The Chernagor Pirates

CHAPTER ONE

Not for the first time—not for the hundredth, either—King Lanius wondered what it would be like to rule Avornis. His ancestors for a dozen generations had been kings. They’d ruled. He, on the other hand…

He, on the other hand, sighed and went on poking through the royal archives. Avornis was a proud and ancient kingdom. That meant it had been accumulating scrolls and codices and sheets of parchment and the occasional (often broken) potsherd for centuries. Lanius, fascinated by history, dug through them as eagerly as a miner went after a rich vein of gold.

The King—well, one of the Kings—of Avornis looked more like a scholar than a ruler. He was a tall, thin, weedy man in his midtwenties, with dark brown hair that needed combing and a beard with a chunk of dust in it down low on his right cheek where he couldn’t see it and flick it away. Instead of royal robes, he wore an ordinary—in fact, rather grubby—linen tunic and baggy wool trousers. The servants had complained that he always came back from the archives covered in dust and dirt, and that robes so smirched were impossible to clean. Lanius didn’t like to cause people trouble when he didn’t have to.

Dispirited sunbeams came through the dusty skylights set into the ceiling. Motes of dust Lanius had kicked up danced in the light. Somewhere off in the distance, far beyond the heavy doors that shut the archives away from the rest of the palace, a couple of serving women shrilly squabbled over something or other. Lanius smiled—he couldn’t make out a word they were saying.

He bent for a closer look at the latest parchment he’d unearthed. It talked about Yozgat—the great southern city where the barbarous Menteshe held the Scepter of Mercy for their master, the Banished One—back in the lost and distant days when Yozgat was not Yozgat but rather Prusa, an Avornan town.

Lanius sighed. “Why do I bother?” he muttered under his breath. Prusa had been made into Yozgat more than five hundred years before, when the wild Menteshe horsemen rode out of the hills and took the southern part of the kingdom away from an Avornis wracked by civil war. It had housed the Scepter of Mercy, once the great talisman of the Kings of Avornis, for four centuries. All efforts to reclaim the Scepter had failed, most of them horribly.

Maybe some clue in Prusa-that-was would yield a key to Yozgat. So Lanius hoped. In that hope, he kept going through the manuscripts in the archives one after another. If he didn’t look, he would assuredly find nothing.

“And if I do look, I’ll probably find nothing,” he said, and sighed again. Odds were, all his efforts were futile. The Banished One might have been cast down from the heavens to earth below, but he remained much, much more than a mere mortal man. He’d spent the intervening years fortifying Yozgat against assault. Even if an Avornan army fought its way to the place, what could it do then? Lanius hoped he would find something, anything, to tell him.

Not on this parchment, which was a tax register and said very little about Prusa’s geography. The next one… The next one talked about a border squabble between Avornis and the Chernagor city-states at the opposite end of the kingdom. No one could be sure how, or if, the archives were organized.

One of these days, I’ll have to do something about that. Lanius laughed at himself. He’d had the same thought ever since he started coming into the archives as a youth. It hadn’t happened yet. He didn’t intend to hold his breath waiting for it to happen. He put down the parchment that didn’t interest him, got up from the chair where he’d been sitting for a long time, and stretched. Something in his back popped. With a glance over his shoulder, as though to say he’d be back, he left the archives.

Servants bowed. “Your Majesty,” they murmured. Their respect might have shown that Lanius was the ruler of Avornis. It might have, but it didn’t. All it showed was that he was the descendant of a long line of kings.

As though to underscore his lack of power, one of the servants said, “Oh, Your Majesty, King Grus wants to see you.”

Not, King Grus wants to see you at your convenience, or anything of the sort. No one worried about Lanius’ convenience—Grus certainly didn’t. “Where is Grus?” Lanius asked. He seldom used the other king’s royal title—as seldom as he could get away with, in fact.

“He’s at the entranceway to the palace, Your Majesty, enjoying the fine spring day,” the servant replied.

Lanius couldn’t quarrel with Grus about that. Spring had come late to the city of Avornis this year. Now that it was finally here, it was worth savoring. “I’ll meet him there, then,” Lanius said.

