The Bastard King

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Colonel Hirundo watched King Grus with more than a little amusement. Grus’ mount was a bay gelding calm as a pond on a breezeless day, but the king clutched the reins and gripped the horse with his knees as though afraid of falling at any moment—which he was. “Meaning no offense, Your Majesty, but you’ll never make a horseman,” Hirundo remarked.

“Really? Why on earth would you say such a thing? Because I’m as graceful as a sack of beans on horseback?”

“Well, now that you mention it, yes.”

“So what?” Grus said. “I give the men something to laugh at. Better they could laugh than quiver in their boots for fear of bumping into Dagipert and the Thervings.”

“When you put it that way, maybe,” Hirundo said.

“Whether I’m a horseman or not, Colonel, I have my reasons for coming along, believe you me I do,” Grus said. “I don’t want to stay in the capital the rest of my days. I want to see more of Avornis than that. How can I deal with what goes on in the kingdom if I don’t keep an eye on it?”

“Plenty of Kings of Avornis have tried,” Hirundo observed. Like Grus, he had risen in the world since their wars against the Menteshe in the south.

“I don’t intend to be one of them,” Grus said.

He was glad to escape the capital, even if escaping it meant going into battle against the Thervings. An army on the march, he was discovering, was different from a fleet of river galleys on the move. In one way, the army had the advantage—it could go anywhere, while available waterways limited the fleet. But the army carried its own stink with it, a heavy odor compounded of the smells of horses and unwashed men. It stayed in Grus’ nostrils and would not go away. Even after his conscious mind forgot about it, it lingered. He smelled it in his dreams.

He led the soldiers west, toward Thervingia, toward danger. No one could doubt the Thervings had used this route to come through Avornis and approach the capital in the recent past. The signs were all too clear—torched villages, empty farmsteads, fields that should have been full of ripening grain going to weeds, instead. Once, Grus’ army came upon what was left of a detachment of Avornan soldiers King Dagipert’s men had met and overwhelmed. Not much remained of the Avornans—only a few scattered bones still recognizable as human, and fragments of clothing enough to identify them as Grus’ countrymen. The Thervings had stolen everything they found worth taking.

“This could happen to us, too,” Grus told the men he led. “It could—if we aren’t careful. If we are, though, nothing can beat us. We just have to watch ourselves, don’t we?”

“Yes,” the soldiers chorused dutifully. He also watched them, sometimes in ways they didn’t expect. He posted extra sentries that evening on the roads leading east, for instance. Those sentries captured six or eight men trying to slip away from the danger they’d seen. Grus didn’t make examples of them, as he might have. But he didn’t let them desert, either. Back to the encampment they went.

Whenever the army passed woods on its way west, Grus sent scouts into them. He didn’t want to give Dagipert the chance to ambush him, as the King of Thervingia had ambushed other Avornan armies. Three days after the army found what was left of that Avornan detachment, the scouts Grus sent to examine a frowning pine forest burst out of it much faster than they’d gone in. They came galloping back toward the main mass of men.

“Thervings!” they shouted. “The Thervings are in the woods!”

“Good!” Grus exclaimed, though he was anything but sure how good it was. “Now we can make them pay for what they’ve done to Avornis.” He raised his voice to a shout like the one he might have used aboard a river galley. “Revenge!”

“Revenge!” the soldiers echoed.

Grus had never led a battle on land before. He didn’t try to lead this one now, either, not really. He’d brought Colonel Hirundo here for just that reason. Hirundo handled the job with unruffled competence. At his orders, horns bellowed from metal throats and signal flags waved. The Avornan soldiers shook themselves out, moving from column to line of battle as smoothly as Grus could have hoped. As they were deploying, Hirundo turned to Grus and asked, “What now, Your Majesty? Do we await the enemy on open ground here, or do we go into the woods after them?”

“Into the woods,” Grus replied at once. “They won’t surprise us now.”

Hirundo nodded. “All right. I hoped you’d say that. If you’d care to do the honors… ?”

“What do you—? Oh.” Grus raised his voice again, this time shouting, “Forward!”

