshe in front of him. He trusted—he bet his life—that the riders at the Avornan left flank and rear would keep the ambushers from throwing his men into chaos.

He knew he would never make a mounted archer. All he could do was draw his sword and wait for the two lines to smash together—if they did; if the Menteshe didn’t turn and flee once more.

Evren’s men didn’t. The nomads in front must have been sure the ambush party from the grove would do its job. By the time they realized the Avornans were neither panic-stricken nor beaten, it was too late for them to break off. Grus and his followers were right on top of them.

“For King Olor and Queen Quelea!” Grus yelled, slashing at a nomad. At closer quarters, the Avornans had the advantage. Their horses were bigger than Menteshe ponies, their chain mail better protection than the treated leather with which Evren’s men armored themselves. Now Grus’ men, also shouting the names of their gods, hacked Menteshe out of the saddle and took revenge for the long-range punishment their enemies had given them.

A nomad cut at Grus’ head. The stroke missed, the Menteshe’s blade hissing past less than a hand’s breadth in front of Grus’ face. The king slashed back. The nomad turned the blow. Sparks flew as his blade and Grus’ grated against each other. Before the Menteshe could strike again, another Avornan laid his cheek open with a backhand cut. He howled and sprayed blood and clutched at himself, all else forgotten in his pain. Grus’ next stroke made him slide off his horse into the dust.

Grus risked a look back over his shoulder. His men had turned on the warriors who’d burst from the almond grove. He breathed a little easier, seeing that the nomads weren’t going to do to him what the Thervings had done to Count Corvus.

All at once, the Menteshe decided they’d had as much of this fight as they wanted. When they galloped off this time, the flight was real, not feigned. One proof the Menteshe truly were running was that they loosed far fewer over-the-shoulder shots at their foes than they had before.

A long pursuit was hopeless. Grus looked around for a trumpeter and, for a wonder, found one. At his order, the fellow blew Rein in. Watching the Menteshe run away was one of the most satisfying things an Avornan army could do.

General Hirundo rode up to Grus. “Well, Your Majesty, they’re paying for everything they’re getting on this side of the river,” he said.

“That’s true.” But Grus had to point out the other side of the coin, as he had before. “They’re making us pay, too.”

“I know,” Hirundo said. “But we can afford it longer than they can.”

“Can we? I wonder,” Grus said. “This farmland they’ve ravaged will take years to get back to what it should be. The same for the lands the Thervings plundered again and again. We have to eat, you know. And without farmers to make soldiers and pay taxes, what are we? In trouble, that’s what.”

Hirundo pointed at him. “So that’s why you’ve made such a fuss about nobles who take over small farmers’ lands.”

“Of course,” Grus said, only to realize it wasn’t of course to Hirundo. “Either I’m King of Avornis, or all these barons and counts get to set up as petty kings inside the kingdom. I don’t intend to let that happen.” He looked south, toward the cloud of dust that veiled the Menteshe from sight. “I don’t intend to let those savages—or their master—ruin Avornis, either.”

“You can stop the nomads, especially if you fight as smart a battle as you did here,” Hirundo said. “But how do you propose to stop the Banished One?”

Grus started to answer. He stopped without saying a word, though, for he realized he hadn’t the least idea.

King Lanius nodded to the green-robed priest who worked out of a tiny room stuck in a back corner of the arch-hallow’s residence. Ixoreus had no ecclesiastical rank to speak of. His white beard said he never would, and that he didn’t care. Lanius felt more at home with him than with most people, though. The two of them shared a restless, relentless urge to know.

The arch-hallow’s secretary returned the nod with the air of one equal replying to another. “So you want to go into the archives, do you?” he said.

“That’s right.” Lanius nodded. “I’m interested in finding out how our prayers and services have changed since earliest times.”

Ixoreus blinked at him. Most old men had trouble reading, while they could still see things clearly at a distance. By the way Ixoreus leaned forward, he had trouble with making out things farther away from him—a lucky infirmity in a man who’d devoted his life to books. “Yes, that could be interesting, couldn’t it?” he said.

“I think so.” Lanius didn’t say he was trying to learn what sort of god the Banished One had been before his banishment. He had the feeling that the less he said about the Banished One, the better off he—and Avornis—would be.

“Let’s see what we can do, then,” Ixoreus said, slowly getting to his feet. His back was stooped; he leaned on a stick. His walk was a shuffle a tortoise might have outsped. Lanius followed without a word, without even a thought, of complaint. The priest, after all, was taking him where he wanted to go. He would have accompanied a willing, pretty girl with hardly more eagerness.

Not far from the altar in the great cathedral was a stairway Lanius had noticed before but never really thought about. He’d assumed it let priests come up more conveniently to attend the altar. And so, no doubt, it did, but that proved to be anything but its main purpose.

Having gone down the stairs, Lanius gaped in wonder. “I never imagined this was here!” he exclaimed.

