Fortunately, however, it did not look as though it would come to fighting. Prince Lazutin, the lord of Hisardzik, not only spoke to Grus from the wall of his city, he came forth from a postern gate to meet the King of Avornis. Lazutin was in his midthirties, slim by Chernagor standards, with a sharp nose and clever, foxy features. He denied speaking Avornan, and brought along an interpreter. Grus suspected he knew more than he let on, for he listened with alert attention whenever any Avornan spoke around him.
Grus did his best to sound severe, saying, “You fell into bad company, Your Highness, when you chose Vasilko’s side.”
Lazutin spoke volubly in the Chernagor tongue after that was translated for him. The interpreter, a pudgy man named Sverki, said, “He says, Your Majesty, it was one of those things. It was political. It was not personal.”
“Men who get killed die just as dead either way,” Grus said.
“You have shown you are stronger than Vasilko,” Lazutin said. Sverki did such a good job of echoing his master’s inflections, Grus soon forgot he was there. Through him, the Prince of Hisardzik went on, “You have shown the gods in the heavens are stronger than the Banished One. This also is worth knowing.”
Grus had an Avornan who understood the Chernagor speech listening to the conversation to make sure Sverki did not twist what Lazutin said or what Grus himself said to Lazutin. The king glanced over to him now. The Avornan nodded, which meant Lazutin really had spoken of the Banished One, and not of the Fallen Star. Grus took that for a good sign.
He said, “You should have known that anyhow, Your Highness.”
Prince Lazutin shrugged delicately. “Some things are more readily accepted with proof. A man may say this or that, but what he says and what is are often not the same. Or have you found otherwise?” He arched an eyebrow, as though daring Grus to tell him he had.
And Grus couldn’t, and knew it. “We are not dealing with men here,” he said. “We are dealing with those who are more than men.”
“The same also applies,” Lazutin answered. “It applies even more, I would say, for those who are more than men make claims that are more than claims, if you take my meaning. The only way to be sure who is believable is to see who prevails when one is measured against another.”
Here’s a cool customer, Grus thought. “And now you have seen?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. Now I have seen.” Even speaking a language Grus didn’t understand, Prince Lazutin fairly radiated sincerity.
In light of the games Lazutin had played, that made Grus less inclined to trust him, not more. “Since you’ve seen, what do you propose to do about it?” the king said.
“Ah… do about it?” If doing anything about it had occurred to the Prince of Hisardzik, he concealed it very well.
But Grus nodded. “Yes, do about it. Ships from Hisardzik raided the coast of Avornis. Hisardzik sided with Vasilko and against me. Do you think you can get away with that and not pay a price?”
By the look on Lazutin’s face, he’d thought exactly that. He didn’t much take to the idea of discovering he might be mistaken, either. “If you think you can take my city as you took Nishevatz, Your Majesty, you had better think again.”
“Not this late in the year, certainly, Your Highness,” Grus replied in silky tones, and Lazutin looked smug. But then Grus went on, “But if I turned my men loose and did a proper job of ravaging your fields, you would have a lean time of it this winter.”
By the way Prince Lazutin bared his teeth, that had hit home. “You might tempt me to go back to the Banished One, you know,” he observed.
Yes, he was a cool customer. “I’ll take the chance,” Grus said, “for you’ve seen the true gods are stronger. You would do better to show you are sorry because you made a mistake before than you would to go back to it.”
“Would I?” Lazutin said bleakly. Grus nodded. The Prince of Hisardzik scowled at him. “How sorry would you expect me to show I am?”
“Fifty thousand pieces of silver, or the equivalent weight,” Grus answered, “and another fifty thousand a year for the next ten years.”
Lazutin turned purple. He said several things in the Chernagor language that Sverki didn’t translate. The Avornan who spoke the northern tongue stirred, but Grus declined to look his way. Finally, through Sverki, Lazutin sputtered, “This is an outrage! A robbery!”
“I’d sooner think of it as paying for the damage your pirates did, with interest to remind you those games can be expensive,” Grus said.
