That was, word for word, what he was supposed to say. Grus let out a sigh of relief. Lanius gave him a cold nod as he came forward. The young king might have said he was pleased to share the crown, but he didn’t mean it. Grus shrugged. What Lanius had meant didn’t matter. The crowd out there was cheering—cheering loud enough to make Grus want to raise his hands to his ears. That mattered.
I suppose I ought to thank the Chernagors for bringing him those funny cats, too, Grus thought. He’s just young enough to think they’re as interesting as girls. Another couple of years, and nothing but a really beautiful concubine would have distracted him so well.
A servant walked up to Arch-Hallow Bucco. The man carried on a velvet cushion a crown identical to the one Lanius wore. The arch-hallow lifted the crown from the cushion and held it high so the people packing the square could see it. As though on cue, the sun came out from behind a cloud and sparkled from the gold and rubies and emeralds and sapphires. “Ahhh!” said the men and women who’d come to see Grus made a king.
Bucco quickly lowered the crown. He motioned for Grus to bend his head. Grus obeyed. This is the last time I have to obey anyone, went through his mind. If that wasn’t a heady notion, he didn’t know what would be. The arch-hallow put the crown on his head. As Bucco set it there, he called out, “It is accomplished!” in a great voice.
Grus straightened. In straightening, he discovered why Arch-Hallow Bucco had wasted no time lowering the crown. It was even heavier than he’d thought it would be—far heavier than the iron helmets he’d worn when he fought. All they’d had to do was keep some savage from smashing in his head. The crown had to look impressive instead. It had to, and it did.
“Hurrah for King Grus!” “Long live King Grus!” “King Grus! King Grus! King Grus!” The shouts washed over Grus like the tide. He didn’t have to worry much about the tide, not serving on river galleys as he’d always done. He didn’t have to worry about it, but he knew what it did.
He raised his hands above his head, asking for quiet in the same way as Arch-Hallow Bucco had. He needed longer to get quiet than Bucco had. He hoped that was a good sign.
“People of Avornis!” he called, pitching his voice to carry, as he would have on the deck of a river galley during a storm. “People of Avornis, I never expected—I never intended—to be set above you.” That was true, or had been true till he’d been summoned to defend the capital from Dagipert and the Thervings. By the way people applauded when he said it, they believed him, too.
He went on, “We have many enemies. I’ll do everything I can to hold back the ones outside the kingdom. And the nobles inside the kingdom who want to take what isn’t theirs also had better look out. They are no friends of Avornis.”
The cheers he got then almost knocked him off the platform. He smiled a little. He’d hoped and thought ordinary people resented greedy nobles like Corvus and Corax. It was good to see he’d been right.
To his surprise, he saw King Lanius clapping his hands, too. Isn’t that interesting? Grus thought. I wonder what Lanius has against the nobility.
Meanwhile, though, he had to finish talking to the crowd. “With your help—with the help of the gods—Avornis will be a great kingdom again,” he told them. “We can be. We aren’t far from it, and you must know that. As long as we pull together and don’t fight among ourselves, we have a chance. The Banished One wouldn’t try so hard to lay us low if he weren’t afraid of us.”
Of course, the Banished One might have wanted to lay Avornis low for no more reason than that it stood in the way of his Menteshe. Having been cast down from the heavens, he thought the material world was his by right— by divine right, Grus thought, and shivered a little. The Banished One had never stopped being offended that any mere mortals wanted to keep on ruling themselves instead of letting him take them in his hands and do with them what he would. Grus looked toward the south. Too bad, was what went through his mind.
“At this time, I’d like to recognize Alca the witch, and to reward her with the post of chief sorcerous aide to the throne,” Grus said. “Alca, step forward!” Alca ascended to the platform, waved, and went down again. Her husband put his arm around her. Pride filled his face. Grus continued, “Alca saved me from a wizardly attack, and deserves promotion. All those who serve me well will get what they earn. Those who don’t will get what they earn, too.”
Again, applause filled the square. Grus had left the impression the Banished One, not Queen Certhia, had launched that attack against him. He didn’t want to humiliate Lanius in public, not unless he had to. Lanius nodded to him, ever so slightly. He recognized what Grus had said, and what he hadn’t. Unless Grus mistook his expression, he was grateful for what hadn’t been said. Maybe we can work together, Grus thought. Maybe.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lanius gave the moncats the chamber next to his bedroom. He’d named the male Iron and the reddish female Bronze. Then, two weeks later, he’d had to find another chamber for the male. When Bronze had her kittens—twins— Iron wanted to kill them, just as Yaropolk had warned he might.
The kittens each clung to Bronze’s fur with all four hands, and wrapped their tiny tails as far around her as they would go, too. For their first couple of weeks of life, clinging and sucking were about all they could do. Bronze was almost as suspicious of Lanius as she had been of Iron before the king gave him a new home. Little by little, feeding her bits of pork and poultry, Lanius won her trust.
When the kittens’ eyes opened, they came to take Lanius as much for granted as they did their mother. One was a male, the other a female. He wondered whether that was happenstance or the way moncats always did things. By then, though, Yaropolk had left the city of Avornis, and none of the Chernagors in the capital admitted to knowing the answer.
He called the male kitten Spider and the female Snitch—she had a way of reaching for anything she could get her tiny hands on and popping it into her mouth. With Grus running the kingdom, Lanius did enjoy having time to spend on the moncats.
He made sure he kept visiting Iron, too, to keep him tame. After sending him away from Bronze and the kittens, Lanius thought about renaming him the Banished One. He thought about it, but then put the idea aside. In Avornis, that was not a name of good omen, even in whimsy.
He was picking fleas off Spider when someone knocked on the door to the moncats’ room. “Who’s there?” he asked. With a little moncat purring on his lap, he didn’t want merely human company just then.
But the answer was, “Grus.”
Grus didn’t throw the title he’d stolen in Lanius’ face. He was doing what he could to get along with Lanius and work with him wherever he could. Lanius couldn’t decide whether that made him dislike his fellow king more or less. Whichever the answer was, he couldn’t ignore Grus. “Come in,” he said.
When Grus did, his gaze traveled from Spider to Snitch to Bronze. He quickly closed the door behind him so the moncats couldn’t get out. Yaropolk had been right about that, too—once loose, they were very hard to recapture. “Fascinating creatures, Your Majesty,” Grus remarked. “Really fascinating. I see why you’re so taken with them.”
“Yes, they are,” Lanius agreed. “Your Majesty,” he added, a bit slower than he should have. He didn’t like yielding Grus the title, but saw no way around it. “Did you come here just to tell me that?”