“Did I say anything about that?”
“No, and you’d better not,” Estrilda told him. “The answer is still no.”
“You might want to wait till somebody asks the question before you give the answer,” Grus said.
“I might, and then again, I might not,” Estrilda said. “Some people, seems to me, need a head start when it comes to getting things straight. And I don’t mean getting that thing straight. That’s what got you into trouble.”
“Yes, I know.” Grus could hardly disagree with that. “It doesn’t happen very often, Estrilda. It’s been years.” He knew he was pleading. He couldn’t help it.
“How can I believe that? How can I be sure of it?” Estrilda asked. “Before, I thought, yes, all right, it happened. Anything can happen once. The world doesn’t end with once. Now… How can I trust you now? I can’t.”
“I am sorry,” Grus said.
“You’re sorry you got caught. We’ve been over that ground before, too.” Estrilda poked at the earrings with a forefinger. “And all this jewelry is very pretty, but I know why you bought it. You bought it to butter me up.”
“I bought it to show you I’m sorry. By the gods, Estrilda, I’m not perfect, but I do love you.” Grus took a deep breath, then rolled the dice by asking, “Would I have listened to you when you asked me to send Alca away if I didn’t?”
“I didn’t ask you to send her away. I told you to send her away.” But his wife hesitated once more. Then she added, “I should say you’re not perfect.”
“I already said I wasn’t,” Grus said. “Every once in a while… these things happen. Most of the time, they don’t. And I think you know that’s true.”
Estrilda hesitated again. At last, as grudgingly as she could, she said, “Maybe.”
That was as much as she’d yielded since finding out about Grus’ affair. He tried for more. “Maybe we can patch things up again, then. We’ve been together for a long time, after all. You said so yourself. If we can’t put up with each other—”
“I can put up with you,” Estrilda said. “These other women?” She shook her head.
Grus said, “I’ve done everything I know how to do to make you forgive me. Have I got any chance at all?”
Estrilda turned her back. After a long, long silence, she said, even more grudgingly than before, “Maybe.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lanius found himself with a pleasant problem—the moncats were having more kittens than he had good names for them. Not only that, keeping track of which moncat owned which name taxed even his formidable memory. He was almost glad the monkeys were unlikely to breed. He would have had to come up with more names yet.
Bronze’s belly bulged with what would be two more kittens before much longer. Lanius wasn’t sure which younger moncat had sired them. He hoped it was the one he’d named Rusty, a beast even redder than the reddest red tabby. Rusty resembled neither Bronze nor Iron very much; Lanius wondered from which of them, and how, he’d inherited his looks. They had to come down from one of the original pair of moncats or the other—that much, at least, seemed clear.
Rusty, at the moment, seemed to be doing his best to kill himself, swinging about on boards and sticks with what in a human would have been reckless disregard for his life. Even the monkeys might not have been able to match his acrobatics, for he had claws to help him hold on and they didn’t. Lanius took out a piece of meat and clucked to him. He had different noises to tell each moncat when a treat was for it—one more thing their burgeoning population threatened to disrupt.
Another moncat, a brownish female, tried to steal the tidbit. “Not for you!” Lanius said, and jerked the meat away. The female gave him a hard look. He was convinced moncats thought and remembered better than ordinary cats. Maybe they were even more clever than his monkeys. He wondered about that, but hadn’t found a way to test it.
Down dropped Rusty, fast enough to raise Lanius’ hackles. As soon as the moncat came to the floor, it hurried over to Lanius and started trying to climb him. He gave Rusty the piece of meat. The moncat crouched at his feet while it ate. Rusty knew Lanius wouldn’t let any of the other animals steal its meat. That made the King of Avornis deserve a little extra affection in the moncat’s eyes.
As Lanius often did, he bent down to stroke Rusty. He tried to tame the moncats as much as he could. The Chernagors had warned him the beasts were less affectionate than ordinary cats—a depressing thought if ever there was one—and the sea-rovers hadn’t been joking. Every so often, though, a moncat would decide to act like a pet instead of a wild animal.
This was one of those lucky moments. Rusty—again, probably happier than usual because of the treat it had just enjoyed— not only purred but also rolled over and over like a lovable pussycat encouraging its owner to pet it. Rusty even let Lanius rub his stomach, though it and the other moncats usually scratched and bit when the king took such a liberty.
Emboldened, Lanius squatted. He picked Rusty up and put it in his lap. To his delight, the moncat let him get away with that. In fact, Rusty purred louder than ever. Lanius beamed. He hadn’t imagined a moncat could act so lovable.
Rusty purred so loud, the King of Avornis didn’t notice the knocking on the door for some little while. Even after noticing, he did his best to ignore it. He wanted that moment to last forever. But the knocking went on and on.
“Yes? What is it?” Lanius said when he couldn’t ignore it anymore. If some stupid servant was having conniptions about something unimportant, he intended to cut off the fellow’s ears and feed them to the moncats.
The door opened. That made Lanius think it was Grus—the servants knew better. Even as Lanius muttered a curse, his hand kept stroking Rusty. The moncat kept purring.
It wasn’t Grus. It wasn’t any of the servants Lanius recognized, either. After a moment, though, he realized he did recognize the man, even if not as a servant. The fellow was one of the thralls Grus and Alca had brought back from Cumanus.
Lanius marveled that he did know him for who—for what— he was. Thralls’ faces usually bore the blank stares that could as easily have belonged to barnyard animals. Not here. Not now. Purpose informed this man’s features. His eyes glittered as he stared straight at Lanius. The long, sharp knife he held in his right hand glittered, too.
Still eyeing Lanius, the thrall strode into the moncats’ room. The animals gaped at him. They weren’t used to seeing anybody but the king. The thrall took another slow, deliberate step. Lanius thought he saw the Banished One peering out through the man’s eyes.
He’s come to kill me, the king thought without undue surprise and—he was surprised about this—without undue fear. He wondered whether by that he he meant the thrall or the Banished One, who impelled the fellow forward as surely as a merely mortal puppeteer worked his puppet’s strings.
Rusty let out a small, questioning mew. Lanius kept hold of the moncat. He came to his feet and took a step back, toward the far wall of the room. Smiling, raising the knife, the thrall came after him.
I’m going to die here, Lanius thought. He didn’t know how the thrall had gotten out of the room where Alca had studied him and his fellows—and where they’d stayed, largely ignored, after she left the city of Avornis. How didn’t seem to matter at the moment. He was out, and he had a knife, and, smiling, he took another purposeful step toward the king.