The Scepter's Return (21 page)

“Yes, Your Majesty, but there's such a thing as taking chances when you don't have to,” the royal guardsman insisted. Grus muttered to himself. The man had a better point than he cared to admit.

Grus finally entered Trabzun two days later. The guards were still unhappy, and so was he. He supposed that made for a reasonable compromise. He went in through the main gate, not over the tumbled masonry the mine had brought down.

Most of the people left in the city were desperately thin. By then, the Avornans had taken the men from the garrison out of Trabzun. They had been in reasonably good shape. They'd kept most of the food for themselves, leaving the civilians—especially the women and children—just enough to sustain life.

“Will you feed us?” a man called in Avornan. By his hazel eyes and light brown hair, he was descended from the folk who'd lived here when Trabzun was Avornan Trapezus. By his hollow cheeks and broomstick forearms, he needed feeding.

“We'll do everything we can,” Grus said. It wasn't quite a promise, as he was uncomfortably aware. He had plenty to keep his soldiers fed. His soldiers and the folk of Trabzun? He wasn't so sure.

A woman even skinnier than the man who'd called held a baby in her arms. The baby's belly stuck out, not because it was plump but on account of starvation. Grus had seen children like that in districts where the crops failed and famine set in. The baby, too listless even to wail, stared at him with dull eyes.

Grus shouted for a quartermaster. When the officer came up to him, he said, “Find out how much the granaries here hold. Feed these people with it. They're going to start dying soon.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The man sketched a salute and hurried away.

So much to do,
Grus thought. Getting the fallen part of the wall into defensible shape would keep his engineers busy. He'd have to garrison Trabzun if he didn't want to lose it as soon as he moved on. The Menteshe would try to take it back. He didn't intend to let them. How much
was
in the granaries? Enough to feed the locals and his army, too? That would be good. It would mean he wouldn't have to bring so much down from the north. How much farther could he push on in this campaigning season? Could he hold everything his army had taken?

Behind all those questions—every one of them important—lay another, one that seemed to shrink them into insignificance. What would the Banished One do now that the Kingdom of Avornis had succeeded south of the Stura for the first time in centuries? What would he do? What
could
he do?

The king stared south.
We'll find out,
he thought, and hoped learning the answer wouldn't prove too expensive.

Ceremony dictated that the king and queen of Avornis should eat together. Lanius and Sosia bent ceremony as far as they could. He didn't mind her company—he never had—but she wanted nothing to do with him. She couldn't get all of what she wanted, though. Sometimes, as at supper one evening, they found themselves at the same table.

Sosia looked daggers at him. By the way she eyed the knife beside her plate, she might have been thinking of using it as a dagger. “How are you today?” he asked, doing his best to pretend everything was fine.

“I
was
all right,” she said pointedly, and sent him another poisonous stare.

“I had a letter from your father this afternoon,” Lanius said.

“Did you?” A little interest stirred in Sosia's voice. That could be important. Of course, she wasn't altogether happy with Grus, either, for he had as much trouble staying faithful to her mother as Lanius did to her. Grudgingly, she asked, “What did he say?”

Before Lanius could answer, the servants brought in the meal—roast mutton with cabbage and parsnips. The spicy scent of crushed mint leaves rose from the mutton. Some sort of cheese sauce covered the parsnips. The cabbage was what it was. A servant splashed sweet red wine into Lanius' goblet, and into Sosia's. At the king's gesture, the servants withdrew.

Lanius raised his silver goblet to Sosia. “Your health,” he said.

“What did the letter say?” she asked again, instead of pledging him in return.

Biting his lip, he answered, “Trabzun has fallen.” Even good news fell flat when delivered to such a hostile audience.

“Well, good, I suppose,” Sosia said. “Does he tell you whether he's found a new lady friend down there, too?”

“Oh, no,” Lanius replied. “Do you have to make this as hard as you can?”

“Why not? You did. It was plenty hard with Oissa, wasn't it?”

Air hissed out between Lanius' teeth. That hit below the belt. “You can't say I've ignored you,” he said, which was true enough.

