The Bastard King

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A lea eyed the Menteshe prisoner with no great warmth. The Menteshe looked back at her out of narrow dark eyes filled with fear and suspicion. Grus listened to the rain drumming down on the roof of his residence in Cumanus. His men and the changing weather had finally persuaded Prince Evren his attacks were costing him more than they were worth.

“You speak Avornan?” Alca asked the prisoner.

“I speak some, yes,” the nomad answered.

“I chose one for you who did,” Grus said.

Alca nodded. She asked the Menteshe, “What is your name?”

“I am Kai-Qubad,” he said. If he’d trusted her, he would have given her his whole genealogy after that; the Menteshe were proud of their ancestors. Grus wondered why. To him, one lizard-eating savage was no different from another. Someone like Lanius, now, had reason to boast about the family tree. But a Menteshe? Kai-Qubad, though, fell silent after his own name, not wanting to give Alca more of a hold on him than he had to.

She didn’t press him for more. Instead, she said, “You need to know that I will know if you lie. Do you understand this? Do you believe it?”

“I understand. I believe. You are…” Kai-Qubad said something in his own tongue.

Grus didn’t speak the Menteshe language. He hadn’t thought the witch did, either, but she nodded. “All right, then. Tell me why Prince Evren went to war against Avornis.”

Kai-Qubad scratched by the side of his mouth. He had a wispy mustache any Avornan man would have been ashamed of, but few Menteshe could have grown a thicker one. After that brief hesitation, he said, “You are there to war on. You should ask, why did we not war on you for so long?”

“When you hadn’t warred on us for so long, why did Evren pick that time to start?” Grus asked.

“Am I Evren? Do I know why the prince does what he does?” Kai-Qubad returned.

Sharply, Alca said, “I know when you evade, too. You would do better not to evade. You would do much better, in fact.” She waited. Kai-Qubad nodded. So did she. “Answer the king’s question,” she told him.

“You are the enemy. You will always be the enemy. And our flocks need new grazing lands,” the nomad said. “What more reason do we need?”

“I don’t know,” Grus said. “Did the Banished One order Evren to send men over the Stura? Is that why you chose to fight when you did?”

“The Banished One. So you call him,” Kai-Qubad said scornfully. “To us, he is the Fallen Star. He will return to the heavens one day. He will return, and all debts will be paid. Oh, yes—they will be paid.”

That prospect—which, unsurprisingly, matched what the Banished One himself had claimed—frightened Grus more than he could say. Kai-Qubad looked forward to it with a gloating anticipation that frightened the king, too. Then Alca said, “You are evading again. Did he order Evren to go over the Stura?”

Kai-Qubad shrugged. He wasn’t a very big man, but his movements held a liquid grace. “Do I know the minds of princes?” he asked. A moment later, he let out a sharp yelp of pain.

“I told you not to evade,” Alca said. “Now answer.”

“No one told me anything,” he said, and then yelped again.

“These games get you nowhere,” the witch warned. “The more you play them, the sorrier you will be. Tell me what you know. Tell me everything you know, and stop wasting time.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” Kai-Qubad set his jaw, plainly expecting more pain. He hissed like a snake when it came. This time, it didn’t seem to go away at once, but hung on and on.

“That is your own lie tormenting you,” Alca said. “If you tell the truth, all will be well once more.”

“Ha!” the Menteshe said. But he stood there, huddled in his own misery, for no more than a few minutes before groaning, “Make it stop! I will speak.”

“If you speak the truth, it will stop,” the witch told him.

“Yes, then. Yes! Our lord and master started Evren against you.” Kai-Qubad sighed with relief. Evidently Alca had meant what she said.

“How do you know this?” Grus asked the nomad.

“How?” The fellow hesitated. By now, even that pause was plenty to cause him pain. He said, “Make it stop! I’ll tell.” He hurried on. “I know because my captain’s sister is wed to one of Prince Evren’s guards. That fellow said the prince had an envoy from the Fallen Star come to court not long before we went over the river against you. When an envoy from him you call the Banished One comes, what can a prince do but obey?”

“We don’t,” Grus said. “We never have. We never will.”

Kai-Qubad looked at him with an emotion he’d never dreamt he would see on any Menteshe’s face—pity. “One day, you will bow before the Fallen Star, as we have done. One day, you will know peace, as we do.” He meant it. He meant every word of it. That alarmed Grus more than anything.

