“I’ll apologize when I get to the palace,” Grus said. “It’ll be on my head, not yours.” He wanted to keep wearing his head awhile longer. What do I do if they draw sword on me? One knife against two longer blades made fearful odds.
And then, from behind him, someone said, “These lugs bothering you?” Grus cautiously looked over his shoulder. Four or five of Crex’s old soldier friends had drifted up to stand at his back. They wore swords; he would have bet they wore them everywhere except to bed. As Crex had been, they were nearer seventy than sixty, but they weren’t soft and they weren’t feeble. Two of them against the pair of ruffians wouldn’t have made an even fight. The lot of them together? That was a different story.
Ortalis came up behind Grus, too. He didn’t have a sword and he wasn’t quite a man yet, but he did have a look on his face that said he’d jump right into a fight and do something nasty to the losers if he won.
The men who’d asked Grus to come with them looked to be weighing their chances. One of them made shooing motions at the retired soldiers. “Shove off, old-timers,” he said. “This here is none of your business.”
Grus could have told him that was a mistake. The graybeard who’d spoken before said, “It is if we make it our business. And if you don’t like it, you can bend over and stick it right there.” The other veterans nodded. A couple of them had already let their hands fall to the hilts of their swords.
“I’ll go to the palace right after the feast,” Grus said. “We can sort everything out then. I’ll see you there, won’t I?”
He didn’t think he would ever see these fellows again. He just hoped they wouldn’t try to murder him now that they hadn’t managed to spirit him away. When one of them said, “Queen Certhia won’t like this,” and started to walk off, he allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief—they hadn’t been paid to risk their lives, then. More reluctantly, the second soldier followed the first. They argued as they went.
“Who are those men?” Estrilda asked quietly.
“My first guess would be, Count Corax’s soldiers,” Grus answered. “He owes me one—or thinks he does.”
“I’m glad you don’t believe they came from Queen Certhia,” his wife said. “What would they have done with you?”
“Nothing good. He must have tried this on the spur of the moment, when he found out I was in the city. Otherwise, he would have managed something better.” Queen Certhia would have managed something better, too, if she’d really wanted my head, Grus thought uneasily. He remembered tossing that letter summoning him to the city of Avornis into the Tuola. Sometimes things like that came home to roost, though he hadn’t worried about it then.
One of Crex’s friends tapped him on the shoulder. “You want us to go home with you, Commodore? Never can tell where you’ll find more buggers like that pair prowling around.”
“Thanks, but—” Grus stopped. The graybeard was right. Being polite here might get him killed. Grus shook his head. “No buts. Thanks. I’ll take you up on that.”
“Smart lad,” the veteran said, just as Grus’ father might have. “Let’s go, then.”
“Yes.” Grus turned away from the pyre. “Let’s.”
King Lanius’ tutor clucked reproachfully. “Your Majesty, you’re not paying attention,” he said. “I don’t even bother bringing my switch with me anymore, but maybe I should start again. What has been the matter with you lately?”
“I’m sorry.” Lanius knew exactly why he’d had trouble thinking about geometry. He’d been thinking about Prinia instead. She’d taught him a couple of things the day before that he hadn’t learned from Marila. He wondered what the archives had to say about things a man did with a woman. He’d never tried to find out, not till now. The archives said something about almost everything. What they had to say about that might prove very interesting.
“‘Sorry is not enough,” his tutor declared. “You’ll need to show more effort—and more success—or I’m going to have to speak to your mother.” He sighed. “I haven’t had to warn you like that for a long time, either.”
Before Lanius could answer, a bodyguard stuck his head into the little room where he had his lessons. “What’s this, Rallus?” Lanius asked in surprise. No one bothered him during lessons. He’d decreed that a long time ago, and in that his word was law—not least because the decree was so inconsequential.
But Rallus said, “Marshal Lepturus wants to see you right away, Your Majesty. It’s important.”
“What is it?” Lanius asked. Rallus just stood there. With a sigh of his own, Lanius told his tutor, “I’d better go. I’ll be back soon.”
He wasn’t wrong very often. This turned out to be one of those times.
Rallus led him to a chamber off the throne room. Lepturus sat there. So did Lanius’ mother. Lepturus always looked gloomy. Now he looked as though he never expected to see day dawn again. Queen Certhia might have aged five years since the morning. Her face was pale. It showed more lines than Lanius had ever seen there. Her eyes were wide and staring.
“What is it?” Lanius said in shock. Then his mind made one of its swift leaps. “Oh, by the gods,” he whispered. “Count Corvus has finally fought the Thervings, hasn’t he?”
Jerkily, Lepturus nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty, he did. A little the other side of the Tuola, it was—he got sick of waiting for Dagipert to come to him, and went out after the Thervings instead. The first fugitives just got back here with word of what happened. The short answer is, Corvus picked the wrong time to get bold.”
“The first fugitives?” Lanius didn’t like the sound of that.
Lepturus gave him another jerky nod. “Dagipert met him on a meadow with a glade of trees off to one side. Corvus, like I said, was feeling bold. He sent his men—our men—charging ahead, and the Thervings gave ground before him.”
Three sentences were plenty to give Lanius the bad feeling that he knew what was coming next. Hoping against hope, he asked, “Did Count Corvus send scouts into that—glade, you called it?”
This time, the commander of the royal bodyguards shook his head. “We were advancing. Why did he need to worry about anything like that? I’m guessing what went through his mind, understand. I don’t know for sure.”
“Nobody knows for sure whether anything went through his mind,” Queen Certhia said bitterly.
“Nobody—nobody here, anyhow—knows for sure whether he’s alive or dead,” Lepturus went on. “He pushed on, happy as—”
“Happy as any man pushing it in,” Certhia interrupted again. “Just that happy, and just that stupid.”
Lanius looked at the floor, at the walls, at the ceiling—anywhere but at his mother. He hadn’t thought she knew what he’d been doing with the serving girls. But she was unlikely to have chosen that particular comparison by accident. Next to this news, though, even that was small. “And there were Thervings in amongst those trees?”
“Oh, yes. Oh, by the gods, yes,” Lepturus answered. “They stayed hidden there till our battle line had pushed past ’em, then they all came swarming out, and they rolled us up like a pair of socks. The soldiers who’ve gotten here are the ones who ran first and fastest, so things may not be quite as bad as they say, but they’re pretty gods-cursed bad—no two ways about it.”
“What do we do?” Lanius asked. “What can we do?”