The Bastard King (18 page)

"Taxes?" Corax's gesture of contempt was, in its own way, magnificent. "You gods-cursed fool, taxes are for peasants!"

"Do you suppose the king would say the same?" By
the king,
Grus meant
Queen Certhia and the rest of the regents,
as Corax no doubt had before.

"You swine!" Corax yelled. "You rustic oaf! You - you enema syringe! You brawling, disobedient lump of guts! You pus-filled, poxy villain! You hairy-assed son of a whore! I piss on you!" He started to undo his fly.

"If he comes out, you'll sing soprano the rest of his days," Grus said through clenched teeth. Again, Corax stopped with the motion half complete. Grus gestured to the sailors and marines. "Take this foul-mouthed fool back to the barbarians. They seem to suit him well. May he have joy of them."

"Yes, Commodore," the men chorused. Heedless of Corax's bellows, they bundled him back into the boat. When they got back to the northwestern bank of the Tuola, they showed what they thought by dumping him into the middle of a mudflat and letting him make his filthy, dripping way back to the Heruls.

"What do we do now, Skipper?" Nicator asked.

"I'll stay here for a few days," Grus answered, still seething. "If he shows any sign - any sign at all - of acting like a civilized human being, I'll ferry him and the Heruls across the river."

"And if he doesn't?"

"If he doesn't? A pox on him and a plague on the barbarians, that's what."

"What about the fight with the Thervings?"

"Well, what about it?" Grus returned. "Do you think I should be the only one worrying about it? Let's see if Corax cares about the kingdom, or if the only thing in the whole world Corax cares about is Corax."

"Something's gone wrong somewhere," Lepturus said.

"What do you propose to do about it?" Queen Certhia demanded, blue eyes flashing fire.

The guards commander sent King Lanius an annoyed glance. He might have been saying,
Pretty soon you'll be old enough to rule on your own, and I won't have to put up with this nonsense from your mother.
That often worked well for him - often, but not always. And not today, for Lanius wanted to know exactly what was going on, too. "What
do
you propose to do about it?" he asked.

Lepturus sighed. "I don't know just what I
can
do about it, Your Majesty," he said. "All I know is, the Heruls didn't cross the Tuola the way they were supposed to. You know what that means as well as I do. It means our army's going to have to fight the Thervings without any help. Count Corvus keeps telling everybody what a great general he is. Pretty soon we find out if he's right."

He didn't sound as though he believed Corvus were such a great general. He sounded as though he doubted whether the nobleman could find the fingers at the ends of his hands without a map. And he managed that without a word of open reproach for Count Corvus. Lanius admired him; he was used to more direct insults.

"But Corax is Corvus' brother," Queen Certhia said. "He'd come to his aid if he possibly could."

"Maybe." Lepturus didn't sound as though he had much use for Corax, either.

"I think it's Commodore Grus' fault," Certhia said. "I think he should come to the city of Avornis at once, and explain his disgraceful conduct."

"For one thing, we don't know it's disgraceful, Your Majesty," the guards commander said patiently. "Why don't we wait and see how the campaign goes before we start throwing blame around like it was mud?"

Certhia fumed. "I am going to give orders that Grus come to the city of Avornis at once. At once, do you hear me?"

"I hear you, Your Royal Highness," Lepturus answered wearily.

"Well, I am," Certhia said, and hurried out of the chamber where the three of them were meeting.

"You don't think that's a good idea?" Lanius asked.

Lepturus shook his head. "No, I don't. Too soon to start blaming. You ought to wait till a campaign's over before you do that. Try doing it in the middle and you're liable to end up looking like a first-class fool - meaning no disrespect to the lady your mother, of course."

"Ah, of course," Lanius said. Lepturus was better than anyone he knew at getting his point across by denying he had any point to get across. Lanius asked, "How do
you
think the campaign will turn out, Lepturus?"

"If you want to know ahead of time how things'll turn out, Your Majesty, you talk to wizards or witches, not to soldiers," the commander of his bodyguards replied. "They'll be glad to tell you. Sometimes they'll even be right."

