“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.
She might not have had any idea how the Banished One could keep her—and, eventually, other Avornan wizards—from freeing thralls. But he did find a way to stop her. A few days after she started her work, a messenger rode in from the west. “Your Majesty!” he cried.
“What is it?” Grus asked. Whatever it was, he didn’t think he would like it.
And he didn’t. The messenger said, “Your Majesty, Prince Evren’s Menteshe have crossed the Stura! They’re burning everything they can reach!”
King Lanius shook his head. Everyone in the royal palace kept asking him the same question. He had no good answer for it. “I don’t know much about Prince Evren, Bubulcus,” he told the latest questioner.
As several people had before, his servant looked indignant. “You’re supposed to know these things, Your Majesty!” Bubulcus exclaimed.
“Why?” Lanius said. “All I know about Evren is that his riders had been quiet lately. Up till now, the Menteshe prince whose men have given us the most trouble is Ulash.”
“Well, why isn’t Ulash giving us trouble now?” Bubulcus asked. “King Grus is across the river from the land Ulash rules, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Lanius admitted. That was a good question, a sensible question. He wouldn’t have thought Bubulcus had it in him. He had to answer, “I don’t know why Ulash is sitting quiet and Evren isn’t, either.”
“Hmph!” Bubulcus said. “All I can tell you is, if you don’t have the answers when we need them, you’ve wasted an awful lot of time in the archives.” He let out another loud, disdainful sniff.
For reasons Lanius never could fathom afterward, he didn’t pick up the nearest blunt instrument and brain the servant with it. He didn’t send Bubulcus to the Maze, or even send him out of the palace. All he did was glare, and even his glare was on the sickly side.
Not knowing what a close brush with disaster he’d had, Bubulcus went right on grumbling. Lanius ignored him more and more ostentatiously. At last, the servant stuck his nose in the air and said, “Well, I can take a hint.” He flounced off, still muttering under his breath.
“You can take it and…” Lanius stopped, shaking his head. Falling to Bubulcus’ level—falling below Bubulcus’ level— wouldn’t do him any good. But the temptation felt almost overwhelming.
So did the temptation to retreat to the archives and find out everything he could about Prince Evren and the principality he ruled. King Lanius wasn’t and never had been a man who yielded to many temptations. Wine held no great allure. Neither did women, except for Queen Sosia. Song? He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. But the prospect of getting dusty in the archives was something else again.
Even in the archives, Avornan writers had more to say about the principality Ulash ruled these days than they did about Evren’s. Ulash’s domain was larger. It sat along a more important stretch of the Stura. And it had been ruled by a series of strong princes. Evren’s predecessors, on the other hand, seemed the most ordinary of men. Some of them seemed a little smarter than average, others a little more foolish. Taken all in all… Taken all in all, Evren’s predecessors seemed deserving of a long, heartfelt yawn, and nothing more.
Evren himself hadn’t attracted much notice, either. He hadn’t led many raids over the river into Avornan territory—not until now. He hadn’t started any fights with his neighbors, though he hadn’t lost any they’d started with him. Maybe that was worth noting. Or—who could be sure?— maybe it wasn’t.
Avornan traders who’d gone down into Evren’s principality noted that he ran things with a rough justice they liked. One of them had actually prevailed in a quarrel with a Menteshe merchant. The Avornan seemed to regard that as something not far from a miracle. Reading it, so did Lanius.
The more he learned about Prince Evren, the more he wondered why Evren had decided to attack Avornis. Evren never had before—not once in his long reign. His sudden assault left Lanius more puzzled now than he had been before he started digging. Things weren’t supposed to work like that.
He wrote down what he had managed to dig up and sent it to Grus in the hope that it would prove useful. He also added a note that said, Do you have any idea why Evren is fighting us? Everything I can find out here argues that he shouldn’t be.
He wondered if Grus would bother answering. The other King of Avornis often went out of his way not to take him seriously. But Lanius did get a reply, and a very prompt one. Thanks for giving me this, Grus wrote. It tells me more about Evren than I already knew, and I used to patrol the miserable son of a whore’s northern border. Lanius read that several times. It made him proud.
Grus went on, And yes, Your Majesty, I can tell you just why Prince Evren has gone to war against us just now. He’s fighting us because he’s the creature of the Banished One. It’s exactly that simple.
Lanius doubted anything was as simple as Grus made it out to be. He wrote back to his father-in-law, asking, Why would the Banished One set Evren in motion against you when you’re across the border from the lands Prince Ulash holds?
A reply, this time, took much longer coming back than had been true before. But Grus did answer, about when Lanius had begun to give up hope that he would. Why? he wrote. I’ll tell you why. To keep me busy.
That was all Grus said. Lanius stared at the note, trying to tease more sense out of it. After a while, he decided there was no more sense to tease. Muttering to himself, he wrote back, What do you mean?
I mean what I said, Grus replied. What did you think I meant?