The Bastard King (37 page)

Just then, after a sharp word of command, Alca took her hands off the coral. It kept on floating in midair, above the level of her head. The shadow it cast on the ground was of a hue different from ordinary shadows - it was reddish, like the coral stone itself. Grus muttered to himself when he saw that. Power might command knowledge, but a powerful man didn't necessarily know things himself.

In that scarlet shadow, Alca set a basin of water. Then, moving swiftly, she mixed lime and olive oil and wax and some strong-smelling substance - "Naphtha," she said, seeing the question on Grus' face - and shaped them into the form of a man. On the image's chest, she placed a pinch of earth from beside the basin. "This is the land Corvus claims as his own. With it, I will make the image stand for him."

Grus nodded again. Even he recognized such correspondences, such links, between the everyday world and that in which magic worked.

Alca held up the image as she'd held up the coral stone. Her chant, though, was different this time, harsh and angry and insistent. When she finished, she cast the image into the basin of water instead of letting it float in the air.

It burst into flames. Grus exclaimed and took a quick step back. Whatever he'd expected, he hadn't expected
that.
The image burned and burned, with a sputtering blue-white flame painful to the eyes. A great cloud of steam rose from the basin.

Alca smiled at his surprise. "Sometimes, sorcery should be interesting, don't you think?" she remarked.

"Interesting? By King Olor's beard, that almost made
my
beard turn white," Grus answered. "I wouldn't mind seeing Corvus go up in flames the same way."

Now the witch frowned. "That is not the purpose of this wizardry," she said severely.

"No, I suppose not," Grus admitted. "Magic's almost killed me twice. I don't really have any business wishing that sort of death on anybody else, do I?"

"I would think not, Your Majesty." Alca still sounded offended. As one skilled in sorcery should have, she took its limits seriously, and expected everybody else to do the same.

Respecting that, Grus changed the subject by asking, "The magic you worked did what it should have done?"

"Oh, yes." Alca nodded. "The spell is accomplished."

"Will Corvus' wizards be able to reverse it?"

"They will try. I have no doubt of that," the witch answered. "But some things are easier to do than to undo once done. This is one of those, or so I believe."

"May I ask one last question?"

Amusement glinted in Alca's eyes. "You are the King of Avornis. You may do whatever you please."

"Ha!" Grus said. "That only goes to show you've never been king. Here's my question, then: How long before we know what we've done up there?"

"I can't tell you - not exactly," Alca said. "That depends on several things - just how many men are shut up in the fortress, what all they can broach, and so on. But I don't think it will be long - not unless Corvus' wizards manage to surprise me. By the nature of things, I don't see how it could be. Do you?"

"No. I don't." Grus sighed. "On the other hand, I've been wrong before. Maybe Corvus' wizards will work something out, or maybe he'll find some other way to hang on up there. I have to stay ready, don't I?"

"If you stay ready for all the uncertain things, the things that may happen but may not, you will make a better king than if you let them take you by surprise," Alca said.

Grus shrugged. "I don't know about that. What I do know is, I'm likely to stay on the throne longer if I'm ready for anything. Maybe that amounts to the same thing."

The witch nodded. "Yes. Maybe it does."

For several days, nothing happened up in the castle on the crag - nothing the army surrounding it could see, at any rate. Grus wondered whether Alca's wizardry had worked as well as she thought. He said nothing about that. If his worries turned out to be right, the time to talk about them would come later. If he turned out to be wrong, he would have made a fool of himself by needlessly showing them.

Eight days after Alca worked her magic, a soldier came down from the castle carrying a flag of truce. "In the names of the gods, Your Majesty," he said when Grus' men disarmed him and brought him before the king, "give me something to drink, I beg you!"

"So I'm'Your Majesty' now, am I?" Grus asked, hiding the exultation that leaped in him. Corvus' soldier nodded, as eagerly as he could. With a smile, Grus said, "Well, that's earned you a little something, anyhow." He nodded to one of his own troopers, who ceremoniously poured a cup of wine and handed it to the man just down from the stronghold.

