The Chernagor Pirates

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Rain dripped from a sky the color of dirty wool. King Grus squelched through the mud, heading from his pavilion toward the Avornan line around Nishevatz. He could hardly see the walls of the city through the shifting curtain of raindrops. Rain in the summertime came every now and again to the city of Avornis; down in the south, it was rare, rare enough to be a prodigy. Here in the Chernagor country, the weather did whatever it pleased.

The mud tried to pull the boots right off Grus’ feet. Each step took an effort. Every so often, he would pause to kick gobs of muck from his boots, or to scrape them against rocks. He tried to imagine Lanius picking his way through this dirt pudding of a landscape. The image refused to form. There was more to Lanius than he’d thought when he first took the throne; he was willing to admit that much. But the other king was irrevocably a man of the palace. Put him in charge of a siege and he wouldn’t know what to do.

Each cat his own rat, Grus thought. He knew he would have as much trouble in the archives as Lanius would here in front of Nishevatz. In his own province, Lanius was perfectly capable. Grus remained convinced that what he did was more important for Avornis.

“Halt! Who comes!” A sentry who looked like a phantom called out the challenge.

“Grus,” Grus answered.

That phantom came to attention. “Advance and be recognized, uh, Your Majesty.” The king did. The sentry saluted. He wore a wool rain cape over a helmet and chainmail. He’d smeared the armor with grease and tallow, so that water beaded on it. Even so, when the weather finally dried—if it ever did—he and all the other Avornan soldiers would have plenty of polishing and scraping to do to keep rust from running rampant. With another salute, the sentry said, “Pass on, Your Majesty.”

“I thank you.” Grus’ own helm and chainmail were gilded to mark his rank. That made the iron resist rust better, but he would have to do some polishing and scraping, too. He did not let servants tend to his armor, but cared for it himself. It protected him. How better to make sure it was as it should be than to tend it with his own eyes and hands?

Another sentry, alert as could be, challenged him. Again, Grus advanced and was recognized. The sentry said, “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but where are your bodyguards?”

“Back there somewhere,” Grus answered vaguely. He felt a small-boy pride at escaping them.

The sentry clucked in disapproval. “You should let them keep an eye on you. How will you stay safe if they don’t?”

“I can take care of myself,” Grus said. The sentry, being only a sentry, didn’t presume to argue. Grus went on. The farther he went, though, the more shame ate away at his pride. The man was right. He took good care of his armor and forgot his bodyguards, who might prove at least as important in keeping him alive.

Promising himself he wouldn’t do that anymore, he pressed on now. He got away with it, too. When he found Hirundo, the general ordered half a dozen men to form up around him. Grus didn’t quarrel. Hirundo wagged a finger. “You’ve been naughty.”

“No doubt.” The king’s tone was dry—the only thing in the dripping landscape that was. “What do you propose to do about it?”

“Why send you to bed without supper, Your Majesty,” Hirundo answered with a grin. “Oh, and keep you safe, if I can, since you don’t seem very interested in doing that for yourself.” Unlike the guard, he had rank enough to point out Grus’ folly.

“Believe me, you’ve made your point,” Grus said. “I hope you’re not going to turn into one of those tedious people who keep banging on tent pegs after they’ve driven them into the ground.”

“Me? I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.” Hirundo was the picture of soggy innocence. “I hope you’re not going to be one of those tedious tent pegs that keep coming loose no matter how you bang on them.”

“Ha,” Grus said, and then, for good measure, “Ha, ha.” Hirundo bowed, unabashed as usual. The king pointed in the general direction of Nishevatz. “How would you like to try to attack the walls under cover of this rain?”

“I will if you give the order, Your Majesty.” Hirundo turned serious on the instant. “If you give me a choice, though, I’d rather not. Archery is impossible in weather like this, and—”

“For us and for them,” Grus broke in.

