The Chernagor Pirates

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lanius wished he weren’t once more briefly seeing Grus in the city of Avornis as the other king hurried from one trouble spot to another. Grus looked harried. Lanius couldn’t blame him. Grus said, “Is it really as bad as it’s sounded from all the reports I’ve had?”

“All I have are the same reports,” Lanius answered. “It doesn’t sound good, does it?”

“This isn’t just a raid, sure enough,” Grus said. “They’re throwing everything they’ve got into it.”

“In a way, it’s a compliment,” Lanius said. Grus eyed him as though he’d lost his mind. “It is,” Lanius insisted. “You were doing too well up in the Chernagor country. The Banished One couldn’t find any way to stop you up there, so he got Ulash moving down in the south.”

The other king frowned as he thought things over. “Something to that,” he said at last. His frown got deeper, pulling the lines of his face into harsh relief. He’s not a young man anymore, Lanius thought. But even if Grus wasn’t as young as he had been, he remained vigorous. He also hadn’t lost his wry wit. “It’s a compliment I could do without, you know.”

“I believe it.” Lanius waited for Grus to warn him not to get too enthusiastic about running the kingdom from the capital while his fellow king took the field. Grus didn’t do it. Instead, he threw back his head— and yawned. Lanius asked him, “How long do you aim to stay in the city of Avornis?”

“Today, maybe tomorrow,” Grus answered. “No longer than that. A couple of things I need to take care of here, and then I’ll be on my way down toward the Stura. It’s not like I haven’t fought in those parts before.”

“What are you going to do here?” Lanius asked.

Grus’ smile was all sharp teeth. “I know Petrosus isn’t your favorite minister,” he said. Lanius nodded. The other king went on, “You’ll be dealing with someone else from now on. Petrosus will spend the rest of his days in the Maze.”

“Even though he’s Ortalis’ father-in-law?” Lanius said in surprise.

“Because he’s Ortalis’ father-in-law,” Grus answered grimly.

“But Ortalis and Limosa ran off and got married by themselves,” Lanius said. “That’s how they both tell it.”

“I don’t care how they tell it,” Grus said. “Ortalis wouldn’t have chosen her if her father hadn’t pulled wires. And any which way, you can’t tell me Petrosus wouldn’t try to pull more now that he’s wedged his way into my family.”

In a way, that was funny. Grus had wedged his way into Lanius’ family the same way. And Grus didn’t just pull wires. He had the whole web of the kingdom in his hands. Pointing that out would not have endeared Lanius to him. The only thing Lanius found to say was, “You would know best.”

Even that earned him a sharp look from Grus. The other king was far from a fool, even if Lanius had to remind himself of that every so often. Grus said, “There are times when I wonder whether I know anything about anything.”

You know enough to hold on to things for yourself, Lanius thought. He said, “Will you use river galleys against the Menteshe?”

“If I can,” Grus answered. “Past that, I’ll just have to see.”

Lanius nodded. “All right. Until you see how things are down in the south, I don’t suppose you can say anything more.” He hesitated, then added, “Are you sure you want to send Petrosus to the Maze? He hasn’t done anything out of line that I’ve been able to see—and you’re right, I don’t like him a bit, so I wouldn’t be shy about telling you if he had.”

“I’m sure.” The older king sounded altogether determined.

“By all the signs, Ortalis and Limosa are happy newlyweds,” Lanius said.

Grus snorted. “Ortalis is getting laid regularly. Of course he’s happy. But what happens when that isn’t enough to keep him happy?” He made a particularly sour face. So did Lanius, who knew what his fatherin-Jaw meant, and wished he didn’t. He wondered what Limosa would think when she found out about her new husband’s… peculiar tastes.

Changing the subject seemed a good idea. Lanius said, “Gods go with you on your trip to the south.”

“Yes,” Grus said. They sat alone in a small audience chamber. A low table with a jug of wine and a couple of cups stood between them. Grus emptied his cup, then looked around to make sure no one lurked outside a window or in the hallway by the door. Only after he’d satisfied himself did he continue, “They’d better, don’t you think? Considering who’s behind Ulash, I mean.”