The Avornans cheered as they began to advance. Grus and Hirundo both weighed those cheers, trying to gauge the army’s spirit from them. At almost the same instant, they both nodded. Despite the attempted desertions a few nights before, the soldiers seemed ready enough to fight.

Well before the Avornans could push in among the pines, Thervings began emerging from them. They formed their own line of battle, which looked more rugged than the Avornans‘, then surged toward Grus’ men, roaring like beasts.

“Come on, boys!” Colonel Hirundo called gaily. “Now we get to pay these bastards back for everything they’ve done to Avornis lately. King Grus!” When he used it, he had a pretty good battlefield roar himself.

“King Grus!” The shout rose from the Avornans. Men also yelled, “King Lanius!” Grus knew he couldn’t complain about that. Lanius was, after all, still king, and they were cheering the dynasty as much as the young man.

To show he didn’t mind, he shouted, “King Lanius!” himself, and then, “Avornis and victory!” He hoped it would be victory.

Dagipert’s men, though, had other things in mind. They cried out their king’s name, as well as guttural bits of Thervingian. Grus didn’t know any of the mountain men’s language, but doubted they were complimenting either Avornis or him.

Most of the Thervings were on foot. The Avornan army had more horsemen than foot soldiers. Hirundo led them to the wings, to try to outflank the Thervings and soften them up with arrows. The Thervings’ riders stayed in the center of their line, in a tight knot around a wolfhide standard. That’s Dagipert’s emblem, Grus realized. He spurred toward it, brandishing his sword.

“Come on, Dagipert!” he yelled. “Fight me, or show yourself a coward!”

The King of Thervingia was at least twenty years older than he was. But if he could cut Dagipert down, he would cut the heart out of the Thervings. And what if you fall yourself, instead? You’re still a long way from the best horseman the gods ever made. Once upon a time, a King of Thervingia had beaten a King of Avornis in single combat and made a drinking cup from his skull.

Grus wished he hadn’t chosen that moment to remember that bit of lore. Lanius, no doubt, could have told him the names of both kings and whatever else he wanted to know about them— except that he didn’t want to know anything. And he hadn’t answered his own question. He tried now. What if I fall, instead? Well, Avornis can get along better without me than Thervingia can without Dagipert. I’m pretty sure of that.

Forth from the Thervings’ ranks came a rider with gilded chain mail and a long gray beard. “You pimp!” Dagipert roared at Grus. “Prostitute your daughter with my daughter’s betrothed, will you?” If the King of Thervingia felt his years or anything but raw fury toward Grus, he didn’t show it.

“I’ll give your daughter to my hangman’s son,” Grus yelled back. Dagipert bellowed with fury. Maybe he’ll have a fit and fall over dead, Grus thought hopefully. That would make his own life easier.

No such luck. Grus hadn’t really expected it. The two kings traded sword strokes between their armies. Dagipert might have been old, but he knew how to handle a blade. And rage seemed to lend him strength. Before long, Grus knew he would be lucky to beat down his foe—would be lucky, in fact, to live.

But their private duel lasted only moments. Avornans rushed forward to help Grus rid the world of Dagipert. Thervings ran up to protect their king and assail Grus. In the battle that developed around them, Grus and Dagipert were swept apart. Grus was anything but sorry. He hoped he’d managed to put some fear into King Dagipert, too, but wouldn’t have bet on it.

Meanwhile, of course, ordinary Thervings could kill him as readily as King Dagipert might have—more readily, in fact, for most of the Thervings were younger and better trained than their king. Grus thrust and parried and slashed. Before long, his sword had blood on it. The blood wasn’t his, though he couldn’t remember wounding any of the enemy.

“Grus!” his men shouted, and, “Avornis!” and, “Lanius!”

Hirundo’s horsemen kept nipping in behind Dagipert’s men, trying to cut them off from the woods and surround them. The Thervings detached men from their main line to hold off such flanking moves, which let the Avornans put more pressure on their front. Little by little, that front began to crumble.

