The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  She didn’t try to hide her disappointment, either, or her annoyance. Grus also pretended not to notice those. He had other things on his mind. Maybe the Banished One was biding his time with the thralls. It was either that or the Avornan sorcerers really were taking them out of the exiled god’s control. Little by little, Grus began to believe it.

  Ortalis came up to Lanius in a palace corridor with an odd expression on his face. Grus’ legitimate son seemed to be trying to look friendly, but he wasn’t having a whole lot of luck. At least he didn’t look as though he wanted to pummel Lanius, the way he had ever since they quarreled.

  “Good morning,” Lanius said. He’d never given up being polite to Ortalis. As far as he was concerned, the quarrel was all inside his brother-in-law’s mind, such as that was.

  “Good morning.” Ortalis sounded as grudging as he looked. But he went on making an effort, saying, “How are you today?”

  “Pretty well, thanks.” Lanius pointed out the window. The view showed flowers in the palace garden, bright blue sky, and puffy white clouds drifting along on a lazy breeze. “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.” By the way Ortalis said it, he hadn’t even thought about the weather until Lanius brought it up. Again, though, he tried to hold up his end of things. “Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right.”

  It wasn’t scintillating conversation, but it was conversation—more than Lanius had had from Ortalis for quite a while. Out in the garden, a sparrow chirped. A jay let out a couple of raucous screeches from a tree not far away. Lanius said, “Good to have all the birds back from the south.”

  “That’s true.” Now Ortalis showed some enthusiasm, even if it wasn’t of the sort Lanius might have chosen; he said, “Songbirds done up in a stew or baked in a pie with carrots and onions and peas are mighty tasty.”

  “Well, so they are.” Lanius like songbirds in a pie, too. Even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have contradicted his brother-in-law just then. He did say, “I like to hear them singing. It’s one of the things that tell me spring is here, along with the sweet smells from the flowers.”

  “Limosa likes flowers, too.” Ortalis might have announced that his wife liked Thervingian poetry—to him, it was obviously her eccentricity. “Some of them do have nice colors,” he allowed, as though he’d learned a few words of Thervingian himself to humor her.

  “Yes, they do.” Lanius enjoyed the poppies and roses and bluebells. He eyed Ortalis, wondering as he often did what went on in his brother-in-law’s head. He sometimes thought he was better off not knowing. But, if Ortalis was working hard to act civilized, the least he could do himself was keep matching Grus’ son. And so he asked once more, “How are you today?”

  “I’m … not too bad.” Ortalis hesitated, then went on, “Anser had a few things to say to me.”

  “Did he?” Lanius worked hard to keep his tone neutral. He didn’t want Ortalis to know that had been his idea.

  His brother-in-law nodded. “He did. He said he knew why the two of us squabbled. He said the whole palace knew about it. I don’t much fancy that.”

  “Not a whole lot we can do about it now,” Lanius said. There would have been a lot less palace gossip if Ortalis’ tastes hadn’t run to the whip. Telling him so was unlikely to change those tastes, worse luck.

  “I suppose not.” Ortalis didn’t seem convinced. He never believed anything could be his fault, even in a small way. The only exception to that rule that Lanius had ever seen came when his brother-in-law went hunting. If Ortalis missed a shot, he laughed and joked about it the way a miller or a leather worker would have. But he was different in many regards when he went hunting.

  “Well … any which way, I’m glad you’re not angry anymore,” Lanius said.

  The corners of Ortalis’ mouth turned down. Pretty plainly, he was still angry. Lanius hadn’t really thought he wasn’t. But Grus’ legitimate son nodded a moment later. “Not worth making a big fuss about,” he said. Coming from him, that was the height of graciousness.

  Lanius nodded, acknowledging as much. “I don’t think it is, either,” he said, and held out his hand.

  Ortalis clasped it. He squeezed just hard enough to let Lanius know he could have hurt him if he’d squeezed harder. That was Ortalis to the core. Then he cocked his head to one side and studied Lanius. “What are you and the beast trainer doing with that silly animal?”