“Oh, yes. That’s what I had in mind, too.” Lanius also took another sip of wine.

Grus got up, came around the table, and set a hand on his shoulder. “You take care of things here. I’ll do what I can with the Menteshe— to the Menteshe.”

“Good.” Lanius beamed. Grus was starting to accept him as a real partner, not just as one in name only. No doubt Grus did so only because he had no choice. Lanius knew as much. He was no less pleased on account of that.

The fastest way south was by ship through the Maze. That made Hirundo unhappy. Even on the placid waters of the marsh, Grus’ general was less than a good sailor. He wagged a finger at the king. “Don’t you laugh at me now, Your Majesty, or I’ll pay you back when you get on a horse.”

“Me? I didn’t say a thing.” Grus contrived to look innocent.

Hirundo laughed, which made him suspect his contrivance could have been better. “I saw what you were thinking. The only thing I can say for this is, it’s better than going out on the open sea.” He shuddered at the memory.

“It’s better than horseback, too,” Grus said.

“Some people might think so,” Hirundo answered pointedly. “I don’t happen to be one of them.” He glanced around at the water, the weeds and branches floating in it, the muddy, grassy tussocks rising just out of it, and shook his head. “I think the only real reason you came through here was so you could see for yourself the monastery you picked out for Petrosus.”

Grus had seen the monastery. It sat in the middle of a tussock big enough to be called an island. The only way off was by boat, and even boats had trouble getting through the mud surrounding it. All the same, the place was built like a fortress. Monks who came there would assuredly spend the rest of their lives in prayer.

Something landed on Grus’ arm. It bit him. He swatted. He didn’t know whether he smashed it or not. A moment later, something else bit him on the back of the neck. He swatted there, too. The bug squashed under his fingers. He wiped his hand on a trouser leg. Monks at Petrosus’ new monastery might spend every spring and summer praying to be plagued by fewer bugs.

Hirundo was swatting, too. “Miserable things. This place is good for nothing—not a single cursed thing.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Grus said. “I can’t think of any place much better for getting rid of troublemakers.” He sent Hirundo a speculative stare.

“Don’t look at me that way!” the general exclaimed. “Don’t you dare, Your Majesty! You tell anybody—me, for instance—he’s liable to have to stay here for the rest of his days, and he’ll be good forever. I know I would.”

“Don’t give me that. I’ve known you too long, and I know you too well,” Grus said. “Nothing could make you stay good forever, or even very long.”

“The threat of staying here for the rest of my life would do it,” Hirundo insisted. “Offhand, I can’t think of anything else.”

When the sun set, the flies and gnats went away and the mosquitoes came out. Their high, thin whine was enough to drive anyone mad. Some of the sailors, more used to traveling through the Maze than Grus was, draped fine mesh nets over themselves and slept without being badly bothered. Grus got some of the netting for himself, too. One of the things nobody told him, though, was how to pull it over himself without letting mosquitoes get in under it. The king passed an uncomfortable night and woke with several new bites from the company he hadn’t wanted.

Noticing Pterocles scratching as the wizard ate bread and ale for breakfast, he asked, “Don’t you have any magic against mosquitoes?”

Mournfully, the wizard shook his head. “I wish I did, Your Majesty. Maybe I’ve spent too much time worrying about big things and not enough about small ones,” he answered, and scratched some more.

Oarmasters on the river galleys got their rowers working as soon as they could. They worked them hard, too, harder than Grus would have in their place. When he remarked on that to the oarmaster of his own ship, the man replied, “Sooner we get out of this miserable place, sooner we stop getting eaten alive.” Grus had a hard time disagreeing with that.

But getting through the Maze in a hurry wasn’t easy, either. Galleys and barges went aground on mud banks and had to back oars or, when badly stuck, to be towed off by other ships. Rowers and officers shouted curses.

Hirundo said, “There ought to be clearly marked channels, so people know where they’re going.”

“Part of me says yes to that,” Grus answered. “The other part wonders whether it’s a good idea to show enemies how to get through the Maze—or, for that matter, to show people shut up inside the Maze how to get out of it. I had to dredge one place out so river galleys could get through the whole length of the Maze. They didn’t used to be able to, you know.”