Lazutin promptly proved he was a prince of merchants and a merchant prince—he started haggling with Grus over how much he would have to pay and for how long. Grus let him dicker the settlement down to a first payment of forty thousand plus thirty-five thousand a year for eight years. He was willing not to take all of Lazutin’s pride. This way, the prince could go back to his people and tell them he’d gotten something from the hard-hearted King of Avornis.
Grus did say, “We’ll leave your lands as soon as we receive the first payment.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Lazutin said. After a moment, he chuckled ruefully. “You’re wasted on the Avornans, Your Majesty. Do you know that? You should have been born a Chernagor.”
“A pleasant compliment,” said Grus, who supposed Lazutin had meant it that way. “I am what I am, though.” And what I am right now is the fellow holding the whip hand.
“So you are,” Lazutin said sourly. “What you are now is a nuisance to Hisardsik.”
“What you were before was a nuisance to Avornis,” Grus replied. “Do you think the one has nothing to do with the other?”
Prince Lazutin plainly thought just that. Why shouldn’t he have been able to do as he pleased without worrying about consequences? What pirate ever needed to have such worries? After he sailed away, what could the folk whose coasts he had raided do? Here, it turned out the Avornans could do more than he had dreamed.
“The sooner we have the payment, the sooner we’ll leave your land,” Grus said pointedly, “and the sooner you can start the harvest.”
Fury filled Lazutin’s face. But it was impotent fury, for his warriors were shut up inside Hisardzik. They could stand siege, yes, but they could not break out. If Grus felt like burning the countryside instead of trying to break into the city, what could they do about it? Nothing, as their prince knew.
“You’ll have it,” Lazutin said. Then he turned his back and stalked off to Hisardzik. Sverki the interpreter stalked after him, mimicking his walk as expertly as he had conveyed his tone.
“He doesn’t love you. He’s not going to, either,” Hirundo said.
“I don’t care if he loves me or not,” Grus said. “I want him to take me seriously. By Olor’s beard, he’ll do that from now on.”
“Oh, darling!” The general sounded like a breathless young girl. “Tell me you—you take me seriously!”
Grus couldn’t take him seriously. Laughing, he made as though to throw something at him. Hirundo ducked. “Miserable troublemaker,” Grus said. By the way Hirundo bowed, it might have been highest praise.
But Grus stopped laughing when he read the letter from King Lanius that had caught up with his army on the march between Nishevatz and Hisardzik. Lanius sounded as dispassionate as any man could about what had happened between Ortalis and Bubulcus. However dispassionate he sounded, that made the servant no less dead. The penalty Lanius had imposed on Ortalis struck Grus as adequate, but only barely.
After rereading Lanius’ letter several times, Grus sighed. Yes, Ortalis had been provoked. But striking a man in a fit of fury and killing one were far different things. Ortalis had always had a temper. Every so often, it got away from him. This time, he’d done something irrevocable.
What am I going to do with him? Grus wondered. For a long time, he’d thought Ortalis would outgrow his vicious streak, and ignored it. That hadn’t worked. Then he’d tried to punish his son harshly enough to drive it out of him, and that hadn’t worked, either. What was left? T
he only thing he could see was accepting that Ortalis was as he was and trying to minimize the damage he did.
“A fine thing for my son,” Grus muttered.
When Grus took the Avornan throne, he had assumed Ortalis would succeed him on it, with Lanius remaining in the background to give the new rulers a whiff of respectability. What else was a legitimate son for? But he’d begun to wonder some time before. His son-in-law seemed more capable than he had expected, and Ortalis… Ortalis kept doing things where damage needed minimizing.
He read Lanius’ letter one more time. The king from the ancient dynasty really had done as much as he could. If his account was to be believed, the servants despised Ortalis now only a little more than they had before. Considering what might have been, that amounted to a triumph of sorts. Grus hadn’t imagined he could feel a certain debt toward his son-in-law, but he did.