“Oh, yes.” The general nodded. “But they don’t need to shoot much. They can just drop things on our heads while we’re coming up the ladders. We need archers more than they do, to keep their men on the walls busy ducking while we’re coming up. And planting scaling ladders in gooey muck isn’t really something I care to do, either.”

“Oh,” Grus said. “I see.” To his disappointment, he did see. “You make more sense than I wish you did.”

“Sorry, Your Majesty,” Hirundo replied. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

“A likely story,” Grus said. “All right, then. If you don’t want to attack in a rainstorm, what about one of the fogs that come off the Northern Sea? Do you think that would be any better?”

Now Hirundo paused to think it over. “It might, yes, if you’ve given up on starving Vasilko out. Have you?”

“Summer’s moving along,” Grus said, which both did and did not answer the question. He continued, “It won’t be easy for us to stay here through the winter, and who knows how long Vasilko can hold out?”

“Something to that.” Hirundo sounded willing but not consumed by enthusiasm. “Well, I suppose we could get ready to try. No telling when another one of those fogs will roll in, you know. The more you want one, the longer you’re likely to wait.”

“You’re probably right,” Grus agreed. “But let’s get ready. We’ll see how hard they really want to fight for Vasilko.” He hoped the answer was not very.

How do we keep the Chernagor pirates from descending on our coasts? Lanius’ pen raced across the parchment. Since he’d started writing How to Be a King for Crex, he’d discovered he was good at posing broad, sweeping questions. Coming up with answers for them seemed much harder. He did his best here, as he’d done his best with every one of the questions he’d asked himself. He wrote about keeping the Chernagor city-states divided among themselves, about keeping trade with them strong so they wouldn’t want to send out raiders, and about the tall-masted ships Grus had ordered built to match those the men from the Chernagor country used. His pen faltered as he tried to describe those ships. He’d ordered them forth, but he’d never seen anything except river galleys and barges. I’ll have to ask Grus more when he comes back from the north, he thought, and scribbled a note on the parchment to remind himself to do that.

Once the note was written, the king paused, nibbling on the end of the reed pen. Some scribes used goose quills, but Lanius was better at cutting reeds, and was also convinced they held more ink. Besides, nibbling the end of a goose quill gave you nothing but a mouthful of soggy fluff.

After a few minutes of thought, he came up with another good, broad, sweeping question, and wrote it down to make sure he didn’t forget it before he could put it on parchment. How do we deal with the thrall who may cross into Avornis from the lands of the Menteshe, and with those we may find in the lands the Menteshe rule?

He almost scratched out the last half of the question. It struck him as optimism run wild. In the end, he left it there. He didn’t suppose he would have if the nomads weren’t fighting one another, but the civil war that had started among them after Prince Ulash died showed no signs of slowing down.

With or without the second half, the question was plenty to keep him thoughtful for some little while. What would Crex or some king who came after him need to know? Lanius warned that, while some escaped thralls came across the Stura seeking freedom, others remained under the Banished One’s enchantments in spite of appearances to the contrary, and served as the exiled god’s spies. Or sometimes his assassins, Lanius thought with a shiver of memory.

Lanius also warned Crex that spells for curing thralls were less reliable than everyone wished they were. Although, he wrote, lately it does seem as though these charms are attended with more success than was hitherto the case.

The king hoped that was true. He looked at what he’d written. He decided he’d qualified it well enough. By the time Crex was old enough to want to look at something like How to Be a King, everyone would have a better idea of how effective Pterocles’ spells really were.

After getting up and stretching, Lanius decided not to sit down again and go back to the book just then. Instead, he stored the parchment and pen and jar of ink in the cabinet he’d brought into the archives for them. At first, he’d been nervous each time he turned away from the book, wondering if he would be stubborn enough to come back to it later. By now, he’d gotten far enough into it to have some confidence he would keep returning and would, one day, finish, even if that day seemed a long way off.

When he came out of the archives in his plain tunic and breeches, several palace servants walked past without paying him the least attention. That amused him. Clothes make the man, he thought. Without them, he seemed just another servant himself.