It didn’t alarm Alca. It angered her. “How do you dare talk of peace when you were taken in war?”

“We have peace,” the Menteshe insisted. “We have perfect peace. We have yielded to the Fallen Star. He is our master. We accept this. We accept him. We need nothing else. We want nothing else. You are the ones who still struggle. When you accept him, you will have perfect peace, too. We bring him to you.”

“You bring plunder and rape and murder,” Grus said.

“And you fight among yourselves,” Alca added. “What do you have to say about that, if you have perfect peace?”

Kai-Qubad shrugged. “Fighting is our sport.” There, for once, Grus believed him completely. He went on, “And some of our enmities go back to ancient days, and do not die at once.” Grus believed that, too.

“Our old ways go back even further than yours,” Grus said. “Why shouldn’t we keep them, if they suit us?”

“Oh, that is very simple,” Kai-Qubad answered. “Your ways are wrong, but ours are right.” He spoke with complete conviction. He showed no sign of sudden pain, either. As far as he was concerned, he was telling the truth. The spell that would have punished him for lying stayed quiet.

“Do you want to hear anything more from him, Your Majesty?” Alca asked. Grus shook his head. The witch gestured to the guards. They took the Menteshe away. Alca sighed wearily. “What can we do with such people?” she said.

“Beat them,” Grus said. “That’s the only thing I can see. If we don’t beat them, one of these days they’ll beat us. And that would be very bad.”

He laughed at the understatement. He’d spent these past months either fighting the Menteshe or trying to understand the thralls who’d swarmed over the Stura into Avornis. He imagined the riders carrying destruction and murder all through the kingdom. He also imagined the wizards—or would they be priests, of a particular dark sort?—following in the nomads’ wake. He imagined farmers and townsfolk made into thralls. And he imagined the Banished One thriving on their adoration and looking out through their eyes and seeing a world full of slaves to him and thinking it was good. He imagined all that, and the laughter curdled in his throat.

“What are we going to do?” he whispered. “Oh, by the gods, what are we going to do?” He looked at Alca, hoping the witch would have an answer. But she spread her hands, as though to say she didn’t know, either. He felt worse than if he hadn’t looked her way at all.

Sosia eyed Lanius. “Something is wrong,” she said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answered, knowing what a liar he was.

His wife knew what a liar he was, too. “I don’t believe you, not even for a minute,” she said. “Something is wrong. When I first realized it, I thought you were having an affair.”

“I’m not,” Lanius said, which was the truth. There were plenty of pretty serving women in the palace. He enjoyed looking at them. He’d kept his hands to himself, though, ever since he’d married Sosia. He’d thought about taking this one or that one to bed, and he knew some of them had thought about the advantages of bedding him, but nothing of that sort had happened.

“I know you’re not,” Sosia said now. “I almost wish you were. Almost. Then I’d know what was wrong. This way…” She shook her head. “This way, I’m guessing, and that’s even worse.”

“I’m sorry,” Lanius said. “You couldn’t do anything about it anyway.” And that, he knew, was also nothing but the truth.

Sosia, who didn’t know what he knew, wasn’t convinced. “Queen Quelea’s tears, how can I believe that when I don’t even know what the trouble is?” she demanded.

The oath didn’t make things better. The oath, if anything, made them worse. “I’m sorry,” Lanius said, and then said no more.

“You shouldn’t be sorry. You should tell me whatever it is. If it’s not a woman—”

“It’s not.”

“I know it’s not. I already told you that.” Sosia sounded impatient. “But since it’s not, what’s the point to keeping it a secret, whatever it is?”

What’s the point to keeping it a secret? Lanius wondered. But he knew the answer to that. He hadn’t shown even Ixoreus what he’d found. Maybe the green-robed priest hadn’t seen that particular piece of parchment. If he had, he hadn’t seen what it meant.

Or maybe he had seen it and had understood it, but didn’t know Lanius had and didn’t want to discuss it with him. Maybe Ixoreus had endured for years the sinking feeling Lanius had known these past few weeks.

Fortunately, Lanius didn’t have long to brood over what he’d found. A servant came in and said, “Your Majesty, the envoys from the Chernagor city-states are here. We’ll have them in the throne room in a quarter of an hour.”

