“Well, well,” Grus said when he saw the towers of the palace, the cathedral’s heaven-reaching spire, and the other tall buildings of the city of Avornis above the walls that protected the capital from invaders. “I’m really coming home. I’m not just stopping for a little while before I have to rush north or south as fast as I can.”
“You hope you’re not, anyhow,” Hirundo said.
Grus glared at him, but finally gave back a reluctant nod. “Yes. I hope I’m not.”
Guards on the wall had seen the approaching army, too. A postern gate opened. A rider came out to make sure it really was an Avornan force. When he waved, the main gates swung open.
Not all the army that had accompanied Grus up from the south went into the city of Avornis. Much of the part that wasn’t on garrison duty down by the Stura had gone into barracks in towns on the way north, to spread the problem of feeding the soldiers over as much of the kingdom as possible. If a dreadful winter—say, a dreadful winter inspired by the Banished One—overwhelmed Avornis, extra mouths to feed in the capital, which was already much the largest city in the kingdom, would only make matters worse.
Instead of waiting at the royal palace, Lanius met Grus halfway there. “You must tell me at once—did Sanjar or Korkut succeed Prince Ulash?” Lanius said. By his expression, he was ready to do something drastic if Grus didn’t take that at once seriously.
“I’ll tell you everything I know,” Grus promised. “And everything I know is—I don’t know.”
“Oh… drat!” Lanius got more use out of what wasn’t even really a curse than Grus could have from a couple of minutes of blasphemy and obscenity. His son-in-law went on, “I think which of them takes over in Yozgat really is important for Avornis. Korkut will cause us more trouble than Sanjar, though neither one of them is half the man their father was.
“How do you know even that much about them?” Grus asked. “They’re both just names to me.”
“I’ve been going through the archives—how else?” Lanius answered. “Things our traders who went south of the Stura in peacetime heard about them, things Ulash’s ambassadors who came up here had to say. Korkut is older, but Sanjar is the son of the woman who became Ulash’s favorite.”
“Isn’t that interesting?” Grus said. “You’ll have to tell me more.”
Now the other king looked faintly abashed. “I’ve already told you almost everything I know.”
“Oh.” Grus shrugged. “Well, you’re right—it is important. And it’s already more than I knew before.” After that, Lanius brightened. Grus went on, “How are things here? How’s Prince Vsevolod?”
The other king’s lip curled. “About the way you’d expect. He’s still annoyed that we had the nerve to defend our own borders instead or going on with the fight to put him back on the throne of Nishevatz, which would actually be important.”
“Oh,” Grus said again, his tone falling. “Well, you’re right. I can’t say I’m surprised. How are other things?”
“They seem all right,” Lanius answered. “Most of them, anyhow.”
What was that supposed to mean? One obvious answer occurred to Grus. “Is my son all right?” he asked.
“Prince Ortalis is fine. He and Princess Limosa seem very happy together, no matter how they happened to meet and wed,” Lanius said.
He spoke with caution he didn’t try to hide. Grus knew he didn’t like Ortalis. Maybe that explained the caution. Or maybe there were things he could have said if they weren’t out in the street. Finding out which would have to wait. Grus said, “Let’s get back to the palace. I’m glad the Chernagors didn’t raid our coast this year.”
“Yes, so am I,” Lanius said. “How would you have handled it if they did?”
“Badly, I suspect,” Grus answered. Lanius blinked, then laughed; maybe he hadn’t expected such blunt honesty. Grus asked, “How are your moncats doing?”
“Very well,” Lanius said enthusiastically, and told Grus more than he wanted to hear about the antics and thievery of the beast called Pouncer.
Not least because Lanius had bored him, Grus put a sardonic edge in his voice when he asked, “And have you found any other pets while I was away?” He made it plain he didn’t mean any that walked on four legs.
Just as plainly, Lanius understood him, for he turned red. “Well, yes,” he confessed with no great eagerness. “You were right about that.” He did have integrity; not many men would have admitted as much. But then, with a certain edge of his own, he inquired, “And how was Pelagonia?”
Grus remembered that he hadn’t named the town in his letters north. He hadn’t wanted to remind Estrilda he was anywhere near it— or near Alca. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that Lanius had seen through his ploy; Lanius saw through all sorts of things. For a moment, he thought of talking about the town and not about the witch. But Lanius had given him a straight answer, and he supposed he owed his son-in-law one in return. With a shrug, he said, “It’s dead. I didn’t know if it would be, but it is.”
He said nothing about Alauda. He most especially said nothing about the baby Alauda would have. Word that he’d been carrying on with a new woman down in the south might eventually reach his wife. Since he hadn’t brought Alauda back to the city of Avornis, Estrilda might not—he hoped she wouldn’t—get too upset about that. He’d been in the field and away from her for a long time, after all. But she wouldn’t be happy if she found out he’d sired another bastard.
Suddenly worried, he wondered whether Lanius knew about Alauda. The other king gave no sign of it. Lanius wasn’t usually very good at keeping secrets off his face. That eased Grus’ mind—a little.
And there was the palace, and there, standing in the doorway waving to him, was Estrilda. That eased Grus’ mind, too. His wife kept her own counsel about some things, but not about his other women. She didn’t know about Alauda, either, then, or not yet. Only when Grus was already hurrying up the steps toward her did he wish those last three words hadn’t occurred to him.
Lanius studied the harvest reports that came into the capital with even more attention than he usually gave them. Ever since that one dreadful winter, he’d worried that the Banished One would wield the weather weapon once again, and wanted to be as ready as he could in case the exiled god did. This year, though, he also eyed the news from the south with unusual attention.
It was every bit as bad as Grus had warned him it would be. Half the dismal harvest reports from the regions the Menteshe had ravaged asked for grain and fodder to be sent to towns whose governors insisted their populace would go hungry and animals would starve if they didn’t get that kind of help.
Grus examined the reports from the south, too. He’d seen what was going on down there with his own eyes, and was grim about it. “We’ll have hunger,” he said bluntly. “I’ll thank Queen Quelea for her kindness if we don’t have famine. And if the nomads keep coming up over the Stura year after year, I don’t know what we’ll do. They hurt us badly.”
“Didn’t we hurt them, too?” Lanius asked.
“I hope so,” Grus said. “I hope so, but how can I be sure? They’re so cursed hard to get a grip on.”
“We drove them back over the Stura,” Lanius said.
“No.” Grus shook his head, as relentlessly precise as Lanius was himself most of the time. “We drove them back to the valley of the Stura. They went over by themselves. If Ulash hadn’t chosen that moment to drop dead, we would have had another big fight on our hands.”
“I do wonder what’s happening on the far side of the river,” Lanius said. “Sanjar or Korkut? Korkut or Sanjar? How will the Menteshe choose? How long will it take ehem?”