When Bubulcus hurried past, oblivious to the rank of the nondescript fellow in the even more nondescript clothes, Lanius almost called him back. Showing the toplofty servant he didn’t know everything there was to know always tempted the king. But Lanius didn’t feel like listening to Bubulcus’ whined excuses—or to his claims that of course he’d known who Lanius was all along. Bubulcus, after all, had never made a mistake in his life, certainly not in his own mind.

Otus, now, Otus was a different story. The former thrall liberated by Pterocles’ magic seemed glad to be alive, glad to know he was alive. If he made a mistake, he just laughed about it. And, when Lanius came to his guarded room, he knew who the king was. Bowing low, he murmured, “Your Majesty.”

“Hello, Otus,” Lanius said. “How are you today?”

The thrall straightened, a broad smile on his face. “I’m fine, thank you. Couldn’t be better. Isn’t it a good day?”

To Lanius, it seemed a day no different from any other. But then, Lanius hadn’t lived almost his entire life under the shadow of thrall-dom. To Otus, today was different from most of the days he’d known, not least because he knew it so much more completely. Lanius said, “I’ve got a question for you.”

“Go ahead,” Otus said. If he noticed the guards who flanked King Lanius, he gave no sign. Lanius still didn’t trust the magic that had lifted the dark veil of thralldom. Did something of the Banished One lurk beneath the freed thrall’s sunny exterior? There had been no sign of it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Besides Otus’ behavior, there was other evidence against any lingering influence from the Banished One in him. The other thralls in the royal palace had calmly and quietly killed themselves before Pterocles could try his magic on them. Didn’t that argue that the Banished One feared its power? Probably. But was he ruthless enough and far-seeing enough to sacrifice a pair of thralls to leave his opponents thinking they’d gained an advantage they didn’t really have? Again, probably. And so… bodyguards.

Lanius asked, “Do you really think we could free a lot of thralls using the spells that freed you?” Otus was the only one here who knew from the inside out what being a thrall was like. If his answer couldn’t be fully trusted, it had to be considered.

“I sure hope so, Your Majesty,” Otus answered. Then he grinned sheepishly. “But that wasn’t what you asked, was it?”

“Well, no,” Lanius admitted.

Otus screwed up his face into a parody of deep thought. He finally shrugged and said, “I do think so. If it freed me, I expect it could free anybody. I’m nothing special.”

“You are now,” Lanius told him. Otus laughed. The king was right. But the former thrall also had a point. The longer he was free, the more ordinary he seemed. These days, he sounded like anyone else—anyone from the south, for he did keep his accent. When first coming out of the shadows, he’d had only a thrall’s handful of words, and wouldn’t have known what to do with more if he had owned them. He truly must be cured, Lanius thought, but then, doubtfully, mustn’t he?

Beloyuz came up to King Grus. He pointed toward the walls of Nishevatz. Bowing, the Chernagor nobleman—the Chernagor whom Grus now styled Prince of Nishevatz—asked, “Your Majesty, how long is this army going to do nothing but sit in front of my city-state?”

Grus almost laughed in his face. He had to gnaw on the inside of his lower lip to keep from doing just that. Call Beloyuz the Prince of Nishevatz, and what did he do? Why, he started sounding just like Prince Vsevolod. After a few heartbeats, when Grus was sure he wouldn’t say anything outrageous or scandalous, he answered, “Well, Your Highness, we are working on that. We’re not ready to move yet, but we are working on it.”

He waited to see if that would satisfy Beloyuz. The Chernagor frowned. He didn’t look as glum or disgusted as Vsevolod would have, but he didn’t miss by much, either. Suspicion clogging his voice, he said, “You are not just telling me this to make me go away and leave you alone?”

“By King Olor’s beard, Your Highness, I am not,” Grus said.

Now Beloyuz didn’t answer for a little while. “All right,” he said when he did speak. “I believe you. For now, I believe you.” He bowed to Grus once more and strode away.

