The Bastard King (56 page)

"Well, if you don't have an allocation from him, suppose you get busy getting one," Lanius said.

"I already know what His Majesty wants me to spend money on - the things I have allocations for," the treasury minister said.

King Lanius was not one who often lost his temper. This time, though, marked one of the exceptions. "You idiot!" he shouted. "You lazy, miserable, worthless, good-for-nothing bastard!"

"Takes one to know one, eh?" Petrosus said. That was the surest proof any man could give that he thought Lanius altogether powerless. Lanius proved him wrong - he punched him in his pointy nose, and blunted it considerably. Petrosus left the chamber dripping blood.

That done, Lanius also wrote to King Grus, explaining in great detail Petrosus' incompetence and insolence. He was amazed his pen didn't scorch the parchment as it raced along. His letter sped south by courier.

In due course, an answer came back.
Petrosus, from all I have heard, is doing a good job on the whole,
Grus wrote.
I have no doubt he is attending to things the same way I would if I were back in the city of Avornis. I am sure you will be able to get along with him once you work a little harder.
Without another word, Grus signed his name.

"By the gods," Lanius muttered. "He really doesn't want me to have the money I need."

Up till then, he hadn't believed that. He'd been sure Grus didn't know what Petrosus was up to. He'd been sure - and he'd been wrong. Grus had known perfectly well. A rival king with less money posed a smaller danger than one with more money. It all seemed very obvious, when you looked at it the right way.

"I'll make money by myself, then," Lanius declared. He was most determined. That he hadn't the faintest idea how to go about making money by himself or for himself worried him only a little.

* * *

Lanius' annoyance didn't worry King Grus. He had more important things on his mind. Whenever he looked over the Stura, he imagined Yozgat in his mind's eye. He wanted the Scepter of Mercy so badly, he knew he wasn't even close to being rational about it.

"How can you hope to get it, Your Majesty?" Alca asked one evening. "Whenever Avornans have tried, it's always been a disaster. Why should it be any different now?"

"I don't know," Grus answered. "I truly don't know. But I do know I'm going to see what I can do one of these days."

"How many thralls were made from Avornan armies?" the witch said.

"Too many," Grus admitted. "But there are plenty of other thralls on the far side of the border. If we can cure them - "

"It will be a miracle," Alca said. "You know that as well as I do. We can't even cure the ones who've fled over the river to us. Well, we can cure some of them, maybe, but how reliable is the cure? Not very, you ask me."

"We have to get better at that," he said. "If we're ever going to reconquer the lands south of the Stura, we've got to be able to turn thralls into ordinary farmers again."

Alca nodded. "That's what we need, all right," she agreed. "Whether we can get it is a different question."

"Well," Grus said, "there are plenty of thralls for you to practice on."

"I wondered if you were going to tell me that," she said. "For someone who claims to care about me - "

"I do more than care about you," Grus broke in. "If you don't know that - "

She interrupted in turn, saying, "For someone who claims to care about me, you keep doing your best to get me killed."

"I want to be able to fight the Banished One," Grus said. "I want to take back the lands the Menteshe stole from us."

"If you try to fight the Banished One, strength against strength, you'll lose, Your Majesty," Alca said bluntly. "You have the strength of a man. He has the strength of an exiled god. If he puts it forth, you
will
lose. That's all there is to it."

She spoke with as much certainty as of tomorrow's sunrise.

King Grus said, "Then any hope of taking land back from the Banished One is nothing but a foolish dream?"

"I didn't say that," the witch replied. "But if you do it, you have to do it so that he
doesn't
put forth all his strength."

"How?" Grus asked.

"Your Majesty, I don't know," she said. "This is the riddle Avornis has been trying to solve since the Banished One was cast down from the heavens."

"Well, one step at a time," Grus said. "I think the Banished One has been trying to see how strong and clever we are. Otherwise, why would he make all these thralls come over the river and into Avornis?" He didn't wait for an answer, but went on, "Maybe we can make him pay for that. Wouldn't it be poetic justice if we used the thralls to learn how to free people from thralldom?"