“Oh, very good!” Lanius said. The delay gave him long enough to put on his crown and a pearl-encrusted robe and take his place on the throne before the merchants who doubled as ambassadors entered the chamber.

The Chernagors were big, blocky men with proud noses, dark beards, and hair tied at their napes in neat buns. They wore embroidered shirts and kilts that stopped just above their knees. Lanius had read that the embroidery and the pattern of the kilt varied from one city-state to another. He was willing to believe it, but hadn’t seen enough Chernagors to tell one town’s distinguishing marks from another’s. They’re probably in the archives, he thought, and wondered where they might lurk.

“Greetings, Your Majesty,” a man, evidently their leader, said. His beard showed more gray than black; he wore a massy golden ring on his right finger and even massier gold hoops in his ears. Some Therving men wore earrings, too; Lanius didn’t know who’d gotten the custom from whom.

He would have to ask another time, if another time ever came. For now, the tough, sticky web of ceremony held him. “Greetings to you, sir,” he replied. “And you are… ?”

“I am called Lyashko, Your Majesty.” Lyashko’s Avornan was fluent, even more so than Yaropolk’s had been. “I bring you not only my greetings but also those of my overlord, Prince Bolush of Durdevatz, and also the greetings of all the other princes of the Chernagors.”

“I am pleased to accept Prince Bolush’s greetings along with your own,” Lanius said. The rest of the Chernagor princes undoubtedly had no idea Lyashko existed. Chernagors always tossed in that last bit like cooks adding a sprig of parsley to garnish a supper plate—it had no purpose but decoration.

“Very good. Very good.” Lyashko smiled and nodded. The hoops in his ears sparkled as they caught the torchlight.

“I am pleased to give you and your comrades gifts,” Lanius said. Out came servants with sacks of coins calculated to the farthing. The gifts Avornis gave to Chernagors rigidly followed the recipients’ ranks, and the formulas for presenting them never changed.

Hefting his own sack—larger and heavier than any of the rest—Lyashko nodded again. “And I am pleased to have gifts for you as well, Your Majesty.”

Lanius leaned forward in anticipation. So did his courtiers. Gifts from Chernagors to Kings of Avornis could be anything at all. That custom was adhered to just as rigidly.

Lyashko spoke to his men in their own tongue. To Avornan ears, the Chernagor language sounded like a man choking to death. One of the dark-haired men came forward and set a block of fine red wood at the base of Lanius’ throne. “It will carve nicely,” Lyashko said, returning to Avornan, “and it has a fine odor.”

Sure enough, a spicy scent, stronger and sweeter than that of cedar, rose from the block. “Thank you,” Lanius said. “Where does this wood come from?”

“An island far out in the Northern Sea,” Lyashko answered. His people seldom gave away secrets they didn’t have to. Lyashko went back to the Chernagor speech. Another man set a necklace of black pearls on the wood. “For Her Majesty, the Queen.”

“In Her Majesty’s name, I thank you,” Lanius said. Sosia wasn’t there to meet the Chernagors; that would have gone flat against custom. Seeing the soft shimmer of light from the pearls, he felt something more was called for. “They’re very beautiful,” he told Lyashko. “This is a generous gift.”

“Why else are we here, but to make you happy?” Lyashko said. The sack of coins he’d just gotten suggested one other reason he might have come to the city of Avornis. Like any other folk, the Chernagors did what was advantageous to them first and worried about other things later. And, like any other folk, they preferred bragging about how generous they were to admitting any such thing.

“Black pearls are rare,” Lanius said. Lyashko’s big head bobbed up and down in agreement. He spoke in his own language again. A moment later, all the Chernagors were nodding. King Lanius went on, “Where did you find so many?”

“There is, in the Northern Sea, an island where the natives dive deep into the water to take the shellfish the pearls come from,” Lyashko replied. “It is hard, dangerous work, and only a very few of the shells have any pearls at all, let alone black ones.”

“Whereabouts in the Northern Sea is this island?” Lanius asked.

Lyashko sent him a reproachful look. He wasn’t supposed to ask specific questions like that; he was only supposed to marvel. At last, the envoy from Durdevatz answered, “That is not easy to say, Your Majesty, for it lies far from any other land.”

