“They’re gone,” Alauda said. “Thank the gods for it. Praise the gods for it. But, by Queen Quelea’s mercy, don’t complain about it.”
“I want to know why,” Grus said stubbornly. “They aren’t acting the way they’re supposed to, and that bothers me.” He’d been down this same road with Hirundo.
His new mistress had less patience for it. “Who cares?” she said with a toss of the head. “As long as they’re out of the kingdom, nothing else matters.” That held enough truth to be annoying, but not enough to make Grus quit trying to lay his hands on some of the nomads.
When at last he did, it was much easier than he’d thought it would be. Like a flock of birds that had fallen behind the rest because of a storm, a band of about twenty Menteshe rode down to the Stura and then along it, looking for boats to steal so they could cross. Three river galleys and a regiment of Hirundo’s horsemen converged on them. When Grus heard the news, he feared the nomads would fight to the death just to thwart him. But they didn’t. Overmatched, they threw up their hands and surrendered.
Their chieftain, a bushy-eyebrowed, big-nosed fellow named Yavlak, proved to speak good Avornan. “Here he is, Your Majesty,” Hirundo said, as though he were making Grus a present of the man.
And Grus felt as though Yavlak were a present, too. “Why are you Menteshe leaving Avornis?” he demanded.
Yavlak looked at him as he would have looked at any idiot. “Because we have to,” he answered.
“You have to? Who told you you have to? Was it the Banished One?” The king knew he sounded nervous, but couldn’t help it.
“The Fallen Star?” Now Yavlak looked puzzled. With those eyebrows, he did it very well. “No, the Fallen Star has nothing to do with it. Can it be you have not heard?” He didn’t seem to want to believe that; he acted like a man who had no choice. “By some mischance, we found out late. I thought even you miserable Avornans would surely know by now.”
“Found out what? Know what?” Grus wanted to strangle him. The only thing that held him back was the certain knowledge that he would have to go through this again with another nomad, one who might not be so fluent in Avornan, if he did.
Yavlak finally—and rudely—obliged him. “You stupid fool,” he said. “Found out that Prince Ulash is dead, of course.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Prince Ulash is dead.”
King Lanius stared at the messenger who brought the word north to the city of Avornis. “Are you sure?” he blurted. He realized the question was foolish as soon as it came out of his mouth. He couldn’t help asking, though. Ulash had been the strongest and canniest prince among the Menteshe for longer than Lanius had been alive. Imagining how things would go without him was nothing but a leap in the dark.
The messenger took the question seriously. That was one of the privileges of being a sovereign. “Yes, Your Majesty. There’s no doubt,” he answered. “The nomads went south of the Stura when they didn’t have to, and prisoners have told King Grus why.”
“All right. Thank you,” Lanius said, and then, as an afterthought, “Do you know who succeeds him? Is it Prince Sanjar or Prince Korkut?”
“That I can’t tell you. The nomads King Grus caught didn’t know,” the messenger said. “Grus is on his way back here now, with part of the army. The rest will stay in the south, in case whichever one of Ulash’s sons does take over decides to start the war up again.”
“Sensible,” Lanius said, hoping neither the messenger nor his own courtiers noticed his small sigh. With Grus back in the capital, Lanius would become a figurehead again. Part of Lanius insisted that didn’t matter—Grus was better at the day-to-day business of running Avornis than he was, and was welcome to it. But Lanius remembered how often he’d had power taken away from him. He resented it. He couldn’t help resenting it.
He dismissed the messenger, who bowed his way out of the throne room. As the king descended from the Diamond Throne, the news beat in his brain, pulsing like his own blood, pounding like a drum. Prince Ulash is dead.
What would come next? Lanius didn’t know. He was no prophet, to play the risky game of foreseeing the future. But things wouldn’t be the same. Neither Sanjar nor Korkut could hope to match Ulash for experience or cleverness.
Will whichever one of them comes to power in Yozgat make an apter tool for the Banished One’s hand? Lanius wondered. Again, he could only shrug. He had believed Ulash’s cleverness and power and success had won him more freedom of action than most Menteshe owned. But then the prince had hurled his nomads northward to help hold Grus away from Nishevatz. When the Banished One told him to move, he’d moved. So much for freedom of action.
By the time Lanius got back to his living quarters, news of Ulash’s death had spread all over the palace. Not everyone seemed sure who Ulash was. The king went past a couple of servants arguing over whether he was King of Thervingia or prince of a Chernagor city-state.
“Well, whoever he is, he isn’t anymore,” said the man who thought he’d ruled Thervingia.
“That’s true,” the other servant said. “It’s the first true thing you’ve said all day, too.”
They could afford to quarrel, and to be ignorant. Lanius, who couldn’t, almost envied them. Almost—he valued education and knowledge too highly to be comfortable with ignorance.
Rounding a corner, the king almost bumped into Prince Ortalis. They both gave back a pace. Grus’ son said, “Is it true?”
“Is what true?” Lanius thought he knew what Ortalis meant, but he might have been wrong.
He wasn’t. “Is the old bugger south of the Stura dead at last?” Ortalis asked, adding, “That’s what everybody’s saying.”
“That’s what your father says, or rather his messenger,” Lanius answered, and watched his brother-in-law scowl. Ortalis and Grus still didn’t get along. They probably never would. Lanius went on, “Now that the Menteshe have gone back to their own side of the border, your father will be coming home.”
“Will he?” Ortalis didn’t bother trying to hide his displeasure at the news. “I hoped he’d stay down there and chase them all the way to what’s-its-name, the place where they’ve stashed the what-do-you-call-it.”
“Yozgat. The Scepter of Mercy.” Yes, Lanius did prefer knowledge to ignorance. He brought out the names Ortalis needed but didn’t bother remembering as automatically as he breathed. He judged that his brother-in-law wanted Grus to go on campaigning in the south not so much because he hoped Avornan arms would triumph as because Grus would stay far away from the city of Avornis. Lanius couldn’t do anything but try to stay out of the way when Grus and Ortalis clashed. Doing his best to stay on safer ground, the king said, “I hope Princess Limosa is well?”
“Oh, yes,” Ortalis said with a smile. “She’s fine. She’s just fine.”
In a different tone of voice, with a different curve of the lips, the answer would have been fine, just fine, too. As things were, Lanius pushed past his brother-in-law as fast as he could. He tried telling himself he hadn’t seen what he thought he had. Ortalis had looked and sounded that very same way, had had that very same gleam in his eye, when he was butchering a deer and up to his elbows in blood. He’d never seemed happier.
Lanius shook his head again and again. But no, he couldn’t make that certainty fall out. And he couldn’t make himself believe anymore that Zenaida hadn’t known exactly what she was talking about.
He also couldn’t help remembering how serene, how radiant, how joyful Limosa looked. That couldn’t be an act. But he didn’t see how it could be real, either.