“You don’t understand yet,” Ixoreus said, smiling. “This is only the first level.”

“How many are there altogether?” Lanius asked.

“Five,” the priest answered. “The cathedral’s a good deal bigger under the ground than it is on top.” He made his halting way toward the stairway down to the next level. As he began to descend, he said, “One of these days I’ll fall, and these stairs will be the death of me.” Lanius started to shake his head and disagree, but Ixoreus smiled again. “There are plenty of worse ways to go. By now, I’ve seen most of them.”

The archives filled the two lowest levels. Lanius’ nostrils twitched at the half musty, half animal smell of old parchment. “No other odor like that in all the world,” he said.

His words seemed to reach Ixoreus in a way nothing else had. “Well, none except ink, anyhow,” he said. He and Lanius eyed each other in perfect mutual understanding.

Down on the bottommost level, only a few lamps burned. In that dim, flickering light, Lanius felt not only the weight of the centuries but also the weight of everything built and excavated above him. After a moment’s fear, he shrugged. If an earthquake made it all collapse, in less than the blink of an eye he would be a red smear thinner than any sheet of parchment. What point to worrying, then?

“Do you want a guide, or would you sooner poke through things on your own?” Ixoreus asked.

“By your leave, most holy sir—” Lanius began.

The priest laughed out loud. “You want me to go away and let you do as you would,” he said. “There may be more to you as a searcher than I thought. The run-of-the-mill sort want me to hold their hand. They may find what they’re looking for, but somehow they’re never looking for anything much. The other kind—well, they often come up empty. When they don’t, though…”

Lanius hardly heard him. The king looked now here, now there, wondering where to begin. He also wondered why he’d never come here before. True, the royal archives held enough documents to keep a man busy till the end of time. Even so, he should have started going through these records years before.

When he sat down, the stool creaked under him. He wondered if it dated back to the days before the Scepter of Mercy was lost. Then he wondered if it dated back to the days before the Banished One was cast out of the heavens. Anywhere else, he would have laughed at the idea. Down here in the near darkness, it didn’t seem so ridiculous anymore.

He almost called Ixoreus back to ask if the records held any order at all. In the end, he didn’t—he wanted to find out for himself. He soon discovered there wasn’t much. Documents from his father’s reign lay beside others dating back before the loss of the Scepter of Mercy. If he wanted something in particular, he was going to need luck and patience.

Luck came from the gods. Patience… Lanius shifted on that ancient stool. Patience he had. His lips twisted in a bitter smile. After all, it wasn’t as though he would be taking time away from anything vital to Avornis if he came down here and worked his way through the clerical archives one silverfish-nibbled piece of parchment at a time. Grus didn’t let him deal with anything vital anyhow.

If he hadn’t had practice reading old, old scripts in the royal archives, he would have been altogether at sea here. As things were, that troubled him no more than switching from the hand of one secretary to that of another would have. He felt like shouting when he came upon letters from half a dozen yellow-robed clerics bewailing the irruption of the Menteshe into the lands around their towns. No Avornan clerics had gone to those towns for more than four hundred years.

He felt like cursing when, in the same set of pigeonholes as those letters, he found others about sending consecrated wine to the Chernagor city-states that came from the reign of his great-grandfather. Maybe someone would find those interesting one day, but he didn’t.

He shoved them back into their pigeonholes. The next cache of letters also came from the days of his dynasty, which meant they were too recent to be interesting to him. He had to go through them one at a time anyway, because no one except Olor and Quelea could be sure ahead of time what might lie mixed in with them.

As it happened, nothing was mixed in with that batch—nothing Lanius cared about, anyhow. “But if I hadn’t looked through them, the parchment I need would be at the bottom of that crate,” he muttered. His words vanished without the slightest trace of echo, as though the parchments and the boxes and racks that held them swallowed up sound. They were surely hungry. They wouldn’t have had many sounds to swallow down here, not for year upon year upon year.

Lanius went through another crate and another rack. He kept waiting for Ixoreus to come nag him about going back up to the outer world again. But the green-robed priest left him alone.

That made him happy. Ixoreus understood, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Lanius had met only a handful of men who did.

And patience and persistence had their reward. Lanius was going through some minutes from a minor ecclesiastical council two hundred fifty years before when he came upon a parchment that didn’t belong with the rest. He saw as much at once; the parchment was yellow with age, the writing faded to a pale ghost of itself. He whistled softly. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything this old in the royal archives.

He brought three lamps together, to give him the best light he could get down here. Then he bent close to see what he could make out. Not just the script was archaic here; so was the language. He had to puzzle it out a phrase at a time. When he finished, he quietly put the parchment back where he’d found it. He said not a word about it to Ixoreus when they returned to the world of light and air. The priest wouldn’t have believed him. Lanius wondered if he believed himself, or wanted to.