With a sigh, Grus walked down to the seashore. Guards flanked him. His shadow stretched out before him. It was longer than it would have been at high summer, and got longer still every day. He understood Beloyuzs worries, for the campaigning season was slipping away like grains of sand through an hourglass. If Nishevatz didn’t fall on its own soon, he would have to move against it—either move, or try to press on with the siege through the winter, or give up and go back to Avornis. They were all unappetizing choices.

The weather was as fine as he’d ever seen it up here in the north. He muttered a curse at that, tasting the irony of it. He hadn’t been lying to Beloyuz. He and Hirundo kept waiting for one of the famous fogs of the land of the Chernagors to come rolling in to conceal an attack on the walls. They waited and waited, while bright, clear day followed bright, clear day. The Chernagor country would have been a much more pleasant place if its summer days were like this all the time. Even so, Grus would gladly have traded this weather for the more usual murk.

Shorebirds skittered along the beach. Some of them, little balls of gray and white fluff, scooted on short legs right at the edge of the lapping sea. They would poke their beaks down into the sandy mud, every now and then coming away with a prize. Others, larger, waded on legs that made them look as though they were on stilts. Those had longer bills, too, some straight, some drooping down, and some, curiously, curving up.

Grus eyed those last birds and scratched his head, wondering what a bill like that could be good for. He saw no use for it, but supposed it had to have some, or the wading birds would have looked different.

Thanks to the clear weather, he could see a long way when he looked out to the Northern Sea. He spied none of the great ships the other Chernagor city-states had sent during the last siege of Nishevatz. They still feared Pterocles’ sorcery.

That left Nishevatz to its own devices. Grus turned toward the gray stone walls that had defied his army for so long. They remained as sturdy as ever. Small in the distance, men moved along them. The Chernagors’ armor glinted in the unusually bright sunshine. How hard would Vasilko’s soldiers fight if he assailed those walls? He scowled. No sure way to know ahead of time. He would have to find out by experiment.

Not today, Grus thought. Today the Chernagors could see whatever he did, just as he could watch them. If one of the swaddling fogs this coast could breed ever came… then, maybe. But no, not today.

He and his guards weren’t the only men walking up the beach. That lean, angular shape could only belong to Pterocles. The wizard waved as he approached. “Good day, Your Majesty,” he called.

“Too good a day, maybe,” Grus answered. “We could do with a spell of worse weather, if you want to know the truth.”

Pterocles only shrugged. “Beware of any man who calls himself a weatherworker. He’s lying. No man can do much with the weather. It’s too big for a mere man to change. The Banished One… the Banished One is another story.”

Grus suddenly saw the cloudless sky in a whole new light. “Are you saying the Banished One is to blame for this weather?” That gave him a different and more urgent reason for wanting fog.

And his question worried Pterocles. “No, I don’t think so,” the wizard answered after a long pause. “I believe I would feel it if he were meddling with the weather, and I don’t. But he could, if he chose to. An ordinary sorcerer? No.”

“All right. That eases my mind a bit.” Grus turned and looked toward the south. His mind’s eye leaped across the land of the Chernagors and across all of Avornis to the Menteshe country south of the Stura River. By all the dispatches that came up from Avornis, Sanjar and Korkut were still clawing away at each other. The princes to either side of what had been Ulash’s realm were still tearing meat off its bones, too. By all the signs, the Banished One’s attention remained focused on the strife among the people who had chosen him for their overlord.

They aren’t thralls, though. They’re men, Grus thought. They might be the Banished One’s servants, but they weren’t his mindless puppets, weren’t his slaves. They worshiped him, but they had their own concerns, their own interests, as well. And, for the moment, those counted for more among them.

That had to infuriate the exiled god. So far, though, the Menteshe seemed to be doing as they pleased in their wars, not as the Banished One would have commanded. His eyes on them, he forgot about Nishevatz, about Vasilko.