If he hadn’t gone, Grus wouldn’t have done anything to him. His fellow sovereign wasn’t a cruel or vindictive man. Lanius would have had an easier time disliking him if he were. The rightful King of Avornis—so he thought of himself—still managed it, but it was sometimes hard work.

Serving women smiled at him as he went past. Sleeping with even a powerless king might let them escape a life of drudgery. Lanius passed the chambers where he kept his white-mustached monkeys and his moncats. He didn’t have time for the menagerie now, either.

Unfiltered by dusty, dirty glass, the sunlight streaming through the open doors of the palace made Lanius first blink and then smile. Bird-song came in with the sunshine. Warblers and flycatchers and other birds were finally coming back from the south. Lanius hadn’t realized how much he’d missed their music until he started hearing it again.

Storks were coming back from the south, too, building great ramshackle nests in trees and on rooftops. They didn’t sing—their voices were raucous croaks—but most people took them for good luck.

Grus stood in the sunshine, not so much basking in it as seeming to cause it. He had a knack for attaching to himself anything good that happened. His royal robes, encrusted with jewels and pearls and shot through with golden threads, gleamed and glittered as though they had come down from the heavens to illuminate the dull, gross, all-too-material earth. Their splendor made Lanius in his plain, dirty clothes seem all the shabbier by contrast.

Turning at the sound of Lanius’ footfalls, Grus smiled and said, “Hello, Your Majesty. Meaning no offense, but you look like a teamster.”

“I was in the archives,” Lanius said shortly.

“Oh. I’m sorry.” In spite of the apology, Grus’ smile got wider. “That means you want to clout me in the head for dragging you out.”

Lanius didn’t care to think what would happen to him if he tried to clout Grus in the head. The other king was about twice his age and several inches shorter than he. But Grus, despite a grizzled beard, was solidly made and trained as a fighting man. Not much in the way of muscle had ever clung to Lanius’ long bones, while he knew far less of fighting than of ancient dialects of Avornan. And so, while he might think wistfully of clouting the usurper, he knew better than to have a go at it.

“It’s all right,” he said now. “I’d come out anyhow. What can I do for you?”

Before Grus could answer, a priest whose yellow robe displayed his high rank walked in through the entrance. He bowed to Grus, murmuring, “Your Majesty.” He started to go on by Lanius, whose attire was anything but royal, but then stopped and stared and at last bowed again. “Your Majesties,” he corrected himself, and walked on.

A real teamster with a couple of barrels of ale in a handcart came in right after the priest. Intent on his work, he noticed neither king. “Let’s find some quiet place where we can talk,” Grus said.

“Lead on,” Lanius said. You will anyhow, he thought glumly.

King Grus sat down on a stool in one of the several small dining rooms in the palace. Servants ate here; royalty didn’t. Grus watched with some amusement as Lanius perched on another stool a few feet away. Perched was the right word—with his long limbs and awkward gait, Lanius put Grus in mind of a crane or a stork or some other large bird.

“This seems quiet enough,” Lanius remarked. A stout door—oak barred with iron—muffled the noise from the hallway outside, and would keep people from eavesdropping on what the two kings said.

“It will do.” Grus watched the younger man fidget. He wondered if Lanius had any idea he was doing it. Probably not, Grus judged.

“What is it, then?” Lanius sounded hostile and more than a little nervous. Grus knew his son-in-law didn’t love him. He wouldn’t have loved a man who’d taken the power rightfully his, either. As for the nerves… Grus thought he understood those, too.

“Tell me what you know about the Chernagors,” he said.

Lanius started. He thought I was going to ask him something else. Grus clicked his tongue between his teeth. He expected they would get around to that, too. Lanius said, “You’ll know a lot already. Hard to be King of Avornis”—he made a sour face at that—“and not know a good deal about the Chernagors.”

“I’m not interested in all the trading they do out on the Northern Sea,” Grus said. “They’ll do that come what may. I’m interested in the rivalries between their city-states.”

“All right.” Lanius thought for a moment. “Some of them, you know, go back a long way, back even before the days when their pirate ancestors took the northern coastline away from us.”

