The Bastard King tsom-1

by Dan Chernenko

  “And that is?” The priest sounded as though it couldn’t possibly be anything important enough to counterbalance his secularity.

  “He’s my son,” Grus answered. To him, that counted for more than anything else.

  “Your son?” Daption echoed. “But I thought Prince Ortalis was your only son.”

  “Prince Ortalis is my only legitimate son,” Grus said. “Anser was… just one of those things that sometimes happen. He’s part of my family, though, and I intend to take care of him.”

  “Is that what you call it, Your Majesty?” the cleric demanded. “But what of our holy faith?”

  “I think our holy faith will do quite well, thanks,” Grus said. “The gods have children. I don’t expect King Olor and Queen Quelea will be too upset because I had one out of wedlock. Queen Estrilda has forgiven me.” Mostly, he added to himself.

  “But… Your Majesty!” Daption seemed to be struggling to put his protest into terms that wouldn’t infuriate the King of Avornis. “Appointing a… a boy who has lived a… a secular life to the post of arch-hallow offends the dignity of all holy clerics who have held the post since the beginning of time.”

  “After Anser’s been arch-hallow for a while, he’ll be as holy as any other cleric, don’t you think?” Grus asked mildly.

  “But—” Daption tried again.

  This time, Grus cut him off with a sharp question. “Are you telling me I haven’t got the right to appoint the man I want as Arch-Hallow of Avornis? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m not, Your Majesty.” The yellow-robed priest did have the sense to see he was treading on dangerous ground. But he went on, “Appointing such a person to such a position, though, is… is unprecedented.”

  Grus gave him a cheerful smile. “Maybe it was. It isn’t anymore, is it? I’ve just created a precedent for it, haven’t I?”

  As King of Avornis since he was a little boy—as the descendant of a dozen generations of Kings of Avornis—Lanius naturally had a strong sense of dignity. The idea that his bastard half-brother-in-law should be named Arch-Hallow of Avornis offended that sense.

  “Have you ever met this Anser?” he asked Sosia.

  His wife shook her head. Before she answered, she yawned. Early in her pregnancy, she was sleepy all the time. “No,” she said. “Are you surprised? I know of him, but that’s all.”

  “Has your father—his father—ever met him?”

  Sosia shrugged. “I don’t know for certain. I don’t think so, but I couldn’t take oath on it.”

  “Well, who on earth would appoint someone he doesn’t even know to such an important job?”

  “No one appoints kings at all. They just happen,” Sosia said pointedly. As Lanius was a king who had just happened, that struck home. His wife went on, “The kingdom seems to get through with good kings and bad ones and indifferent ones. Do you think it can’t survive with Anser as arch-hallow?”

  “No,” Lanius admitted. “But couldn’t your father have picked a better man for the spot, since he does get to choose?”

  “Better how?” Sosia asked.

  “Wiser. More holy. Older. Anser can’t even be as old as I am, can he?”

  “I don’t think so, not quite,” Sosia said. “Maybe that wasn’t what Father meant by ‘better,’ though. Maybe he cared more that Anser would stay loyal to him. Family counts for the world with Father. If you don’t know that, you don’t know anything about him.”

  Lanius started to make a sarcastic remark about Ortalis, but changed his mind at the last minute. Sosia had a point. Bucco, loyal only to himself, had menaced the crown and Lanius’ grip on it as long as he lived. What Lanius did say was, “Well, maybe you’re right. But what am I supposed to tell this Anser when he comes to the city of Avornis?”

  “How about, ‘Welcome to the capital’?” his wife suggested. “How about, ‘I hope you do a good job as arch-hallow’?”

  Since Lanius had no better ideas, those were the first two things he did tell Anser when, not quite a month later, Grus’ bastard son arrived from the south. “Thank you so very much, uh, Your Majesty,” Anser replied. His eyes were enormous with wonder at where he found himself. But for that, he looked much like a younger version of Grus—looked more like him, probably, than either Sosia or Ortalis, both of whom had a good deal of Estrilda in their features.

  “What do you know about the priestly hierarchy?” Lanius asked him, coming up with a question of his own.

