The Bastard King tsom-1

by Dan Chernenko

  “Er—yes.” Lanius wasn’t sure what that meant. But, since he had no other good hopes, no other choice, he plunged ahead. “I don’t want to be the last part of the dynasty.”

  “What?” Lepturus had black, bushy eyebrows that reminded Lanius of caterpillars. They wiggled like caterpillars now. “What are you saying, boy?” That was no way to address the King of Avornis, but Lanius didn’t mind. He told Lepturus what he meant. Lepturus’ eyebrows did some more wiggling. “You figured this out all by your lonesome?”

  “Well, with some help from my tutor,” Lanius answered.

  “And what do you suppose I can do about it?” Lepturus asked.

  Again, Lanius told him. Now, will he take me seriously? he wondered. On the one hand, he was King of Avornis. On the other hand, he was nine years old. He’d seen—as what child has not?—that grown-ups often treated children like fools just because they were children.

  But Lepturus thought for a little while and then said, “Do you know, Your Majesty, I think we can do something like that.”

  “I hope you can.” Lanius had never been more sincere.

  A couple of days later, Duke Regulus rode from his encampment outside the city of Avornis to have supper with Lepturus at the royal palace. Only a few soldiers rode with Regulus. He plainly expected no trouble. Lanius’ tutor had said he wasn’t very smart. If that didn’t prove it, nothing ever would.

  Smart or not, though, Regulus looked splendid as he rode up to the palace. Lanius watched him from a window where he wouldn’t be seen. Regulus looked more like a king, a warrior king, than he ever would.

  But did looks make the King of Avornis? Lanius hoped not. If they did, he would never sit on the Diamond Throne when it really mattered.

  Down below, big, bluff Regulus dismounted. So did his companions. Royal guardsmen took charge of their horses. Lepturus came out and embraced Regulus. They went into the bodyguards’ dining hall arm in arm. The door closed behind them, and Lanius couldn’t see any more.

  After a while, a serving woman told him to go to bed. In such matters, he was a child, not the king. They could make him go to bed. They couldn’t make him fall asleep. He lay awake a long, long time, listening. But he didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. At last, sleep sneaked up on him.

  Next thing he knew, the morning sun shone in his face. He needed a moment to remember something important should have happened. Had it? He didn’t know. The serving women at breakfast chattered among themselves in voices too low for him to make out what they were saying, but they always did that. One of the bodyguards winked at him, but they were always doing things like that. Lanius didn’t know whether he felt like shouting or crying.

  “Time for your lessons, Your Majesty,” one of the maidservants said.

  “All right,” Lanius answered, so eagerly that she blinked. People had trouble understanding he really liked to study. They didn’t, so they thought he shouldn’t. And he especially wanted to go to his lessons today.

  “Good morning, Your Majesty,” his tutor said. “We’ll be reading the chronicles this morning, for style and for grammar and for history.”

  “Yes, yes.” Lanius was monstrously impatient. “Speaking of history, what happened last night? Tell me!”

  His tutor gave him a sidelong look. “What happened last night? Well, that great general, Duke Regulus, didn’t go back to his army. Lepturus arrested him and sent him to the Maze instead. And if you go into the Maze, you don’t come out again. Now, Your Majesty, to your lessons, if you please.”

  “Yes. My lessons,” Lanius said. Regulus deposed and imprisoned didn’t solve all his problems. Nothing but growing up would. But he’d just bought himself a better chance to grow up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A nomad paced the Osprey. He had a good horse. He had several good horses, in fact; he frequently changed them. That was what let him keep up with the river galley. Grus looked over at him every so often as the ship made its way along the Stura. The rider might have been waiting for a moment of inattention to start shooting. Or he might have been a wizard, with some darker, deadlier purpose in mind.

  “Me, I don’t miss Regulus,” Nicator remarked.

  “No, I don’t miss him, either,” Grus answered. “He wanted to be King of Avornis, and we’ve already got one.”

  “He wouldn’t have made a good one, either,” Nicator said. “Bastard thought he knew everything when he didn’t know enough to stay out of a trap that shouldn’t have fooled a halfwitted dog. The Thervings would have served him up for supper—with garlic bread, by the gods.”