Prince Lazutin made the payment of forty thousand pieces of silver the day after he agreed to it with Grus. The prince did not accompany the men bringing out the sacks of silver coins. The interpreter, Sverki, did. “Tell His Highness I thank him for this,” Grus said (after he’d had a few of the sacks opened to make sure they really did hold silver and not, say, scrap iron).
“You are most welcome, I am sure,” Sverki said, sounding and acting like Lazutin even when the Prince of Hisardzik wasn’t there.
“I look forward to receiving the rest of the payments, too,” Grus said.
“I am sure you do,” Sverki replied. Something in his tone made Grus look up sharply. He sounded and acted a little too much like Lazutin, perhaps. If the interpreter here was any guide to what the prince felt, Grus got the idea he would be wise not to hold his breath waiting for future payments to come down to the city of Avornis.
What could he do about that? He said, “If the payments do not come, Hisardzik will not trade with Avornis, and we may call on you up here again. Make sure your principal understands that.”
Sverki looked as mutinous as Lazutin would have, too. “I will,” he said sulkily. Grus hid a smile. He’d gotten his message across.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Lanius stared at Otus’ guardsman. “You’re joking,” he said. “By the gods, Your Majesty, I’m not,” the soldier replied. “He’s sweet on Calypte. Can’t argue with his taste, either. Nice-looking girl.”
“Yes.” Lanius had noticed her once or twice himself. That the thrall’s eye—the ex-thrall’s eye—might fall on her had never crossed his mind. He said, “But Otus has a woman down south of the Stura.”
The guardsman shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that. But even if he does, it wouldn’t be the first time a fellow far from home finds himself a new friend.”
“True.” Lanius had found himself a few new friends without going far from home. He asked, “Does Calypte realize this? If she does, what does she think?”
“She thinks he’s sweet.” By the way the guard said the word, he might have been giving an exact quote. “Most of the serving girls in the palace think Otus is sweet, I suppose on account of he looks but doesn’t touch very much.”
“Is that what it is?” Lanius said.
“Part of it, anyway, I expect,” the guard answered. “Me, I feel ’em when I feel like it. Sometimes they hit me, sometimes they enjoy it. You roll the dice and you see what happens.”
“Do you?” Lanius murmured. He’d never been that cavalier. He could have been. How many women would haul off and hit the King of Avornis? He shrugged. Most of the time, he hadn’t tried to find out. “How serious is Otus?” he asked now. “Is he like a mooncalf youth? Does he just want to go to bed with her? Or is he after something more? If he is, could she be?”
With a laugh, the guard said, “By the gods, Your Majesty, you sure ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“Why, of course,” Lanius answered in some surprise. “How would I find out if I didn’t?” That was another question. Before Otus’ guard could realize as much, the king said, “Take me to him. I’ll see what he has to say.”
“Come along with me, then, Your Majesty,” the guard said.
When Lanius walked into Otus’ little room, the ex-thrall bowed low. “Hello, Your Majesty,” he said. “How are you today?” He was scrupulously polite. Only that lingering old-fashioned southern accent spoke of his origins. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Lanius replied. “I came by because I wondered how you were getting along.”
“Me? Well enough.” Otus laughed. “I’ve got plenty to eat. No one has given me much work to do. I even get to be clean. I remember what things were like on the other side of the river. Most ways, I’m as happy as a cow in clover.”
“Most ways?” There was the opening Lanius had been looking for. “How aren’t you happy? How can we make you happy?”
“Well, there is a girl here I’ve set my eye on.” Otus was very direct. Maybe that sprang from his years as a thrall, when he couldn’t have hidden anything and didn’t have anything worth hiding. Or maybe it was simply part of his nature. Lanius didn’t care to guess. Otus went on, “I don’t know if she wants anything to do with me.” He sighed. “If I had my own woman here—if she was cured, I mean—I wouldn’t look twice at anybody else, but I’m lonesome.”
“I understand,” Lanius said. “Have you tried finding out what this girl thinks of you?”
“Oh, yes.” The ex-thrall nodded. “But it’s hard to tell, if you know what I mean. She doesn’t come right out and say what she wants. She makes me guess.” He sent Lanius a wide-eyed, guileless smile. “Is this what it’s like when everybody is awake inside all the time?”
