"That musht – must – be what they wanted," Pterocles said. "If we were all running around trying to protect ourselves from an imaginary danger, we wouldn't have worried about the real dangers in this country. And there are, oh, just a few of those."
"Are there? I hadn't noticed," Grus said. Strix laughed raucously. Pterocles giggled. The king eyed him. "I hadn't thought being drunk and disorderly was one of them."
Pterocles bowed and almost fell over. Straightening, he said, "Your Majesty, I am not disorderly."
Strix laughed again. So did Grus. He said, "Well, no more than usual, anyway. Why don't you go to bed? In the morning, you can be sober and disorderly." After another imperfectly graceful bow, the wizard lurched out of the firelight and off toward his tent. Grus turned to Strix. "Happier now?"
"A bit." The guard captain followed Pterocles' irregular path with his eyes. "You were right, Your Majesty. He does know what he's doing. Makes that other fellow look even more like an idiot than he did already."
Grus shrugged. "Some men are smarter than others. Some men are braver than others. Some men are better wizards than others. You can use men who aren't the smartest or the bravest. Wizards who aren't the very best have their uses, too."
Strix chewed on that, then reluctantly nodded. "I suppose so," he said, and then, "I know what I'd use him for, by the gods."
Grus had a pretty good idea of that himself. He said, "Well, but once you did, I wouldn't be able to use him for anything anymore." Strix chuckled. He hadn't been joking, though, and neither had the king.
Ortalis seemed to imagine that Lanius had offended him. That offended Lanius. As far as he could see, he'd done nothing but tell his brother-in-law the truth. Whom could the truth offend? Only a fool. So it looked to the younger king, anyhow.
It must have looked different to Ortalis. He stubbornly stayed away from meals with Lanius and Sosia. That meant Limosa stayed away, too. Lanius regretted her absence more than Ortalis', for she was usually better company. When Grus' legitimate son couldn't avoid Lanius – when they passed in a hallway, for instance – he would give as curt a nod as he could get away with and go on with a scowl darkening his face.
Sosia only threw up her hands when Lanius complained. "He's been hard and harsh for as long as I can remember," she said. "You're not telling me anything I don't know. If you want to throw him in a dungeon for lese-majeste, go ahead. I won't say a word. It might even teach him something." By the way her mouth twisted, she didn't think it would.
Lanius had just promised Tinamus he wouldn't be punished for lese-majeste no matter what he did. He didn't expect the architect to do anything that deserved punishment, where Ortalis' expression indicted him half a dozen times a day. All the same… "The only thing he'd learn in a dungeon was how to hate me forever. Sooner or later, he'll get over this. If nothing else works, Limosa will bring him around."
"Maybe." Sosia's mouth twisted again, as though she'd tasted something sour. She liked Limosa less than Lanius did. To her, Ortalis' wife was more a threat than a person. If Limosa gave Ortalis a son, Ortalis would think the succession passed through him alone. Grus might even think the same thing. Ortalis' opinion didn't matter so much. Grus' mattered overwhelmingly. Sosia went on, "If you want to send Ortalis to the Maze, I won't say a word about that, either."
"I can get away with more and more these days," Lanius said. "Your father's stopped thinking I'll try to overthrow him whenever he turns his back. But if I did that, there would never be peace between us again. No matter what I think, no matter what you think, Ortalis matters to him. And…" He didn't want to go on or to admit what came next even to himself. But he did. "And if we quarrel with each other, I'll lose, curse it. He's better at such things than I am."
He paused again, hoping his wife would tell him he was wrong. But Sosia only sighed and said, "You're better than you used to be."
He could have directly confronted Ortalis. That was not his way, though. It never had been. He wouldn't have said even as much as he had if he hadn't been worried for the child Limosa carried.
Instead of bearding his brother-in-law, then, he called on Anser in his residence by the grand cathedral. Anser got along with everybody. Maybe he could find a way for Lanius and Ortalis to get along with each other.
A forest of antlers decorated the walls of Anser's study – antlers from stags he'd slain himself. Lanius wondered what Anser's predecessors as arch-hallow would have thought of that. Some of them had been saints, some scholars, some statesmen, even a few scoundrels. The king didn't think any of them had taken his chief pride in his skill with the bow.
Anser wore the arch-hallow's red robe as casually as though it were a greengrocer's tunic and breeches. He took his title more lightly than any of the men who'd gone before him, too. He neither was nor wanted to be a theologian. All he was doing as arch-hallow was making sure the priesthood caused King Grus no trouble. That, Lanius had to admit, he did pretty well.
A smile of what looked like and surely was real pleasure spread over Anser's face when Lanius walked in. "Your Majesty!" he exclaimed. Laughing, he bowed himself almost double. He didn't need to do that; he came as close to being a genuine friend as a king could have. But he didn't do it because he had to. He did it because he felt like it, which made the gesture very different from what it would have been otherwise.
He made Lanius laugh, too, which wasn't always easy. "Good to see you, by the gods," Lanius said.
"Let me fetch you some wine. That'll make it better yet." Anser bustled off. He came back with a jug and two mismatched cups, for all the world like any bachelor who didn't ever bother pretending to be a fussy housekeeper.
Lanius sipped appreciatively. "I tell you," he said, "I'm tempted to take that whole jug and pour it down my throat."
"Go ahead, if you want to. Plenty more where it came from." Anser didn't have a whole lot of use for fighting temptation. He was more apt to yield to it. After a moment, though, he realized Lanius seldom talked that way. He pointed a finger at the king. "Something's on your mind, isn't it?" By the way he said it, he might have feared Lanius was suffering from a dangerous disease.
"Afraid so," the king replied, and poured out the story of his trouble with Ortalis.
"You really do need the rest of the jug, don't you?" Anser said when he was done.
"I don't know that I need it. But I want it." Lanius wondered whether Anser recognized the difference. A glance at all those antlers made him doubt it. Sighing, he went on, "I didn't intend to quarrel with him, but then – "
"It's easy enough to quarrel with Ortalis even when you don't intend to," the arch-hallow finished for him.
That wasn't what Lanius had been about to say, which made it no less true. He said, "All I wanted to do was make sure nothing bad happened to Limosa."
"No matter how much she might enjoy it," Anser murmured.
Lanius had been finishing the cup of wine. He almost choked at that. Anser was in dangerous form this morning. "I was thinking of the baby," Lanius said carefully.
"Well, of course you were," Anser said. That couldn't be anything but polite agreement… could it?
Wondering too much would only make matters worse, Lanius decided. He said, "I was hoping you could help persuade Ortalis I didn't mean to offend him. I was only trying to do his whole family a good turn."
"What's that saying about getting punished for your good deeds and not for your bad ones?" Anser clucked sympathetically. Then he did something more practical – he refilled Lanius' winecup. Lanius drank without hesitation; no, he wouldn't have minded getting drunk by then, not at all. The arch-hallow poured his own mug full again, too. After a sip, he went on, "I'll do what I can, Your Majesty, but I don't know how much that'll be."