“Maybe we should have gone around,” Hirundo said.

“Going through it is still the fastest way to get south,” Grus said. “We’re not crawling now. We’re just not going as fast as we would if everything were perfect.”

“Oh, hurrah,” Hirundo said sourly.

His general’s sarcasm didn’t faze Grus. He peered south, waiting for the steersman to find the channel of the Nedon, which ran south for some little distance after escaping the flat swampland of the Maze. As soon as the ships were in a place where they could easily tell the difference between the river and the countryside through which it flowed, they made much better time.

This left Hirundo no happier. As the river galleys sped up, their motion grew rougher. Every mile the fleet traveled south, Hirundo got greener.

Grus, by contrast, enjoyed the journey on the Nedon. Eventually, the river would turn east, toward the Azanian Sea. Since the Menteshe were fighting farther south, his men and horses would have to leave the galleys and barges then. He would have to get on one of those horses. That prospect left him as delighted as river travel left Hirundo.

When Lanius heard clanks and then a meow in the royal archives, he wasn’t very surprised, not anymore. He didn’t jump. He didn’t wish he were a soldier, or even that he had weapons more deadly than pen, parchment, and ink. He just got to his feet and went over to see if he could find the moncat responsible for the racket.

After some searching, he did. Pouncer was carrying a stout silver serving spoon. Lanius wondered how it had gotten the spoon from the kitchens here to the archives; they weren’t particularly close. For that matter, the chamber where the moncat lived wasn’t all that close to the kitchens, either. There had to be passages in the walls a moncat could go through, regardless of whether a man could.

The king scooped up Pouncer—and the spoon. The moncat twisted and tried to bite. He tapped it on the nose, hard enough to get its attention. “Stop that!” he told it, not that it understood Avornan. But it did understand the tap and the tone of voice. Both told it biting was something it wasn’t supposed to do. Little by little—about as fast as an ordinary cat would—it was learning.

Servants exclaimed as Lanius carried Pouncer down the corridor. “How did it get out this time?” a man asked.

“I don’t know,” the king replied. “I wish I did, but I’ve never seen it leave its room. I don’t think any cooks have ever seen it sneak into the kitchens, either.”

“Maybe it’s a ghost.” The servant sounded serious. The workers in the royal palace were a superstitious lot.

“Feels too solid to be a ghost—and I’ve never heard of a ghost that steals spoons,” Lanius said. The moncat twisted again, lashing out with its free front foot. It got Lanius on the forearm. “Ow! I’ve never heard of a ghost that scratches, either.”

“You never can tell,” the servant said darkly. He went down the corridor shaking his head. Lanius went up the corridor to the moncats’ chamber.

When he got there, he set Pouncer down. Then he had another small struggle getting the silver spoon away from the moncat. He watched for a while, hoping the beast would disappear down whatever hole it had used while he was there. But, perverse as any cat, it didn’t.

At last, Lanius gave up. He took the spoon off to the kitchens. As he walked through the palace, he wondered if Pouncer would get there ahead of him, steal something else, and then disappear again. But he saw no sign of it when he went through the big swinging doors.

One after another, the cooks denied seeing the moncat. “Has that miserable beast been in here again?” a fat man asked, pointing to the spoon in Lanius’ hand.

He held it up. “I didn’t steal this myself.”

He got a laugh. “I don’t suppose you did, Your Majesty,” the fat cook said, and took it from him. “But how does the moncat keep sneaking in?”

“That’s what I want to find out,” Lanius answered. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Sorry, Your Majesty,” the cook said. The other men and women who worked in the kitchens shook their heads. A lot of them sported big bellies and several chins. That was, Lanius supposed, hardly surprising, not when they worked with and around food all the time.

A woman said, “What do you suppose the animal’s been eating with that spoon?” She got a louder laugh than Lanius had, and added, “I suppose we’d better wash it.” The fat man who was holding it tossed it into a tub of water ten or fifteen feet away. He had perfect aim. The spoon splashed into the tub and clattered off whatever crockery already sat in there.