“If the Menteshe make peace, or if one of them wins outright…” Grus began.

Pterocles nodded, following his thought perfectly. “If that happens, the Banished One could well look this way again.”

“Frightening to think we depend on strife among our foes,” Grus said.

“At least we have it,” Pterocles replied. “And since we have it, we’d better make the most of it.”

“We will,” Grus said. “I don’t think we’re going to starve them out before we start running low on food ourselves. I hoped we would, but it doesn’t look that way. If we want Nishevatz, we’ll have to take it. I intend to try to take it. But I need fog, to let me move men forward without being seen.”

“If I could give it to you, I would,” Pterocles said. “Since I can’t, I’ll hope with you that it comes soon.”

“When I didn’t want them, we had plenty of fogs,” Grus said. “Now that I do, what do we get? Weather the city of Avornis wouldn’t be ashamed of. The best weather I’ve ever seen in the Chernagor country, by the gods—the best, and the worst.”

“The gods can give you fog, if they will,” Pterocles said.

“Yes. If they will.” Grus said no more than that. If the Banished One had power over wind and weather, surely the gods in the heavens did, too. Come on, Grus thought in their direction. It wasn’t a prayer—more like an annoyed nudge. You can make things harder for the Banished One.

Were they listening? Grus laughed at himself. How could he tell? If they didn’t pay some attention to it, though, they could earn an eternity’s worth of regrets. With the world in his hands, the Banished One might find a way back to the heavens. Grus tried to see beyond the sky. He couldn’t—he was only a man. But the gods could do whatever they pleased. Olor could take six wives and still keep Quelea contented. If that wasn’t a miracle, Grus didn’t know what would be.

If he didn’t believe in the power of the gods, what other power was there left to believe in? That of the Banished One. Nobody could deny his power. Yielding to it, worshiping it, was something else again.

“Fog,” Grus said. “We need fog.”

Fog filled the streets of the city of Avornis, rolling off the river, sliding silently over the walls, muffling life in the capital. The silence struck Lanius as almost eerie. Did the thick mist really swallow sound, or was it so quiet because people didn’t care to go out and try to find their way around in the murk? The question seemed easier to ask than to answer.

When the king stepped out of the royal palace, it grew indistinct, ghostly, behind him. If I walk back toward it, he thought, will it really be there? Or will it disappear or recede before me like a will-o‘-the-wisp?

Lanius exhaled… His own breath added to the fog swirling all around him. From what he had read, such smothering, obliterating fogs were far commoner in the land of the Chernagors than they were here. He hoped Grus kept his army alert through them, and didn’t let Vasilko’s men launch a surprise attack against the Avornan lines.

He walked a little farther from the palace. Even his footsteps seemed sorter than they should have. Was that his imagination? He didn’t think so, but he supposed it could have been.

“Your Majesty?” a guard called from behind him. The man sounded anxious. When Lanius looked back, he saw why. Or, better, he didn’t see why, for the guardsman had disappeared altogether. “Your Majesty?” the fellow called again, something close to panic in his voice. “Where are you, Your Majesty?”

“I’m here,” Lanius answered, and walked back toward the sound of the guardsman’s voice. With each step, the royal palace became more decidedly real. The king nodded to the worried bodyguard. “Thick out there today, isn’t it?”

“Thick as porridge,” the guard said. “I’m glad you came back, Your Majesty. I would have gone after you in another moment, and the mist might have swallowed me whole. You never can tell.”

“No, I suppose not.” Lanius hid a smile. But it faded after a couple of heartbeats. The Banished One could do things with the weather no ordinary sorcerer could hope to match. If he had sent the fog, and if someone—or something —lurked in it… Lanius’ shiver had nothing to do with the clammy weather. By way of apology, he said, “I was foolish to wander off in it myself.”

The guardsman nodded. He would never have presumed to criticize the king. If the king criticized himself, the guard would not presume to disagree.