“That’s fine,” Grus said agreeably. “If knowing why they hated each other before helps me know how they hate each other now, I’ll listen. If it doesn’t”—he shrugged—“it can wait for some other time.”

Grus was a relentlessly practical man. One of his complaints about Lanius was that his son-in-law was anything but. Of course, had Lanius been more like him, he would also have been more likely to try to overthrow him—and much more likely to succeed.

“What’s this all about?” Lanius asked now, a practical enough question. “The Chernagors haven’t troubled us much lately—certainly no sea raids on our coast like the ones in my great-grandfather’s day, and not more than the usual nuisance raids across the land frontier. Thervingia’s been a lot bigger problem.”

“Not since Prince Berto became King Berto,” Grus said. Avornis’ western neighbor was quiet under a king who would rather build cathedrals than fight. Grus approved of a pious sovereign for a neighbor. Berto’s father, King Dagipert, had almost made Thervingia the master of Avornis and himself Lanius’ father-in-law instead of Grus. He’d also come unpleasantly close to killing Grus on the battlefield. The news that Dagipert had finally died was some of the best Grus had ever gotten.

“You know what I mean.” Lanius let his impatience show. He had scant patience for comments he found foolish.

“All right.” Grus spread his hands, trying to placate the younger king. “I’m concerned because the Banished One may be trying to get a foothold in some of the Chernagor city-states. With Berto on the throne in Thervingia, he won’t have any luck there, and he could use a lever against us besides the Menteshe.”

“I wonder if the Banished One and Dagipert connived together,”

Lanius said. Grus only shrugged once more. He’d wondered the same thing. Avornans had never proved it. Dagipert had always denied it. Doubt lingered even so.

“Any which way, our spies have seen Menteshe—which is to say, they’ve surely seen the Banished One’s—agents in several Chernagor towns,” Grus said.

“Milvago.” Lanius’ lips shaped the name without a sound.

“Don’t say it.” Grus shook his head in warning. “Don’t even come as close as you did. That’s nobody’s business but ours—and I wouldn’t be sorry if we didn’t know, either.”

“Yes.” Despite the warm spring weather, Lanius shivered. Grus didn’t blame him a bit. Everyone knew King Olor and Queen Quelea and the rest of the gods had joined together to cast the Banished One out of the heavens and down to earth more than a thousand years before.

Everyone knew that, yes. What no one knew, these days, was that the Banished One—Milvago, as he’d been known when he still dwelt in the heavens—hadn’t been any minor deity. Lanius had found that truth in the ecclesiastical archives, far below the great cathedral in the capital.

No, Milvago hadn’t been any ordinary god, a god of weather or anger or earthquakes or other such well-defined function. From what the ancient archives said, Milvago had fathered Olor and Quelea and the rest. Until they cast him forth, he’d been Lord of All.

He remained, or seemed to remain, immortal, though he wasn’t all-powerful anymore—wasn’t, in fact, a god at all anymore. He wanted dominion on earth, not only for its own sake but also, somehow, as a stepping-stone back to the heavens. Avornis had always resisted him. Grus wondered how long his kingdom could go on resisting a power greater than it held.

“Do you know what I think?” Lanius said.

Grus shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea, Your Majesty.” He stayed polite to Lanius. The other king seldom used his royal title. Lanius resented reigning rather than ruling. Grus didn’t worry about that, as long as the resentment stayed no more than resentment. Polite still, Grus added, “Tell me, please.”

“I think the Banished One is stirring up trouble among the Chernagors to keep us too busy even to try to go after the Scepter of Mercy down in the south,” Lanius said.

That hadn’t occurred to Grus. He realized it should have. The Banished One saw the world as a whole. He had to try to do the same himself. “You may very well be right,” he said slowly. “But even if you are, what can we do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Lanius admitted. “I was hoping you might think of something.”

“Thanks—I think,” Grus said.

“If we get in trouble in the north, what can we do but try to calm it down before it gets worse?” Lanius asked. “Nothing I can see. We can’t very well pretend it isn’t there, can we?”

“I don’t see how. I wish I did.” Grus’ laugh was sour as green apples. “Well, Your Majesty, the Scepter of Mercy has been out of our hands for a long time now. I don’t suppose a little longer will make that much difference.”