Had it happened all at once, Dagipert’s army would have fallen to pieces, and Grus might have won a famous victory, one that would have let him be talked about in the same breath with storied Kings of Avornis from far-off days. It didn’t. The Thervings kept enough order to withdraw into the forest under good discipline, and he had no great inclination to go after them once they’d drawn back.

“Congratulations, Your Majesty!” said Colonel Hirundo, coming up to him after the fighting ended. “We beat them!”

“Yes.” Wearily, Grus nodded. “And do you know what, Colonel? I’ll take that. Considering everything that could have happened, I’ll take it, and gladly.”

Lanius had always loved the archives. They never argued with him. They never told him no. Not only had he learned a great deal going through them, he’d learned a great deal about how to learn. No one, not even his tutor, ever seemed to have thought about that. The more he did, though, the more important it seemed.

If he wanted to find out what had happened in ancient days, he went through chronicles, and through the reports generals and other officials had left behind—those were often the raw material from which the chroniclers shaped their stories. If he wanted to find out about money, he started pawing through tax rolls. If he found himself interested in sorcery, a separate part of the archives concerned itself with that. Knowing where and how to start looking was often as important as anything else when he was trying to find out something.

He breathed in the smells of old parchments and ink and dust as a lover breathed in his lover’s perfume. And, when he decided to find out what the archives had to say about moncats, he went with confidence to the records of old-time Avornan sailing expeditions. In days gone by, Avornis had ruled the northern coast. That was before the Chernagors settled there and began squabbling with Avornis, amongst themselves, and against the Thervings.

Yaropolk hadn’t told him the name of the island chain Iron and Bronze had come from. That would have made things easier, but he managed well enough without it. And poking through parchments, never quite sure what the next one would show, had a pleasure of its own. Some of those Avornan explorers had sailed a long way. Going through the records they’d left behind, Lanius felt like an explorer himself.

None of the records used the word moncat; that was just his translation of the name the Chernagors had given the creatures. Of course the old Avornan explorers, if they’d ever come across the animals, would have called them something else.

When he figured that out, he realized he would have to go back through several parchments he’d already set aside. That left him imperfectly delighted with the world, but he saw no help for it. By then, he was bound and determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. His father had been a stubborn man, too. Had Mergus not been, he never would have taken a seventh wife when Certhia found herself with child.

Lanius was in no position to defy the world. All he could do was try to learn something he wanted to know. King Grus was making sure nothing more important or glamorous would come his way.

One of the reports he came across for a second time had nothing to do with ships sailing out across the seas to the north. Just the opposite, in fact—it was an account by some intrepid Avornan who’d pushed far into the south not long after the Menteshe swept the Avornans out of that part of the world.

He started to put that book aside yet again. But the Avornan explorer, despite his old-fashioned language, wrote in an entertaining style. And so Lanius kept reading.

“Oh, by the gods!” he said in a low voice. Things down in the south had been a lot more chaotic in the old days than they were now. When Avornis and the Menteshe weren’t fighting these days, they traded across the border. The Menteshe princes, though, made sure Avornans didn’t go too far south of the frontier, while Avornans, fearing each nomad as the Banished One’s eyes and ears, refused to let any Menteshe come very far north.

Once upon a time, it hadn’t been like that. The fellow whose report Lanius was reading had gotten all the way down to Yozgat, where the Menteshe stowed away the Scepter of Mercy after capturing it from Avornis. That truly amazed Lanius. He hadn’t had the faintest idea any Avornan had set eyes on it from the day the Menteshe took it till now. Yet here was a detailed description of the building where the nomads kept the Scepter. The explorer wrote:

Were it within the bounds of our own realm, I should without hesitation style it a cathedral. Yet that were false and misleading, the Menteshe now hallowing no other gods save only the false, vile, and wicked spirit cast from the heavens for that he was a sinner, the spirit known as the Banished One. Him do they worship. Him do they reverence, and give no tiniest portion of respect unto King Olor and Queen Quelea, the which thereof are truly deserving.

He went on for some little while, spewing forth one platitude after another. That tempted Lanius to put aside the old parchment after all. He didn’t, though, and ended up glad he didn’t, for the explorer went on.