Lanius went back inside the palace. His cheeks and beard were beaded with moisture. He hadn’t noticed it in the fog, where everything was damp, but he did once he came inside. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his royal robe. A servant coming up the hallway sent him a scandalized stare. His cheeks heated, as though he’d been caught picking his nose in public.

At least it wasn’t Bubulcus, the king thought. Bubulcus would have made him feel guilty about it for the rest of his days.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” That call echoing down the corridor came not from a guardsman but from a maidservant.

“I’m here,” Lanius called back. “What’s gone wrong now?” By the shrill note of hysteria in the woman’s voice, something certainly had.

She came around the corner and saw him. “Come quick, Your Majesty!”

“I’m coming,” Lanius said. “What is it?”

“It’s the prince,” she said. Terror gripped Lanius’ heart—had something happened to Crex? Then the serving woman added, “He’s done something truly dreadful this time,” and Lanius’ panic eased. Crex wasn’t old enough to do anything dreadful enough to raise this kind of horror in a grown woman. Which meant…

“Ortalis?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the woman said.

“Oh, by the gods!” Lanius said. “What has he done?” Which serving girl has he outraged, and how badly? was what he meant.

But this serving woman answered, “Why, he went and killed a man. Poor Bubulcus.” She started to cry.

“Bubulcus!” Lanius exclaimed. “I was just thinking about him.”

“That’s all anybody will do from now on,” the serving woman said. “He had a wife and children, too. Queen Queleas mercy on them, for they’ll need it.”

“How did it happen?” Lanius asked in helpless astonishment. The woman only shrugged. Lanius spread his hands. “You were going to take me to him. You’d better do that.”

She did. They had to push through a growing crowd of servants to get to Ortalis, who still stood over Bubulcus’ body. A whip lay on the floor behind the prince. Blood soaked the servant’s tunic. It pooled beneath him. His eyes stared up sightlessly. His mouth, Lanius was not surprised to find, was open. In character to the last, the king thought.

The bloody knife in Ortalis’ right hand was a small one, such as he might have used for cutting up fruit. It had sufficed for nastier work as well.

“What happened here?” Lanius demanded as he shoved his way to the front of the crowd. “And put that cursed thing down, Ortalis,” he added sharply. “You certainly don’t need it now.”

Grus’ son let the knife fall. “He insulted me,” he said in a distant— almost a dazed—voice. “He insulted me, and I hit him, and he jeered at me again—said his mother could hit harder than that. And the next thing I knew… The next thing I knew, there he was on the floor.”

Lanius looked around. “Did anyone see this? Did anyone hear it?”

“I did, Your Majesty,” said a sweeper with a grizzled beard. “You know how Bubulcus always likes—liked—to show how clever he was, to see how close to the edge he could come.”

“Oh, yes,” Lanius said. “I had noticed that.”

“Well,” the sweeper said, “he sees that there whip in His Highness’ hand—”

“I’d just come in from a ride,” Ortalis said quickly.

“In this horrible fog?” Lanius said. He wished he had the words back as soon as they were gone. He could guess what Ortalis had really been doing with the whip. With whom, and did she like it? he wondered, feeling a little sick.

“Anyways,” the sweeper went on, “Bubulcus asks him if that’s the whip he uses to hit little Princess Capella. And that’s when His Highness smacked him.”

“I… see,” Lanius said slowly. Had he been in Ortalis’ boots, he thought he would have hit Bubulcus for that, too. Using a whip on a willing woman was one thing. Limosa thinks Ortalis is wonderful, Lanius reminded himself, gulping. Using the same whip on a baby girl was something else again. Not even Ortalis would do such a thing— Lanius devoutly hoped.

If Ortalis had let it go there, Lanius didn’t see how anyone could have said anything much. But Bubulcus had had to make one more crack, and then… “After that,” the sweeper said, “His Highness punctured him right and proper, he did.”

