He also evidently followed Avornan, though he chose not to use it with Zangrulf. King Dagipert’s envoy spoke for him once more. “He also says you will be an even greater man, if you live.”
“Does he?” Grus wondered exactly what that was supposed to mean. “Well, I’m likelier to be a greater man if I live than if I don’t.”
Zangrulf chuckled. Aldo didn’t. Again, he spoke in Thervingian. Again, the ambassador translated. “He says yes, that is true. But he also says there are men, and more than men, who will not want you to live. He says, beware.”
Grus started to answer that with another joke. The words stuck in his throat. It had been years since the Banished One appeared in his dreams, but he’d never forgotten—however much he wished he could.
Prince Lanius bowed to his tutor as a peasant might have bowed to the King of Avornis. “Please!” the prince said. “I’ll work twice as hard tomorrow if you let me see the Thervings today!”
He’d had to learn flattery. Some of his lessons said that people flattered princes, not the other way round. Maybe that was true for other princes. It wasn’t true for Lanius.
His tutor didn’t answer right away. The man plucked at his beard, thinking things over. At last, he said, “Let me ask His Majesty’s chamberlains. It’s not really up to me. It’s up to the king.”
Hope died in Lanius. “He won’t let me. He never lets me do anything I want. He won’t even let me see my mama.” He’d just lost his first tooth. His tongue kept exploring the hole where it had been. Once there, now gone. Having Queen Certhia banished from the palace left the same sort of hole in his life. He would grow a new tooth. How could he grow a new mother?
“Let me ask,” the tutor said again. “You are King Scolopax’s heir, after all.” That meant little to Lanius. From everything he’d seen, it also meant little to Scolopax. But when the tutor came back, he was smiling. “It’s all arranged. You can do it. You have to put on your fancy robe and your coronet, but you can do it.”
“Oh, thank you!” Lanius cried. The robe, heavy with gold thread, made his skinny shoulders sag and hurt from its weight. The coronet was too small for him, and most uncomfortable. He didn’t care. Getting something he really wanted didn’t happen very often. He intended to enjoy it as much as he could.
He had a place not far from the throne, across the aisle from Arch-Hallow Bucco. Even that couldn’t rain his day, although the arch-hallow kept glaring at him as though he had no right to exist.
King Scolopax sat impassive on the sparkling Diamond Throne. His robes, of cloth-of-gold, put Lanius’ to shame. His golden crown, set with rubies and sapphires and emeralds, was far heavier than Lanius’ coronet. His expression might have been regal calm. On the other hand, he might have been slightly sozzled.
But then Lanius forgot all about his uncle, the king. Here came the Thervings. Their ambassador wore a fur jacket, leather trousers, and boots that clomped on the marble throne-room floor. Avornan soldiers in gilded chain-mail shirts surrounded him and his companions. Lanius wished they would go away. They made it hard for him to see the Thervings.
A herald bawled out the ambassador’s name—Zangrulf. He bowed very low to King Scolopax. The other Thervings, the ones who served the ambassador, bowed lower still. Lanius wanted to imitate them. Only the thought that he would probably get a spanking if he did made him hold still.
“Avornis has paid tribute to Thervingia for many years,” the ambassador said in fluent if accented Avornan. “The last treaty for the tribute is going to expire. King Dagipert expects you to renew it at the same rate.”
Behind Lanius, his tutor, dressed in a robe so fine it was surely borrowed, let out a soft hiss of anger. “He bargains over kingdoms the way an old woman in the vegetable market bargains over beets.”
Lanius hardly heard him. He was watching his uncle, up there on the Diamond Throne. Scolopax looked every inch a king. He sat hardly moving, staring down at the Therving ambassador like a god looking down on creatures some other, clumsier, deity had made. When Zangrulf finished, Scolopax deigned to speak one word: “No.”
At that one word, whispers almost too soft to hear raced through the throne room. Lanius felt the surprise and excitement, though he didn’t know what they meant. Zangrulf spelled that out for him like his tutor spelling out a new, hard word. “If you refuse, Your Majesty, King Dagipert will be within his rights to go to war against you, to go to war against Avornis.”
Those whispers raced through the throne room again. This time, they had a little more weight to them. This time, too, that one word was loud even in the quiet. War.
“No,” King Scolopax repeated. “That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant. You can tell it to your precious king, or to anyone else you please.”
“Think twice, Your Majesty,” Zangrulf said. “Think three times. King Dagipert is fierce, and dangerous to anger. The armies of Thervingia are brave, and ready for battle. King Mergus did not refuse us. He—”
Lanius could have told the Therving that mentioning his father was not the way to get his uncle to go in a direction he wanted. He could have told that to Zangrulf, but he never got the chance. King Scolopax did it for him. When Scolopax said “No!” this time, he shouted the word out at the top of his lungs. Then he pointed to the door. “Get out!” he yelled. “Get out, and be happy you still keep your head on your shoulders. Get out!”
As though the embassy had gone just the way he’d hoped, Zangrulf bowed again. So did his retainers. They turned and trooped out of the throne room. The Avornan guards surrounded them, as they had before. Lanius wanted to clap his hands. All through his life, he would love a parade.
“He did what?” Commodore Grus said when news of the fiasco in the throne room got to Veteres.
“He turned down Dagipert’s ambassador,” said the man with the news. “Turned him down flat, by the gods.”
Grus gulped his wine. “Now what? Is it war with the Thervings?”
“It had better not be war,” Nicator exclaimed. “If it is, how do we fight it? We haven’t got enough soldiers, and we haven’t got enough river galleys, either.”
“You know that,” Grus said. “I know that. Why doesn’t King Scolopax know that?”
“Beats me.” Nicator drained his mug and waved to the barmaid for another. “He’s king, after all. He’s supposed to know things like that. He’s supposed to know everything that’s going on in Avornis.”
“I should say so,” Grus exclaimed. “I know everything that’s going on in my flotilla—that’s my job. The whole kingdom is his job.”
“There’s a certain kind of captain who doesn’t think that way,” Nicator said. “You know the kind I mean. He’ll say ‘Do this. Do that. Do the other thing,’ but he won’t bother to find out if you’ve got the men or the gear or the money or the time to carry out his orders. That’s not his worry—it’s yours. But then you get the blame if what he says turns out to be impossible.”
Grus nodded. “Oh, yes. I know officers like that. I run them out of my service just as fast as I can.”
“I know you do, skipper,” Captain Nicator said. “A lot of buggers like that, though—they’re nobles, and they’re not so easy to get rid of.”
“Don’t remind me,” Grus said. He’d come as far as he had because he’d proved he was good at what he did. Nobles who’d gotten their posts because of who their grandfathers were had to obey his orders. That didn’t keep them from looking down their noses at him.
The barmaid came over to the table with a pitcher of wine. She filled Nicator’s mug. Grus shoved his across the table toward her. She poured it full, too.