When Prince Ulash’s envoy reached the throne, he bowed so low, he made a mockery of the ceremony. “Greetings, Your Majesty,” he said in excellent Avornan. “May peace lie between us.”
“Yes. May there be peace indeed,” Lanius replied. Even polite ritual had its place. It was no more than polite ritual. He and Farrukh-Zad surely both knew as much. Ulash’s Menteshe and Avornis might not fight every year, but there was no peace between them, any more than there was peace between the gods and the Banished One.
Farrukh-Zad bowed again, even more sardonically than before. “I bring greetings, Your Majesty, from my sovereign, Prince Ulash, and from his sovereign…” He did not name the Banished One, but he came close enough to make an angry murmur run through the throne room. Then he went on, “They send their warmest regards to you, King Lanius, and to your sovereign.…” He did not name King Grus, either, but the salutation was no less insulting on account of that.
He is trying to provoke me, Lanius thought, and then, He is doing a good job. “I am King of Avornis,” he remarked.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Farrukh-Zad said, in a tone that could only mean, Of course not, Your Majesty.
“For example,” Lanius continued, affecting to ignore that tone, “if I were to order you seized and your head struck off for insolence, I would have no trouble getting my guards to obey me.”
Farrukh-Zad jerked, as though something had bitten him. So did one of his retainers. That may be the wizard, Lanius thought. His own stood in courtier’s clothing close by the throne. The Menteshe ambassador said, “If you did, that would mean war between Avornis and my folk.”
“True,” Lanius agreed. “But I have two things to say there. First is, you would not see the war, no matter how it turned out. And second, when Prince Evren’s Menteshe invaded Avornis last year, they hurt themselves more than they hurt us.”
“Prince Ulash is not Prince Evren,” Farrukh-Zad said. “Where his riders range, no crops ever grow again.”
“That must make life difficult in Ulash’s realm,” King Lanius said. “Perhaps if his riders bathed more often, they would not have the problem.”
Avornan courtiers tittered. Farrukh-Zad was not swarthy enough to keep an angry flush of his own from showing on his cheeks. He gave Lanius a thin smile. “Your Majesty is pleased to make a joke.”
“As you were earlier,” Lanius replied. “Shall we both settle down to business now, and speak of what Prince Ulash wants of me, and of Avornis?”
Before answering, Farrukh-Zad gave him a long, measuring stare. “Things are not quite as I was led to believe.” He sounded accusing.
“Life is full of surprises,” Lanius said. “I ask once more, shall we go on?”
“Maybe we had better.” Farrukh-Zad turned and spoke in a low voice with one of the other Menteshe—the one who had started when Lanius warned him. They expected me to be less than I am, Lanius thought. That must be why the embassy came when Grus was away. I’ve surprised them. That was a compliment—of sorts. The ambassador gave his attention back to the king. “In the name of my sovereign, Prince Ulash, I ask you what Avornis intends to do with the thralls who have left his lands and come to those you rule.”
“Do you also ask that in the name of Prince Ulash’s sovereign?” Lanius inquired, partly to jab Farrukh-Zad again, partly because he did want to know. Thralls—the descendants of the Avornan farmers who’d worked the southern lands before the Menteshe conquered them— were less than full men, only a little more than barnyard animals, thanks to spells from the Banished One. Every so often, thralls escaped those dark spells and fled. Every so often, too, the Banished One and the Menteshe used thralls who feigned escaping those spells as spies and assassins.
Again Farrukh-Zad conferred with his henchman before answering. “I am Ulash’s ambassador,” he said, but his hesitation gave the words the lie. “These thralls are Ulash’s people.”
“When they wake up, they have a different opinion,” Lanius said dryly. He wished Avornan wizards had had better luck with spells that could liberate a thrall from his bondage. The Banished One’s sorceries, though, were stronger than those of any mere mortals. If all of Avornis fell to the Menteshe, would everyone in the kingdom fall into thrall-dom? The thought made Lanius shudder.
Farrukh-Zad said, “You have in your hands—you have in this very palace—many who fled without awakening. What do you say of them?”
“Yes, we do,” Lanius agreed. “One of them tried to kill me this past winter, while another tried to kill King Grus. We hold your sovereign’s sovereign to blame for that.”
“You are unjust,” the Menteshe envoy said.
“I doubt it,” Lanius said. “Thralls who stay thralls usually stay on the land. Why would these men have crossed the Stura River into Avornis, if not through the will of the Banished One?” There, he thought. Let Farrukh-Zad know I’m not— much— afraid to speak his master’s name.
Now the ambassador’s companion leaned forward to speak to him.
Nodding, Farrukh-Zad said, “If you admit that these men belong to the Fallen Star, then you must also admit you should return them to him.”
Lanius would sooner have been pawing through the archives than playing verbal cut-and-thrust with a tool of a tool of the Banished One. No help for it, though. He said, “I did not admit that. I said the Banished One had compelled them to cross the river. Compulsion is not the same as ownership, and certainly not the same as right.”
“You refuse to give them back, then?” Farrukh-Zad’s voice was silky with danger.
Avornan wizards still studied the thralls, learning what they could from them. Maybe the Banished One wanted them back because he was afraid the wizards would find out something important. Maybe. Lanius didn’t know what the odds were, but he could only hope. “I do,” he said. “As long as they have done no wrong in Avornis, they may stay here.”
“I shall take your words back to Prince Ulash,” the envoy said. “Do not believe you have heard the last of this. You have not.” His last bow held enough polite irony to satisfy even the most exacting Avornan courtier. Having given it, he didn’t wait for any response, or even dismissal, from King Lanius, but simply turned and strode out of the throne room, the other Menteshe in his wake.
Lanius stared after him. He’d always thought about the power that went with being king in fact as well as in name. As he began to use it, he saw that worry went with the job, too.
Riding as usual at the head of his army, Grus got his first good look at Nishevatz. Seeing the town did not delight him. If anything, it horrified him. “Olor’s beard, Hirundo, how are we supposed to take that place?” he yelped.
“Good question, Your Majesty,” his general replied. “Maybe the defenders inside will laugh themselves to death when they see we’re crazy enough to try to winkle them out.”
It wasn’t quite as bad as that, but it wasn’t good. Nishevatz had originally been a small island a quarter of a mile or so off the coast of the mainland. Before the Chernagors took the northern coast away from Avornis, the townsfolk had built a causeway from the shore to the island. The slow wheel of centuries since had seen silt widen the causeway from a road to a real neck of land. Even so, the approach remained formidable.