“Pouncer?” he called. “Are you there, Pouncer, you stinking, mangy creature?” Pouncer was as fastidious as any other moncat, and didn’t stink. The beast’s luxuriant fur proved it wasn’t mangy. Lanius slandered it anyhow. Why not? It was no more likely to pay attention to anything he said to or about it than any other moncat, either.
It did, however, pay attention to food. Lanius lay down on his back on the least dusty stretch of floor he could find. He thumped on his chest. If Pouncer was anywhere close by, that noise ought to attract the moncat. It would do its trick, climb up on his chest, and win its tasty reward. It would… if it was close enough to hear.
“Mrowr?” The meow, though muffled, made Lanius want to cheer. It also made him proud—in a peculiar way. Here he was, congratulating himself for… what? For beating the Menteshe? For finding something important about the Chernagors in the archives? No. What had he done to win those congratulations? He’d outthought a moncat.
Of course, what was the alternative? As far as he could see, it was not outthinking a moncat. And how proud would he have been of that?
“Mrowr?” Pouncers meow definitely sounded strange, as though the moncat were behind something that deadened the noise… or as though it had something in its mouth.
And so it did, as Lanius discovered when the moncat came toward him. A rat’s tail dangled from one side of Pouncer’s jaws, the rat’s snout from the other. As it had been trained to do, Pouncer climbed up onto the king’s chest. The moncat dropped the rat right there.
“Thank you so much!” Lanius exclaimed. He didn’t want to grab the rat even to throw it away. And Pouncer, naturally, was convinced it had done him not only a favor but an honor by presenting him with its kill. Pouncer was also convinced it deserved a treat from his hands—it had gotten up on his chest the way it was supposed to.
He gave the moncat a scrap of meat. Pouncer purred and ate it.
Then Pouncer picked up the rat again, walked farther up Lanius’ chest with it, and, still purring all the while, almost dropped it on his face.
“If you think you’re trying to train me to eat that, you’d better think again,” the king told the moncat.
“Mrowr,” Pouncer answered, in tones that could only mean, Why aren’t you picking this up now that I’ve given it to you?
“Sorry,” said Lanius, who was anything but. When he sat up, the rat rolled away from where Pouncer had put it and fell on the floor. With another meow, this one of dismay, the moncat dove after it. The king grabbed the animal. The moncat grabbed the rat. “Mutton’s not good enough for you, eh?” Lanius demanded. This time, Pouncer didn’t say anything. The moncat held the rat in both clawed hands and daintily nibbled at its tail.
Lanius didn’t try to take away its prize. Pouncer was less likely to kick or scratch or bite as long as it had the rat. That remained true even after the chunk of meat the king had fed it.
And yet, even though Pouncer had caught the rat on its own, it hadn’t declined to clamber up onto him for the little bit of mutton. He’d trained it to do that, and it had.
“Not much of a trick,” Lanius told the moncat. Pouncer didn’t even pretend to pay attention. The rat’s tail was much more interesting, to say nothing of tasty. The king went on, “Of course, I’m not much of an animal trainer, either. I wonder what someone who really knows what he’s doing could teach you.”
“Mrowr,” Pouncer said, as though doubting whether anybody—Lanius included—could teach it anything.
How much could a moncat learn? Suppose a skilled trainer really went to work with the beasts. What could he teach them? Would it be worth doing, or would Grus grumble that Lanius was wasting money? Grus often grumbled about money he wasn’t spending himself. Still, it might be amusing.
Or, just possibly, it might be more than amusing. Lanius stopped short and stared at Pouncer. “Could you learn something like that?” he said. “Are you smart enough? Could you stay interested long enough?”
With the rat’s tail, now gnawed down to the bone here and there, dangling from the corners of Pouncer’s mouth, the moncat didn’t look smart enough for anything. Even so, Lanius eyed it in a way he never had before.
He put it back in its room, knowing it probably wouldn’t stay there long. Then he went looking for King Grus, which wasn’t something he did very often. He found the other king closeted with General Hirundo. They were hashing out the campaign in the Chernagor country over mugs of wine. “Hello, Your Majesty,” Grus said, courteous as usual. “Would you care to join me?”
“As a matter of fact, Your Majesty, I’d like to talk to you in private for a little while, if I could,” Lanius answered.
Grus’ gaze sharpened. Lanius didn’t call him Your Majesty every day, or every month, either. The older man rose. “If you’ll excuse us, Hirundo…” he said.
“Certainly, Your Majesty. I can tell when I’m not wanted.” The general bowed and left. Had he spoken in a different tone of voice, he would have thought himself mortally insulted, and an uprising would have followed in short order. As things were, he just sounded amused.
After Hirundo closed the door behind him, Grus turned back to Lanius. “All right, Your Majesty. If you wanted my attention, you’ve got it. What can I do for you?”
Lanius shook his head. “No, it’s what I can do for you.” Honesty compelled him to add, “Or it may be what I can do for you, anyhow.” He set out the idea he’d had a little while earlier.
The other king stared at him, then started to laugh. Lanius scowled. He hated to be laughed at. Grus held up a hand. “No, no, no. By the gods, Your Majesty, it’s not you.”
“What is it, then?” Lanius asked stiffly.
“It’s the idea,” Grus said. “It’s not you.”
It’s my idea, Lanius thought, still offended. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Why—” Grus started to be glib, but caught himself. He did some thinking, then admitted, “I don’t know that anything’s wrong with it. It’s still funny, though.”
When Lanius went to bed that night, the Banished One appeared to him in a dream. Before that cold, beautiful, inhuman gaze, the king felt less than a moncat himself. The Banished One always raised that feeling in him, but never more than tonight. Those eyes seemed to pierce the very center of his soul. “You are plotting against me,” the Banished One said.
“We are enemies,” Lanius said. “You have always plotted against Avornis.”
“You deserve whatever happens to you,” the Banished One replied. “You deserve worse than what has happened to you. You deserve it, and I intend to give it to you. But if you plot and scheme against me, your days will be even shorter than they would otherwise, and even more full of pain and grief. Do you doubt me? You had better not doubt me, you puling little wretch of a man.”
“I have never doubted you,” Lanius told him. “You need not worry about that.”
The Banished One laughed. His laughter flayed, even in a dream. “I, worry over what a sorry mortal does? Your life at best is no more than a sneeze. If you think you worry me, you exaggerate your importance in the grand scheme of things.”
Even in a dream, Lanius’ logical faculties still worked—after a fashion. “In that case,” he asked, “why do you bother appearing to me?”
“You exaggerate your importance,” the Banished One repeated. “A flea bite annoys a man without worrying him. But when the man crushes the flea, though he worries not a bit, the flea is but a smear. And so shall you be, and sooner than you think.”