King Lanius almost asked the Chernagor what the name of the island was. He started to, but then held back. What point to the question? Lyashko wouldn’t give him a straight answer, and he didn’t want more evasions. Better just to let it go.

When he didn’t ask, Lyashko’s broad shoulders shook with a sigh of relief. The envoy spoke in his own language once more. A couple of other Chernagors lugged up a large crate or box covered with a sheet of shining blue silk. Just as Lyashko was about to go into his speech, a series of harsh, shrill screeches came from inside the crate. The Chernagor gave a rather sickly grin. “Knowing your fondness for strange beasts,” he said, “we have brought you these, which paid us back by spoiling the surprise.”

He brusquely swept aside the silk sheet. Inside the cage—for such it was—was a pair of monkeys. They were mostly black, with white on their bellies, white eyebrows, and great sweeping white mustaches that gave them the look of somber old men. To Lanius’ surprise, they were smaller than his moncats. They stared at him from round black eyes.

As he stared back, he wondered if the pearls Lyashko had brought for Sosia would be enough to reconcile her to the monkeys. He dared hope, anyhow. “Thank you very much,” he said. “It’s been a long time since anyone here in the city of Avornis has seen animals like these.”

“There’s a reason for that, too, Your Majesty,” Lyashko said. “They’re delicate creatures. You have to keep ’em warm all through the winter. If you don’t, they’ll get a flux of the lungs and die.”

“I see,” Lanius said. “Tell me everything else I need to know about them, please. Are they a male and a female?”

“They are, but I don’t know how much good it’ll do you,” the Chernagor replied. “I’ve never heard of ’em breeding while they’re caged.”

“We’ll see,” Lanius said, anticipating a new challenge. “What do they eat? That’s something else I’d better know.”

“In the trees, they eat leaves and fruit and eggs and bugs and anything little they can catch,” Lyashko said. “We’ve been feeding them what we eat, and they’ve done all right with that. They really like cabbage—they think it’s the best stuff in the world.”

“Cabbage,” Lanius repeated. “I’ll remember that.” He turned formal. “I thank you again, Lyashko, and again I thank Prince Bolush through you.”

“My pleasure, Your Majesty,” Lyashko said. “And since you noised it about that you were after monkeys…” He got a look at Lanius’ face. “Oh, wasn’t I supposed to say that out loud? Sorry. Real sorry.”

Lanius sighed. Sosia was going to have a thing or two to say to him. Maybe more than a thing or two.

Alca drummed her fingers on the tabletop in Grus’ quarters in Cumanus. “Your Majesty, I don’t know what more we can learn about thralls here that we can’t find out back in the city of Avornis.”

Grus sighed. She was right, and he knew it. He sighed again all the same. “I have my reasons for not wanting to go back right away.”

“I know you do,” the witch answered. “But have those reasons got anything to do with the thralls, or even with the Menteshe?”

“No,” Grus admitted. Had he said anything else, she would have known he was lying. Prince Evren’s riders had gone back to the south side of the Stura, those who’d escaped Avornan soldiers and river galleys. Grus thought it would take more than even the Banished One’s command to get them to move on Avornis again anytime soon. As for the thralls, they’d stopped crossing the river in such large numbers as soon as the war with Evren’s men broke out. To put it mildly, Grus doubted that was a coincidence.

Alca said, “Well, then. What’s keeping us here, in that case?”

He looked at her. “You know as well as I do.”

She reached for the goblet of wine in front of her. After she sipped from it, her tongue flicked out like a cat’s to get rid of a deep red drop at a corner of her mouth. Grus watched, fascinated. Alca did her best not to notice him watching. She said, “This has to end. When we go home, we have to be two people who spent a while working together, and nothing more. You see that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Grus answered, most reluctantly. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for Estrilda. It wasn’t even that he didn’t look forward to taking her to bed again. He supposed Alca was thinking like thoughts about her husband. Even so… “I don’t want it to end.”

“I know that. But it has to, don’t you see?” Alca said. “The longer it goes on, the more trouble it will cause when they find out about it back at the capital.”

“Who says anyone will find out?” Grus asked.

The look she gave him was not that of a witch foretelling the future. It was the look of a woman who knew how the world worked, and all the more wounding because of that. “Most of the time, ordinary people can’t keep their love affairs secret,” she said. “You’re the King of Avornis. What do you think the odds are?”