At length, they suffered me to gaze upon this grand and holy relic, now no more than a spoil of war. Yet, like a slave woman once the beautiful and famous wife of some grand noble, it doth retain even in its lowly state a certain haggard loveliness. Indeed, I believe the building wherein it is enshrined was peradventure once a house for the proper gods, though now sadly changed into a hall in which the Banished One receives his undeserved praises of those he hath seduced away from truth and piety.

That was interesting. Lanius hadn’t believed any shrine to Olor and Quelea had existed so far south. He read on, doing his best to ignore the old-fashioned language. The merchant had been lucky to get out of Yozgat in one piece, for he’d left just before the Banished One himself came to view the Scepter.

Had I been there then, the Menteshe do assure me, nothing less than death or thralldom had been my portion. The Menteshe have no love for us Avornans, but the Banished One, being filled with a cold and bitter hate against us, is here even harsher than these his people. In his jealousy, he minds him that we were privileged to wield the Scepter of Mercy, whose touch he to this day may not abide. Thus he stole it, for to keep it from being turned against him.

Lanius slowly nodded. That all fit in with what other sources told him, but was more definite and emphatic than anything else he’d seen. He wished the merchant had gotten a glimpse of the Banished One. That might have told him things worth knowing. Or, on the other hand, more likely it wouldn’t have. Had the Banished One sensed an Avornan close by, the intrepid explorer would have paid the price for his zeal.

Carefully, Lanius returned the ancient parchment to its pigeonhole. If ever an Avornan army went down to Yozgat, it might prove useful to the commander. Lanius had never seen a better description of the city’s walls and defenses. On the other hand, it was also more than three hundred years old. No telling what the Menteshe had done since to make sure the Scepter of Mercy stayed exactly where it was.

He laughed a little, sadly, as he left the archives. No telling, either, when an Avornan army might push south past the Stura River, let alone all the way down to Yozgat. These days, the fight was to keep the Menteshe on their side of the river, and to keep the Banished One from making yet more Avornan farmers into soul-dead thralls.

The tide may turn again, Lanius thought, and tried very hard to believe it.

Colonel Hirundo beamed at King Grus. “The tide has turned, Your Majesty!” he exclaimed. “We drive the barbarians.”

“Yes.” Grus sounded less delighted than his officer. “We’ve given Dagipert something to think about, anyhow.”

“Something to think about? I should say so,” Hirundo answered. “Three weeks, and we’ve driven his army all the way out of Avornis. There ahead, across that stream, that’s Thervingia. We’re heading into Thervingia.” By the way he said it, he might have been talking about exploring the dark side of the moon. Up till now, the Thervings had had all the better of the fighting between the two kingdoms during Dagipert’s long reign.

“Send your cavalry across,” Grus told him. “Find a good farm, a prosperous farm, close by the border. Burn it. Run off the livestock. If the farmer puts up a fight, deal with him or capture him and bring him back for the mines. If he flees, let him go. Once you’ve done that, bring your horsemen back.”

“Bring them back?” Hirundo gaped. “Olor’s beard, why? Uh, Your Majesty?”

“Because we’ve still got to worry about Corvus and Corax, that’s why,” Grus answered. “Dagipert’s never going to take the city of Avornis, not if he sits outside it for a thousand years.” He’d been more worried than that when Dagipert besieged the royal capital not so very long before, but he wasn’t about to admit it now, not even to himself. He went on, “The rebels just might, though, if we stay away from home too long. Bound to be traitors in the city that Alca’s witchery didn’t find, and who knows how much trouble they can cause if we give ’em the chance?”

Would Lanius sooner have Corvus for a protector than me? Grus wondered. He’d done everything he could to make his usurpation as painless as possible. He couldn’t very well have gone further than marrying his own daughter to the young king. From all the signs Grus could read, Sosia and Lanius were getting on as well as a couple of newly weds could. But would Lanius think he could be king in his own right if Corvus overthrew Grus? Grus was convinced he’d be wrong, but that might not have anything to do with what Lanius believed.