True or not, it didn't help. “Oh, good. I got your leftovers,” Sosia said sardonically.

“That … isn't how it worked.” Lanius said no more than that. Explaining that Oissa had gotten Sosia's leftovers would also have been true. He hadn't made love with the serving girl when he thought Sosia would soon expect him to make love with
her.
Somehow, he doubted his wife would appreciate the details of how he'd managed his affair.

He was right to be dubious, too. Even the one sentence proved too much. “Huzzah for you,” she told him. “You must be very proud of yourself.”

Lanius had a bite of mutton in his mouth. He knew that. All the same, it tasted uncommonly like crow. “You're not making this easy, you know,” he said.

“Should I? Should I smile and say, ‘Oh, yes, dear, sleep with all the pretty women you want. I don't mind'? Should I say that?” Tears ran down Sosia's face. “I don't see how, because I
do
mind. I've done everything I know how to do to make you happy. I bore your son, by the gods. And this is the thanks I get?” She left the table very suddenly.

Lanius finished supper by himself. Yes, it definitely tasted of crow. Even the wine tasted of crow, which was probably an all-time first. He declined dessert. The servant who'd proposed it gave him a reproachful look. “The kitchens worked hard on the tarts, Your Majesty,” he said.

The king didn't want to think what Sosia would have done with that line. Not least to keep from thinking about it, he said, “I hope the cooks enjoy them, then.”

That was an uncommon bounty. “Are you sure, Your Majesty?” the servant asked. The king nodded.

After the servant left, Lanius walked out into the garden. A nightjar called plaintively. He'd heard the night birds many times. He didn't think he'd ever seen them.

Something fluttered past his face. That wasn't a nightjar—it was a bat, skittering wildly through the air. He looked up into the sky. The stars spilled across the darkness like tiny jewels on velvet. How many of them there were! And yet, as he'd seen when he spent a night in the woods with Anser and Ortalis, more stars shone than he could see from the city of Avornis. Smoke from uncounted hearths and lamps and candles smudged the sky over the capital. The glare from all those candles and lamps and other open flames also robbed the heavens of some of their luster.

Lanius sighed. Sosia wouldn't have mocked him for wondering about bats and nightjars and stars, but she wouldn't have understood, either. She didn't have that sort of curiosity herself, or the one that drove him to poke through the archives. But she was better with people than he would be if he lived a hundred years.

He sighed again. He knew he would have to patch things up with her. Jewelry might help, if it wasn't too obviously a bribe. That had done some good before. Staying away from serving girls would be bound to help, too. It would, if he could. Could he? One more sigh burst from him. He doubted it. He couldn't spend all his time in the archives—not alone in the archives, anyhow.

Grus looked back over his shoulder, in the direction of Trabzun. His soldiers stood on the walls there now. The Menteshe who hadn't died in the fall of the city were on their way up to Avornis now. Their labor would do something to repair all the harm they'd worked in their invasion of his kingdom—not enough, not nearly enough, but something.

Sweat rivered down Grus' face. He felt as though he were being steamed inside his mailshirt. He swigged from a jar of water mixed with wine. Standing orders were for soldiers to drink as much as they could hold. Some of them ignored standing orders, as some soldiers ignored standing orders of any kind. Telling who ignored orders here was easy. The miscreants were the ones who toppled from the saddle with heatstroke. Several men had died. Grus would have thought that might give the others a hint. But men went right on not drinking enough and collapsing because they didn't.

Hirundo brought his horse up alongside Grus'. “How much farther do you plan on going this campaigning season, Your Majesty?” the general asked.

“I'd like to go to Yozgat,” the king answered.

“I'd like a lot of things I'm not going to get. I'd like to lose twenty years, for instance,” Hirundo said. “I didn't ask what you'd like. I asked what you planned. You're one of the people who know the difference—or I hope you are.”

“I hope so, too,” Grus said. “I really had hoped to get there before the season ended. But you're right—it won't happen. We ought to take what we can get and do our best to see that the Menteshe don't take it back.”

