As before, Lanius ascended to the Diamond Throne. As before, Queen Certhia sat at his right hand. As before, Lepturus stood at his left. “How now?” he asked when Karajuk and what looked like the same four henchmen made their bows before him.
“My Master asks if you are ready to do his bidding now that you have had a taste of winter and hunger,” Karajuk said.
“It has been a cold winter, hasn’t it?” Lanius said, as though he hadn’t particularly noticed till the Menteshe reminded him. “But there is no special hunger here—no worse than any other winter, anyhow.”
Karajuk’s narrow eyes widened. In that moment, Lanius was sure he saw the Banished One looking out through his envoy. “You lie,” the Menteshe hissed.
“You mind your tongue, wretch,” Lepturus rumbled, “or we’ll send you back to your vile Master with it in your pocket.”
Lanius raised his hand. “It’s all right, Lepturus. He’s a barbarian, and knows no better.” As he’d been sure it would, that angered Karajuk all over again. “But what I said is true. No one starves here in the city of Avornis. By all the gods, I swear it.”
That was also calculated to infuriate Karajuk, who served one no longer, or not quite, a god. “With this winter?” the Menteshe growled. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you please,” Lanius said politely. “If you like, after you leave the palace our soldiers will escort you through the city so you can see for yourself whether I am telling the truth.”
“Do you take me for a little boy?” Karajuk could be insulting, too. “Your soldiers will show me what Avornis wants me to see.”
“No.” When Lanius shook his head, he felt the weight of the crown. “Go where you will in the city of Avornis. The guards will protect you. Folk do not love the Banished One here. You need protection in the city.”
Karajuk and his henchmen put their heads together. When he turned back to Lanius, he said, “I will take you up on your generous offer.” Irony dripped from his words. “I think you are bluffing. I think you are lying.”
Not only Lepturus but several of the bodyguards growled at that. Lanius said, “I think you are rude and serve a bad Master. After you go through the city, we can see who is right. For now, you are dismissed.”
“You had better be careful, bastard boy who calls himself king,” Karajuk said. “If my Master—”
“You are dismissed,” Lanius said again. Karajuk, scowling blacker than the storm clouds outside, had to withdraw. Lanius might not rule on his own yet, but he had discovered that the king got the last word.
Karajuk and the Banished One’s lesser servants took their tour the next day. Along with ordinary guardsmen, Lepturus sent a couple of wizards with them. Lanius didn’t know what the ambassador and his henchmen might do in the way of magic, but he agreed with the commander of the bodyguard— better not to have to find out the hard way.
When Karajuk and his followers returned to the throne room after going through the city, the Menteshe looked less happy than ever. “I still say it’s some sort of a trick,” he ground out.
“You may think what you like, of course,” Lanius said. “We here in Avornis have a word in our language for someone who will not believe what his eyes tell him.” He’d pulled that gibe from an ancient book of japes. He’d hoped he would get the chance to use it. He didn’t smile at Karajuk, but he felt like it.
The Banished One’s ambassador said, “You will regret this.” He turned and stalked out of the throne room without waiting to be dismissed. The other Menteshe, as always, followed him. They might have been puppies trailing after their mother.
“Nicely done, Your Majesty,” Lepturus said when they were gone.
“Maybe,” Lanius answered. “We’ll have trouble once good weather finally comes again.”
His guards commander only shrugged. “Name a year when we haven’t had trouble.” Try as he might, Lanius couldn’t.
Resentfully, sullenly, six weeks after it should have, winter finally left Avornis. “Now we’ll have floods, on account of all the melting snow,” Nicator predicted.
“I hope not,” Grus said, fearing his friend was right.
“As soon as things thaw out and dry out, we’re going to have the Menteshe on our backs, too,” Nicator said. “And the Thervings—you mark my words. Dagipert’s still got to be steaming because we held him last summer.”
“Well, in that case we ought to get a call to come back to the north before too long,” Grus said. “We’ve gone back and forth between the Stura and the city of Avornis so often, I’m actually starting to know what to do on horseback.”
“Me, I don’t fall off so much anymore,” Nicator said. “That’ll do.”
“What worries me is what we’ll do if the Thervings come down out of the mountains and the Menteshe boil up from the south at the same time.”
“Yes, that’d be bad, all right,” Nicator agreed.
“Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen.” Grus made the finger sign to repel bad luck. He went on, “You know, there’s one good argument that King Dagipert isn’t the Banished One’s creature.”
“What’s that, Skipper?”
“Well, if he were, the Thervings and the Menteshe would move against us together more often than they do,” Grus answered. “Since they don’t, odds are Dagipert’s his own man.”
“His own miserable old dragon, you mean,” Nicator said. Grus laughed. Nicator went on, “He couldn’t have caused Avornis any more grief if he were the Banished One’s mother-in-law.”
That probably wasn’t true. Peasants on lands the Menteshe conquered were lost to true humanity forever. Peasants on lands the Thervings overran just started working for them instead of for their own kingdom. In one way, the difference was profound. In another, though, it wasn’t. No matter who took them away or what happened to them, they were still lost to Avornis.
Before very long, the message the two river-galley officers had expected proved to be waiting for them in a little town alongside the Stura. Grus read the parchment a watch officer handed him, then nodded to Nicator: “We’re ordered to return to the city of Avornis as fast as we can get there. That means by horseback.”
“Of course it does,” Nicator said gloomily. “If they could stick us in a catapult and shoot us from hither to yon, they’d do that instead.”
“And you’d like it better, too, wouldn’t you?” Grus asked with a sly smile.
“Who, me? I might, by the gods. I don’t know for sure. I wouldn’t get saddle sore, anyhow, I’ll tell you that.”
“No, but you’d like coming down from getting flung a lot less than you like dismounting from a horse.”
“I might,” Nicator said. “But then again, I might not, too. You never can tell.” Grus snorted. Nicator let out a rumbling chuckle.
They rode north on a couple of horses the royal post lent them. The royal post of Avornis was supposed to be able to get anywhere in the Kingdom of Avornis in a hurry. If it relied on horses like those first two it furnished Grus and Nicator, Grus had trouble seeing how it did its job. He’d never ridden a more lethargic beast, and Nicator’s was no livelier. “They’ve got two gaits,” Grus said after another vain try at coaxing a canter, let alone a gallop, from his mount. “One’s a walk—”
“And so’s the other,” Nicator said.
Grus made a face at him. “If stepping on your commander’s jokes isn’t mutiny, it ought to be.”
“If you call that a joke, Skipper, it deserves stepping on,” Nicator replied. They both laughed, and rode on at the best speed the sorry horses would give them.
When they came to the next relay station, they changed mounts. The horses they got there were a little livelier than the ones they’d had before, but not much. They kept heading north, changing horses every station or two. Sometimes they got bad horses, sometimes indifferent ones. If the royal post owned any good horses, it hid them very well.