  Grus nodded. His own opinion of Regulus was no higher. On the other hand… “Now our army in front of the city of Avornis has no general at all, not to speak of.”

  “It didn’t before,” Nicator said scornfully. “Just a sorry bastard with more ambition than brains. And speaking of sorry bastards—” He jerked a thumb toward the Menteshe. “What do you suppose he’s up to?”

  “Just keeping an eye on us, I hope,” Grus replied. “They haven’t got many river galleys of their own, so they use horsemen instead. We’ve seen it before.”

  “Haven’t seen one of the buggers dog us quite like this.” Nicator scowled. “He’s up to something.”

  “Maybe. If he is, we can’t do much about it,” Grus said. “We can’t give the Menteshe any excuse to go to war with Avornis, not when King Dagipert’s ready to throw every Therving in the world across our western border.”

  “If we had the Scepter of Mercy, we’d make ’em all think twice,” Nicator muttered. He sighed. “And if pigs had wings, everybody’d need to stay under shelter.”

  “Shelter,” Grus said. Involuntarily, he looked up into the sky. No fat porkers overhead—only a few swifts and swallows after the insects buzzing above the river. Somehow, the sight of them helped him make up his mind. He raised his voice to call, “Turnix!”

  “Yes, Commodore?” the wizard answered, hurrying back from the Osprey’s bow. The gray in his beard reminded Grus how long they’d been together. Not as long as with Nicator, but still quite a while. Turnix went on, “What can I do for you?”

  Grus pointed to the Menteshe rider. “Can you tell me what he’s up to?”

  “I can try. If a Menteshe wizard has warded him, I may not succeed. If the Banished One has warded him”—his fingers twisted in a sign to turn aside evil, which Grus imitated—“I won’t succeed.”

  “Try,” Grus urged. “And why would the Banished One care about one river galley in particular? Avornis has a fine, big fleet.”

  “Yes, Commodore,” Turnix said, “but Avornis has only one Grus.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Grus shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. Just tend to your wizardry, all right?”

  “Of course, Commodore.” But Turnix’s eyes gleamed. He might obey, but he would go on thinking his own thoughts. He took from his belt pouch a stone of sparkling, shifting color. Holding it up to Grus, he said, “This is the famous amandinus, from out of the distant east. It’s an antidote to poison; it makes a man overcome his adversaries; it lets him prophesy and interpret dreams; and it makes him understand dark questions, questions hard to solve.”

  “That all sounds splendid,” Grus said agreeably. “So long as it does what I want, too.” Before Turnix could reply, Grus went on, “One thing I’ve always wondered—if a wizard has a stone like that, why doesn’t he quickly become very powerful?”

  “Well, for one thing, sir, this isn’t the only bit of amandinus in the world, you know,” Turnix said. “And, for another, there are other magics besides the one inherent in the stone. But it does have its uses even so.”

  “All right. I’m answered. I’ll let you tend to your business.”

  “I think I can manage, sir.” Turnix aimed the amandinus stone at the Menteshe. He began a chant of which Grus understood not a word. He did understand that, had the wizard aimed an arrow, instead, he would have been drawing back a bow. The chant
grew higher and sharper. Turnix called out one last word.

  The nomad cried out as though he had been pierced by an arrow. He spurred south as fast as he could ride. “Nicely done,” Grus said. “I don’t think we’ll see him again anytime soon.”

  “No.” But Turnix’s voice was troubled. “He was well warded, sir. But one thing I noted beyond any doubt.”

  “What’s that?” Grus asked, as he was meant to do.

  “He wasn’t riding along to keep an eye on the Osprey, sir,” Turnix replied. “He was keeping an eye on you—on you in particular, I mean.”

  “Well, what of it?” Grus tried not to take that too seriously. “I’m not unknown down here in the south. I’ve been commanding river galleys and flotillas of river galleys in these parts for a good many years now. If the Menteshe didn’t know who I was and worry about me, I’d be disappointed.”

  Turnix shook his head. “That’s not why he was following this ship.” He sounded very sure of himself. “If he’s not heading straight back to a wizard with connections to the Banished One—or maybe to the Banished One himself—I’d be amazed.”

