“If you would be so kind,” Grus answered.
Bonyak nudged the flunkies, who were busy feeling the weight of their own sacks. They set one heavy, metal-bound wooden chest after another in front of the Diamond Throne. “These are for Avornis, Your Majesty,” Bonyak said. Courtiers leaned forward, waiting for him to open one of the boxes, their faces full of avid curiosity.
At Bonyak’s nod, one of the men who followed him undid the hasp on the topmost chest and opened it. “Fifty thousand pieces of silver, from Prince Tvorimir to Avornis,” Bonyak said. “His Highness will also make an agreement like the ones the princes of Hisardzik and Jobuka made with your kingdom not long ago.”
“Will he?” Grus said. Bonyak nodded again. The Avornan courtiers murmured among themselves. The present wasn’t very interesting— they’d seen plenty of silver themselves—but the news that came with it was good. Grus nodded back. “I am pleased to accept this silver for the kingdom,” he declared in loud, formal tones. “Never let it be said that I did not seek peace between Avornis and the Chernagor city-states.”
“Prince Tvorimir has this same thought,” Bonyak said. Of course he does— for the time being, Grus thought. I’ve made him afraid of me. The Chernagor ambassador went on, “Prince Tvorimir also sends you a personal gift, a gift from him to you, not from Hrvace to Avornis.”
As Bonyak had before, he gestured to the burly, bearded men who accompanied him. One of them came forward with an enormous earthenware jug, which he set beside the chests of silver pieces. Bonyak said, “This is a special kind of liquor, which we have in trade from an island far out in the Northern Sea. It is stronger than any ale or wine, strong enough so that it burns the gullet a little on the way down.”
“Does it indeed?” Grus said, his voice as neutral as he could make it.
Bonyak understood what he wasn’t saying. “I will gladly drink of this, Your Majesty. And let your wizards test it, if you think I have taken an antidote,” the envoy said. “By the gods in the heavens, may my head answer if it is poison.”
He did drink, and with every sign of enjoyment. “I will make a magical test anyhow,” Grus replied, “and if it is poison, your head will answer. For now, you and your comrades are dismissed.”
Bowing, the Chernagors departed from the throne room. Grus summoned Pterocles and explained what he wanted. The wizard looked intrigued. “Liquor that isn’t wine or ale? How interesting! I suppose it isn’t mead, either, for mead’s no stronger than either of the others. Yes, I can test it against poisons.” He dipped out a little of the liquid from the mug, then poured it over an amethyst. Neither the stone nor the liquor showed any change. Pterocles added a couple of sprigs of herbs to the dipper. “Cinquefoil and vervain,” he explained to Grus. “They’re sovereign against noxious things.” He murmured a charm, waited, and then shrugged. “All seems as it should, Your Majesty. There is one other test to make, of course.” He fished the herbs out of the dipper.
“What’s that?” the king asked.
“A very basic one.” Pterocles grinned. He raised the dipper to his lips and drank what was in it. He coughed as he swallowed. “Whew! That’s strong as a demon—your Chernagor wasn’t joking.” He paused, considering. “Can’t complain about the way it warms me up inside, though, I wonder how the people the Chernagors got it from made it.”
“Ask Bonyak—not that he’ll tell you even if he knows,” Grus said. “Well, if it hasn’t turned you inside out and upside down, why don’t you let me have a taste, too?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t I?” Pterocles filled the dipper again and handed it to him.
Grus took it. He sniffed. The stuff smelled more like wine than anything else, though less fruity. He sipped cautiously. When he swallowed, he could feel the heat sliding down to his stomach. It spread out from there. “Not bad,” he said after the same sort of pause for thought as Pterocles had used. “A mug’s worth would be plenty to get you drunk.”
Pterocles eyed the jug. “I’d say a mug’s worth would be enough to get you dead—but what a way to go.”
“If you were going to make something like this, how would you do it?” Grus asked.
The wizard laughed. “If I knew the answer to that, I’d already be doing it. Some things you can concentrate by boiling. But when you boil wine, you make it weaker than it was before, not stronger. I don’t know why. But it is so—I know that.”
“Maybe you need to save what’s boiling away instead of what’s left in the pot, then,” Grus said with a laugh of his own.
“Who knows? Maybe I do.” Pterocles kept on smiling. “I don’t know how I’d do that, though,”
“I was only joking,” Grus said. “Probably nothing to it.”
Lanius’ head felt as though some demented smith with a heavy hammer were using it for an anvil. Pterocles insisted the liquor Prince Tvorimir gave to King Grus wasn’t poisoned. But Lanius had poisoned himself with it the night before. His father-in-law had warned him a little would get him drunk. Lanius hated to admit it, bur his father-in-law had been right and more than right.
And because Grus had been so right, Lanius faced the moncats’ room with a wince. The warmth and the smells—especially the smells— were not what he wanted with a tender head. But he had never trusted the servants to take care of the animals. If they didn’t do the work, that meant he had to. Despite the wince, he opened the door, went in, and quickly closed it behind him.
It was as bad as he’d thought it would be. His stomach twisted. He almost had to leave very abruptly. After one gulp, though, he brought things under control again and got to work. Cleaning the moncats’ sandbox was a job nasty enough as things were, and seemed even worse when he was nauseated himself. He was glad the animals used a sandbox like ordinary cats; if they’d done what they wanted wherever they wanted, they would have been much harder to keep.
After he took care of that, he went to the kitchens to get them some meat. The fat cook named Cucullatus grinned at him and said, “Haven’t seen that funny animal of yours for a while now. Did you chain it up?”
“No, but I’m tempted to,” he answered. “Pouncer makes me suspicious when it’s being good—it’s probably up to something.” Cucullatus laughed a sour laugh.
Lanius went back to the moncats’ room with the meat. The animals swarmed around his feet, rubbing and purring and acting for all the world as though they really were lovable creatures and not furry opportunists. He knew better. They were as heartless and self-centered as any of his courtiers.
Before dumping most of the food in their dishes, he doled out treats to one moncat or another. He was busy doing that when he noticed Pouncer wasn’t begging there with the rest of the moncats. He looked around the room—and didn’t see it.
“Oh, by the gods, where has the stupid creature gone now?” he exclaimed. But the problem wasn’t that Pouncer was stupid—the problem was that the moncat was too smart for its own good.
The two places where Lanius knew the moncat went were the kitchens and the archives. Pouncer hadn’t gone to the kitchens lately. Did that mean it was likely to make an appearance there now, or that it would keep on staying away? The king pondered. Trying to think like a Chernagor was hard enough. Trying to think like a moncat? He wanted to throw up his hands at the mere idea.
But he had to decide. Kitchens or archives? He took some scraps of meat and hurried off toward the room where he’d spent so much happy time. If Pouncer did show up there, he wanted to kick the moncat for disturbing his peace of mind.
He still didn’t know how Pouncer got into the archives, any more than he knew how the miserable beast escaped from its room. Instead of contentedly pawing through parchments, he had to poke around in dark corners where Pouncer was likely to come forth. Wherever the moncat did emerge, it always looked enormously pleased with itself. Lanius couldn’t decide whether that amused him or infuriated him.