He wished she’d put it some other way. “Well, no one will find out from me,” he said.

“Or from me,” Alca answered. “But what has that got to do with anything? People will gossip—about the doings of a king especially.”

“We have been working together,” Grus said. “Everyone knows that. We were friends before we came down to Cumanus. Everyone knows that, too. It will be all right. Nobody will think so much of our seeing a lot of each other.” He’d seen as much of her as there was to see. He thought of the little mole she had on the inside of one thigh, and of…

But she gave him that worried look again. “Either it will be all right, or it will be all the worse on account of that. I know which way I’d bet. Even so, we should go back to the capital. Otherwise—” She broke off.

“Otherwise what?” Grus asked when she didn’t finish the thought.

He didn’t think she was going to answer, but she finally did. In a very low voice, she said, “Otherwise I don’t think I’ll want to go back at all, and we have to. You know we do.”

Grus thought about letting the love affair run away with him, about casting Estrilda aside and putting Alca in her place, or about taking Alca as a second wife after she left her husband. He thought about it for perhaps half a minute, and then shook his head.

Alca was watching him. Still very quietly, she said, “You see, Your Majesty.”

He wished she hadn’t used his title then. It only added to the weight he had to carry. No doubt she’d done it with just that in mind. He sighed. He was the king, but even a king had trouble getting away with some things. “We’ll go back to the city of Avornis,” he said. “Take as many thralls as you think you’ll need. Do everything you can to check them first, though. We don’t want to take trouble back with us.”

“We will be taking trouble back with us,” Alca said. “But you’re right, of course. We don’t want to take that kind of trouble back with us, too.”

With another sigh, Grus said, “I’ll talk to the river-galley captains and set things moving.” Alca smiled happily. That stung.

When Grus did talk to the galley captains, they seemed surprised he was leaving Cumanus. That stung, too. They couldn’t have been surprised because of the state of the river—the Stura ran higher in fall than it did in summertime. They couldn’t have expected he would find out more about the thralls here anytime soon—Alca hadn’t come up with anything new for quite some time. And they probably didn’t think the Menteshe would pick this time of year to invade Avornis again.

In that case, they had to be surprised because he was cutting short his affair with Alca. They couldn’t be surprised if they didn’t know about it. And if they knew about it, they were all too likely to talk once they got back to the city of Avornis.

He didn’t tell Alca about that. She might not say, “I told you so,” but she would surely think it.

Guarded and urged along by soldiers, half a dozen thralls boarded one of the river galleys bound for the capital. Ordinary peasants would have stared and exclaimed. The thralls took the ship as much in stride as they did everything else. It was only one more incomprehensible thing among the swarm of incomprehensibilities that made up their lives.

Alca, on the other hand, boarded the galley on which she and Grus would travel with every sign of relief. “Wonderful to be going home at last, isn’t it?” she said brightly.

“Wonderful,” Grus echoed. What a liar I am, he thought.

No one required Lanius to come to the piers to greet Grus on his return from the south. Maybe Grus didn’t think he’d won enough of a victory to hold a celebration. Maybe it had just slipped his mind to send ahead to the city, and order one. Either way, it didn’t bother Lanius. He had his children. He had the archives. He had the moncats. Now he had the monkeys with the ridiculous mustaches, too.

He was with the monkeys when Grus came in. They required a room of their own, not only because they needed to be kept warm whereas the moncats didn’t but also because the moncats, larger and fiercer, would have made a meal out of them if they’d lived together.

When the door opened behind Lanius, he turned in some annoyance. By now, the servants knew they weren’t supposed to bother him when he was with the animals. Grus, however, was a different story. He did as he pleased. He eyed the monkeys with more than a little curiosity. They stared back at him from their round black eyes with at least as much curiosity. One of them fiddled with its droopy mustache, just as a man might have done.

“Quite a menagerie you’re getting,” Grus remarked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a monkey before.”

“I hadn’t, either. The Chernagors brought them to me,” Lanius answered. More slowly than he should have, he added, “Welcome home.”

“Thanks, Your Majesty.” Grus’ voice was dry. He eyed the monkeys again. “The Chernagors are shrewd. Say what you want about ’em, they’re nobody’s fools. They must have figured out that you like funny beasts.”

