“Vasilko?” The rebel prince’s father made as though to spit, but at the last moment—the very last moment—thought better of it. “Vasilko cannot get cat to shit in box.” That Vasilko had succeeded in ousting him seemed not to have crossed his mind.
“Let me ask it a different way,” Lanius said. “Working through Vasilko, can the Banished One bring them together?”
Now Vsevolod started to shake his head, but checked himself. “These city-states, they are for long time enemies. You understand?” he said. Lanius nodded. Vsevolod went on, “Not easy to go from enemy to friend. But not easy to stand up to Banished One, either. So… I do not know.”
“All right. Thank you,” Lanius said. But it wasn’t all right. If Vsevolod wasn’t sure the Banished One couldn’t bring all the Chernagor towns under his sway, he probably could. And if he could…
“If he can,” Grus said when Lanius raised the question, “the fleet that raids our west coast next year or the year after is liable to be twice as big as the one we beat back.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Lanius said.
“Believe me, Your Majesty, I would rather lie to you,” Grus said. “But that happens to be the truth.”
“Did I ever tell you I found out what King Cathartes had to say about the Scepter of Mercy?” Lanius asked suddenly.
“Why, no. You never did.” King Grus smiled a crooked smile. “Up until this minute, as a matter of fact, I wouldn’t have bet anything I worried about losing that I’d ever even heard of King, uh, Cathartes.”
“I would have said the same thing, until I found a letter of his in the archives while you were on campaign,” Lanius said. Grus smiled that crooked smile again; like Lanius’ fondness for strange pets, his archivescrawling amused his fellow king. But Grus’ expression grew more serious as he heard Lanius out. Lanius finished, “Now maybe we have some idea why the Banished One hasn’t tried to turn the Scepter against us.”
“Maybe we do,” Grus agreed. “That’s… some very pretty thinking, Your Majesty, and you earned what you got. How many crates full of worthless old parchments did you go through before you came on that one?”
“Seventeen,” Lanius answered promptly.
Grus laughed. “I might have known you’d have the number on the tip of your tongue. You usually do.” He spoke with a curious blend of scorn and admiration.
Lanius said, “One of the parchments turned out not to be worthless, though, so it was worth doing. And who knows whether another will mean a lot a hundred years from now, and who knows which one it might be? That’s why we save them.”
“Hmm.” Grus stopped laughing. Instead of arguing or teasing Lanius some more, he changed the subject. “Did that monkey of yours ever have babies?”
“She did—twins, just like the moncats,” Lanius answered. “They seem to be doing well.”
“Good for her,” Grus said. “Good for you, too. I’ve been thinking about what you said, about how breeding animals shows you’re really doing a good job of caring for them. It makes sense to me.”
“Well, thank you,” Lanius said. “Would you like to see the little monkeys?”
Grus started to shake his head. He checked the gesture, but not quite soon enough. But when he said, “Yes, show them to me,” he managed to sound more eager than Lanius had thought he could.
And the smile that spread over his face when he saw the young monkeys couldn’t have been anything but genuine. Lanius also smiled when he saw them, though for him, of course, it was far from the first time. Nobody could look at them without smiling. He was convinced of that. They were all eyes and curiosity, staring at him and Grus and then scurrying across the six inches they’d ventured away from their mother to cling to her fur with both hands, both feet, and their tails.
“They act a lot like children. They look a lot like children, too,” Grus said. “Anybody would think, looking at them, that there was some kind of a connection between monkeys and people.”
“Maybe the gods made them about the same time as they made us, and used some of the same ideas,” Lanius said. “Or maybe it’s just happenstance. How can we ever hope to know?”
“The gods…” Grus’ voice trailed off in a peculiar way. For a moment, Lanius didn’t understand. Then he did, and wished he hadn’t. What if it wasn’t the gods, but only Milvago—only the Banished One?
He forced that thought out of his mind, not because he didn’t believe it but because he didn’t want to think about it. This was another of the times when at least half of him wished he’d never stumbled upon that ancient piece of parchment under the great cathedral. Had finding it been worth doing?
“Anyhow,” Grus said, “I’m very glad for your sake that your monkeys have bred. I know you’ve done a lot of hard work keeping them healthy, and it seems only fair that you’ve gotten your reward.”
“Thank you very much.” At first, Grus’ thoughtfulness touched Lanius. Then he realized the other king might be doing nothing more than leading both of them away from thoughts of Milvago. He couldn’t blame Grus for thinking along with him, and for not wanting to think about what a daunting foe they had. He didn’t care to do that himself, either.
Rain pattered down outside the palace. In one hallway, rain pattered down inside the palace. A bucket caught the drips. When the rain stopped, the roofers would repair the leak—if they could find it when the rain wasn’t there. Grus had seen that sort of thing before. Odds were, the roofers would need at least four tries—and the roof would go right on leaking until they got it right.
Turning to Pterocles, Grus asked, “I don’t suppose there’s any way to find leaks by magic, is there?”
“Leaks, Your Majesty?” Pterocles looked puzzled. Grus pointed to the bucket. The wizard’s face cleared, but he shook his head. “I don’t think anyone ever worried about it up until now.”
“No? Too bad.” They turned a corner. Grus got around to what he really wanted to talk about. “You’ve never said anything about the letter I gave you—the one from Alca the witch. What do you think of her notions for new ways to shape spells to cure thralls?”
“I don’t think she’s as smart as she thinks she is,” Pterocles answered at once. He went on, “She doesn’t understand what being a thrall is like.”
“And you do?”
Grus had intended that for sarcasm, but Pterocles nodded. “Oh, yes, Your Majesty. I may not understand much, but I do understand that.” The conviction in his voice commanded respect. Maybe he was wrong. He certainly thought he was right. Considering what had happened to him, maybe he was entitled to think so, too.
Backtracking, Grus asked, “Can you use anything in the letter?”
“A bit of this, a dash of that.” Pterocles shrugged. “She’s clever, but she doesn’t understand. And I have some ideas of my own.”
“Do you?” Grus wished he didn’t sound so surprised. “You haven’t talked much about them.” That was an understatement of formidable proportions. Pterocles had shown no signs of having ideas of any sort since being felled outside of Nishevatz.
He shrugged again. “Sometimes things go better if you don’t talk about them too soon or too much,” he said vaguely.
“I… see,” said Grus, who wasn’t at all sure he did. “When will you be ready to test some of your ideas? Soon, I hope?”
“I don’t know,” the wizard said. “I’ll be ready when I’m ready— that’s all I can tell you.”
Grus felt himself getting angry. “Well, let me tell you something. If you’re not ready with your own ideas, why don’t you go ahead and try the ones the witch sent me?”