Corvus' soldier gulped it down so fast, a little spilled out of his mouth, trickled through his beard, and dripped down onto the dry, dusty ground on which he stood. He wiped his lips and chin on his sleeve, saying, "Ahhh! That's sweeter than Queen Quelea's milk, Banished One bite me if it isn't!"

"I'm glad my wine makes you happy," Grus said dryly. "I do have to ask, though, if you came down just to guzzle it, or for some other reason, too."

That seemed to remind the fellow of the white flag he still carried in his left hand. "Oh." He grimaced. "Count Corvus would yield himself and his garrison and his keep to you, and begs you to spare their - our - lives."

"Would he? Does he?" King Grus whispered. His own soldiers grinned and murmured and nudged one another. Alca, who stood not far away, smiled a small, weary smile. Grus asked, "Why did he suddenly decide to give up?"

"Why?" Corvus' man echoed. "I'll tell you why, Your Majesty. On account of our stinking spring failed, that's why. You can fight a long time without food, even without hope. But you can't go on without water."

"Why shouldn't I let the lot of you parch to death up there?" Grus demanded. "Why shouldn't I take Corvus' head the instant I've got him?"

"Here's why: Because if you tell me no, we'll sally from the keep and fight as hard as we can as long as we can," the soldier answered. "You'll be rid of us, but we'll hurt you, maybe hurt you bad, going down. What have we got to lose?"

Why shouldn't I promise Corvus his life and
then
take his head?
Grus wondered. But that had its own obvious answer. If he swore an oath here and then broke it, who would ever trust him the next time he swore one? He scowled but nodded. "Agreed. Come forth with no weapons, with only the clothes on your backs. Tell Corvus he'll tend a shrine in the heart of the Maze till they lay him on his pyre. Tell him he
will
die if he ever sets a toe outside that shrine. Make sure he understands, for I'd sooner kill him than look at him."

"He... thought you might say something like that, Your Majesty," Corvus' man replied. Grus gestured -
away.
The soldier started back up the crag.

Going uphill took longer than coming down. Before too very long, though, a long column of soldiers came out of the main gate and marched into captivity. Grus' men hurried up to make sure they were obeying the terms the king had set them. Waves and whoops and joyful shouts announced they were.

Grus had Corvus brought before him. The count looked disgusted. "If you hadn't struck at our spring, we'd've held out a lot longer," he snarled. Then, remembering where he was and who held the power, he grudgingly added, "Uh, Your Majesty." The title seemed to taste bad to him.

"I did, though," Grus answered. "And you would be wise, very wise, to give me no tiniest excuse to slay you."

"You swore you wouldn't," Corvus exclaimed.

"Maybe I lied," Grus said. The defeated rebel looked as appalled as he'd hoped. He went on, "Or maybe, if you push me, you'll make me lose my temper, and I'll forget about what I promised. I'd be sorry afterward."

"That wouldn't do me much good," Corvus muttered.

"No, it wouldn't, would it?" Grus agreed with a smile.

Corvus kept very quiet after that. He gave Grus no excuse for anything at all. Grus gestured, and his men took Corvus away.

He put a garrison of his own in the keep from which Corvus had dominated the countryside for so long. Then he turned back toward the city of Avornis. He still had to worry about the Menteshe and the Thervings, but he wouldn't have to fear civil war as well as his foreign foes - not for a while, anyhow.

But for how long?
he wondered.
When will some other nobleman decide he ought to be King of Avornis? Half the counts in the kingdom turn the peasants on their lands into their own private armies. Have to do something about that one of these days.
He wondered what he
could
do. He wondered if he could do anything but beat the rebels one by one as they arose.
There has to be a better way than that. There has to be, if only I can find it.

When the army encamped that night, he asked Alca to supper with him. She raised an eyebrow when she found she was the only one he'd invited. "Your Majesty, is this proper?" she asked.

"You just helped me put down a civil war," Grus answered. "What's improper about celebrating that?"

"Nothing," Alca admitted, and stayed in the pavilion. Over supper, he asked whether she had any ideas about keeping other nobles with wide estates from imitating Corvus and Corax. She didn't, not on the spur of the moment. He swallowed a sigh.