Lanius wondered whether they would have washed it if the cook hadn’t asked if the moncat had eaten from it. Some things, perhaps, were better left unknown. He walked out of the kitchen without asking.

He was walking back to his own chambers when he almost bumped into Limosa, who was coming up the corridor. She dropped him a curtsy, murmuring, “Good morning, Your Majesty.”

“Good morning, Your Highness,” the king answered. “How are you today?”

“I am well, thank you,” she answered. “May I please ask you a question, Your Majesty?”

Lanius thought he knew what the question would be. Since he didn’t see how he could avoid it, he nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you.” Limosa visibly gathered her courage. “Is there any way you can release my father from the Maze?”

He’d been right. “I’m sorry,” he said, and did his best to sound as though he really were sorry. He knew he had to work at it, considering what he really thought of Petrosus.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who knew what he thought of the former treasury minister. Flushing, Limosa said, “I know you aren’t fond of my father, Your Majesty. But could you please free him for my sake?”

“If I could, I would,” Lanius answered, thinking, If I could, I… might. I did ask Grus not to send him to the Maze, so maybe I would. He wasn’t brokenhearted at having a good excuse not to, though. “But King Grus sent him away, and King Grus is the only one who can bring him back to the palace.”

“And King Grus won’t,” Limosa said. Lanius didn’t contradict her. Biting her lip, she went on, “He thinks my father tricked Ortalis into marrying me. By the gods, Your Majesty, I tell you again it isn’t true.”

“I see,” Lanius said—as neutral a phrase as he could find.

“It isn’t true,” Limosa insisted. “I wanted to marry Ortalis. I love him.” Lanius wanted to say, Are you out of your mind? Before either did more than cross his mind, Limosa went on, “He’s the most wonderful man I ever met—uh, meaning no disrespect to you, Your Majesty, of course.” She blushed.

“Of course,” Lanius echoed. He was too bewildered, too astonished, to find anything else to say. Ortalis? The Ortalis who hunted because he was fond of blood? The Ortalis who hurt women because it excited him? That Ortalis was the most wonderful man Limosa had ever met? Something, somewhere, didn’t add up. Lanius had no idea what. He did know the only individual to whom he less wanted to be married than he did to Ortalis was the Banished One.

Limosa sighed. “He’s so sweet. And he does such marvelous things.” She blushed again, this time a bright, bright red. Lanius only scratched his head. He really did wonder if they were talking about the same Ortalis. If he hadn’t seen Grus’ son with Limosa, he wouldn’t have believed it.

Horse-drawn wagons full of grain rattled along with Grus’ army. They didn’t slow it down badly, but they did help tie it to the roads. Grus wasn’t happy about that, but knew he gained as well as lost from having them along. The Menteshe made a habit of burning farms and fields and anything else they came across. Carrying supplies with him was the only way he could be sure of having them when he needed them most. The horizon to the south should have been smooth, or gently rolling with the low hills between the valleys of the Nine Rivers. Instead, an ugly brown-black smudge obscured part of it. Pointing that way, Grus said, “We’ll find the nomads there.”

Hirundo nodded. “That’s how it looks to me, too.” He sent the king a sly smile. “Are you ready to ride into battle, Your Majesty?”

Did ride have a little extra stress, or was Grus imagining things? Knowing Hirundo, he probably wasn’t. He answered, “I’m as ready as I’m going to be,” and set a hand on his horse’s neck. The beast was a placid gelding. It did what Grus wanted it to do, and didn’t put up much in the way of argument. That suited him fine. Hirundo rode a stallion. It had more flash, more fire. Grus cared very little about that. To him, a horse with fire was a horse that was all too likely to pitch him out of the saddle and onto the ground headfirst.

He nodded to a trumpeter who rode close by. The man blew Trot. The king used his knees and the reins to urge his horse up from a walk. The sooner his men closed with the Menteshe, the better, as far as he was concerned. Prince Ulash’s men had already come too far north to suit him.