With a sigh, Grus waved Hirundo on. “Go do as I tell you. We’ll let Dagipert know what we might have done. Next time, if we have to, we will do it. This time, he gets off easy, and let him thank the gods for it.”

Grus hoped Dagipert would take his moderation as a warning and not as a confession of weakness. He knew that was only a hope, though, not a guarantee. Dagipert might think the Avornan civil war was a pot he could stir to his own advantage. He might think that—and he might be right.

Hirundo saluted. “One burnt-out farmhouse coming up, Your Majesty.”

He called orders to his horsemen. They rode along the stream, looking for a ford. Before long, the whole band splashed across, then raced on into Thervingia. Grus waited on the Avornan side of the border, worrying. If the Thervings had an army waiting in ambush among those trees over there, as they were fond of doing…

But no roaring horde of Thervings burst from the woods. No more than a quarter of an hour after Hirundo’s men crossed the border, a column of smoke rose into the air. The soldiers who remained in Avornis with King Grus pointed to it and nudged one another. The vengeance the horsemen were taking might be small and symbolic, but vengeance it was.

Then Hirundo led his column back from the west. This time, they made for the ford without hesitation. Water dripping from his mount’s belly and from his own boots, Hirundo rode up to Grus. “It’s taken care of, Your Majesty,” he said. “The farmer and his kin tried putting up a fight from inside the house. Brave—but stupid. One of their arrows hurt a horse. I hope it makes ’em feel better in the next world, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“All right,” Grus said. “We’ve done what we came to do.” We’ve done enough of what we came to do, anyhow. “Now we go back to the city of Avornis and take care of something else.” We’ll take care of a piece of something else, anyway. I hope we’ll be able to take care of a piece of it. He wished he could worry about one trouble at a time, instead of having them land on him in clumps.

At Hirundo’s orders, the army turned about. Grus watched the men, liking the way they kept looking back toward the border. They weren’t worrying about the Thervings falling on them. They were wishing they could have done more in the enemy’s land. That was all to the good.

Hirundo seemed to be thinking along with him. “These men have the Thervings’ measure,” he said.

Grus nodded. “I think you’re right. We’ve spent a while running away from them—running away or getting trapped. The sooner Dagipert decides he can’t get away with bullying us, the better off we’ll be.”

“Well, we made a fair start here,” Hirundo said.

“It also helps that we had an officer here who did such a good job against the enemy. Congratulations, General Hirundo.”

Hirundo’s eyes glowed. “Thank you very much, Your Majesty! This is a lot better than chasing the Menteshe all over the landscape.”

Grus looked south. “One of these days, maybe, we’ll see if we can do a proper job of chasing the Menteshe.” He sighed. “It won’t be anytime soon, though, I’m afraid. We have a few other things to worry about first.” A laugh without mirth. “Oh, yes, just a few.”

But, as the long column of horsemen and foot soldiers and wagons made its way back toward the city of Avornis, Grus kept looking southward. He knew where the kingdom’s greatest enemy dwelt. He would have been a fool if he didn’t. He laughed that unhappy laugh again. I may be a fool. I’ve been a fool before— the gods know that’s true. But there are fools, and then there are fools. I’m not the kind of fool who forgets about the Banished One. I hope I’m not. I’d better not be.

Part of King Lanius was disappointed to have King Grus come back in what looked very much like triumph. Part of Lanius, in fact, was disappointed to see Grus come back to the capital at all. Had the Thervings overwhelmed the usurper, Lanius would have been King of Avornis in fact as well as in name.

Unfortunately, though, becoming king in fact as well as in name wouldn’t have magically turned him into a general. And, if Dagipert’s men had slaughtered Grus, they would have slaughtered his army, too—which would have left exactly nothing between them and another siege of the city of Avornis. They’d come too close to taking the capital the last time. This time, they might actually bring it off. And then where would you be? Lanius asked himself. He liked none of the answers he came up with.

Grus, meanwhile, had other things on his mind. “Well, Corvus has proved he’s just as bad a general when he’s fighting against Avornis as he was when he claimed he was fighting for the kingdom,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” Lanius told him. “How can you say that? You haven’t fought Corvus at all, not yet.”