Over the course of the meal, he also swallowed a good deal of wine. So did Alca. Before long, he tried to kiss her. She twisted away. "Your Majesty, I'm married," she reminded him.

"So what? So am I," he said grandly - yes, he'd had a lot of wine.

"And what would Queen Estrilda say if she found out about this?" Alca asked.

"She'd say it was how I fathered my bastard boy," Grus answered. She would also say quite a few other things, most of them at the top of her lungs. Grus was sure of that. He didn't mention it to Alca.

The witch got to her feet. "I did not come here for that, Your Majesty. I'm not angry - not yet. Being noticed is always flattering, up to a point. If someone goes past that point when you don't want him to ..."

She didn't say what might happen then. But Grus, wine or no wine, abruptly remembered she
was
a witch. Unpleasant things might follow if he pushed too hard. "All right," he said grumpily. "Go on, then."

"Thank you, Your Majesty." Alca hesitated, then added, "If neither of us were wed, that might be different. But as things are?" Shaking her head, she slipped out of the tent. Grus poured his goblet full again and finished the job of getting drunk.

For the most part, Lanius was glad to get back to the royal palace. He had, after all, lived there his whole life. Coming back to the moncats and the forays into the archives meant returning to comfortable routine. Coming back to Sosia was pleasant, too. But, as day followed day and routine submerged him, he did wonder if he'd lost a chance he might not see again.

Even finding an answer was far from easy. When Lanius asked the question in the privacy of his own mind, that was one thing. But when he asked it out in the world, that was something else - something more dangerous. Asking the wrong person could prove deadly dangerous. Who was the right person? Was
anyone
the right person?

After some thought, he arranged to see Lepturus. The commander of the royal bodyguards had always been loyal to the dynasty of which Lanius was the last survivor. Even if Lepturus gave an answer he didn't like, he doubted the older man would pass his words on to Grus.

Lepturus heard him out in thoughtful silence. The officer plucked at his beard. It was white these days. It had been iron gray when Lanius first knew him. How had Lepturus gotten so old without his noticing? At last, the guards commander said, "Me, I think you did just the right thing by sitting tight and not starting a fight here when you got back from the field, Your Majesty. If you'd risen against Grus, you would have lost."

In a way, that was what Lanius wanted to hear. It was what he'd told himself. And yet... "Don't you think the soldiers would have risen for me, for the dynasty, against the upstart?"

"Some of them would have," Lepturus replied at once. "Some of the bodyguards would have, too."

"But not all of them?" Lanius asked, and the guards commander shook his head. Lanius grimaced. That hurt. If not all the men who'd protected him since he was a baby would have risen for him, he
would
have lost, without a doubt. "Why wouldn't they?"

"On account of Grus looks to be a pretty good fighting man, and we need that," Lepturus answered. "It's not the only thing we need, but it's the one soldiers think about. You can't expect anything different. And Grus was smart when he sent Nicator back here with you. Everybody likes Nicator. Olor's beard, I like the old pirate myself. And
he
likes Grus - always has, always will."

King Lanius sighed. No, that wasn't what he'd wanted to hear. But he'd called Lepturus to tell him the truth, or as much of it as the guards commander saw. He asked, "What do
you
think of Grus?"

"Me?" That question seemed to startle Lepturus, where the others hadn't. "Me?" he said again. "He could have done a lot worse, I will say that."

"If he had, I'd be dead," Lanius said.

"That's part of what I mean," Lepturus replied. "He's held back King Dagipert for one more year, he beat Corvus and Corax, he married you to Sosia instead of putting you in the grave.... He could have done a lot worse. Plenty of other people would have - Corvus springs to mind."

That wasn't what Lanius wanted to hear, either. "But what about Grus?" he demanded. "Do you think anybody needs him? Do you think the kingdom needs him?"

"Probably," Lepturus answered. Lanius threw his hands in the air and walked off. The commander of the bodyguards called, "Don't do anything foolish, now," after him.

"I won't," Lanius answered. He had a pretty good idea of what Lepturus meant by the words -
don't start plotting against Grus.
He hadn't intended to do that even if Lepturus had shown interest in the idea. Grus had already proved he was good at sniffing out conspiracies about as fast as they were born.