“Whose orders?” Grus and Alca said it together.
“Orders.” The thrall seemed to have to say things more than once, perhaps to keep them straight in his own mind, such as it was. After a moment, sweating harder than ever, he got out: “His orders.”
“Whose?” Alca asked. But then the rainbow on the thrall’s face began to redden, as had happened with the sorcery back in the capital. The man who’d fled over the Stura groaned. He clutched at his forehead. Alca dropped the crystal. The rainbow vanished. But the thrall crumpled to the ground. A guard felt his wrist, then shook his head. The thrall was dead. He’d given no answer. But Alca and Grus had gotten one even so.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The baby yowled. Lanius stared fondly down at her in her mother’s arms. Had she been someone else’s, the noise would have driven him crazy. He was sure of that. But, since Pitta was his, he didn’t mind… too much.
Sosia said, “I wish she would have been another boy. Babies don’t always stay healthy.” That was a careful way of saying they died all too easily.
“I do know that,” Lanius said. “I was sickly myself. I think one of the reasons my uncle, Scolopax, never did anything to me was that he thought I wouldn’t live to grow up anyhow. But I did, and he died not too long after my father. Crex is healthier than I ever was.”
“King Olor and Queen Quelea keep him that way,” Sosia said. “And the gods watch over you, too, Pitta.”
“Yes,” Lanius agreed. Pitta kept right on crying. Raising his voice, the king went on, “We should hear from your father soon.”
“He’s staying down in the south longer than I thought he would,” Sosia said.
“We have a real problem down there,” Lanius said. “What are we supposed to do with so many thralls?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Sosia answered.
“Nobody else does, either,” Lanius said.
A wet nurse took Pitta from Sosia and bared her breast. The baby settled down to suck. The wet nurse was stolid and plain. Lanius realized all Pitta’s wet nurses were stolid and plain. Come to think of it, Crex’s had been, too. He laughed. He couldn’t help seeing their uncovered breasts. Sosia evidently didn’t want him getting any ideas on account of that.
“What’s funny?” his wife asked.
“You are,” Lanius answered. She gave him an odd look. He didn’t explain, not while the wet nurse could hear. She might have known she was stolid, but probably didn’t think of herself as plain. Who did, woman or man?
A messenger came into the royal bedchamber. Bowing to Lanius, he said, “Beg pardon, Your Majesty, but I have a letter here from King Grus.” He held out a sealed roll of parchment.
Lanius took it. “Thank you,” he said. The messenger bowed again and went out. Lanius broke the seal on the letter and unrolled it.
“What does he say?” Sosia asked.
“‘Congratulations, Your Majesties, on the birth of your daughter. I hope the girl is well, and I hope you are well, too, my dear Sosia. Hearing that both these things are so will make my stay down here much more pleasant than it is now. We know little, disappointingly little, and the Banished One is doing his best to keep us from learning more. His best, as you know, is all too good. Still, when Alca can keep him from noticing what she is about, she does learn by bits and pieces. One day before too long, she hopes she can fit the pieces together. May she prove right, for I wish I were back in the city of Avornis with my new granddaughter, my grandson, and the two of you. With fond regards, King Grus.’”
Even in a letter to his daughter, he called himself the king. He knew Lanius would be reading it, too, and wanted to remind him who he was, who had power. Lanius understood that very well indeed.
The wet nurse’s nipple slid out of Pitta’s mouth. The woman hoisted the sleepy baby to her shoulder and patted her on the back. Pitta gave forth with a resounding belch. “That should keep her happy,” the wet nurse said.
It would keep me happy, Lanius thought. A belch like that among his bodyguards would provoke loud laughter. The wet nurse rocked the little princess in her arms for a few minutes, then laid her in the cradle. Pitta didn’t start howling again, which proved how tired she was.
Lanius and Sosia yawned, too, both of them at the same time. They were also tired. Sosia was still getting over childbirth. Lanius had no such excuse. But a new baby disrupted the lives of all the people most intimately concerned with it. Even if, being king, he didn’t have to take care of Pitta, she kept him up at night. He suspected she kept half the palace up on bad nights.
Bobbing a curtsy, the wet nurse left the chamber. Sosia yawned again, even wider than before. “Sleep if you want to,” Lanius told her. “By the gods, you’ve earned the right.”
“If I sleep now, I won’t sleep tonight,” Sosia answered. “Then I’ll be just as sleepy tomorrow.”
“I wonder how people ever catch up on sleep till a baby starts sleeping through the night—especially people without servants,” Lanius said.
“If you really want to know, you could ask my mother,” Sosia said.
“I did that when Crex was born,” Lanius answered. “What she said was, ‘Mostly, you don’t sleep.’ ”
Sosia yawned one more time. “She’s right.”
River galleys patrolled the Stura, gliding up and down the river. Standing at the stern of one of them, King Grus felt years slide from his age. He felt as though he were commanding a flotilla again, on the lookout for an invasion from the south. He’d spent a lot of time doing that, and thought he’d done it well. It was certainly a simpler job than King of Avornis.
Having Alca up at the river galley’s bow reminded him he still wore those years. The invasion he was looking for wasn’t of hard-riding Menteshe horsemen. He wanted to keep more thralls from crossing the Stura and coming up into Avornis. He didn’t know what to do with the ones he had. He knew he didn’t want to have to deal with any more of them.
“Boat!” shouted a lookout standing not far from the witch. “Boat in the river!” He pointed toward the southern bank of the Stura.
Grus saw the boat, too. He nodded to the oarmaster and the helmsman. “We’re going to sink it.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The oarmaster upped the stroke.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” The helmsman tugged at the steering oar, guiding the galley at the little rowboat ahead. Even as he did so, though, he asked, “Do we really have to do this? He’s just trying to get away from the gods-cursed Menteshe.”
“I know.” Grus wasn’t happy about it, either. “If the thralls were ordinary men, I’d be glad to have them. Even if every third one spied for the Banished One, I’d be glad to have them. We can always use peasants who’ll settle down and work. I’d take them up near the border with Thervingia, where we’ve lost so many farmers of our own. But what can we do with thralls?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the helmsman admitted.
“Neither do I,” Grus said. “I wish I did. They’re the Banished One’s creatures. If we use them, so are we.”
The rowboat drew close as the river galley bore down on it. The thrall in the boat had wit enough to use the oars. But he was so intent on crossing the Stura and getting to the north bank, he never paid the least attention to the galley. Any normal man would have noticed the long, lean, deadly craft speeding toward his boat. Any normal man would have tried to get away, or at least would have cursed the sweating, grunting oarsmen who propelled the galley at him. The thrall just kept on rowing.