“Ha!” Grus said. “That only goes to show you’ve never been king. Here’s my question, then: How long before we know what we’ve done up there?”
“I can’t tell you—not exactly,” Alca said. “That depends on several things—just how many men are shut up in the fortress, what all they can broach, and so on. But I don’t think it will be long—not unless Corvus’ wizards manage to surprise me. By the nature of things, I don’t see how it could be. Do you?”
“No. I don’t.” Grus sighed. “On the other hand, I’ve been wrong before. Maybe Corvus’ wizards will work something out, or maybe he’ll find some other way to hang on up there. I have to stay ready, don’t I?”
“If you stay ready for all the uncertain things, the things that may happen but may not, you will make a better king than if you let them take you by surprise,” Alca said.
Grus shrugged. “I don’t know about that. What I do know is, I’m likely to stay on the throne longer if I’m ready for anything. Maybe that amounts to the same thing.”
The witch nodded. “Yes. Maybe it does.”
For several days, nothing happened up in the castle on the crag—nothing the army surrounding it could see, at any rate. Grus wondered whether Alca’s wizardry had worked as well as she thought. He said nothing about that. If his worries turned out to be right, the time to talk about them would come later. If he turned out to be wrong, he would have made a fool of himself by needlessly showing them.
Eight days after Alca worked her magic, a soldier came down from the castle carrying a flag of truce. “In the names of the gods, Your Majesty,” he said when Grus’ men disarmed him and brought him before the king, “give me something to drink, I beg you!”
“So I’m ‘Your Majesty’ now, am I?” Grus asked, hiding the exultation that leaped in him. Corvus’ soldier nodded, as eagerly as he could. With a smile, Grus said, “Well, that’s earned you a little something, anyhow.” He nodded to one of his own troopers, who ceremoniously poured a cup of wine and handed it to the man just down from the stronghold.
Corvus’ soldier gulped it down so fast, a little spilled out of his mouth, trickled through his beard, and dripped down onto the dry, dusty ground on which he stood. He wiped his lips and chin on his sleeve, saying, “Ahhh! That’s sweeter than Queen Quelea’s milk, Banished One bite me if it isn’t!”
“I’m glad my wine makes you happy,” Grus said dryly. “I do have to ask, though, if you came down just to guzzle it, or for some other reason, too.”
That seemed to remind the fellow of the white flag he still carried in his left hand. “Oh.” He grimaced. “Count Corvus would yield himself and his garrison and his keep to you, and begs you to spare their—our—lives.”
“Would he? Does he?” King Grus whispered. His own soldiers grinned and murmured and nudged one another. Alca, who stood not far away, smiled a small, weary smile. Grus asked, “Why did he suddenly decide to give up?”
“Why?” Corvus’ man echoed. “I’ll tell you why, Your Majesty. On account of our stinking spring failed, that’s why. You can fight a long time without food, even without hope. But you can’t go on without water.”
“Why shouldn’t I let the lot of you parch to death up there?” Grus demanded. “Why shouldn’t I take Corvus’ head the instant I’ve got him?”
“Here’s why: Because if you tell me no, we’ll sally from the keep and fight as hard as we can as long as we can,” the soldier answered. “You’ll be rid of us, but we’ll hurt you, maybe hurt you bad, going down. What have we got to lose?”
Why shouldn’t I promise Corvus his life and then take his head? Grus wondered. But that had its own obvious answer. If he swore an oath here and then broke it, who would ever trust him the next time he swore one? He scowled but nodded. “Agreed. Come forth with no weapons, with only the clothes on your backs. Tell Corvus he’ll tend a shrine in the heart of the Maze till they lay him on his pyre. Tell him he will die if he ever sets a toe outside that shrine. Make sure he understands, for I’d sooner kill him than look at him.”
“He… thought you might say something like that, Your Majesty,” Corvus’ man replied. Grus gestured— away. The soldier started back up the crag.
Going uphill took longer than coming down. Before too very long, though, a long column of soldiers came out of the main gate and marched into captivity. Grus’ men hurried up to make sure they were obeying the terms the king had set them. Waves and whoops and joyful shouts announced they were.
Grus had Corvus brought before him. The count looked disgusted. “If you hadn’t struck at our spring, we’d‘ve held out a lot longer,” he snarled. Then, remembering where he was and who held the power, he grudgingly added, “Uh, Your Majesty.” The title seemed to taste bad to him.
“I did, though,” Grus answered. “And you would be wise, very wise, to give me no tiniest excuse to slay you.”
“You swore you wouldn’t,” Corvus exclaimed.
“Maybe I lied,” Grus said. The defeated rebel looked as appalled as he’d hoped. He went on, “Or maybe, if you push me, you’ll make me lose my temper, and I’ll forget about what I promised. I’d be sorry afterward.”
“That wouldn’t do me much good,” Corvus muttered.
“No, it wouldn’t, would it?” Grus agreed with a smile.
Corvus kept very quiet after that. He gave Grus no excuse for anything at all. Grus gestured, and his men took Corvus away.
He put a garrison of his own in the keep from which Corvus had dominated the countryside for so long. Then he turned back toward the city of Avornis. He still had to worry about the Menteshe and the Thervings, but he wouldn’t have to fear civil war as well as his foreign foes—not for a while, anyhow.
But for how long? he wondered. When will some other nobleman decide he ought to be King of Avornis? Half the counts in the kingdom turn the peasants on their lands into their own private armies. Have to do something about that one of these days. He wondered what he could do. He wondered if he could do anything but beat the rebels one by one as they arose. There has to be a better way than that. There has to be, if only I can find it.
When the army encamped that night, he asked Alca to supper with him. She raised an eyebrow when she found she was the only one he’d invited. “Your Majesty, is this proper?” she asked.
“You just helped me put down a civil war,” Grus answered. “What’s improper about celebrating that?”
“Nothing,” Alca admitted, and stayed in the pavilion. Over supper, he asked whether she had any ideas about keeping other nobles with wide estates from imitating Corvus and Corax. She didn’t, not on the spur of the moment. He swallowed a sigh.
Over the course of the meal, he also swallowed a good deal of wine. So did Alca. Before long, he tried to kiss her. She twisted away. “Your Majesty, I’m married,” she reminded him.
“So what? So am I,” he said grandly—yes, he’d had a lot of wine.
“And what would Queen Estrilda say if she found out about this?” Alca asked.
“She’d say it was how I fathered my bastard boy,” Grus answered. She would also say quite a few other things, most of them at the top of her lungs. Grus was sure of that. He didn’t mention it to Alca.
The witch got to her feet. “I did not come here for that, Your Majesty. I’m not angry—not yet. Being noticed is always flattering, up to a point. If someone goes past that point when you don’t want him to…”
She didn’t say what might happen then. But Grus, wine or no wine, abruptly remembered she was a witch. Unpleasant things might follow if he pushed too hard. “All right,” he said grumpily. “Go on, then.”