“Why?” Lanius asked. “Would he have helped it run away even faster than it did? Do you think it could have run away any faster than it did?”
“If you weren’t the king, I’d turn you over my knee,” Bucco snarled.
If I were really the king, if I could give orders here and have them obeyed, I’d do worse than that to you, Lanius thought. Aloud, he said, “What exactly can you do? By the gods, you had better do something, don’t you think?”
“Our army would have had a general who could do something if your mother hadn’t somehow managed to spirit Duke Regulus off to the Maze,” the arch-hallow said. “You ought to blame her, not me.”
Lanius almost laughed in Bucco’s face. His mother hadn’t had a thing to do with that. He’d managed it all by himself. But maybe it was better that the arch-hallow didn’t grasp that. Lanius said, “If Regulus hadn’t disappeared, would I still be king?”
“Of course you would, Your Majesty!” Bucco exclaimed, too quickly to be quite convincing.
“If I’m not king anymore, if a grown-up is, there won’t need to be a Council of Regents anymore, either,” Lanius pointed out. Bucco drummed his fingers on the stone of the battlement. He’d probably thought he could ride Regulus as a man rode a horse. Seeing how readily Regulus had stumbled into a trap, Lanius figured that Bucco had probably been right, too. But another man might not prove so easy to ride. I have to make him worry about such things, Lanius thought. He pointed east once more, toward the Thervings’ tents. “What will you do about them?” he asked again.
“I have a plan,” Arch-Hallow Bucco said in his loftiest tones.
“I’m so glad to hear it,” Lanius replied. “Will it work as well as your last plan—the one that brought the Thervings here to our door?”
Bucco took a step toward him. Lanius flinched. He hated himself for it, but couldn’t keep from drawing back. For all his wit, he was only a boy—and on the skinny side, and not very tall. Arch-Hallow Bucco nodded grimly. “You would do well to remember, Your Majesty, that if you provoke me far enough I will have you given a common, everyday whipping.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Lanius’ voice went high and shrill.
Arch-Hallow Bucco didn’t answer. But he looked as though he would enjoy, enormously enjoy, having Lanius whipped. He wouldn’t do it himself, perhaps; make his holy palms sting from walloping a boy’s, even a royal boy’s, backside? No. He’d give the order to a servant or a bodyguard. It would be his, though, and he and Lanius would both know it.
“I will come of age, you know,” Lanius remarked. “And when I do, I will remember. I promise you that.”
“Good. Remember, then, that I try to make a man of you, not a spoiled, whining puppy,” Bucco said. “When you have a man’s judgment, you will see that.”
Will I? Lanius had his doubts. He’d never read of anyone who grew up grateful for whippings. If he hadn’t read of such things, they weren’t real to him. But he put this one aside for now. Real or not, it could wait. “Can the Thervings take the city of Avornis?” he asked nervously. He’d never read of that happening, either, but what he’d read seemed somehow less reassuring when measured against the swarm of enemy tents out beyond the city wall.
And he felt uncommonly relieved when Arch-Hallow Bucco shook his head, smiled, and gave him not a whipping, but a patronizing pat on the shoulder. “No, Your Majesty,” the arch-hallow said. “Not without treason, and probably not with it, either. King Dagipert’s not out there to take the city.”
“Then why didn’t he stay home?” Lanius burst out.
Bucco laughed—also patronizingly. “He is trying to make us do what he wants.”
“He’s doing a good job of it, too!” Lanius said.
“In the end, it will come out right. You’ll see,” Bucco said. “We will give him money and presents, and he will go back to Thervingia. He wants our gifts, and believes he can force us into giving them to him. Unfortunately, he is, for the moment, liable to be right.”
King Dagipert did mount one attack on the walls of the capital. Maybe he thought the Avornans too demoralized to fight back, even with the advantage the fortifications gave them. If Dagipert did think that, he soon found out he was wrong. Once he saw the attack had no chance, he called it off.
Then he sent an envoy up to the main gate of the city with a flag of truce. Bucco went to the gate to treat with the Therving. When he came back to the royal palace, he looked pleased with himself. “Just as I thought—King Dagipert wants money,” he told Lanius. “If we give it to him, he will go away. The only question now is, how much? Oh, and the Therving wants to send his son here to the palace to meet you.”
“I’ll meet him,” Lanius said. “Of course I will.” He was always eager to meet anyone new. He saw the same faces day after day inside the palace. Some of them, like Bucco’s, he would have been happier not seeing.
The arch-hallow nodded. “I will make the necessary arrangements, then.” He would have made the same arrangements even if Lanius had said he didn’t want to meet Dagipert’s son. Lanius was sure of that. And Bucco might as well have admitted as much, saying, “We are hardly in a position to refuse.”
“I suppose not,” Lanius said. “Which son of Dagipert’s is coming here? Is it Berto, his heir, or is it one of his younger sons?”
“It’s Prince Berto.” Bucco gave Lanius a thoughtful look. “You do soak up all sorts of things, don’t you, Your Majesty?”
“Of course. The more I know, the better off I am.” Lanius spoke as though that were an article of faith. So he’d taken it, from his earliest days. But now I know lots of strange things, and I’m still not very well off, he thought. Would I be worse off still if I knew less? Could I be worse off?
He sighed. I probably could. Being a king, even a king who was a powerless boy, wasn’t so bad. I could be a starving peasant who was also a powerless boy. Or, if I hadn’t figured out what to do about Duke Regulus, I could have ended up in the Maze— or dead.
Prince Berto came to the royal palace the next afternoon, after worshiping at Olor’s cathedral. That touch made Arch-Hallow Bucco happy. So did the news Berto brought. Presenting the prince to King Lanius, Bucco said, “I am invited to the Thervings’ encampment tomorrow, to talk with King Dagipert face-to-face. Prince Berto has given me his father’s safe-conduct.”
“Good.” Lanius hoped Dagipert would ignore it, as he’d ignored so many agreements. He spoke to Berto with the formality that had been drilled into him. “I am pleased to meet you, Your Highness.”
“And I am pleased to meet you, Your Majesty.” Berto spoke good Avornan, with only a slight guttural Therving accent. Like most of his countrymen, he was big and fair. He wore his hair long. That, with his wolfskin jacket and cowhide boots with the hair out, made him seem extraordinarily shaggy to Lanius. But his smooth-chinned face was open and friendly as he went on, “When I come here, I feel… closer to the gods than I do in Thervingia.”
“But Thervingia is full of mountains,” Lanius said. “You’re closer to the heavens there, closer to the gods.” Closer to all of them but the Banished One, anyhow, he thought uneasily.
Berto shook his head. “When I walked into the cathedral, I didn’t know if I was still on earth or up in the heavens myself. You’re so lucky, Your Majesty, to be able to worship there whenever you please.”