Lanius’ answering nod was unhappy. Four hundred years ago, the then-King of Avornis had brought the great talisman down from the capital to the south to help resist the inroads of the Menteshe. But the hard-riding nomads had fallen on the Scepter’s escort, galloped off with it to Yozgat, and held it there ever since. After several disastrously unsuccessful efforts to retake it, the Avornans hadn’t tried for a couple of centuries. And yet…

Lanius said, “As long as we go without it, the Banished One has the advantage. All we can do is respond to his moves. Playing the game that way, we lose sooner or later. With it, maybe we can call the tune.”

“I know.” Now Grus sounded unhappy, too. Sending Avornan soldiers south of the Stura River was asking either to lose them or to see them made into thralls—half-mindless men bound to the Menteshe and to the Banished One. And Yozgat, these days the chief town of the Menteshe Prince Ulash, lay a long way south of the Stura. “If only our magic could stand up against what the Banished One can aim at us.”

“Wish for the moon while you’re at it.” But King Lanius caught himself. “No. Wish for the Scepter of Mercy.”

“If I need to have it already before I can hope to get it—” Grus stopped. Even if he went around that twenty-two times, he’d still get caught.

“We have to try. Sooner or later, we have to try,” Lanius said. But Lanius was no soldier. How much of the bitter consequences of failure did he grasp?

On the other hand, not trying to take back the Scepter of Mercy would also be a failure, a failure most bitter. Grus understood that, too.

He’d never wished more to disagree than when he made his head go up and down and said, “You’re right.”

Lanius dreamed. He knew he dreamed. But dreams in which the Banished One appeared were not of the ordinary sort. That supremely cold, supremely beautiful face seemed more real than most of the things he saw while wide awake. The Banished One said, “And so you know my name. You know who I was, who I am, who I shall be again.”

His voice was as beautiful—and as cold—as his features. Lanius heard in these dreams with the same spectral clarity as he saw. Milvago. The name, and the knowledge of what it meant, echoed and reechoed in his mind.

He didn’t speak the name—however one spoke in dreams—but the Banished One sensed it. “Yes, I am Milvago, shaper of this miserable world,” he declared. “How dare you presume to stand against me?”

“You want to conquer my kingdom,” Lanius replied. He could answer honestly; the Banished One, he’d seen, might commandeer his dreams, but couldn’t harm him in them. “You want to make my people into thralls. If I can keep you from doing that, I will.”

“No mere mortal may hinder me,” the Banished One said.

“Not so.” Lanius shook his head, or it felt as though he shook his head, there in this dream that was all too real. “You were cast down from the heavens long ago. If no man could hinder you, you would have ruled the world long since.”

“Rule it I shall.” The Banished One tossed his head in more than mortal scorn. “What is time? Time means nothing to me, not when I created time. Think you I am trapped in it, to gutter out one day like a lamp running dry? You had best think again, you mayfly, you brief pimple on the buttock of the world.”

Lanius knew he would die. He didn’t know the Banished One wouldn’t, but Milvago had shown no sign of aging in all the long years since coming down from the heavens. He couldn’t assume the Banished One was lying. Still, that didn’t matter. The king’s tutors had trained him well. However intimidating the Banished One was, Lanius saw he was trying to distract him here. Whether he would die wasn’t the essence of the argument. Whether he remained omnipotent—if, indeed, he’d ever been omnipotent—was.

“If you were all you say you are, you would have ruled the world since you came into it,” Lanius said. “That you don’t proves you can be beaten. I will do everything I know how to do to stop you.”

“Everything you know how to do.” The Banished One’s laughter flayed like whips of ice. “What do you know? What can you know, who live but for a season and then go back to the nothingness from which you sprang?”

“I know it is better to live free than as one of your thralls,” Lanius answered. “Did the gods who sprang from you decide the same thing?”

Normally, the Banished One’s perfect countenance showed no emotion. Rage rippled over it now, though. “After yours, their turn shall come,” he snarled. “You need not doubt that. Oh, no, do not doubt it. Their turn shall come.”

