Whatever or whoever caused the hard winter, it had results neither Lanius nor Grus could ignore. Farmers sent petitions by the score—by the hundred—to their local governors and to the royal capital, asking to be relieved of taxes. How can I pay, one of them asked, when all my cows and half my sheeps is dead, and so is my mule?
Some farmers didn’t bother with petitions. They simply abandoned their land and made for the closest town or for the city of Avornis, looking for whatever work they could find. Very often, they couldn’t find any, and started to starve. “What are you going to do about these fellows?” Lanius asked Grus after a party of half a dozen unlucky men came to the palace to beg.
“I’m not so much worried about them,” Grus answered. “I’m worried about their farms.”
“Their farms?” Lanius said. “Why do you care about the farms? The men are here, and they’re hungry.”
“Oh, I know that,” his father-in-law said. “But they’re here because they’re walking away from their farms. Who’s going to get that land now? The nobles, probably, in spite of all the laws I’ve made to keep that from happening.”
“Well, yes,” Lanius admitted. “Even so…” His voice trailed away. Usually, he was the one who thought in abstract terms, while Grus was down-to-earth. Here, though, he saw men and Grus saw agricultural policy. He scratched his head. It made for an odd reversal.
Grus sensed as much, too. “I’m trying to think about the whole kingdom, Your Majesty,” he said, his tone edgy. “What’s more important than Avornis?”
“Nothing. I’m sure of that,” Lanius replied. “But if the Kingdom of Avornis isn’t made up of people like these hungry farmers, what is it?”
His father-in-law started to answer, hesitated, started again and again failed, and finally frowned. “You have a point,” he said at last. “How are the granaries? Can we feed them?”
He expected Lanius to have the answer at his fingertips, and Lanius did. “Oh, yes, we can feed them till spring without too much trouble,” he answered. “We’ve had good harvests the last couple of years, and there’s plenty of wheat in the granaries, and even more rye and barley. Oats, too, come to that.”
“Oats?” Grus made a face. “A lot of people, especially down in the south, think they’re nothing but fodder for horses.”
“I never said they were fancy,” Lanius answered. “But if it’s a choice between boiling oats and making porridge of them on the one hand and going hungry on the other, I know which I’d sooner do.”
“I suppose so.” Grus still sounded unhappy, but he couldn’t very well argue. He drummed his fingers on the side of his thigh. “I wish I knew whether this was just a bad winter of the sort we often get, or a bad winter sent by the Banished One.”
“This is a very bad winter, which makes it more likely the Banished One has given us a gift.” Lanius paused and then decided to see what happened when he said, “You could use a wizard to help you find out.” Grus had given him the opening, after all.
“I haven’t got one I can rely on against the Banished One right now,” Grus said.
King Lanius eyed him. “And whose fault is that?”
“Oh, it’s mine,” Grus replied. “Have I ever said any different?” More than a little reluctantly, Lanius shook his head. Grus had never been shy about admitting his own flaws. He wasn’t the sort of man to claim he had none, as more than a few kings had been wont to do. Lanius sighed. If only Grus had worked harder to root out those faults… Of course, even fewer men tried to do that than admitted they had flaws in the first place. Lanius didn’t suppose he could blame Grus too much for failing to root them out. No—not too much, anyhow.
Guards spirited Thraupis into the palace as though he were the most beautiful courtesan in the world. He wasn’t. He was a gangling middle-aged man with stooped shoulders, a long, horsy face, and watery gray eyes with a nearsighted squint. King Grus received him in a chamber well separate from his living quarters, and, despite the hunger in the city, gave him roast meat and white bread and sweet wine red as blood.
“Very kind, Your Majesty; very kind,” Thraupis said. He started to wipe his mouth on his sleeve, then remembered his manners and used a cloth instead.
“Glad you’re pleased,” Grus replied. “Now, then—let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Happy to oblige, Your Majesty; happy to oblige.” Thraupis had a habit of repeating himself. He picked up a wooden case and set it on the table next to his empty platter. A moment later, a servant whisked the platter away. Another servant poured him more wine. “Thank you. Thank you very much,” he said, and opened the case.
Grus eyed the contents—cleverly displayed on black velvet—as avidly as he might have eyed a courtesan displayed by the same fabric. The ram-headed spiral gold bracelet with the emeralds for eyes particularly caught his notice. “This is a very fine piece,” he said to Thraupis.
By the way the jeweler beamed, Grus knew it was also a very expensive piece. “Glad you like it,” Thraupis said. “Mighty glad.” He pointed to a pair of elaborate earrings with filigree-work gold disks and boat-shaped pendants and several small golden seeds dangled from each pendant by chains of almost unimaginable fineness. “These’d go well with the bracelet, Your Majesty. They’d go really well.”
“I’m sure they would. I’m certain of it.” Grus shook his head in bemusement. He was starting to talk like Thraupis. Yes, he was starting to sound just like him. Stop that, he told himself sternly. “How much do you want for them? Will the treasury have any money left if I buy them?”
Thraupis named a price. He named it only once. Once was plenty to make Grus yelp. The jeweler clucked. “Can’t get much lower, Your Majesty—not much. Gold is gold. Jewels is jewels. My time’s worth a little something. Yes, a little something, by the gods.”
“You’re a thief,” Grus said—but weakly. But the King of Avornis couldn’t let those pieces go by, not just then he couldn’t. He took the bracelet and earrings to Estrilda and gave them to her with as much of a flourish as he could—all things considered, less than he would have wanted. “I hope you like them,” he said.
“They’re very pretty,” Estrilda answered. “Would you have gotten them for me if you hadn’t been sleeping with the witch?”
“Dear…” Grus said in strained tones.
“Spare me,” Estrilda told him. “When you did this the first time, you were easy enough to forgive. You said you wouldn’t do it again, and I believed you. The second time? No. I’ve told you that, too. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
She eyed him. “And now you’re going to say something like, ‘Well, if you can’t be nice to me, I’ll get rid of you and find somebody who can.’ Go right ahead—that’s all I’ve got to say to you.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything at all,” Grus said. “I don’t want to get rid of you, Estrilda. All I want to do is go back to the way things were before.”
“Not likely,” Estrilda said. “If you drop a goblet, can you put it back together again?”
“Not easily,” Grus answered, “but I’m doing what I can. You’ll see cracks on the goblet when I’m done, but I hope it will hold wine again.”
“That’s a pretty figure of speech,” Estrilda said. “Why should I care whether it holds wine or not, though? You’re the one who smashed it and spilled the wine it did hold.”
“I know,” Grus said, “but you wouldn’t be so angry at me if you didn’t still care at least a little.”
Estrilda was silent for a long time. At last, she sighed. “We’ve been together since before we really finished growing up. How can I help but care? If you think that makes me want to let you touch me now, though, you’d better think again.”