“Well… yes.” Lanius didn’t care to admit that he’d given the Chernagors a few hints about what he liked. If he told Grus, it would get back to Sosia. It probably would anyway, sooner or later, because of what Lyashko had said in the throne room. But when it got back to his wife, he knew he would hear about it.

“If you want to see strange creatures, I can show you some I brought back from the south,” Grus said.

“Really? What sort of creatures?” Lanius asked eagerly. He knew there were some animals and birds that dwelt in the south but never came up to the capital. He knew which of those he would most like to see, too. Had Grus figured out that the road to his affection ran through his curiosity? Maybe he had. He was nobody’s fool, either.

But what he said now—“Thralls”—rocked Lanius back on his heels. Grus went on, “We brought some of them back so we can go on studying them here.”

“I see,” Lanius said. “But isn’t that dangerous?”

“Probably,” the older man answered. “We decided not bringing ’em back would be even more dangerous, though. I hope we were right.” He didn’t look altogether contented with the choice he’d made.

For his part, Lanius didn’t suppose he could quarrel with that choice till he knew more; whether it proved right or wrong, Grus had obviously made it with care. Lanius said, “Yes, I would like to see the thralls before long.”

“Good.” Grus nodded in unreserved approval. Lanius cherished that, for he seldom got it. Thoughtfully, Grus went on, “You need to have a notion of just what kind of foe Avornis is up against there.”

“Oh.” That quite took the urge off Lanius’ desire to learn more about thralls. His own voice grim, he said, “As a matter of fact, Your Majesty, so do you.”

Grus’ eyes widened. Lanius rarely used his title. Then one of the monkeys pulled the other’s tail. The victim, screeching, scrambled up the lattice of sticks and boards Lanius had had the carpenters run up to simulate a jungle. Screeching in a different key, the tail-puller pursued. Right over Grus’ head, one of them—Lanius didn’t see which—did something that monkeys do. People also do those things, but after about the age of two they’re more careful about where.

A cloudburst of curses burst from Grus. Then, to Lanius’ astonishment, he started to laugh. Pointing an accusing finger at Lanius, he said, “I think you’ve trained them to do that.”

“I have not,” Lanius said. “They’ve gotten me, too. They aren’t like moncats—they go where they please. Can I get you a towel?”

“I could use one,” his father-in-law answered. “I could use a bath, too, as a matter of fact. And if they can’t get the stink out of this robe, the tailors are going to have some very unkind things to say about me—and about your precious pets.”

“Here’s the towel,” Lanius said. “I am sorry.”

“So am I.” Grus scrubbed vigorously at his hair. “Maybe I should have been wearing the crown.” After a moment, he shook his head. “No, then more of it would have dripped down onto my face.” He threw the towel on the floor. “Thank you kindly, Your Majesty. That helped—some. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going off to clean up.” He did make sure he latched the door behind him.

And so, Lanius’ news didn’t get told just then. In fact, he forgot all about it for a while, the first time he’d been able to do that since discovering it. He wagged a finger at the monkeys. “That was naughty,” he said. “That was very naughty.”

Then, as Grus had before, he started to laugh. His reasons, though, were rather different. He found himself wishing he were much, much smaller. Then he too could have scrambled up into that lattice. He too could have poised himself over the other king’s head. And he too could have done just what that little mustachioed monkey had done.

King Grus walked through the royal palace with a curious mix of pleasure and apprehension. He’d never dreamt, when he first boarded a river galley all those years ago, that he would end up here. And he had a firm grip on the throne. Lanius was in no position to challenge him, not really. After what he’d done to the luckless Pandion, none of the nobles seemed inclined to try to take the crown away. Knowing that would have been plenty to please almost any man.

As for the apprehension… Like a lot of husbands, Grus feared his wife would find out he hadn’t been faithful. Like a good many of those husbands, he feared his wife would find out he hadn’t been faithful again. He couldn’t very well deny he’d slipped once, not when the evidence of his slip was at the moment Arch-Hallow of Avornis. But the difference between once and twice was almost bigger than the difference between never and once. Once could—well, nearly could—be an accident, an aberration. Twice? No, not twice.

Maybe fewer people really knew than Alca thought. Maybe the ones who did know would keep their mouths shut. He was the King of Avornis, after all. If he found out who spread gossip about him, he could make that person sorry for the rest of his days.