  “Why would the Banished One care so much about me? I’m not that important in the scheme of things,” Grus said. The wizard only shrugged. Grus muttered something under his breath. Now he wished he hadn’t summoned Turnix.

  As the Osprey approached the little riverside town of Tharrus, a dispatch boat shot out from the waterfront. The rowers pulled as though demons were right behind them. Grus had intended to pass Tharrus by, but slowed down to let the dispatch boat come alongside. “Permission to come aboard?” one of the men on her called.

  “Granted,” Grus replied.

  “Here you are, Commodore Grus,” the fellow said when he stood on the planks of the Osprey’s, deck. He thrust a rolled-up scroll at Grus.

  “I expect you want me to read this now, don’t you?” Grus asked. That was wasted irony—the other man just nodded. Sighing, Grus broke the seal. He read and sighed again. After that, he rolled up the parchment and stood there without a word.

  “Well?” Nicator asked at last.

  Grus shook his head. “Not very well. Not very well at all, I’m afraid. The Thervings are over the border in the northwest, and there’s not a single, solitary thing between them and the city of Avornis.”

  A few weeks before, Lanius had been able to look out from the royal palace and see the encampment of the Avornan army beyond the walls of the capital. He saw an army encamped there once more, but it wasn’t an Avornan army—the Thervings had come to the city of Avornis. If they broke in, he wouldn’t be King of Avornis anymore. If they broke in, Avornis wouldn’t be a kingdom anymore, only a conquered part of Thervingia.

  Arch-Hallow Bucco stood on the tower with him. “How do you explain this?” Lanius asked him.

  “How do I explain it?” Bucco echoed, as though wondering whether he’d heard right. “What do you mean?”

  Is he really so thick? Lanius wondered. He doubted it. “You head the Council of Regents, don’t you? That means you do now what I’ll do when I’m older, doesn’t it? You rule Avornis, don’t you? That means that” —Lanius pointed out toward Dagipert’s host—“is your fault. And if it’s your fault, you’d better explain it, hadn’t you?”

  Bucco looked as though he hated him. Bucco undoubtedly did hate him. The arch-hallow opened his mouth, closed it, and then tried again. “Our army would have been better off with a general at its head.”

  “Why?” Lanius asked. “Would he have helped it run away even faster than it did? Do you think it could have run away any faster than it did?”

  “If you weren’t the king, I’d turn you over my knee,” Bucco snarled.

  If I were really the king, if I could give orders here and have them obeyed, I’d do worse than that to you, Lanius thought. Aloud, he said, “What exactly can you do? By the gods, you had better do something, don’t you think?”

  “Our army would have had a general who could do something if your mother hadn’t somehow managed to spirit Duke Regulus off to the Maze,” the arch-hallow said. “You ought to blame her, not me.”

  Lanius almost laughed in Bucco’s face. His mother hadn’t had a thing to do with that. He’d managed it all by himself. But maybe it was better that the arch-hallow didn’t grasp that. Lanius said, “If Regulus hadn’t disappeared, would I still be king?”

  “Of course you would, Your Majesty!” Bucco exclaimed, too quickly to be quite convincing.

  “If I’m not king anymore, if a grown-up is, there won’t need to be a Council of Regents anymore, either,” Lanius pointed out. Bucco drummed his fingers on the stone of the battlement. He’d probably thought he could ride Regulus as a man rode a horse. Seeing how readily Regulus had stumbled into a trap, Lanius figured that Bucco had probably been right, too. But another man might not prove so easy to ride. I have to make him worry about such things, Lanius thought. He pointed east once more, toward the Thervings’ tents. “What will you do about them?” he asked again.

  “I have a plan,” Arch-Hallow Bucco said in his loftiest tones.

  “I’m so glad to hear it,” Lanius replied. “Will it work as well as your last plan—the one that brought the Thervings here to our door?”

  Bucco took a step toward him. Lanius flinched. He hated himself for it, but couldn’t keep from drawing back. For all his wit, he was only a boy—and on the skinny side, and not very tall. Arch-Hallow Bucco nodded grimly. “You would do well to remember, Your Majesty, that if you provoke me far enough I will have you given a common, everyday whipping.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Lanius’ voice went high and shrill.