"I'm talking to you right now, Lepturus." Lanius put an edge in his voice. "Do you think it will turn out well?"

Lepturus looked at him for a long time, then said, "No."

"Well, Skipper, what are you going to do with
that?"
Nicator pointed to the parchment Grus held.

Grus read the parchment one more time. Then he crumpled it and tossed it into the Tuola. "There. That takes care of that. They never sent it. I never got it."

"Commodore, that's mutiny!" Turnix exclaimed.

"No." Grus shook his head. "If I ordered every river galley on all the Nine Rivers to make for the city of Avornis and throw little King Lanius out of the royal palace on his backside,
that
would be mutiny. I don't intend to do any such thing."

"But you're disobeying an order." The wizard, at times - the most inconvenient times, generally - showed a remorselessly literal mind.

"How can I disobey an order I never got?" Grus asked.

"But they'll find out you did, and then you'll be in even more trouble," Turnix said.

"That won't be for a while. I'll worry about it later," Grus said. Turnix threw his hands in the air and walked up the deck of the
Bream
toward the bow.

Nicator said, "Skipper, if you
did
order all the river galleys to make for the capital, do you suppose their captains would do it?"

"I don't know," Grus answered. "I don't want to find out. I don't want to have to find out."

"Well, no," his captain admitted. "But if you did, I think they might. You've won victories, and the blue-blooded generals mostly haven't. It'd make all those blue bloods who look down their pointy snoots at the navy think twice, eh? You just bet it would."

He was right, Grus knew. The Avornan navy was and always had been a stepchild. It was there. It was sometimes useful. But it wasn't where careers were made. It wasn't where heroes were made. The cavalry came first, then the foot. River galleys? A long way after either. A man with a father called Crex the Unbearable could never have risen to high rank on land, as Grus had in the lesser service.

"I hope it never comes to that," Grus said. "And I hope they hang Corax from the tallest tree they can find. But he's the one who wants to be King of Avornis, not me."

"All right, Skipper. All right." Nicator nodded. "I know why you have to talk like that. But like I said, if you ever did give the order, I bet the other captains
would
follow it."

"Who knows? I'm not going to give it, so what's the point of wondering?" He had to say that, too.

But river galleys had one advantage over foot soldiers and even horsemen. They were swift, swift, swift. If he ever chose to move against the capital - and if his captains chose to move with him - he could move fast. He rubbed his chin. He could...

He'd never wanted to strike for the royal power. Only in the past couple of years had he realized he
might
strike for it, it might be within his grasp. Yes, he was the son of Crex the Unbearable. Yes, he was only a commodore, not a general - not even an admiral, since the Avornan navy rarely gave out such an exalted rank. But if he seized the capital, if he seized the palace, who could stop him from putting the crown on his own head? Nobody, not so far as he could see.

"What happens if you get another letter that says you have to go to the city of Avornis?" Nicator asked.

"I don't know," Grus said. "Maybe I'll lose that one, too. I won't worry unless they try to take my command away."

"What do you think will happen to Corvus' army without Corax and the Heruls coming along to give it a hand?"

"I don't know that, either." Grus shrugged. "You're just full of inconvenient questions today, aren't you?"

"I don't think Commodore Grus is coming to the palace," Lanius remarked to Lepturus.

"I don't think he is, either," the commander of the royal bodyguards replied. "If I were him, I don't think I would have."

"But doesn't that turn him into a traitor?" Lanius asked. "Mother heads the regency council, after all. Till I come of age, she rules Avornis."

Lepturus coughed. "If your mother goes and pushes things, she can probably
make
Commodore Grus into a traitor, make him a rebel. If she doesn't, he's just an officer who had a quarrel with another officer and fears the other fellow has more clout than he does."

"What's the difference?" Lanius asked.

"I'll tell you what the difference is, Your Majesty. If he's somebody who's had a quarrel with another officer, he'll go on obeying any orders he gets that don't put him straight into danger from his own side. If he's a traitor, he won't. He'll rebel. What with King Dagipert and the Thervings marching on us, we don't really want to have to fight a rebel, too."

