The Bastard King

by Harry Turtledove

  “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.