With a sigh, and with a look of regret aimed at the bread and dried meat he wouldn’t be able to eat, at the cup of wine he wouldn’t be able to finish, and at the inviting cot he wouldn’t be able to fall into any time soon, King Lanius got to his feet and ducked his way out through the tent flap and into the night.
“What on earth is going on around here?” he demanded of the first soldier he saw.
He expected an answer. He might have gotten an excited answer, an angry answer, even an incoherent answer, but he thought he would acquire something in the way of information. Instead, the soldier gaped at him, mouth falling open. The man’s eyes bugged out of his head. “A ghost!” he cried. “Sweet Queen Quelea guard me, a ghost!” He fled.
Lanius said something nasty under his breath. He drummed his fingers on the outside of his thigh. Why me? he wondered. Why do I find the maniacs when all I’m looking for is the answer to a simple question?
The frightened soldier’s wails made other men stare his way. He walked toward them, repeating, “What on earth is going on?”
“Oh, by the gods,” one of them said fearfully. “It is him. I know his look, and I know his voice, too.”
Then they all cried out, “A ghost!” and fled every which way.
King Lanius pinched himself. It hurt. He was, emphatically, still flesh and blood. He hadn’t really needed to do any pinching, either; all the time he’d spent on a horse that day had left him saddlesore. Avornan lore said a great many things about ghosts. Some he’d heard from servants, some he’d found poking through the royal archives. Never in all his days had he heard of a saddlesore spook.
He strode forward. If things had been confused before—and they had—the addition of eight or ten fleeing men screaming, “A ghost!” at the top of their lungs did nothing to calm the situation. He heard more soldiers—men who couldn’t possibly have seen him—also start shouting, “Ghost! Ghost! Gods preserve us, a ghost!”
“Idiots,” Lanius snarled. “Fools. Morons. Imbeciles. Lack-wits. Dolts. Clods. Chowderheads. Buffoons. Soldiers.”
One of them, trying to run away from him, almost trampled him instead. Lanius grabbed the fellow and refused to let him go. “Oh, Queen Quelea save me, it’s got its claws in me now!” the man moaned, plainly believing his last moments on earth had arrived.
“Shut up, you… you soldier, you,” Lanius told the trooper. He shook him, which only terrified the fellow worse. “Now, gods curse you, tell me why you think I’m dead.”
“Because… Because… Because… King Grus killed you.” The soldier got it out at last. Then his eyes rolled up in his head. He went limp in Lanius’ arms. Lanius had heard of people fainting from fright. Up till that moment, he’d never seen it.
And he’d finally gotten an answer. He didn’t think he’d gotten any information, though. “King Grus did what?” he said. The soldier, of course, didn’t answer. Lanius let go of him in disgust. The man slumped to the ground and hit his head on a rock. As far as Lanius could tell, that was more likely to hurt the rock than the man’s obviously empty head.
Resisting the impulse to kick the fellow while he was down, Lanius looked around for Grus’ pavilion. He didn’t see it, and growled something he’d heard a bodyguard say after banging his thumb with a hammer.
If he couldn’t find the pavilion, maybe he could find his fellow king. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than another soldier caromed off him. He grabbed this one, too, and snarled, “Where’s Grus?”
The man goggled at him, but didn’t faint. Lanius would have kicked him if he had. Instead, still gaping, the soldier said, “He’s over that way.” A moment later, he blurted, “Why aren’t you dead?”
“I don’t know,” Lanius snapped, exasperated past endurance. “Why aren’t you, you simple son of a whore?”
“You’re the bastard,” the soldier retorted, at which Lanius, in a perfect transport of fury, did kick him. He howled. He also managed to break free, which was lucky for him—Lanius was reaching for the dagger he wore on his belt. Up till then, he’d used the fancy weapon only as an eating knife. Now he wanted to kill with it. “Nobody cut me down,” the soldier added. “That’s why I’m not dead.” Lanius would gladly have taken care of it, but the man ran off into the night.
Since the soldier had escaped, Lanius went on in the direction in which he’d pointed. A couple of minutes later, he came upon Grus and General Hirundo. Bodyguards surrounded them. And, sure enough, a corpse dressed in royal robes much like those Lanius was wearing lay only a few paces away.
“What happened here?” Lanius asked loudly.
Everyone stared at him. The guards, after a moment’s astonishment, started forward to lay hold of him. “Stop!” Grus said, and they did. Lanius knew a momentary stab of jealousy. Nobody ever obeyed him like that. With what Lanius later realized was commendable calm, Grus went on, “I just killed somebody who looked and sounded exactly like you. Are you the real Lanius, or are you somebody else who looks like him and wants to do me in?”
“By Olor’s beard, I’m beginning to wonder myself,” Lanius answered. “You realize I’d say I was myself regardless of whether that were so?”
“Oh, yes.” Grus nodded. “The other fellow had your voice, but you sound more like you even so, if you know what I mean.” He wore not a dagger but a sword on his hip. His hand had closed on the hilt, but he didn’t draw the blade. Instead, he asked, “What was the name of that Therving trader who gave you your first pair of moncats?”
“He wasn’t a Therving. He was a Chernagor,” Lanius said. At first, he thought Grus a fool for not remembering. Then he realized his father-in-law was testing him, and felt a fool himself. “His name was Yaropolk.”
“Relax, boys,” Grus told his bodyguards. “This is the real King Lanius. Hello, Your Majesty. That fellow there”—he pointed to the corpse—“has your face and your voice. Or he did, till I let the air out of him.”
“Looking like me let him get close to you,” Lanius said slowly.
“I’d say you’re right,” Grus answered. “I’d say Corvus and Corax have a pretty good wizard working for them, too. Or Corvus does; Corax is dead. I came as close to being dead myself as makes no difference. But here I am, and I still aim to have my reckoning with dear Count Corvus.” He sounded thoroughly grim.
“All right. Better than all right, in fact—good,” Lanius said. “I don’t like having my image stolen.”
“Your Majesty, I didn’t like it, either, not even a little bit,” Grus said. “And remember, it could have gone—it could still go—the other way, too. Wouldn’t you have let someone who looked like me get close?”
“Yesss.” Lanius stretched the word out into a long, slow hiss. “Yes, I think I might have.”
“We’ll both be careful, then,” Grus said. “But I’ll tell you one thing more.” He waited till Lanius raised a questioning eyebrow, then continued, “Corvus had better be more careful than either one of us.”
“Yes,” King Lanius said once more. Just for a moment, he too sounded fierce as a soldier. “Oh, yes, indeed.”
General Hirundo pointed up the steep slope toward the castle perched at the top of the crag. “There it is. There he is,” Hirundo said. “That’s what Corvus is king of these days. The rest of Avornis is yours.”
“True.” Grus nodded. “That makes us better off than we were when Corvus decided to start calling himself king, and half the countryside hereabouts decided it would sooner have him with a crown on his head than Lanius.”