“Scouts out in the van! Scouts out to the flanks!” Hirundo called. Riders peeled off from the main body of the army and hurried out to take those positions. Grus nodded again. He would have given that command in a moment if Hirundo hadn’t. Generations of painful experience fighting the southern nomads had taught Avornis that attacks could come from any direction at any time.

Lanceheads glittered in the sun. His army was split fairly evenly between lancers and archers. If they could come to close quarters with the Menteshe, they would have the edge. More painful experience had taught that closing with the hard-riding nomads wasn’t always easy, or even possible.

Grus glanced toward Pterocles. “What of their wizards?” the king asked.

“I don’t feel anything… out of the ordinary, Your Majesty,” the wizard said after a pause for thought. After another pause, he added, “Not everything is the way it ought to be, though.”

“What do you mean?” Grus asked. Pterocles only shrugged. Grus tried again, asking, “Why do you say that?” Pterocles gave back another shrug. The king said, “Could it be because you feel the Banished One paying attention to what happens here, where you didn’t up by Nishevatz?”

Pterocles jerked, as though someone had stuck him with a pin when he wasn’t looking. He nodded. “Yes. It could be. In fact, I think it is. There’s… something watching, sure enough.”

“What can you do?”

“What can I do?” Pterocles laughed, more than a little wildly. “I can hope he doesn’t notice me, that’s what. And a forlorn hope it is, too.” He pulled on the reins and steered his horse away from the king’s.

Grus hadn’t intended to ask him any more questions anyhow.

Late that afternoon, a scout came galloping back to the king. “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” he called, his voice cracking with excitement. “We just saw our first Menteshe, Your Majesty!”

“Did you?” Grus said, and the young man nodded, his head jerking up and down, his eyes shining. “Did you catch him? Did you kill him?”

Some of that fervid excitement faded. “No, Your Majesty. I’m sorry. He rode off to the southwest. We sent a few men after him, but he got away.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Grus told him. “Plenty more where he came from. And maybe he showed us where some of his friends are.” If I find them, will the Banished One be brooding over the battlefield? Grus wondered. If I don’t, though, what am I doing here? Why aren’t I just yielding my southern provinces to Prince Ulash? He couldn’t do that, not if he wanted to stay King of Avornis, not if he wanted to be able to stand the sight of his own face whenever he chanced to see a reflection. But he didn’t relish going forward, either.

The Avornan army didn’t go much farther forward that day. When the army encamped for the night, Grus ringed it with sentries a long way out. “That’s very good,” Hirundo said. “That’s very good. I remember how much trouble Evren’s men gave us at night.”

“So do I,” Grus answered. “That’s why I’m doing this.” The Menteshe would sneak close if they could, and pepper a camp with arrows. They didn’t do much harm, but they stole sleep soldiers needed.

Despite all the sentries, a handful of nomads did manage to sneak close enough to the main camp to shoot a few arrows at it. They wounded two or three men before shouts roused soldiers who came after them. Then they disappeared into the night. They’d done what they’d come to do.

The disturbance roused Grus. He lost a couple of hours of sleep himself, and was yawning and sandy-eyed when the Avornans set out not long after sunrise. They went past fields the raiders had torched perhaps only the day before. Sour smoke still hung in the air, rasping the lungs and stinging the eyes.

He actually saw his first Menteshe on Avornan soil the next morning. A band of Ulash’s riders had slipped past the Avornan sentries, leaving them none the wiser. By the surprise with which the Menteshe reacted to the sight of the whole Avornan army heading their way, they hadn’t so much eluded the scouts as bypassed them without either side’s noticing.

Despite the way the Menteshe threw up their hands and shouted in their guttural language, they didn’t wheel their horses and gallop off as fast as they could go. Instead, they rode toward the Avornans, and started shooting at a range Avornan bows couldn’t match.

Grus had seen that before, too, most recently in his fight with Prince Evren’s nomads. “Forward!” he shouted to the trumpeters, who blew the appropriate horn call. The Avornans pushed their horses up to a gallop as fast as they could. Grus’ own mount thundered forward with the rest. He hoped he could stay aboard the jouncing beast. A fall now wouldn’t be embarrassing. It would be fatal.