  “Not much,” Anser said frankly. “I would worship down in Anxa. Everybody down in the south worships hard. With the Menteshe and the Banished One so close, we know the gods are our hope. But I never thought of being a priest, let alone arch-hallow, till… till Father sent word for me to come here.”

  He seemed open and friendly and easy to like, none of which Lanius had expected. The king asked, “What did you want to do, then?”

  “I was apprenticed to my uncle—my mother’s brother. He’s a miller, with the biggest mill in Anxa. He has four daughters and no son, so I suppose it might have been mine one day. And I like to hunt—I really like to hunt, and I’m a dead shot with a bow—and I’d love to breed horses if I had the money.”

  Lanius tried very hard not to smile. He didn’t think he’d ever met such an… ordinary person in all his life. “If the Arch-Hallow of Avornis doesn’t have the money to do whatever he wants, I don’t know who would,” he remarked.

  Anser’s eyes got wider yet. Lanius hadn’t thought they could. “Really?” the young bastard breathed. “That never occurred to me. Do you suppose I’d have the time to go out hunting, too?”

  “If you want to, I think you might,” Lanius answered. “Except for a king”—he couldn’t say except for the King, not when Avornis had two—“who could tell the arch-hallow no?”

  “Really?” Anser said again. “You have to understand, Your Majesty, I never thought about any of this till Father told me to come here. I’ve thought about it since, of course, but I don’t know enough about what I’ll be doing to have my thoughts make a whole lot of sense, if you know what I mean.”

  “What do you think you’ll be doing?” Lanius asked.

  “Whatever Father wants me to, I expect,” Anser said. His grin made that disarming. “That’s why he chose me for the job, isn’t it?”

  “Probably,” Lanius said. “What do you think about it?”

  “It’s all right with me,” Anser said. “Father always took the best care of me he could. He didn’t pretend I wasn’t there, the way a lot of men do with their bastards. What else can I do— what else should I do—but pay him back for that as well as I know how?”

  Loyalty, Lanius thought. Grus expected to get it. And, evidently, Anser expected to give it. The whole family put a large weight on it. Lanius shook his head. Ortalis? I don’t think so. I don’t think Grus thinks so, either.

  He wondered for a moment why Grus hadn’t named his legitimate son Arch-Hallow of Avornis. He wondered for a moment, yes, but no longer. Grus is liable to want Ortalis to be King of Avornis after him. He probably wishes Ortalis were better than he is, but I’m afraid he wants him to be king any which way.

  Lanius couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a more frightening thought.

  Not even Grus could make the clerics anoint Anser as arch-hallow in one fell swoop—not when his bastard boy wasn’t a priest at the start of the process. If the men who consecrated Anser and appointed him to the priesthood wore sour expressions, they were wise enough to keep their mouths shut except for the necessary prayers. And Grus was wise enough to keep his mouth shut about their expressions.

  Having been hallowed, Anser wore a black robe for one day, a green robe on the next, and a yellow one the day after that. Then the clerics could give him a red robe with clear consciences. Grus didn’t see that the quick parade through the ecclesiastical ranks mattered very much, but he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut about mat, too. He was not a man who ran from trouble, but he wasn’t a man who s
tirred it up for no good reason, either.

  Anser’s wide-eyed, openmouthed awe at the royal palace, the great cathedral in the city of Avornis, and, in fact, everything about the capital made Grus smile. He didn’t quite know what to do about discovering his bastard was a much more likable youngster than his legitimate son.

  One thing he didn’t do was mention it to Estrilda. One day, though, his wife asked, “Did you think about inviting Anser’s mother up here to see him made arch-hallow?”

  “No,” Grus replied at once—he knew a question with more prickles than a porcupine when he heard one.

  “Why not?” Estrilda asked.

  “Because I didn’t think you’d like it.”

  “Ah.” Estrilda considered that, then nodded. “Well, you were right.” He’d thought he’d gotten away as clean as a married man who’d fathered a bastard could hope to with his wife, but then Estrilda asked, “What was she like? Anser’s mother, I mean.”