“That’s exactly how I can say it—because I haven’t fought Corvus yet, I mean.” Grus grinned at Lanius.

Lanius didn’t grin back. He knew he was being teased, and he’d always been sensitive of his dignity. “Stop joking and tell me what you mean,” he said severely.

To his annoyance, Grus’ grin only got wider. His unwelcome colleague on the throne bowed low and said, “Yes, Your Majesty,” as though Lanius held it all by himself— the way I’m supposed to, Lanius thought. Grus went on, “If Corvus were any kind of a soldier, he would have come up here and tried to take the city of Avornis away from me while I was busy with the Thervings. Since he didn’t, I get to move against him instead of the other way around—and I intend to.”

“Oh.” Lanius’ irritation evaporated. He nodded to King Grus. “Yes, you’re right. I understand now. Thank you.”

“‘Thank you’?” Grus echoed. “For what?”

“For showing me something I hadn’t seen myself, of course,” Lanius answered. “It hadn’t occurred to me that you could judge a general by whether he fought at all as well as by how well he fought.”

“Well, you can. And you’re welcome, for whatever it’s worth to you.” Grus’ expression remained quizzical. “You’re a funny one, aren’t you?”

“So I’m told, now and again. I don’t see the joke myself— but then, that may be what makes me funny to other people.” Lanius shrugged.

“You are a funny one,” Grus said positively. “If you’re willing to give it, I’m going to want your help against Corvus and Corax.”

“What kind of help?” Lanius asked. “I just proved I’m no soldier myself.” He remembered his own recent reflections on what he might have done if Grus hadn’t come back from his campaign against King Dagipert. And, eyeing his fellow sovereign, he added, “Besides, didn’t your pet witch show you I’m not to be trusted?”

“Alca’s not my pet. Alca’s not anybody’s pet, and you’d be smart not to call her that to her face,” Grus replied. Lanius decided he was probably right. Grus continued, “And she didn’t show me I couldn’t trust you. She only showed me you didn’t like me. I already knew that.”

He didn’t sound angry. He didn’t sound amused, which would have made Lanius angry. He might have been talking about the weather. On that dispassionate note, Lanius had no trouble dealing with him. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Come along with me when I move against Corvus and Corax,” Grus told him. “When the time comes, show you’re with me and want me to win. That will make the men fighting for the gods-cursed nobles know they’ve picked the wrong side.”

But the right side is mine, not yours, Lanius thought. Grus waited. Lanius made himself ask another question. Is Grus’ side better or worse than Corvus‘? He sighed. However much he wished he did, he didn’t need to think very long before finding an answer there. “I’ll come with you,” he said.

Back in the city of Avornis, people spoke of the Maze as though it were impassable, as though a man who once set foot in it were certain never to come out again. No doubt the Kings of Avornis had encouraged that view of the marshes and swamps behind the capital. When they exiled foes to the Maze, they didn’t want them emerging again. They didn’t want people thinking they could help exiles emerge again, either.

The truth was less simple, as truth had a way of being.

Grus had no qualms about moving an army through the Maze. There were streams that traversed the entire region. He’d learned about some of them while still commodore of Avornis’ river galleys. Others were known to the folk who dwelt in the Maze without being exiles—fishermen, hunters, trappers. River galleys couldn’t make the whole journey. They drew too much water. Flat-bottomed barges, on the other hand…

Despite that, he hadn’t been in the Maze very long before he started to wonder whether he’d made a ghastly mistake. That had nothing to do with the barges. A breeze even meant they could move by sail. The men who poled and rowed them along rested easy for the time being. Everything was going as well as it could. Grus still worried. The more he looked at Lanius, the more he worried, too.

Lanius kept looking now this way, now that. It wasn’t curiosity, of which Grus had seen he owned an uncommon share. The more he stared around the Maze, the paler and quieter he got. His lips thinned. His jaw set. He kept sneaking glances at Grus. Grus didn’t like those glances. He knew looks couldn’t kill. If he hadn’t known that, he would have feared falling over dead.