He reached for Lanius, the nails on his fingers sharpening into talons as his hands drew near. As one will in dreams, Lanius turned to flee. As one will in dreams, he knew he fled too slow. He looked back to see how much danger he was in. The Banished One, apparently, could make his arms as long as he chose. His hand closed on the shoulder of the King of Avornis.

Lanius shrieked himself awake.

“Are you all right?” The hand on his shoulder belonged to his wife. Even in the dim light of the royal bedchamber, Sosia looked alarmed. “I haven’t heard you make a noise like that in…” Grus’ daughter shook her head. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you make a noise like that.”

“Bad dream,” Lanius said.

He would have left it there. He didn’t want to worry Sosia. Grus had arranged the marriage—forced it on both of them, in other words. The new king wanted to tie himself to Avornis’ ancient dynasty as closely as he could. In their seven years of marriage, though, Lanius and Sosia had come to care for each other as much as a married couple could reasonably be expected to do—which was, perhaps, more than anything else, a triumph of good manners and patience on both sides.

Sosia shook her head. Her dark, wavy hair, down for the night, brushed across his face. “That wasn’t any ordinary dream,” she said. “You don’t have dreams like that—nightmares, I should say. Did you see… him?”

She didn’t even want to call him the Banished One. She didn’t know the name Milvago, or what the Banished One had been before his ouster from the heavens. So far as Lanius knew, only he and Grus knew that. Grus had told him not to tell anyone—not his wife, who was Grus’ daughter, and not the Arch-Hallow of Avornis, who was Grus’ bastard son. Lanius hadn’t argued. He too could see that the fewer people who knew about exactly what sort of enemy Avornis faced, the better.

After his scream, he couldn’t very well lie to Sosia. “Yes, I saw him,” he said with a reluctant nod.

“Why doesn’t he leave you alone?” She sounded indignant, as though, could she have been alone with the Banished One, she would have given him a piece of her mind. She probably would have, too.

“He sends me dreams. He sends your father dreams. He doesn’t bother other people—General Hirundo never gets them, for instance,” Lanius said. The Banished One didn’t trouble Sosia, either, but Lanius forbore to mention that.

His wife sounded more irate than ever. “He should bother other people, and leave you alone.”

But Lanius shook his head. “In an odd way, I think it’s a compliment,” he said. “He knows your father and I are dangerous to him, so we’re the ones he visits in dreams. That’s what we think, anyhow.”

Maybe we’re giving ourselves too much credit, he thought. Could he and Grus—could any mortals—seriously discommode the Banished One? On days when Lanius felt gloomy, he had his doubts. But why had thralls under the Banished One’s will tried to murder the two Kings of Avornis the winter before, if those kings didn’t represent some kind of danger?

Sosia said, “What I think is, you ought to go back to sleep, and hope no more bad dreams come. And if they don’t, you can worry about all these things in the morning, when you feel better.”

Lanius leaned over and kissed her. “That’s good advice,” he said. In fact, he could think of no better advice for the wee small hours of the morning. He took it, and the Banished One left him alone… then.

King Grus and the man he hoped to make his new wizard eyed each other. The wizard, whose name was Pterocles, said, “I’ll do everything I can for you, Your Majesty.” He was young and earnest and very bright. Grus was sure he would be diligent. Whether he would be versatile enough, or discreet enough, to make a royal wizard… Grus wished he weren’t quite so young.

And what was Pterocles thinking about as he sat studying Grus? The king couldn’t read his face. That was, if anything, a point in the wizard’s favor. After dealing with so many petitioners and courtiers over the years, Grus knew how transparent most men were. Not this one.

“One of the things a king’s wizard needs to do,” Grus said, “is keep his mouth shut. I think you can manage that.”

“I hope so,” Pterocles replied. “I don’t want to cause you scandal.”

“Good,” Grus said, a little more heartily than he should have.

“And I do have a certain advantage along those lines,” the wizard went on.

“Oh? What’s that?” Grus asked.

“I’m a man,” Pterocles answered, and stroked his silky brown beard as though to emphasize the point.

Grus’ glower would have made most men hoping for royal favor cringe, or more likely despair. Pterocles sat impassive. Grudgingly, Grus said, “You’ve got nerve.”