  Grus could have told her in great detail. Before he started to— just before he started to—he realized that question had plenty of prickles, too, even if they were better hidden. As casually as he could, he answered, “Do you know, it was so long ago I hardly remember. I was drunk when it happened, anyhow.”

  Estrilda didn’t find any more porcupinish questions for him, so he supposed he’d given the right answer to that one. He also supposed she didn’t know he’d tried to take Alca to bed with him after her magic had helped him end Count Corvus’ rebellion. Had she known, she would have expressed her detailed opinion about it—Grus was sure of that. Estrilda had never been shy.

  A couple of days later, still wearing his red robes, Anser came to the palace and asked, “Now that I’m arch-hallow, what do you want me to do?”

  “See that things run on an even keel,” Grus told him. “Don’t let clerics meddle in politics—they don’t belong there. Past that, whatever you please, as long as you don’t make a scandal of yourself.”

  “I’ll try,” Anser said. “But I don’t know anything more about the gods than what the priests down in Anxa taught me when I was little.”

  “That should be plenty,” Grus answered. “Be good yourself, and expect the priests to be good, too. If you find some who aren’t—and I’m sure you will—then talk to me, and we’ll figure out what to do about them.”

  His bastard son nodded. “All right. I’ll do that. Thanks, uh, Your Majesty.”

  “Go on,” Grus said, liking him very much. “Just do the best you can, and everything will be fine.”

  Not even Estrilda had an easy time disliking Anser. “He’s… sweet,” she admitted grudgingly.

  “He is, isn’t he?” Grus said. “And the other thing is, with any luck at all, I won’t have to worry about who’s arch-hallow and whether he’ll give me trouble for the next twenty or thirty years.” He liked fixing things so they stayed fixed.

  He wished he could fix things with the Thervings as readily as he’d fixed the arch-hallowdom. But Anser was cooperative. Fierce old King Dagipert wasn’t. With the coming of spring came another invasion from the west.

  Lanius said, “Last year, you told me you couldn’t fight Dagipert with all your strength because of Corvus’ rebellion. There’s no rebellion now. Will you fight him with everything we have?”

  Grus didn’t want to fight Dagipert with everything he had. He feared the Thervings would thrash the Avornan army, as they’d already thrashed it too many times. He needed a force that could stand up against them. He was building it, yes, but he knew the job was far from over.

  But he didn’t want to look like a coward before his fellow king—or before all of Avornis, either. So he answered, “I’ll do everything I can, Your Majesty, to keep the Thervings from ravaging us the way they’ve done before.”

  Lanius was harder to satisfy with a bland generality than he might have been. He asked, “What exactly does that mean?”

  Since Grus didn’t know exactly what it meant, he answered, “You’ll see. Part of what we do—part of what we’re able to do—will depend on what King Dagipert does, you know.”

  He didn’t think that completely satisfied the younger man, either. But Lanius held his peace. He’s seeing how much rope I’ve given myself, Grus judged. For the kingdom’s sake as well as his own, he hoped he could make good on what he’d promised.

  To General Hirundo, he said, “When you move against the Thervings, do your best to keep them on land where they’ve already gone pillaging two years in a row. The sooner they get hungry, the sooner they’ll start thinking about going home.”

  “I’ll try,” Hirundo said. “They don’t have much in the way of a supply train, and that’s a fact.”

  “No, they don’t,” Grus agreed. “They keep themselves going by eating the countryside bare, like any locusts.”

  Hirundo laughed. “That’s funny.”

  Grus shook his head. “Maybe it would be, if the Thervings weren’t so dangerous. But they are, worse luck.”

  “We beat ’em last year.” The general sounded confident enough. “I don’t see any reason why we can’t do it again.”

  “I see one,” Grus said, “and that is that we did beat them last year.”

  “I don’t follow you.” Hirundo frowned, perhaps to show how much he didn’t follow. “Now that we have beaten them, the men will know they can do it. They should have an easier time, not a harder one.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I hope you’re right,” Grus said. “But the other thing you have to remember is, Dagipert’s trouble. He knows we beat his Thervings last year, too, and you can bet he’s had steam coming out of his ears ever since. He’s smart and he’s tricky and he’s nasty. If he hasn’t spent all winter trying to come up with some sneaky way of making us pay for what we did to him last year, I’d be amazed.”

