Slowly, awkwardly, wearily, the peasants made way for the men on horseback. “Where are you bound?” Grus asked them.
“City of Avornis,” answered one of the men hauling a handcart.
Crex, Grus’ father, had come off a farm and headed for the capital. He’d managed to land a place in the royal guards, and had done well enough for himself. But most peasants weren’t so lucky. Grus said, “Why don’t you stay on your own plots of land?”
A few minutes before, Nicator had called Arch-Hallow Bucco the biggest idiot in the world. Now all the peasants— men, women, and children—looked at Grus as though the title belonged to him. “Haven’t got ’em anymore,” said the fellow with the handcart.
“Why not?” Grus asked. They all looked tired, but otherwise hale enough. “You don’t seem too lazy to keep them up.”
That got him more than he’d bargained for. All the peasants shouted indignantly. The man who seemed more willing to talk than the others said, “Count Corvus pitched us off our land so he can raise cows and sheep on it. And what can we do about that? Not a gods-cursed thing, that’s what we can do.”
“Oh.” Grus kicked his horse up into a trot. However little he liked the motion, he wanted to get away from those irate peasants. Nicator stuck by his side like a burr. At last, Grus said, “How are we going to stay strong if we throw all the peasants off the land? Where will we get our soldiers?”
“Beats me,” Nicator answered. “How can anybody keep nobles from grabbing up land? That’s half of what being a nobleman’s all about.” He sighed wistfully. “I always thought it sounded pretty good—buying land out to the horizon, I mean.”
“It may be good if you’re doing the grabbing.” Grus jerked a thumb back toward the dispossessed peasants. “What about them? They’re Avornans, too.”
“If I’m a noble, I just give ’em the back of my hand,” Nicator said. Grus laughed again, though that wasn’t so funny, either.
Before he got to the royal capital, Grus heard a rumor so strange, he refused to believe it. But when he repeated it after coming into the city of Avornis, his wife only nodded. “Yes, that’s true,” Estrilda said.
“They’ve betrothed King Lanius to a Therving princess?” Grus said.
Estrilda nodded again. “That’s right.”
“But that’s madness,” Grus said. “Once they’re wed, who’s the real power in Avornis? Dagipert of Thervingia, that’s who.”
“That’s right.” This time, his father spoke before his wife could. Crex sounded revoltingly cheerful about it, too.
“Who arranged it? Arch-Hallow Bucco?” Grus asked. Estrilda and Crex both nodded. After a moment, so did Grus. “Yes, in a way it must make sense for him,” he said. “It keeps the Thervings quiet for the time being, and I don’t think Bucco sees or cares about anything past that.”
“Stupid bastard doesn’t need to,” Crex said. “Stupid bastard isn’t king. He just gets to play at the job till he’s buggered it up for everybody else.” A long string of such cracks might have been what helped him get called Crex the Unbearable.
Before Grus could answer, a dog yelped in pain in the next room. A moment later, so did a boy. “Ortalis!” Grus called. His son came in, an apprehensive look on his face. He was holding one hand in the other. “Let me see,” Grus said. His son plainly didn’t want to, but had no choice. Grus nodded to himself, then asked, “Why did Rusty bite you?”
“I don’t know,” Ortalis mumbled, looking down at the floor. “Because he’s mean.”
“Because you hurt him?” Grus suggested. Ortalis didn’t say anything. Grus pointed to the doorway. “Go to your room. No supper for you tonight.”
“You ought to give him a good walloping,” Crex said as Ortalis suddenly departed. “I gave you a good walloping whenever I thought you needed it, and you didn’t turn out too bad.”
Grus didn’t argue with his father. What point? But he didn’t agree, either. The way he remembered it, Crex had walloped him whether he needed it or not. Before his beard began to grow, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t treat his own son the same way if he ever had one. He wondered whether it would have made any difference if he had decided to whack Ortalis at the first sign of misbehavior. He doubted it. Nothing except help from the gods could have turned Ortalis into a good-natured boy.
To keep from thinking about that, he went back to what they’d been talking about before. “How can Bucco stay head of the Council of Regents when he’s gone and sold us to Dagipert and the Thervings?” Sold us to the Banished One, he almost said. But no one had ever proved that about the King of Thervingia, and the Avoman peasants who now lived under Thervingian rule weren’t the soulless thralls the Menteshe treated like cattle.
Crex said, “Pack of spineless swine in the palace, that’s how.”
Estrilda added, “Lanius isn’t old enough to rule on his own, and won’t be for years. Who else can do the job? Queen Certhia?”
“How could she do it worse than Bucco has?” Grus demanded.
Crex loosed a long, loud, sour laugh. “If she gets the chance, sonny, maybe she’ll show you how.”
“Good day, Your Majesty.” Lepturus bowed to King Lanius.
“And a good day to you.” Lanius gave back the bow to the commander of his bodyguards.
To his surprise, Lepturus pulled out a sheet of parchment from the gold-embroidered pouch he wore on his belt. “Read this,” he said, his lips hardly moving. “Read it, then get rid of it.”
No less than any other boy, Lanius delighted in intrigue for its own sake. He unrolled the parchment. The note was short and to the point. Do you want to see your mother back in the palace ? it asked. If you do, help Lepturus.
“Well, Your Majesty?” the dour guards commander asked gruffly.
Before answering, Lanius tore the parchment into tiny scraps, then went to a window and scattered the scraps to the wind. As he came back, Lepturus nodded approval. The young King of Avornis whispered, “You know I want her back. How can we do it?”
“That depends,” Lepturus said quietly. “Do you really want to marry this Therving princess?”
Lanius made a horrible face. “I don’t want to marry anybody. Who’d want to have anything to do with girls?” A world of scorn filled his voice.
Lepturus’ furry eyebrows twitched. So did his mouth—about as close as he could come to a smile. “Oh, they have their moments,” he observed. Lanius, who would argue about anything, was more than ready to quarrel over that. Lepturus didn’t give him a chance. He held up a hand and said, “Never mind. Call Bucco to the palace and tell him you won’t marry Princess What’s-her-name no matter what.”
“Will he pay any attention?” Lanius asked. “He’s head of the Council of Regents, after all. He runs Avornis. I don’t. He won’t let me.”
“He may run Avornis,” Lepturus answered. “He doesn’t run you. If you say you won’t marry this girl, what can he do except try to talk you into it?”
“I don’t know.” Lanius wasn’t so sure he wanted to find out, either. But he decided he would, if that meant Bucco left and his mother came back.
When he nodded, Lepturus clapped him on the shoulder, hard enough to stagger him. “Good lad,” he said. “Do you want someone to write the words for you, or would you sooner do it yourself?”
“I’d sooner do it.” Lanius drew himself up, though he still reached only the middle of Lepturus’ chest.