If she said she was bound and determined to be Lanius’ queen, Grus knew his own life would get more difficult. She paused to consider before she answered. She’s not stupid, either, Grus thought. Is she smart enough to see when she’s well off? Or is she as head-over-heels for Lanius as he is for her?
She said, “I’ll go, Your Majesty. If I stay, I’ll have you for an enemy, won’t I? I don’t want that. Anyone in Avornis would be a fool to want you for an enemy, and I hope I’m not a fool.”
“You’re not,” Grus assured her. “ ‘Enemy,’ I think, goes too far. But I am going to protect my own family as best I can. Wouldn’t you do the same?”
“Probably,” Cristata answered. “I have to trust you, don’t I, about what ‘quietly set for life’ means? You were generous paying for what Ortalis did.”
Grus found himself liking her. She had nerve, to bargain with someone with so much more power—and to make him feel guilty for using it. He said, “By the gods, Cristata, I won’t cheat you. Believe me or not, as you please.” When she nodded, he went on, “We have a bargain, then?” She nodded again. So did he. “Gather up whatever you need to take with you. If we’re going to do this, I want you gone before Lanius can call you again.”
“Yes, I can see how you might.” Cristata sighed. “I will miss him. He’s… sweet. But you could have done a lot worse to me, couldn’t you?”
Only after she was gone did Grus realize that last wasn’t necessarily praise.
“You… You…” Lanius’ fury rose up and choked him. What he could do about it, however, knew some very sharp bounds. Grus was the one with the power, and he’d just used it.
“Think whatever you like,” he said now. “Call me whatever you like. If you’re going to take serving girls to bed now and again, I won’t fuss, though Sosia might. You’re a man. It happens. I ought to know.”
His calm words gave Lanius’ rage nowhere to light. Absurdly, Lanius realized he never had taken Cristata to bed. Coupling on the floor, even on a carpet, wasn’t the same. “I love her!” he exclaimed.
“She’s nice-looking. She’s clever. She’s got spirit,” Grus said. “And you picked her out yourself. You didn’t have her forced on you. No wonder you had a good time with her. But love? Don’t be too sure.”
“What do you know about it, you—?” Lanius called him the vilest names he knew.
“I think you’re sweet, too,” Grus answered calmly. Lanius gaped. Grus went on, “What do I know about it? Oh, a little something, maybe. Cristata reminds me more than a little of Anser’s mother.”
“Oh,” Lanius said. Try as he would to stay outraged, he had trouble. Maybe Grus did know what he was talking about after all. Lanius went on, “You still had no business—none, do you hear me?—interfering in my affairs… and you can take that last however you want.”
“Don’t be silly,” Grus answered, still calm. “Of course I did. You’re married to my daughter. You’re my grandchildren’s father. If you do something that’s liable to hurt them, of course I’ll try to stop you.”
Lanius hadn’t expected him to be quite so frank. He wondered whether that frankness made things better or worse. “You have no shame at all, do you?” he said.
“Where my family is concerned? Very little, though I’ve probably been too soft on Ortalis over the years,” Grus said. “He’s embarrassed me more times than I wish he had, but that isn’t what you meant, and I know it isn’t. I’ll do whatever I think I have to do. If you want to be angry at me, go ahead. You’re entitled to.”
And no matter how angry you are, you can’t do anything about it. That was the other thing Grus meant. He was right, too, as Lanius knew only too well. His impotence was at times more galling than at others. This… He couldn’t even protect a woman he still insisted to himself he loved. What could be more humiliating than that? Nothing he could think of. • “Where did you send her?” he asked after a long silence.
Some of the tension went out of Grus’ shoulders. He must have realized he’d won. He said, “You know I won’t tell you that. You’ll find out sooner or later, but you won’t be up in arms about it by the time you do.”
His obvious assumption that he knew exactly how Lanius worked only irked the younger man more. So did the alarming suspicion that he might be right. Lanius said, “At least tell me how much you’re giving her. Is she really taken care of?”
“You don’t need to worry about that.” Grus named a sum. Lanius blinked; he might not have been so generous himself. Grus set a hand on his shoulder. He shook it off. Grus shrugged. “I told you, I’m not going to get angry at you, and you can go right ahead and be angry at me. We’ll sort it out later.”
“Will we?” Lanius said tonelessly, but Grus had turned away. He wasn’t even listening anymore.
Lanius slept by himself that night. Sosia hadn’t wanted to sleep beside him since finding out about Cristata. He didn’t care to sleep by her now, either. He knew he would have to make peace sooner or later, but sooner or later wasn’t yet.
He thought he woke in the middle of the night. Then he realized it was a dream, but not the sort of dream he would have wanted. The Banished One’s inhumanly cold, inhumanly beautiful features stared at him.
“You see what your friends are worth?” the Banished One asked with a mocking laugh. “Who has hurt you worse—Grus, or I?”
“You hurt the whole kingdom,” Lanius answered.
“Who cares about the kingdom? Who has hurt you?”
“Go away,” Lanius said uselessly.
“You can have your revenge,” the Banished One went on, as though the king hadn’t said a word. “You can make Grus pay, you can make Grus weep, for what he has done to you. Think on it. You can make him suffer, as he has made you suffer. The chance for vengeance is given to few men. Reach out with both hands and take it.”
Lanius would have liked nothing better than revenge. He’d already had flights of fantasy filled with nothing else. But, even dreaming, he understood that anything the Banished One wanted was something to be wary of. And so, not without a certain regret, he said “No.”
“Fool! Ass! Knave! Jackanapes! Wretch who lives only for a day, and will not make himself happy for some puny part of his puny little life!” the Banished One cried. “Die weeping, then, and have what you deserve!”
The next thing Lanius knew, he was awake again, and drenched in sweat despite the winter chill. He wished the Banished One would choose to afflict someone else. He himself was getting to know the one who had been Milvago much too well.
Land-travel in winter was sometimes easier than it was in spring or fall. In winter, rain didn’t turn roads to mud. Land travel was sometimes also the only choice in winter, for the rivers near the city of Avornis could freeze. After Grus’ troubles with Lanius, he was glad to get away from the capital any way he could. If the other king tried to get out of line, he would hear about it and deal with it before anything too drastic could happen. He had no doubt of that.
Once Grus reached the unfrozen portion of the Granicus, he went faster still—by river galley downstream to the seaside port of Dodona. The man who met him at the quays was neither bureaucrat nor politician, neither general nor commodore. Plegadis was a shipwright and carpenter, the best Avornis had.
“So she’s ready for me to see, is she?” Grus said.
Plegadis nodded. He was a sun-darkened, broad-shouldered man with engagingly ugly features, a nose that had once been straighter than it was now, and a dark brown bushy beard liberally streaked with gray. “Do you really need to ask, Your Majesty?” he said, pointing. “Stands out from everything else we make, doesn’t she?”