“It can be,” Lanius said. “Are things more complicated than you’re used to?”
“Complicated! That’s the word!” Otus nodded again, more emphatically this rime. “I should say so! What can I do?”
“Keep trying to find out. That’s about all I can tell you,” Lanius answered. “No, one thing more—I hope you have good luck.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Suddenly, Otus looked sly. “Can I tell her you hope I have good luck? If she hears that, maybe it will help me have the luck I want to have.”
Lanius said, “You can if you want to. I hope it does.” When he left the ex-thrall’s chamber, he told the guards, “If he needs privacy, give him enough. Make sure he can’t go wandering through the palace without being watched—that, yes. But you don’t need to stay in the same room with him.”
The guards smiled and nodded. One of them said, “Curse me if I’d want company then—except the girl, of course.”
“Yes. Except the girl. That’s what I meant,” the king said.
“Are you sure it’s safe, Your Majesty?” a guardsman asked.
“No, I’m not sure,” Lanius answered. “But I think so. Pterocles likely did cure him of being a thrall. And if the wizard didn’t, I expect the lot of you will be able to keep Otus from doing too much harm.”
The soldiers nodded. By their confidence, they expected the same thing. The man who’d first spoken with the king grinned and said, “There’s one thing more. We know Otus wants to be alone with Calypte, not if she wants to be alone with him.”
“True enough. We don’t,” Lanius said. “But I’ll tell you this much— I think Otus has earned the chance to find out. Don’t you?” The guardsmen looked at one another as they considered. Then, in better unison than they’d shown a moment earlier, they nodded once more.
King Grus had overthrown Prince Vasilko and reverence for the Banished One in Nishevatz. He’d persuaded Prince Lazutin in Hisardzik that backing the Banished One and joining in attacks against Avornis wasn’t the smartest thing Lazutin could have done—persuaded him expensively, a way a man who was a merchant when he couldn’t get away with piracy would remember. Now Grus led the Avornan army east toward Jobuka, which had also joined in raids along the Avornan coast. He wanted all the Chernagors to learn they could not hairy their southern neighbor with impunity.
> As the army moved east, Grus kept a wary eye on the weather and on the crops ripening in the fields. When the harvest was done, the army wouldn’t be able to live off the land anymore and he would have to go home, and he wanted to remind not only Jobuka but also Hrvace, which lay farther east still, of his existence.
Ravno, which ruled the land between Hisardzik and Jobuka, was unfriendly to both of them, and had not sent ships to join the raiders who’d ravaged the eastern coast of Avornis. Grus ordered his men not to plunder the countryside as they traveled through Ravno’s territory. In gratitude, Prince Osen, who ruled the city-state, sent supply wagons to the Avornan army. Along with the wagons still coming up from Avornis itself, they kept Grus’ men well supplied with grain.
“I know what we ought to do,” Hirundo said as the army encamped one evening. The setting sun streaked his gilded helmet and mailshirt with blood. “We ought to set up as bakers.”
“As bakers?” Grus echoed, eyeing the grizzled streaks in the general’s beard. They’d both been young officers when they first met, Hirundo the younger. Hirundo was still younger than Grus, of course, but neither of them was a young man anymore. Where did all the years go? Grus wondered. Wherever they were, he wouldn’t get them back.
Hirundo, meanwhile, bubbled with enthusiasm. “Yes, bakers, by Olor’s beard. We’ve got all this wheat. We can bake bread and sell it cheaper than anybody in the Chernagor city-states. We’ll outdicker all the merchants, leave ’em gnashing their teeth, and go home rich.” He beamed at Grus.
Grus smiled back. You couldn’t help smiling when Hirundo beamed. “Do you know what?” Grus said. Still beaming, Hirundo shook his head. “You’re out of your mind,” Grus told him.
With a bow, the general said, “Why, thank you very much, Your Majesty.” Grus threw his hands in the air. Some days, you were going to lose if you argued with Hirundo.
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