“Sounds good to me.” By the relief in Hirundo's voice, it sounded very good to him. “I did want to make sure you weren't getting carried away.”

“Tempting, but no.” Grus sounded dry enough to make Hirundo laugh. He went on, “I'm not falling in love for the first time, you know. I've gone along this kind of road before. I won't let a pretty face fool me.”

That got another chuckle from the general. “Fine. In that case, how does stopping at the next river line sound?”

“Terrible,” Grus answered, and Hirundo's face fell. The king continued, “But we'll do it anyhow. I know how thin we're stretched. I know how much work we still have to do behind the line, too. Gods only know how many thralls still need freeing. And we have more forts to set up—otherwise the Menteshe will start nipping in to chew up our supply wagons. We have a thousand other things to take care of besides those, I know, but they're the most important. Or am I missing something?”

“I don't think so, Your Majesty,” Hirundo said. “You might ask Pterocles what he thinks, though.”

“I'll do that,” Grus promised.

But I won't do it just yet,
he thought. He had accomplished more south of the Stura than any Avornan king since the loss of the Scepter of Mercy. By that standard, the campaign was an outstanding success. He hadn't done as much as he'd hoped he would. Did that make it a failure?

With some hesitation, he shook his head. It just meant he would need longer to get what he wanted. So he told himself, anyhow.

Looking south, he swore softly. Prince Korkut would have the coming winter to try to figure out what to do when the war resumed come spring. So would Prince Sanjar. They would also have the winter to try to figure out what to do about each other.

And the Banished One would have the winter to work out his next moves against Avornis. Grus liked giving him a breathing space even less than he liked giving one to the Menteshe princes. But going too far too fast would be worse … he supposed.

CHAPTER TEN

King Lanius relished getting away from the city of Avornis. If he wasn't in the palace with Sosia, she couldn't quarrel with him. Things were going well in the countryside. Lanius still suspected that Tinamus thought he was crazy. That didn't matter. What did matter was whether the architect and the swarm of stonecutters and bricklayers and carpenters and other artisans at his command could create what Lanius wanted. By all appearances, they could.

Watching their work grow gave the king an unusual sense of accomplishment. Here was something real rising at his command. So many of a ruler's monuments were intangible—laws, decrees, orders. Not here. Not now. This he could reach out and touch. His son could come here and see for himself what Lanius had been up to.

And Crex, seeing for himself, would probably decide Lanius was crazy, too.

The air was full of the rich greenness of growing things. Had the breeze blown from the other direction, it would have carried the smoke and stinks of the artisans' encampment, an odor much more like those usual in the city of Avornis.

Some of the workmen washed in the stream that ran by the encampment. Some of them splashed one another to fight the late-summer heat or just to have a good time. They whooped and hollered as they played. Lanius sighed. The foolishness looked like fun, but it wasn't the sort of fun in which a king could indulge. All he could do was watch and be wistful.

“Here comes Tinamus, Your Majesty,” the guard said.

“Well, good,” Lanius said. “I was going to want to talk to him today.”

Tinamus bowed to the king. “Good morning, Your Majesty,” he said. “Everything here seems to be going very well. No builder could ask for a more generous client. The only thing I wish is …” His voice trailed away.

“Yes?” Lanius knew what Tinamus wanted. Grus would have been able to make that
yes
so intimidating, Tinamus never would have had the nerve to come out and say it. Grus was made of fabric coarser than Lanius, and really was as tough as he sounded. Lanius wasn't particularly tough, and couldn't sound as though he were.

Proof of that was his utter failure to intimidate Tinamus. The architect went right on with what he'd been at the point of saying. “What I wish, Your Majesty, is that I had some notion of what all this is
for.”

If Lanius couldn't sound severe, maybe he could look that way. His eyebrows came down. He pursed his lips and frowned. If his father had made a face like that, anyone who saw it would have quaked in his boots. By all accounts, King Mergus had been as tough as a boot. Lanius still didn't seem to impress Tinamus very much. He said, “We've been over this ground before. The less you know, the better off you are.”