  “Seeing how much he can learn,” Lanius answered easily. Whatever else he had in mind was his business, not Ortalis’.

  “Seems like you’re spending a lot of silver while you’re at it,” his brother-in-law observed.

  Lanius only shrugged. “It’s a hobby. Everybody has them.” Unlike Ortalis’, his didn’t involve dealing out pain. Mentioning that just after they’d made up seemed a bad idea, so he didn’t. Instead, he went on, “I’m not throwing the money at a lot of loose women. That keeps your sister happy.”

  Ortalis only shrugged. “I don’t lose any sleep over what my sister thinks. I never have, and I don’t suppose I ever will.” From things Sosia had said, she and Ortalis hadn’t gotten along even when they were children. Now, of course, Ortalis had a new reason to resent her—her son might stand in the way of his offspring when it came to the succession.

  I hope Limosa has another girl. Lanius didn’t say that, no matter how strongly he felt it.

  Ortalis set a hand on his shoulder. Again, the prince squeezed a little harder than he might have. “Have fun with your hobby,” he said, and went on his way.

  Lanius had expected he would do more snooping about the moncat. The king would have gone on saying as little as he could if Ortalis had. He might have talked with Grus and Pterocles about what he was up to. If it ever became absolutely necessary, he might have with Collurio.

  “With my brother-in-law, my charming brother-in-law?” Lanius murmured. Without the least hesitation, he shook his head.

  Once upon a time, Trabzun had been the Avornan city of Trapezus. Behind its gray stone wall, it still was a city of sorts, but it wasn’t an Avornan city anymore. The tall, thin towers sprouting up in large numbers would never have occurred to a builder from the kingdom Grus ruled.

  “They look like asparagus,” Grus remarked.

  “If you say so, Your Majesty,” Hirundo answered. “Me, I think they look like something else myself.”

  “Something else? Oh.” Grus made a face that almost matched Hirundo’s leer. “Maybe yours is that skinny. I hope mine’s not.”

  “What you do with it is as important as what you’ve got,” the general declared in lofty tones.

  Grus pointed toward Trabzun. “Well? What are we going to do with it? That place can stand a proper siege, and we can’t go on without reducing it. The garrison could sally and do horrible things in our rear.”

  Hirundo could have risen to that, too, but he didn’t. He said, “If you expected to get all the way to Yozgat in one campaigning season, you probably expected too much.”

  “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have my hopes,” Grus admitted.

  “Nothing wrong with hopes, as long as you don’t let them run away with you,” Hirundo said.

  Did I let them run away with me when I came south of the Stura in the first place? Grus wondered. He shook his head. He refused to believe that. And if he had hoped to get all the way to Yozgat (and he had) … He’d known he would probably need to be lucky. He had been, up till now.

  “Maybe they’ll surrender,” he said, knowing he would have to be very lucky to see that happen.

  “It’s just like pretty girls—never hurts to ask, but they don’t say yes as often as you wish they would,” Hirundo answered.

  “We won’t have as much fun when they do here, either—if they do.” In spite of saying that, Grus sent a herald up to the walls of Trabzun. The man shouted out a demand that the city open its gates to the Avornan army. He used both his own language and the guttural tongue of the Menteshe.

  Soldiers
on the wall shouted insults at him. To leave the rest of the army in no doubt that those were insults, they emptied chamber pots into the ditch in front of the wall. Some of them flung the pots out at the herald. None struck home, but he quickly rode back to the Avornan lines.

  “They won’t yield, Your Majesty,” he reported.

  “Oh, yes, they will,” Grus said. “They just don’t know it yet.”

  In the previous few years, he’d besieged several Chernagor towns. All of them were stronger than Trabzun seemed to be. This place didn’t have the sea covering much of its perimeter. He sent his riders out to close the line around it. All the time, he hoped the Menteshe inside would sally. He would much rather have faced them out in the open than in the advantageous position the walls gave them.

  They sat tight, though. Maybe they were hoping for rescuers, or maybe they thought they could outlast the besiegers. Maybe they were right, too. That unappetizing thought made Grus scowl, but he kept at the siege all the same. The Menteshe would surely prove right if he didn’t try.