“I hope so, Your Majesty. I wouldn’t be much good to you if I didn’t,” Pterocles replied. “And would you want me if I were so stupid—no, so ignorant—that I didn’t know why you need a new wizard?”

“Mph.” Grus pursed his lips and blew a hissing stream of air out through them. Everyone in the palace, and probably everyone in the city of Avornis, knew why he needed a new wizard. Alca the witch had been as skilled at sorcery as anyone in the capital. She’d saved Grus’ life from murder by magic before he became king. Grus had admired her, used her talents… had an affair with her. Her husband found out. So did Estrilda, Grus’ wife. The king made himself bring his attention back to Pterocles. “Are you too frank for your own good?” he wondered aloud.

“If you decide I am, you’ll pick someone else,” the wizard said. “But if I can’t speak openly to you, what good am I?”

“A point. Yes, definitely a point.” Grus drummed his fingers on the marble-topped table in front of him. The stone was cool under his fingertips. “Tell me,” he said, “has the Banished One ever appeared to you in dreams?”

That cracked Pterocles’ shell of calm. He jerked as though bitten by a horsefly. His eyes opened very wide. “Once, Your Majesty. Only once, King Olor and Queen Quelea be praised,” he said. “But how could you know about that?”

“Wizards aren’t the only ones who know strange things,” Grus answered. “I wouldn’t want you as my wizard if the Banished One took no interest in you.”

“Why ever not?” the wizard asked. “I would be much happier if I had never seen that perfect, perfectly sneering face, if I had never been reminded I was to him no more than some crawling insect is to me.”

The way he spoke convinced Grus he told the truth. Nobody who had not had the Banished One invade at least one of his nights could have imagined the boundless contempt with which the castaway from the heavens viewed the human race. The king said, “If you’re going to be a bug, how would you like to be a bug with a sting?”

He’d surprised Pterocles again; he saw as much. “If I thought I could sting the Banished One, I would,” the wizard said. “But how?”

“What do you know of the Scepter of Mercy?” Grus asked.

“Why, Your Majesty, I know as much as any Avornan living,” Pterocles exclaimed, springing to his feet and bowing. Grus’ hopes suddenly soared. Had good luck—or the hands of the gods, disguised as good luck—led him to a man who could truly help him against the Banished One? But then, with another bow, the wizard added, “Which is to say, not very much,” and perched himself on his stool once more.

“I see.” Grus did his best to sound severe, but the corners of his mouth couldn’t help twitching up. Pterocles’ grin made him look very young indeed. Grus said, “How would you like to learn?”

Before answering, Pterocles pulled an amulet on a silver chain out from under his linen tunic—a fine opal, shimmering in blue and red, half covered by a laurel leaf. He murmured a low-voiced charm, then explained, “My amulet and my magic will make me invisible to those who would do me evil. That being so, Your Majesty, I will tell you I would give all I have to learn those secrets.”

“Good. You may, and at just the price you offer,” Grus said. If he could frighten Pterocles away, he wanted to find out now. But the wizard only nodded, his eyes glowing with excitement. Grus went on, “And I’ll tell you something else, too. Amulets like that are fine for warding yourself against an ordinary wizard. All they do against the Banished One is draw his notice. You might as well be saying, I’m talking about something I don’t want the Banished One to hear. Going about your business in the most ordinary way is more likely to confuse him. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, and I wish I didn’t.” Pterocles had put the amulet away. Now he drew it out again and looked it over. “This is as strong a spell as any man can hope to cast.”

“I believe you,” Grus said. “Do you really think you can hope to beat the Banished One by being stronger than he is?”

Had Pterocles said yes to that, Grus would have dismissed him. The wizard started to—he had a young man’s confidence in his own strength and power. But he also had some sense, for he checked himself. “Mm… maybe not.”

“Good,” Grus said. “In that case, you just may do.”

Lanius’ crown lay heavy on his head. His neck would ache tonight from bearing up under the weight of the gold. He wore it as seldom as he could. But an embassy from one of the Chernagor city-states was a formal occasion.