If. The trouble with gossip—so he thought, being gossiped about rather than gossiping—was that it was too easy and spread too fast. This one told that one, who told the other one, who told the next one, who… Before long, who could say where the chain started?

He sometimes thought he would welcome an invasion from the Thervings. That would let him forget his own troubles and start thinking of Avornis‘. But Lanius had known what he was talking about. King Berto, unlike Dagipert, was more interested in praying than fighting. Grus was sure that made Olor and Quelea and the other gods very happy. Most of the time, it would have made him happy, too. Now? That he wondered was a measure of how worried he was.

Not even playing with his grandchildren let him ease his mind. As he tried to keep Pitta from tearing out his beard by handfuls, he wondered whether Lanius was amusing himself outside of Sosia’s bed. If he is, I’ll… He stopped, feeling foolish. I’ll what? Considering what he’d been up to, what could he say to his son-in-law? I can say whatever I want, by the gods, as long as I don’t get caught myself.

Later, he suspected that that blasphemous thought had had something to do with what happened. But, no matter how little he could prove, he knew what he thought.

Once back in the city of Avornis, he didn’t watch Alca working with the thralls. That, he thought, would have been asking for trouble. If he spent a lot of time with the witch, one of them or the other might do something or say something to give them away. He could see that plainly, and so he stayed away.

Sometimes, though, whatever you did was wrong. Estrilda said, “Why aren’t you paying more attention to those poor people you brought back from the south? Didn’t you go down there to try to do more for them?”

Grus was drinking a mug of wine when his wife asked the question. He didn’t choke, though he came close. Once he was breathing normally again, he said, “I’ve been busy. I’ve had a lot to catch up on since I got back.”

“Even so,” Estrilda said. “The more the witch finds out, the better off we’ll be. And the better off the thralls will be, too. You should keep an eye on what Alca’s doing here.”

He couldn’t even tell her no. If he hadn’t taken Alca to bed, he would have been hovering around her, trying to learn as much as he could about what she was up to and what the chances were. If he hung back now, Estrilda would start wondering why. He couldn’t have that. Finishing the wine at a gulp, he spoke as casually as he could. “Well, maybe I will.”

“I hope you do,” Estrilda said. “The thralls are the key to everything, I think.”

That, Grus knew, was liable to be true in ways Estrilda hadn’t expected. Still, he went off to see Alca with more than a little eagerness.

He found her sooner than he’d thought he would, not in the suite of rooms where she worked with—worked on—the thralls, but wandering through the hallways. He smiled and hurried toward her, but then stopped short. Her face was almost as blank as that of a thrall. She looked as though she’d been through some dreadful disaster and had no idea how she’d come out alive.

“Sweet Quelea’s mercy!” Grus exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”

Her expression didn’t change. Her voice was just as empty as she answered, “He knows.”

“Who knows?” Grus asked automatically, though any idiot should have been able to figure that out for himself. Maybe the question was one to which he didn’t really want an answer.

Want it or not, he got it. “My husband,” Alca said, spelling out the obvious. “He… is not pleased with me.” By the way she said that, it was as much an understatement as she could make of it.

“How did he find out?” Grus asked.

The witch shrugged. “He did, that’s all. He knew enough that I couldn’t make it out to be a lie—especially when it was no lie.” She paused, then added, “He is going to cast me aside. I don’t suppose I can blame him.” She stared down at the mosaic work floor.

Grus knew she loved—or had loved—her husband. He asked, “Do you want me to order him to keep you?”

Alca didn’t look up. She simply shook her head. “What good would it do, Your Majesty? The thing is broken. There is no magic to put it back together. I wish there were.” She turned away. “I can’t even blame him. He has good reason for doing what he does.”

“I’ll take care of you.” Grus set a hand on her shoulder.

She twisted away from him. “We’ve already taken care of things well enough, wouldn’t you say?”

He had no answer for that. Even so, he promised, “You’ll not want.”

“For money, you mean?” Alca asked, and Grus nodded. Her laugh was bitter as wormwood. “And for love, Your Majesty? Can Petrosus allocate that from the treasury, too?” She held up a hand. “Never mind. It’s not your fault alone—it’s not as though you forced me. But that doesn’t make things easier right now. If you’ll excuse me…” She walked down the corridor. Grus wanted to follow her, but he knew that would only make matters worse, if they could be any worse.