  He didn’t intend to storm the walls. That would be quick and decisive if it worked—and had about as much chance of working as he did of throwing double sixes back-to-back at dice. You could do it. He’d done it. But you were a fool if you counted on it, because it wasn’t very likely.

  His men methodically dug a trench around Trabzun. They heaped up the excavated dirt inside the trench to serve as a breastwork to protect them from whatever the Menteshe inside the city might do. Then they dug another trench, this one beyond their encampment. The breastwork on the outer trench faced outward. Any relieving force would have to battle its way through the fieldworks to get at the Avornans.

  Even though Grus didn’t try to storm Trabzun, he wasn’t eager to wait till the defenders starved enough to submit. Summoning Pterocles, he said, “When I was besieging a rebel’s castle, the witch who served me as chief sorcerer before you managed to stop up the castle’s water supplies, and my foe had to surrender. Can you do the same here?”

  The witch who served me as chief sorcerer. He sighed. He’d loved Alca for a while. He hadn’t loved her well enough to leave Estrilda, though. He sighed again. Nothing seemed sadder than the memory of a love that had fallen to pieces.

  Pterocles knew about Alca. He also knew better than to say anything about her, or about the way Grus hadn’t mentioned her name. All he did say was, “I don’t know, Your Majesty. I can try to find out, if you like.”

  “Yes, please, if it’s not too hard.” Grus didn’t add, And it had better not be. He and Pterocles had worked together long enough to let the wizard understand that without its being said.

  “I’ll get right at it,” Pterocles said. “Seems a pretty straightforward use of the law of similarity. Do we have an arrow that’s been shot from the walls of Trabzun? A stone from a catapult would be even better.”

  “If you want arrows, talk to the surgeons,” Grus said. “As for stones, well, I don’t think their catapults have done much, but maybe we could provoke them, if that’s what you really want.”

  “If you’d be so kind,” Pterocles said. He and Grus had worked long enough to let the king understand that that meant, You’d cursed well better, if you expect me to work the magic you need.

  Grus concentrated a couple of dozen men beyond bowshot of the walls of Trabzun but within reach of a stone-thrower. They lingered out in the open, not doing very much but seeming fascinated with something on the ground. He wondered how long they’d have to wait for the Menteshe to notice them.

  It wasn’t long. The nomads were alert to whatever the Avornans did. A stone the size of a man’s head hissed through the air. But the Avornan soldiers were alert, too. They scattered. The stone thudded home harmlessly. One of them scooped it up and carried it away. They tried not to offer the Menteshe such a tempting target again.

  Pterocles briefly borrowed a hammer from a blacksmith and knocked chips off the ball of stone the catapult had shot. He mixed them in with the dirt he used to form walls and buildings and round towers that looked like a miniature version of Trabzun’s. Catching Grus’ eye on him, he nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty, it is a model of the city,” he said. “Now it’s a model of the city that includes something from the real city. That will make the magic more accurate.”

  “Good,” Grus said, and waited to see what Pterocles would do next.

  The wizard held a forked stick over his model, as though he were an ordinary dowser trying to find water for a farmer who wanted to dig a well. But an ordinary dowser would have let his stick rise and fall as it would. Pterocles didn’t. He chanted a spell as he worked with it—an insistent charm set, Grus realized, to the tune of a song children sang in the streets of the city of Avornis.

  “Here we go,” Pterocles murmured, as the tip of the stick dipped, and then dipped again and again and again, pointing now toward one part of the model of Trabzun, now toward another.

  “What does that mean?” Grus asked.

  After finishing the chant, Pterocles answered, “I’m very sorry, Your Majesty, but I’m afraid it means the town has a great many wells and cisterns and such inside it. We wouldn’t be able to close off all of them at once.”

  “Oh.” Grus had been afraid he would say something like that. He’d watched ordinary dowsers at work any number of times. When their sticks dipped, it meant they’d scented water. The same evidently held true here, even if Pterocles, a better wizard than any ordinary dowser, didn’t need to walk the whole territory he tested.