"It would be, if we could do that," Alca said. "Whether we can or not, I don't know." She eyed him. "Or are you just looking for reasons to keep me down here in the south and not go back to the city of Avornis?"

"You know what my reasons are," he answered. "And I hope you have some of those reasons, too." He thought he had the right to hope; in spite of what she'd said after they joined the first time, she'd come to his bed several times since. Even so, he went on, "If you think you can do a better job curing thralls in the capital, say the word and we'll go back there. Would having more wizards here help?"

The witch sighed. "I don't think so. I'm not sure where I try will make any difference at all. I'm not sure it can be done. We haven't got many wizards who could help."

"If it can't be ..." Grus didn't want to think about that, but made himself. "If it can't be, I don't see what chance Avornis has of ever taking any land back from the Menteshe. Do you?"

"No, Your Majesty." Alca sighed again. "All right. You've convinced me the work is important. Now if you'd only convinced me I had any real chance of doing it."

"How do you know until you try?" Grus asked. "It may be easier than you think."

"It almost certainly is easier than I think," Alca said, "for I doubt it can be done at all."

Having gotten the last word, though, the witch did decide to make the effort. Grus smiled to himself and said not a word. In some ways, Alca and Estrilda weren't so very different after all. If he'd said as much to either one of them, she would have made him sorry for it. That being so, he knew he was smart to say nothing.

His guardsmen brought another thrall up from the floor of the amphitheater in Cumanus. An ordinary man might have complained or struggled at such treatment. The thrall just stared around in dull, incurious incomprehension. He didn't know what was going to happen to him, and he didn't care, either.

Alca sighed. "This is foolishness, and nothing but foolishness."

"You've come this far," Grus said. "Why not go a little further?"

"Because of what the Banished One may do if I try?" she suggested. But they'd already seen samples of that. "All right, Your Majesty. I am your fool, sure enough - in more ways than one."

That made Grus wince. Alca turned away from him and began to cast a spell on the thrall. The fellow knew what magic meant. He bawled wordlessly and tried to twist free of the guards, as a beast of burden might have kicked up its heels when it saw a man with a whip in his hand. Grus wondered what sort of wizards the thrall had been unlucky enough to meet in his unhappy life south of the Stura.

The thrall's struggles did him no more good than an ox's might have done it. The guards had no trouble hanging on to him. Alca continued her spell. King Grus winced again. Seeing a man - or someone who still looked like a man, at any rate - reduced to such impotence was hard to bear.

When Alca made a sudden, sharp pass, the thrall stopped struggling as abruptly as he'd started. His mouth fell open, showing teeth that had probably never had any care in all his days. "What's your name?" Alca asked him, her voice quiet and interested.

"Do thralls have names?" Grus asked.

"I don't know," she whispered back. "But
men
have names - I do know that. Now hush."

Grus obeyed. The thrall ignored the byplay between witch and king. His dirty face furrowed. That might have been the hardest question anyone had ever asked him. It might have been the first question anyone had ever asked him. After a long, long pause, he said, "Immer."

That was a name an Avornan might have borne, which surprised Grus. If it also surprised Alca, she gave no sign. Nodding, she said, "All right, Immer, how do we go about setting free the part of you that has a name and knows what it is? How do we bring that part out and leave the rest behind?"

Immer only shrugged. Grus was surprised again, this time that she'd gotten even so much of an answer from him.

And the witch seemed surprised, too. "Isn't that interesting?" she murmured. "There's more of him inside himself than I'd expected. Maybe I'll be able to do this after all."

"Some of our wizards have," Grus said.

"I know," she said. "But some of them thought they had, and then watched their wizardry fail a little at a time. I don't want that to happen. If I can break this spell, I want to break it once and for all."

"Good." Grus nodded. He didn't want to see wizardry done by halves, either.

Immer just stood there, waiting for whatever would come next. Or rather, as far as Grus could tell, he wasn't waiting. He seemed to give no more thought to what might come than a steer would have.