  Arch-Hallow Bucco didn’t answer. But he looked as though he would enjoy, enormously enjoy, having Lanius whipped. He wouldn’t do it himself, perhaps; make his holy palms sting from walloping a boy’s, even a royal boy’s, backside? No. He’d give the order to a servant or a bodyguard. It would be his, though, and he and Lanius would both know it.

  “I will come of age, you know,” Lanius remarked. “And when I do, I will remember. I promise you that.”

  “Good. Remember, then, that I try to make a man of you, not a spoiled, whining puppy,” Bucco said. “When you have a man’s judgment, you will see that.”

  Will I? Lanius had his doubts. He’d never read of anyone who grew up grateful for whippings. If he hadn’t read of such things, they weren’t real to him. But he put this one aside for now. Real or not, it could wait. “Can the Thervings take the city of Avornis?” he asked nervously. He’d never read of that happening, either, but what he’d read seemed somehow less reassuring when measured against the swarm of enemy tents out beyond the city wall.

  And he felt uncommonly relieved when Arch-Hallow Bucco shook his head, smiled, and gave him not a whipping, but a patronizing pat on the shoulder. “No, Your Majesty,” the arch-hallow said. “Not without treason, and probably not with it, either. King Dagipert’s not out there to take the city.”

  “Then why didn’t he stay home?” Lanius burst out.

  Bucco laughed—also patronizingly. “He is trying to make us do what he wants.”

  “He’s doing a good job of it, too!” Lanius said.

  “In the end, it will come out right. You’ll see,” Bucco said. “We will give him money and presents, and he will go back to Thervingia. He wants our gifts, and believes he can force us into giving them to him. Unfortunately, he is, for the moment, liable to be right.”

  King Dagipert did mount one attack on the walls of the capital. Maybe he thought the Avornans too demoralized to fight back, even with the advantage the fortifications gave them. If Dagipert did think that, he soon found out he was wrong. Once he saw the attack had no chance, he called it off.

  Then he sent an envoy up to the main gate of the city with a flag of truce. Bucco went to the gate to treat with the Therving. When he came back to the royal palace, he looked pleased with himself. “Just as I thought—King Dagipert wants money,” he told Lanius.
“If we give it to him, he will go away. The only question now is, how much? Oh, and the Therving wants to send his son here to the palace to meet you.”

  “I’ll meet him,” Lanius said. “Of course I will.” He was always eager to meet anyone new. He saw the same faces day after day inside the palace. Some of them, like Bucco’s, he would have been happier not seeing.

  The arch-hallow nodded. “I will make the necessary arrangements, then.” He would have made the same arrangements even if Lanius had said he didn’t want to meet Dagipert’s son. Lanius was sure of that. And Bucco might as well have admitted as much, saying, “We are hardly in a position to refuse.”

  “I suppose not,” Lanius said. “Which son of Dagipert’s is coming here? Is it Berto, his heir, or is it one of his younger sons?”

  “It’s Prince Berto.” Bucco gave Lanius a thoughtful look. “You do soak up all sorts of things, don’t you, Your Majesty?”

  “Of course. The more I know, the better off I am.” Lanius spoke as though that were an article of faith. So he’d taken it, from his earliest days. But now I know lots of strange things, and I’m still not very well off, he thought. Would I be worse off still if I knew less? Could I be worse off?

  He sighed. I probably could. Being a king, even a king who was a powerless boy, wasn’t so bad. I could be a starving peasant who was also a powerless boy. Or, if I hadn’t figured out what to do about Duke Regulus, I could have ended up in the Maze— or dead.

  Prince Berto came to the royal palace the next afternoon, after worshiping at Olor’s cathedral. That touch made Arch-Hallow Bucco happy. So did the news Berto brought. Presenting the prince to King Lanius, Bucco said, “I am invited to the Thervings’ encampment tomorrow, to talk with King Dagipert face-to-face. Prince Berto has given me his father’s safe-conduct.”

  “Good.” Lanius hoped Dagipert would ignore it, as he’d ignored so many agreements. He spoke to Berto with the formality that had been drilled into him. “I am pleased to meet you, Your Highness.”