  “I am sorry,” Pterocles repeated.

  “I believe you. So am I,” Grus said. Sometimes—most of the time, it often seemed—being sorry didn’t help. This looked like one of those occasions.

  “What do we do now?” the wizard asked.

  “What we would have done if the Menteshe hadn’t tried to knock my men flat with a catapult ball,” Grus replied. “We try to take Trabzun away from them without drying up those wells.”

  “All right.” Pterocles sent the model of the city a reproachful glance, as though he’d expected more from it than it wanted to give him. But then he brightened. “I won’t knock this to pieces just yet. Maybe we’ll find another way to use it.”

  “Maybe.” Gus did his best to stay polite; it wasn’t Pterocles’ fault that Trabzun was so well supplied with water. He nodded to the wizard. “You never can tell.”

  When a cook burst out of the kitchens crying, “Your Majesty! Oh, your Majesty!” it was a good bet Pouncer had done something particularly brazen in there. If the cook wasn’t upset about the moncat, then a couple of the meat carvers had probably gone after each other with knives. Given a choice like that, Lanius hoped Pouncer was the one to blame.

  The cook rounded a corner and bore down on him like a Chernagor pirate ship with a strong following wind. “Here I am,” Lanius said mildly.

  “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” The cook went right on yelling, now in Lanius’ face.

  “Here I am,” the king repeated, not quite as mildly this time. “What do you want?”

  “That … that … that horrible creature of yours!” The cook hadn’t gotten any quieter.

  “What about that horrible creature of mine?” Lanius knew a certain amount of relief that the trouble did involve Pouncer. At least he wouldn’t walk into the kitchens and find somebody dead on the floor. He wasn’t relieved by the way the cook kept going on at the top of his lungs. “Tell me what the moncat’s done. Try to tell me without making the top of my head fly off.”

  “Well, Your Majesty, the nasty beast went and stole—” The cook stayed much too loud.

  “I said, try to tell me without making the top of my head fly off!” Suddenly, Lanius shouted just as loud. The cook’s eyes bugged out of his head in amazement. Lanius dropped his voice to more normal tones and went on, “I said it, and I cursed well meant it, too.” He folded his arms across his chest and waited to see whether the man was paying any attention at all.

  “I’ll try, Your
Majesty.” Now Lanius could hardly hear the cook at all. That didn’t bother him; he didn’t mind leaning forward. “It stole a fine silver spoon and a marrow bone, and then it disappeared again. You should have drowned the miserable thing when it was a kitten.”

  “A marrow bone, too, eh? It must have thought you were rewarding it for being clever enough to steal the spoon,” Lanius said.

  “Well, then, it’s pretty stinking stupid, isn’t it?” The cook’s voice rose again.

  “Easy, there. Easy, I say.” Lanius might have been gentling a spooked horse. “Just don’t go jumping out of your breeches. You’ll probably get the spoon back sooner or later. Pouncer usually takes them someplace where people go. It’s not as though some pawnbroker will give the beast a few coins for the silver in it.”

  “Why does the gods-despised animal steal spoons in the first place?” the cook demanded. He didn’t seem much gentled.

  “Pouncer is a great many things—willful, obnoxious, annoying, pestilential, mangy. Take your pick,” Lanius said. “But one thing that moncat is not is gods-despised. I would stake a great deal on the truth of that.”

  “Oh, you would, would you?” The cook didn’t believe a word of it. “And why wouldn’t the gods despise the rotten creature?”

  “Because Pouncer just may be the salvation of the kingdom,” Lanius replied, and the cook’s eyes bugged out of his head all over again. The king continued, “I am sorry about the marrow bone. Some soup or stew or gravy won’t be all that it might have been. But I suppose you can probably find another.”

  “This is no joking matter, Your Majesty,” the cook protested.

  “Good, because I’m not joking,” the king said. “The spoon likely will come back. You can come up with a new bone. Do you have any other reasons to shriek in my ear, or was that everything?”