Alca began to chant again. Grus wondered if she would take out her crystal and shine a rainbow onto the thrall's face. She didn't. After a moment's thought, Grus decided he was glad she didn't. The Banished One had caused too much trouble through her magical rainbows. Maybe - no, certainly - he could cause trouble other ways, too. But Grus had seen he could do it that way.

The thrall suddenly stiffened. Grus tensed, wondering if another spell had gone awry. But then Immer blinked. He twisted one arm free of the guard who held it. He brought his hand up to his face and began to weep. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you."

Awe prickled through Grus. "He sounds like ... like a man," he whispered.

Immer nodded. "Man," he echoed, and pointed at himself with that free hand. "Man!" he said again, proudly this time.

"By the gods, Alca, I think you've done it," Grus said.

"It's a beginning," Alca said. "I don't know how much more than a beginning it is, but it's a beginning."

"Man!" Immer repeated, and nodded once more, so vigorously that locks of his grimy, greasy, matted hair bounced up and down. "Thrall?" This time, he violently shook his head, and his hair flew out around his head. Had he known the word before? Who could guess?

"If he's free of this horrible enchantment, Mistress Alca, why doesn't he talk like a proper man now?" one of the guards asked.

"Because he doesn't know how," the witch replied. "He still knows what he knew when he was a thrall. The spell I used doesn't turn him into a man all by itself. I don't think any spell could do that. It lets him learn the things he needs to become a man, the same way a child would. Before, he couldn't."

"Will he take as long as a child would to learn all those things?" Grus asked in some alarm. If a freed thrall needed fifteen or twenty years to become fully mature, what point to breaking the spell?

But Alca shook her head. "I'm sure he won't," she answered. "In many ways, he already has a man's experience. He'll learn what he needs to know quickly. He
can
learn now, where he couldn't before."

"Learn!" Immer used the word with an avid hunger Grus had never heard attached to it up till that moment. "Learn!"

"You'll have your chance," Grus told him. The thrall - ex-thrall? - frowned in confusion. He didn't understand what Grus meant. "Yes. Learn," Grus said, making it as simple as he could. "You learn." Immer smiled broadly. He understood that. He liked it, too.

"Shall we take him back down with the others, Your Majesty?" one of the guards asked.

Grus shook his head. "No. If he's a man, or on the way to being a man, he shouldn't have to go back in with thralls."

"No thrall!" Immer jabbed a thumb into his own skinny chest. He shook his head, too. "No thrall!"

The guard didn't look convinced. Grus hoped Immer meant it. He glanced at Alca. She gave back a tiny shrug and said, "Whatever he is, I don't think he's a spy for the Banished One."

"All right, then." That made up Grus' mind for him. He told the guards, "Take him to the barracks. Clean him up. Show him what being a man means. If he doesn't learn fast enough to suit you, give him lumps. Don't give him bad ones - that wouldn't be fair. Just enough to keep his attention, you might say."

"Like we would with a little boy?" the guard asked.

"That's right," Grus agreed. "Just like that."
Would Ortalis have turned out better if I'd given him more lumps? Who knows? How can you tell? But how can you keep from wondering, either?
He sighed. Ortalis was what he was. Grus wished he were something else, but he wasn't and never would be.
Too bad,
Grus thought.
Oh, by the gods, too bad!

At supper that night, Alca said, "I never dreamt it would be so easy. The spell of thralldom really
can
be lifted. And I don't know what the Banished One can do to stop it from being lifted, either. It's not the sort of spell where he can find a handle and turn it against me."

"The way he did with the spell where you used crystals?" Grus asked.

"Yes." The witch shuddered at the memory of those misfortunes. "But this is different. By the gods, it is."

"Good." Grus got up, came around the table, and kissed her. She responded eagerly. When she was pleased with herself, she was pleased with the world around her, too. And the world around her included him.

When morning came, Alca left his bed even before sunrise and hurried to the amphitheater. Grus got there later. The witch didn't look at him. She was intent on the business at hand. The guards brought out another thrall. Alca set to work on the woman, whose name, she learned, was Crecca. Grus watched her conjuration. It seemed to go as smoothly as Immer's unbinding had. That afternoon, Alca broke the ties of darkness that subjected another man.