"Oh." Lanius pondered that, and then reluctantly nodded. "Yes, I suppose you make sense there."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Lepturus said. "I'm not good for much - especially these days, on account of I'm getting old." His eyebrows waggled. Sure enough, those hairy caterpillars had gray in them that hadn't been there a couple of years earlier. "But I've always had pretty fair luck at making sense, and I'm glad you think I do even yet."

King Lanius eyed him. "That's the oddest sort of modesty I think I've ever heard." Lepturus snorted and spluttered. The king went on, "How well will Count Corvus do - how well
can
Count Corvus do - fighting the Thervings without Corax and this army of Heruls that was supposed to attack them from the rear?"

"We drove them back last summer, you know," Lepturus said.

"Yes, but Corvus wasn't commanding our army then. You were," Lanius said.

"Count Corvus has his connections with the Heruls, and he makes a pretty fair soldier, when he pays attention to what's going on around him," the guards commander said. "And now, Your Majesty, if you'll excuse me - " He left before King Lanius could ask him how often Corvus paid attention and how often he didn't.

With a sigh, Lanius got to his feet and walked through the hallways of the palace. He wasn't going anywhere in particular. He should have been doing his lessons, but writing verses wasn't his favorite part of them. He would sooner have poked around in the archives. He would have gotten his shirt and breeches dusty, which would have annoyed his mother, but so what? But his tutor was a conscientious man, and would insist that he do the verses.

Later
, Lanius thought, and kept on wandering.

When he went by, servants bowed if they were men, curtsied if they were women. "Your Majesty," they would murmur. It was almost as though he really ruled Avornis - almost, but not quite.

"Good morning, Your Majesty," a serving girl said. She smiled at him.

"Oh. Good morning, Marila," Lanius answered. He smiled, too. Marila was a couple of years older than Lanius. But she didn't smile at him as though he were just a little boy, as so many of the servants did.

"Where were you going, Your Majesty?" she asked. "What were you doing?"

"Nowhere much," he said. "Nothing in particular." He took a deep breath. "Would you ... ?" he began, and then stopped. His ears felt as though they were on fire. Try as he would, he couldn't go on.

Marila curtsied. "Would I what, Your Majesty?" she said, and gave him another smile.

That encouraged Lanius to try again. "Would you ... like to come with me?" The last few words came out in a rush.

Her eyes got big. They were very blue - not as blue as his mother's, which would have alarmed him, but very blue even so. "All right, Your Majesty," she said. "Where will we go?"

Panic rolled over him. "I - I - I don't know," he whispered.

Marila laughed. Had she laughed
at
him, he would have run away. But she didn't - or he didn't think she did. She asked, "Well, where would you go if I wasn't coming along?"

That, he could answer. "To the archives," he said at once.

The serving girl blinked. Whatever she'd expected, that wasn't it. She nodded, though, and then brushed back a lock of hair - somewhere between brown and auburn - that had fallen down in front of her face. "All right, Your Majesty, we'll go to the archives."

They weren't far. Lanius' feet might have been leading him there even when the rest of him had no idea that was where he planned to go. He opened the door, then stood aside to let Marila go in ahead of him.

.She looked at him as though he were utterly mad. "You're the
king!"
she exclaimed.

"Well," he said. Feeling foolish, he walked in. She followed. He closed the door.

They were the only ones in there. He would have been surprised had it been otherwise. The room was surprisingly large. Halfhearted sunshine filtered in through a skylight and a couple of windows high up on the southern wall that hadn't been washed for a long time. Books and ledgers and scrolls and maps - some a few months old, some a few years old, some a few centuries old, and a few even older than that - were piled, stacked, or sometimes just thrown on or into tables and chests and trunks and cases. The air smelled of leather and parchment and ink and dust. Motes danced in pale sunbeams.

"What a funny place!" Marila said. "What do you
do
here? Uh, Your Majesty?"

"I come here to look through things," Lanius answered. "When I go through these parchments, I never know what'll be on them. Sometimes it's interesting - things nobody's seen for years and years. Sometimes it's boring."

"What do you do then?" the serving girl asked.

Lanius shrugged. "Then I look at another one."