Here, at least, he thought he knew what the trouble was. When King Lanius looked out into the Maze and then glowered at him yet again, he decided to strike first, before things got even worse. “Are you looking for your mother’s convent?” he asked.

Lanius started. Grus hid a smile. Lanius hadn’t thought he was so obvious. Grus didn’t think he had. After a moment, the young king nodded. “Yes, I am,” he said with as much defiance as he could muster.

“It’s over that way, I believe,” Grus told him, pointing southeast. “I’m sorry she’s there. You can believe that or not, just as you please, but it happens to be true. If she hadn’t tried to kill me, she’d still be in the city of Avornis. I’d like to hope you believe that’s true.”

He waited. Lanius said nothing for a long, long time. At last, though, he nodded. “I suppose it may be. But it doesn’t make things any easier for me.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not true. It doesn’t make things much easier for me.”

“All right, Your Majesty,” Grus replied. “I don’t ask that you love me, even if one of the other things I hope is that you’ll come to love my daughter one of these days. But I do wish you’d try to be fair to me.”

He waited again. Lanius looked like a man doing his best to hate him. After another pause, the youth said, “I suppose even the Banished One deserves that much. I’ll give it to you, if I can.”

“Thank you so much.” Grus didn’t try to hide the sarcasm. Lanius turned red. Grus went on, “The gods gave the Banished One what they thought he deserved. Now they’re rid of him, and they don’t have to worry about him anymore. We still do. Kings of Avornis have tried to be fair to him, or what they reckoned fair to him, before. You’d know more about that than I do, wouldn’t you?”

“Probably.” Lanius didn’t notice how arrogant he sounded.

“Fine,” Grus said. Odds were Lanius did know much more about it. But Grus knew what counted. “It’s never worked, has it? The only thing the Banished One calls fair is everything for him and nothing for us—not even all of our souls. Am I right about that, or am I wrong?”

“Oh, you’re right.” Lanius was willing—more than willing, even eager—to talk seriously about something abstract and intellectual. He went on, “The best explanation for it that I’ve read is that he reckons the gods his equals, and might deal fairly with them if they would deal with him at all. But we’re only people. He doesn’t see much more point to fair dealings with us than we would to fair dealings with so many sheep.”

He wasn’t stupid. He was, in fact, anything but stupid. “That’s interesting—makes a lot of sense, too, I think.” Grus sighed. “But it doesn’t make dealing with the Banished One any easier.”

“No,” Lanius agreed. “I don’t think anything will ever make dealing with the Banished One much easier. Even if we could get the Scepter of Mercy back, that wouldn’t make him want to deal with us. It would just make him worry about us more.”

“The way we’d worry about a sheep that could shoot a bow,” Grus suggested. Lanius nodded. Then he snickered. He didn’t laugh very often, and Grus felt a prick of pleasure at teasing mirth out of him.

Then he felt a prick of a different sort, and another, and another. The marshes and puddles and swamps and tussocks of the Maze bred mosquitoes and flies and midges and gnats in swarming, buzzing profusion. Lanius was slapping and muttering, too. On a nearby barge, horses’ tails switched back and forth, back and forth. The animals’ ears twitched. On yet another barge, a sailor fell into the water because he kept on swatting bugs without noticing he was walking off the stern. The air smelled wet and stagnant.

Here and there in the Maze, willows and elms and swamp oaks and other water-loving trees created little forests amidst the grasses and bushes and reeds and cattails and water lilies that covered most of the region. Kingfishers shrieked. Dippers chirped. Sun-dappled shadows danced. The trees marked higher ground—not high ground, for there was none hereabouts, but higher, and drier. People lived on that higher ground, those who made their living from what the Maze gave them and those who got sent there for what they’d done in the wider world.

Grus knew just where Queen Certhia’s convent lay. He said not a word as the barge passed within half a mile of it. Instead, he listened to the chirping frogs, pointed out a swimming water snake to Lanius, laughed when half a dozen turtles leaped off a floating log into the stream, and thought about fair dealing with the Banished One. “Baaa!” he said softly. I may be a sheep to him. One day, I’d like to be a sheep with a bow.