  “Ah.” Now Hirundo nodded. He seemed to decide nodding wasn’t enough, so he bowed, too. “You’re pretty smart and tricky and nasty yourself, Your Majesty. Trying to figure out what the other bastard’s going to do before he does it is always a good idea, but how often do people really sit down and think that through?”

  “They ought to,” Grus said. There, he was sure, Lanius would agree with him. He wished he and the young king could find more things to agree about.

  Hirundo, meanwhile, let out a scornful snort. “How often do people do what they ought to do? If they did, what would clerics use for sermons?”

  “A point. A distinct point,” Grus admitted.

  “Maybe you ought to take the field again, Your Majesty,” Hirundo said. “If anybody can outthink Dagipert, you’re the one.”

  Grus hadn’t intended to. At the suggestion, though, he stroked his beard in thought. “Maybe I will,” he said at last. “I hadn’t planned on it, but maybe I will.”

  Sosia beside him, King Lanius watched King Grus ride out of the city of Avornis at the head of his army, hurrying off to fight the Thervings. “I hope he’ll be all right,” Sosia said anxiously.

  “So do I,” Lanius said. His wife hoped Grus would be all right because Grus was her father and she loved him. Lanius hoped Grus would be all right because, if he weren’t, some disaster would have come down on the army he led, and on the Kingdom of Avornis. Lanius didn’t love Grus. He didn’t think he ever would. He’d acquired some—well, more than some— reluctant respect for his father-in-law’s brains and nerve, but love? He shook his head. Not likely.

  He glanced over toward Sosia. Her arms were folded across her belly. They lay there more easily than they would have not long before. She had more belly than she’d had not long before. The more she bulged, the more the reality that she was going to have a baby sank in for Lanius. Let it be a son, he thought. Let the dynasty go on. I’ll worry about Ortalis after my son is born.

  Soldiers closed the great gates of the city after Grus’ army passed out of it. A carriage took Lanius and Sosia back to the palace. Another one took Estrilda and Ortalis. Lanius got on well enough with his mother-in-law, but he
was glad not to travel in the same carriage as Ortalis.

  At the palace, Sosia and Estrilda started chattering. Ortalis went off to do whatever he did. Whatever it was, Lanius didn’t want to know. He himself went looking for Marshal Lepturus.

  “Hello, Your Majesty,” the commander of the royal bodyguards said when Lanius found him just coming out of the palace steam bath. “Trying to warm up my old bones, see if they’ll move a little smoother.”

  Lanius started to say, You’re not old. The words died unspoken. They wouldn’t do, even for a polite compliment. Lepturus had commanded the bodyguards when Lanius’ father ruled Avornis, and he’d been commanding them for some time before King Mergus died. He remained sturdy, but his wrinkled, age-blotched skin, bald head, and snowy beard told him their own tale. Lanius wondered uncomfortably if the same thing would happen to him one day. He shivered, as though winter had suddenly run an icy finger along the ridge of his spine.

  “Here.” Marshal Lepturus’ joints creaked and crackled as he sat down on a marble bench outside the door to the steam bath. “What can I do for you?”

  Lanius sat down beside him. He looked around before he answered. No servants were in sight. He spoke in a low voice— fortunately, Lepturus’ ears, unlike Nicator’s, still worked fine. “Now that Grus has left the city, I want your help with something.”

  The guards commander leaned toward him. “What have you got in mind? I’m listening.” He too spoke so quietly, no one but Lanius could possibly have heard him.

  “I want to bring my mother back from the Maze,” Lanius said.

  Marshal Lepturus looked at him for a long time before answering, softly and sadly but very definitely, “No.”

  “What?” Lanius couldn’t remember the last time Lepturus had said that to him, certainly not on anything this important. “In the name of the gods, why not?”

  “Do you aim to fight your own civil war against King Grus, Your Majesty?” Lepturus asked. “We’ve been over that ground before, you know.”

  “Civil war? No, of course not,” Lanius said. “All I want to do is set my mother free.”