“Yes, I heard,” the queen said. “I don’t think there’s anyone for half a mile around who didn’t hear.”
“Well, yes,” Lanius said. “It’s still good news,”
“So it is,” Sosia said. “I do worry about the succession.”
Lanius worried about it, too. What would happen when Grus died? He wasn’t a young man anymore. Lanius himself thought he ought to be sole king after that, but how likely was Ortalis to agree with him? Not very, he feared. At the moment, he had a son and Ortalis didn’t. Ortalis wasn’t happy about that, either; he’d just proved as much. If he had one, or more than one, too…
“It could be complicated,” Lanius said.
“It’s already complicated,” Sosia replied. “It could be a disaster.”
He started to smile and laugh and to say it couldn’t be as bad as all that. He started to, yes, but he didn’t. For months now, he’d been reading all the news about the civil war between Prince Sanjar and Prince Korkut. Would some Menteshe prince one day read letters about the civil war raging among the contenders and pretenders to the throne of Avornis? It could happen, and he knew it.
Sosia read his face. “You see,” she said. “We dodged an arrow this rime. We may not be so lucky a year from now, or two, or three.”
“You’re not wrong,” Lanius said with a sigh. “By Olor’s beard, I wish you were. Oh!” He stopped, then went on, “And there’s something else you weren’t wrong about.”
“What’s that?” Sosia asked.
“Ortalis and Limosa.” Lanius told her what Ortalis had said, and what he thought it meant, finishing, “The other thing is, Limosa’s head over heels in love with your brother in spite of—maybe even because of—this.”
“You mean you think she does like the horrible things he does?” Sosia made a face. “That’s disgusting!” But her pause was thoughtful. “Of course, you’re right—somebody may like what somebody else thinks is disgusting.” Lanius nodded at that. A moment later, he wished he hadn’t, for her look said she had his sporting with the serving girls in mind. He turned away so he could pretend he didn’t know what she was thinking. She laughed. She knew he knew, all right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Avornan soldiers scoured the countryside for timber and oil to make Prince Vsevolod the most magnificent funeral pyre anyone had ever seen. They built the pyre just out of bowshot of Nishevatz, and laid the body of the white-bearded Prince of Nishevatz atop it.
Beloyuz advanced toward the grim gray walls of the city-state behind a flag of truce. He shouted in his own language. Prince Vasilko’s men stared down at him from the battlements. They said not a word until he finished, and let him go back to the Avornan lines without shooting at him in spite of that flag of truce.
To King Grus, that was progress of a sort. Beloyuz seemed to think the same. “Well, Your Majesty, I told them His Highness has passed from among men,” the Chernagor noble said. “I told them I would rule Nishevatz in his place once Vasilko was driven from the city. I told them—and they heard me! They did not hate me!”
“Good.” Grus meant it. A small fire burned not far from the pyre. “Light a torch, then. Send Vsevolod’s spirit up toward the heavens with the smoke, and then we’ll get on with business here on earth.”
“Yes.” Beloyuz took a torch and thrust it into the flames. The tallow-soaked head caught at once. The Chernagor raised the torch high—once, twice, three times. Grus almost asked him what he was doing, but held back. It had to be some local custom Avornis didn’t share. Then Beloyuz touched the torch to one corner of the pyre.
The blast of flame that followed sent him and Grus staggering back.
“Ahh!” said the watching Avornan soldiers, who, like their king, had seen a great many pyres in their day and eyed them with the appreciation of so many connoisseurs. When Grus watched an old man’s body go up in smoke, he always thought back to the day when he’d had to burn his father. Crex, who’d come off a farm in the south to the city of Avornis and found a position as a royal guardsman, was gone forever. But in the blood of that Crex’s great-grandson, another Crex, also flowed the blood of the ancient royal dynasty of Avornis. And that younger Crex would likely wear the crown himself one day.
Grus wondered what his father would have to say about that. Some bad joke or other, probably; the old man had no more been able to do without them than he’d been able to do without bread. He’d died before Grus won the crown, died quickly and quietly and peacefully. Days went by now when Grus hardly thought of him. And yet, every so often, just how much he missed him stabbed like a sword.
He blinked rapidly and turned away from Vsevolod’s pyre. The heat and smoke and fire were enough to account for his streaming eyes. He wiped them on the sleeve of his tunic and looked toward Nishevatz. The burly, bearded warriors on the wall were watching Vsevolod’s departure from this world as intently as the soldiers Grus commanded. He saw several of them pointing at the pyre, and wondered what they would be saying.
“Tell me,” he said to Beloyuz, “do your people have the custom of reckoning one pyre against another?”
“Oh, yes,” the Chernagor answered. “I think it must be so among every folk who burn their dead. Things may be different among those who throw them in a hole in the ground, I suppose. But a pyre, now, a pyre is a great thing. How could you not compare one to the next?”
“Prince Vsevolod will be remembered for a long time, then.” Grus had to raise his voice to make himself understood above the crackling of the flames.
“Yes. It is so.” Beloyuz nodded. “You have served him better in death, perhaps, than you did in life.”
Grus sent him a sour stare. “Do you think so, Your Excellency? Excuse me—I mean, ‘Your Highness.’ Do you truly think so? If I did not care what became of Vsevolod, why did I spend so many of my men and so much of my treasure to try to restore him to the throne of Nishevatz?”
“Why? For your own purposes, of course,” Beloyuz replied, with a shrug that could have made any world-weary Avornan courtier jealous.
“To try to keep the Banished One from gaining a foothold here in the Chernagor country. I do not say these are bad reasons, Your Majesty. I say they are reasons that have nothing to do with Vsevolod the man— may the gods guard his spirit now. He could have been a green goat, and you would have done the same. We are both men who have seen this and that. Will you tell me I lie?”
However much Grus would have liked to, he couldn’t. He eyed Beloyuz with a certain reluctant respect. Vsevolod had never shown much in the way of brains. Here, plainly, was a man of a different sort. And would different mean difficult? It often did.
A difficult Prince of Nishevatz, though, would be a distinct improvement. Vasilko, Vsevolod’s unloving son, wasn’t just difficult. He was an out-and-out enemy, as much under the thumb of the Banished One as anybody this side of a thrall could be.
“Let the Chernagors in the city know where you stand about this and that,” Grus told him. “Let them know you’re not Vsevolod, and let them know you’re not Vasilko, either. That’s our best chance to get help from inside the walls, I think.”
“Your best chance, you mean,” Beloyuz said.
Grus exhaled in some annoyance. “When you’re Prince of Nishevatz—when you’re Prince inside Nishevatz—I want two things from you. I want you not to bow down to the Banished One, and I want you not to raid my coasts. Past that, Your Highness, I don’t care what you do. You can turn your helmet upside down and hatch puffin eggs in it for all of me. Is that plain enough?”