“You’re here. I live a long ways off from the capital. Wasn’t that I had a cousin move here more than twenty years ago, give me a place to stay, I never would’ve come. But Baron Clamator, he’s right there where m at.”
That probably—no, certainly—reflected reality. Lanius. wished it didn’t, but recognized that it did. “Well, go on…” he said.
Knowing the pause for what it was, the peasant said, “My name’s Flammeus, Your Majesty.”
“Flammeus. Yes, of course.” Lanius was annoyed with himself. A steward had whispered it to him, and he’d gone and forgotten it. He didn’t like forgetting anything. “Go on, then, Flammeus.” If he said it a few times, it would stick in his memory. “What’s Baron Clamator doing?” He had a pretty good idea. Farmers usually brought one complaint in particular against their local nobility.
Sure enough, Flammeus said, “He’s taking land he’s got no right to. He’s buying some and using his retainers to take more. We’re free men down there, and he’s doing his best to turn us into thralls like the Menteshe have.”
He didn’t know much about the thralls, or about the magic that robbed them of their essential humanity. He was just a farmer who, even after cleaning up and putting on his best clothes, still smelled of sweat and onions. He wanted to stay his own master. Lanius, who longed to be fully his own master, had trouble blaming him for that.
Grus had issued laws making it much harder for nobles to acquire land from ordinary farmers. He hadn’t done it for the farmers’ sake. He’d done it to make sure they went on paying taxes to Kings of Avornis and didn’t become men who looked first to barons and counts and dukes and not to the crown. Lanius had seen how that helped him keep unruly nobles in line.
And what helped Grus could help any King of Avornis. “Baron Clamator will hear from me, Flammeus,” Lanius promised.
“He doesn’t listen any too well,” the farmer warned.
“He’ll listen to soldiers,” Lanius said.
“Ahh,” Flammeus said. “I figured King Grus would do that. I didn’t know about you.” Courtiers stirred and murmured. Flammeus realized he had gone too far, and quickly added, “Meaning no disrespect, of course.”
“Of course,” Lanius said dryly. Some Kings of Avornis would have slit the farmer’s tongue for a slip like that. Lanius’ own father, King Mergus, probably would have. Even Grus might have. Lanius, though, had no taste for blood—Bubulcus, luckily for him, was living proof of that. “I will send soldiers,” the king told Flammeus.
The farmer bowed and made his escape from the throne room. He would have quite a tale to tell the cousin he was staying with. Lanius found new worries of his own. He’d never given orders to any soldiers except the royal bodyguards. Would the men obey him? Would they refer his orders to Grus, to make sure they were real orders after all? Or would they simply ignore him? Grus was the king with the power in Avornis, and everybody knew it.
Should I write to Grus myself? That might get rid of trouble before it starts, Lanius thought. But it would also delay things at least two weeks. Lanius wanted to punish Clamator as quickly as he could, before the baron got word he was going to be punished. I’ll write Grus, telling him what I’m doing and why. That pleased Lanius. It would work fine… unless the soldiers refused to obey him at all.
His heart pounded against his ribs when he summoned an officer from the barracks. He had to work hard to hold his voice steady as he said, “Captain Icterus, I am sending you and your troop of riders to the south to deal with Baron Clamator. He is laying hold of peasant land in a way King Grus’ laws forbid.” He hoped that would help.
Maybe it did. Or maybe he’d worried over trifles. Captain Icterus didn’t argue. He didn’t say a word about referring the question to King Grus. He just bowed low, said, “Yes, Your Majesty,” and went off to do what Lanius had told him to do. His squadron rode out of the city of Avornis that very afternoon.
Yes, this is what it’s like to be a real King, Lanius thought happily. His sphere was no longer limited to the royal chambers, the archives, and the rooms where his moncats and monkeys lived. With Grus away from the capital, his reach stretched over the whole kingdom.
It did, at least, until he wrote to the other king to justify what he’d done. Writing the letter made him want to go wash afterwards. It wasn’t merely the most abject thing he’d ever written. It was, far and away, the most abject thing he’d ever imagined. It had to be. He knew that. Grus would not take kindly to his behaving like a real king. But reading the words on parchment once he’d set them down… He couldn’t stomach it. He sealed the letter without going through it a second time.
Sosia said, “I’m proud of you. You did what needed doing.”
“I think so,” Lanius said. “I’m glad you do, too. But what will your father think?”
“He can’t stand nobles who take peasants under their own wing and away from Avornis,” his wife answered. “He won’t complain about whatever you do to stop them. You’re not about to overthrow him.”
“No, of course not,” Lanius said quickly. He would have denied it even if—especially if—it were true. But it wasn’t. He didn’t want to try to oust Grus. For one thing, his father-in-law was much too likely to win if they measured themselves against each other. And, for another, this little taste of ruling Lanius was getting convinced him that Grus was welcome to most of it. When it came to animals or to ancient manuscripts, Lanius was patience personified; the smallest details fascinated him. When it came to the day-to-day work of governing, he had to fight back yawns. He also knew he would never make a great, or even a good, general. Grus was welcome to all of that.
Sosia said, “I wish things were going better up in the Chernagor country. Then Father could come home.”
“I wish things were going better up in the Chernagor country, too,” Lanius said. “The only reason they aren’t going so well is that the Banished One must be stronger up there than we thought.”
“That’s not good,” Sosia said.
“No, it isn’t.” Lanius said no more than that.
Sosia asked, “Can we do anything here to make things easier for Father up there? Would it be worth our while to start trouble with the Menteshe, to make the Banished One have to pay attention to two places at once?”
Lanius looked at her with admiration. She thought as though she were King of Avornis. He answered, “The only trouble I can see with that is, we’d have to pay attention to two places at once, too. Would it work a bigger hardship on the Banished One or on us? I don’t know, not offhand. One more thing to go into a letter to your father.”
“One more thing?” Sosia cocked her head to one side. “What’s Ortalis gone and done now?”
“I don’t know that he’s done anything since the last time,” Lanius said. They both made sour faces. Saying he didn’t know that Ortalis had done anything new and dreadful wasn’t the same as saying Sosia’s brother hadn’t done any such thing. How much had Ortalis done that nobody but he knew about?
Lanius shook his head. Whenever Ortalis did such things, somebody else knew about it. But how many of those somebodies weren’t around anymore to tell their stories? Only Ortalis knew that.
“He should start hunting again,” Sosia said. Something must have changed on Lanius’ face. Quickly, his wife added, “Hunting bear and boar and birds and deer and rabbits—things like that.”
“I suppose so.” Lanius wished he could sound more cheerful. For a while, Ortalis had seemed… almost civilized. Hunting and killing animals had let him satiate his lust for blood and hurt in a way no one much minded. If only it hadn’t lost the power to satisfy him.