He entered the throne room a quarter of an hour before a servant would escort the Chernagors into his presence. Courtiers bowed low as he walked past them. They had to be polite, but he knew they were there more to see the Chernagors than to see him. He went through the palace all the time. The Chernagors, on the other hand, came to the city of Avornis but seldom.

The royal throne rose several feet above the floor, to let the king look down on the envoys who came before him. Two stalwart bodyguards stood in front of it, one to the left, the other to the right. They both wore gilded mailshirts and gilded helms with crests of crimson-dyed horsehair. As Lanius ascended to the throne, the guards thumped the butts of their spears against the floor in salute.

He settled himself on the throne as best he could. It was made to look imposing, not to be comfortable. In his younger days, his mother and Marshal Lepturus, the commander of the royal guards, would have taken those places in front of the throne. No more. Grus had exiled both of them to the Maze, the boggy, swampy country east and south of the capital. Queen Certhia had tried to kill Grus by sorcery. Lepturus’ crime was more recent. He’d refused to let his granddaughter marry Grus’ son. Lanius sympathized. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone connected to him marrying Ortalis, either.

A stir in the throne room swept such thoughts from his mind. Here came the Chernagors, advancing up the central aisle toward the throne.

They were big, blocky men with bushy beards and dark hair fixed in neat buns at the napes of their necks. They wore linen shirts bright with fancy embroidery and knee-length kilts that left hairy calves on display.

Their leader, whose hair and beard were frosted with gray, bowed low before Lanius. “Your Majesty,” he said in fluent, gutturally accented Avornan. “I am Lyut, Your Majesty. I bring you greetings from Prince Vsevolod of Nishevatz, and from all the other Princes of the Chernagors.”

That last was polite nonsense; most of the other princes of the Chernagors were Vsevolod’s rivals, not his allies. “I am pleased to greet Prince Vsevolod in return,” Lanius replied, and then, deviating from the usual formalities, “Do you know the ambassador Yaropolk, who has represented your city-state here in times past?”

“I do, Your Majesty,” Lyut replied. “In fact, I have the honor to be second cousin to his junior wife.”

“He is an able man,” Lanius said, which seemed a safe enough compliment. “I have gifts for you and your men.” At his nod, a courtier brought leather sacks of coins for Lyut and his followers. The ambassador’s sack was larger and heavier than any of the others. Ancient custom dictated just how much went into each sack.

Lyut bowed. “Many thanks, Your Majesty. Your generosity knows no bounds. We have gifts for you as well.”

King Lanius leaned forward. So did the other Avornans in the throne room. The Chernagors were wide-faring sailors and traders. Equally ancient custom said their gifts to Kings of Avornis might be anything at all, as long as they were interesting. Lyut gestured to the men behind him.

“Here, Your Majesty,” Lyut said as the other Chernagors took skins out of leather sacks and unrolled them. The skins were from great cats, lion-sized, with orange hair striped with black. “These come from lands far away.”

“I’m sure they must,” Lanius said politely. “You must tell me more later.” He tried to sound enthusiastic. The skins were interesting, but the Chernagors had done better. The mustachioed monkeys and the strange moncats Lanius raised were, to his way of thinking, cases in point.

With another bow, Lyut said, “That would be my pleasure, Your Majesty. In the meantime, though, I hope you will hear my petition.”

“You have come from far away to make it,” Lanius said. “Speak, then. Tell me what is in your mind.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty. You are as gracious as you are wise.” Lyut paused, then went on, “Let me be blunt, Your Majesty. There are men in Nishevatz who would let my city-state fall under the shadow of the Banished One. More—there are men in my city-state who would help Nishevatz fall under the shadow of the Banished One. Prince Vsevolod resists them, but he is not a young man. And who knows in which direction his son, Prince Vasilko, will turn? We need your help, Your Majesty. We need Avornis’ help.”

King Lanius wanted to laugh. He also wanted to cry. By himself, he didn’t have the power to help a Chernagor city-state. That lay in Grus’ hands. Lanius said, “What I can do, I will do.” Lyut bowed again. Maybe he took that as a promise of aid. Or maybe he knew how weak Lanius truly was, and took it for a promise of nothing at all.