The Menteshe, vastly outnumbered, were not ashamed to flee. Grus had expected nothing else. They kept shooting over their shoulders, too, and shooting very well. But the Avornans were also shooting now, and some of them had faster horses than the nomads did. Whether the Menteshe liked it or not, their pursuers came into range.

And the Avornans could shoot well, top, even if they didn’t carry double-curved bows reinforced with horn and sinew the way Ulash’s men did. One nomad after another threw up his hands and crumpled to the ground. A horse went down, too, and the beast just behind fell over it and crashed down. Grus hoped both riders got killed.

The surviving nomads scattered then, galloping wildly in all directions. A few of them might have gotten away, but most didn’t. Grus waved to the trumpeters. They blew the signal to rein in. Little by little, the Avornans slowed. Sides heaving, Grus’ horse bent its head to crop a wisp of grass.

“Very neat, Your Majesty,” Hirundo called, a grin on his face.

“Do you mean this little skirmish, or do you mean that I managed to stay on the horse?” Grus inquired.

Hirundo’s grin got wider. “Whichever you’d rather, of course.”

“I’m prouder of staying on and even keeping up,” the king said. “This little band of Menteshe was nothing special—beating them was like cracking an egg with a sledgehammer. They’re scattered over the countryside, raiding and looting. Until they come together again, we’ll win some easy victories like this.”

“We want to win as many of them as we can, too, before they do come together,” his general said. “The more of them we can get rid of that way, the fewer we’ll have to worry about then.”

“I know. Believe me, I know,” Grus said. “And even if we do hit them hard, they spatter like quicksilver. We won’t always be able to pursue the way we did here, either. If we split up to go after them, they’re liable to jump us instead of the other way around.”

“Well, Your Majesty, you certainly do understand the problem,” Hirundo said. “Now if you can figure out a way to solve it…”

Grus grunted and leaned forward to pat the side of his horse’s neck. Avornans had understood the problem ever since the Menteshe boiled up from the south centuries before. The nomads, trained since childhood to ride and to tend their flocks, were simply better horsemen than the Avornans. Not only did they carry more powerful bows, but they could also cover more ground. If Avornis hadn’t had the advantage of numbers… Grus didn’t care to think about what might have happened then.

Forcing himself to look on the bright side instead, Grus said, “Well, we solved it here, anyhow.”

“So we did.” Hirundo nodded. “How many more times will we have to solve it, though, before we finally drive the Menteshe back over the Stura?”

“I don’t know,” Grus answered with a sigh. He didn’t even know yet whether the Avornans could drive Prince Ulash’s men back over the river this year. That was something else he preferred not to think about. With another sigh, he went on, “The other question is, how much damage will they do before we can throw them out? They haven’t mounted an invasion like this for years.”

“Yes, and we both know why, or think we do,” Hirundo said. The response made the king no happier. Up until recently, Ulash had seemed both reasonable and peaceable, qualities Grus wasn’t in the habit of associating with the Menteshe. But he and his folk reverenced the Banished One—the Fallen Star, they called him. If he told Ulash to cause trouble for Avornis, Ulash would—Ulash had—no matter how reasonable and peaceable he’d seemed for many years.

“I wonder…” Grus said slowly.

“What’s that, Your Majesty?” Hirundo asked.

“I wonder if we can do anything to persuade Ulash he’d be better off worshiping the gods in the heavens than the Banished One.”

“I doubt it.” Hirundo, a practical man, sounded like one. “If the Menteshe haven’t figured out who the true gods are yet, we can’t teach ’em.”

He was probably right, no matter how much Grus wished he were wrong. But things were more complicated than Hirundo realized. Bang Olor and Queen Quelea and the rest were undoubtedly the gods in the heavens. That made them stronger than the Banished One, yes. Whether it made him any less a true god… was yet another thing Grus would sooner not have contemplated.

That evening, drums boomed in the distance. Grus knew what that meant—the Menteshe were signaling back and forth across the miles. The drumbeats carried far better than horn calls could have. The king wondered what the nomads were saying with those kettledrums. He kicked at the dirt inside his tent. He’d served down in the south for years, but he hadn’t learned to make sense of the drums. He knew no Avornans who had. Too bad, he thought.