Chastising an offensive servant and killing him were also two different things. Lanius’ sole relief was that Ortalis didn’t seem to have done it for his own amusement. Again, killing in a fit of rage was different from killing for the sport of it.

A servant who killed in a fit of rage would be punished. He might lose his head. King Grus’ son, Lanius knew, wouldn’t lose his head for slaying Bubulcus. But Ortalis shouldn’t get off scot-free, either. For all Bubulcus’ faults—which Lanius knew as well as anybody—he hadn’t deserved to die for a crude joke or two.

“Hear me, Ortalis,” Lanius said, his tone more for the benefit of the murmuring servants than for his brother-in-law. “When you killed Bubulcus, you went beyond what was proper.”

“So did he,” Ortalis muttered, but he didn’t try to deny that he’d transgressed. That helped.

“Hear me,” Lanius repeated. “Because you went beyond what was proper, I order you to settle on Bubulcus’ widow enough silver to let her and her children live comfortably for the rest of their lives. That will repair some of what you have done.”

He waited. Two things could go wrong with his judgment. Ortalis might prove arrogant enough to reject it out of hand, or the servants might decide it wasn’t enough.

Ortalis did some more muttering, but he finally said, “Oh, all right. Fool should have known when to shut up, though.” That struck Lanius as the most fitting epitaph Bubulcus would get.

The king’s gaze swung to the servants. None of them said anything right away; they were gauging what he’d done. After a bit, one of the men said, “I expect most of us wanted to pop Bubulcus one time or another.” Slowly, one after another, they began to nod.

Lanius let out a small sigh. He seemed to have gotten away with it on both counts. “Take the body away and clean up the mess,” he said. The scarlet pool under Bubulcus’ corpse unpleasantly reminded him how much blood a body held. “Let Bubulcus’ wife—his widow—know what happened. And let her know Prince Ortalis will also pay for the funeral pyre.”

Ortalis stirred, but again did not protest. Most of the servants drifted away. A few remained to carry out Lanius’ orders. One of them said, “You took care of that pretty well, Your Majesty.” A couple of other men nodded.

“My thanks,” Lanius said- “Some of these things, you only wish they never would have happened in the first place.”

Even Ortalis nodded. “That’s true. If he’d just kept quiet…” He still didn’t sound sorry Bubulcus was dead. Expecting him to was probably asking too much. And the servants had seemed satisfied that he would pay compensation. It could have turned out worse.

Then Lanius realized it wasn’t over yet. I have to write Grus and let him know what his son’s done now. He would almost rather have gone under a dentist’s forceps than set pen to parchment for that. No help for it, though. Grus would surely hear. Better he should hear from someone who had the story straight.

Two men carried Bubulcus’ body away. Women went to work on the pool of blood. Ortalis scowled at Lanius. “How much silver will you steal from me to pay for that wretch’s worthless life?”

“However much it is, you can afford it better than he can afford what you took from him.” Lanius sighed. “I know he could drive a man mad. More than once, I almost sent him to the Maze. Now I wish I would have. In the Maze, he’d still be breathing.”

“If he made you angry, he was too big a fool to hope to live very long,” Ortalis said. “You’re too soft for your own good.”

“Am I?” Lanius said.

His brother-in-law nodded. “You let the servants get away with murder.”

No, you’ve just gotten away with murder, Lanius thought. No ordinary man would have come off so lightly. But Ortalis wasn’t an ordinary man, not when it came to his family connections. That he’d paid any price at all probably surprised the palace servants.

Grus’ son stooped and picked up the knife he’d used to stab Bubulcus. “What will you do with that thing?” Lanius asked. If Ortalis wanted to keep it for a souvenir, he would have to change his mind. The king made up his mind to be very firm about that.

But Ortalis answered, “I’m going to throw it away. I’ve got no more use for it now.” He strode down the hallway. Lanius stared after him. Ortalis still didn’t see that he’d done much out of the ordinary. Lanius sighed again. Bubulcus, could anyone have asked him, would have had a different opinion.