The drums went on all through the night. Grus woke several times, and each time heard them thudding and muttering, depending on how far off they were. Every time he woke, he had more trouble falling back to sleep.

“A letter from King Grus, Your Majesty,” a courier said, and handed King Lanius a rolled and sealed parchment.

“Thank you,” Lanius said in some surprise; he hadn’t expected anything from Grus. He broke the wax seal and opened the letter. King Grus to King Lanius — greetings, he read, and then, I wonder if you would be kind enough to do me a favor. Does anyone in the royal archives talk about the drum signals the Menteshe use? Does anyone know what the different signals mean? If you can find out, please let me know as quickly as possible. Many thanks for your help. A scrawled signature completed the letter.

“Is there an answer, Your Majesty?” the courier asked.

“Yes.” Lanius called for parchment, pen, and ink. King Lanius to Grus — greetings, he wrote; he still hesitated to admit that Grus deserved the royal title. But that reluctance didn’t keep him from continuing, I do not know of any records such as you request, but I have never looked for them, either. I will now, and as soon as I can I will let you know if I find what you want— and, for that matter, if I don’t. He signed the letter, sealed it with candle wax and his signet ring, and gave it to the courier. “Take this to Grus in the south. I want him to know I will give it my full attention.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty.” The courier bowed and hurried away.

Lanius, bemused, headed straight for the archives. Grus had never asked him for information before. He wondered if he could come up with it. He hoped he could. No Avornan could think of the southern provinces being ravaged without cringing. Lanius might still wish Grus didn’t wear the crown. That had nothing to do with whether he wanted Grus to drive the Menteshe out of the kingdom.

“Drum signals,” Lanius muttered. He knew where a lot of old parchments that had to do with the Menteshe in one way or another were stored. Maybe he could find what Grus wanted in among them.

He spent the rest of the day trying, but had no luck. He did discover there were even more documents in those crates than he’d thought. He vanished back into the archives after breakfast, and didn’t come out again until suppertime.

When he disappeared early the following morning, too, Sosia called after him, “I hope I’ll see you again before too long.”

“That’s right,” answered Lanius, who’d only half heard her. Sosia laughed and shook her head; she’d seen such fits take her husband before.

He found the best light he could in the archives. No one ever did a proper job of cleaning the skylights far above, which left the dusty daylight in there all the more wan and shirting. Lanius had complained about that before. He wondered whether complaining again would do any good. He had his doubts.

Then he started going through the parchments once more, and forgot about skylights and everything else but the work at hand. He had no trouble finding parchments mentioning the Menteshe drums. The Avornans hadn’t needed long to realize the nomads didn’t pound them for amusement alone. But what they meant? That was a different question.

The more Lanius read, the more annoyed he got. Why hadn’t his countrymen paid more attention to the drums? More than a few of them, traders and soldiers, had learned the spoken and written language of the Menteshe. Why hadn’t anyone bothered to learn their drum signals? Or, if someone had, why hadn’t he bothered to write them down?

Lanius kept plugging away. He learned all sorts of interesting things about the Menteshe, things he’d never known or things he’d seen once before and then forgotten. He learned the commands a Menteshe used with a draft horse. Those fascinated him, but they had nothing to do with what Grus wanted.

I can’t come up empty, Lanius told himself. I just can’t. If he failed here, Grus would never ask him for anything again. As though that weren’t bad enough, the other king would despise the archives. Lanius took that as personally as though Grus were to despise his children.

And then, half an hour later, the king let out a whoop that echoed through the big archives chamber. He held a report by a soldier who’d served along the Stura in the reign of his own great-great-great-grandfather. The man had carefully described each drum signal the Menteshe used and what it meant.

After making a copy of the report, Lanius left the chamber. He scribbled a note to go with the copy, sealed them both, and gave them to a courier for the long journey south.

“You look pleased with yourself,” Sosia answered when he went back to the royal chambers in triumph.

“I am,” Lanius answered, and then looked down at the dusty finery he wore. “But the servants won’t be pleased with me. I forgot to change before I went into the archives.”