The Bastard King (26 page)

That was, word for word, what he was supposed to say. Grus let out a sigh of relief. Lanius gave him a cold nod as he came forward. The young king might have said he was pleased to share the crown, but he didn't mean it. Grus shrugged. What Lanius had meant didn't matter. The crowd out there was cheering - cheering loud enough to make Grus want to raise his hands to his ears. That mattered.

I suppose I ought to thank the Chernagors for bringing him those funny cats, too,
Grus thought.
He's just young enough to think they're as interesting as girls. Another couple of years, and nothing but a really beautiful concubine would have distracted him so well.

A servant walked up to Arch-Hallow Bucco. The man carried on a velvet cushion a crown identical to the one Lanius wore. The arch-hallow lifted the crown from the cushion and held it high so the people packing the square could see it. As though on cue, the sun came out from behind a cloud and sparkled from the gold and rubies and emeralds and sapphires. "Ahhh!" said the men and women who'd come to see Grus made a king.

Bucco quickly lowered the crown. He motioned for Grus to bend his head. Grus obeyed.
This is the last time I
have
to obey anyone,
went through his mind. If that wasn't a heady notion, he didn't know what would be. The arch-hallow put the crown on his head. As Bucco set it there, he called out, "It is accomplished!" in a great voice.

Grus straightened. In straightening, he discovered why Arch-Hallow Bucco had wasted no time lowering the crown. It was even heavier than he'd thought it would be - far heavier than the iron helmets he'd worn when he fought. All they'd had to do was keep some savage from smashing in his head. The crown had to look impressive instead. It had to, and it did.

"Hurrah for King Grus!" "Long live King Grus!" "King Grus! King Grus! King Grus!" The shouts washed over Grus like the tide. He didn't have to worry much about the tide, not serving on river galleys as he'd always done. He didn't have to worry about it, but he knew what it did.

He raised his hands above his head, asking for quiet in the same way as Arch-Hallow Bucco had. He needed longer to get quiet than Bucco had. He hoped that was a good sign.

"People of Avornis!" he called, pitching his voice to carry, as he would have on the deck of a river galley during a storm. "People of Avornis, I never expected - I never intended - to be set above you." That was true, or had been true till he'd been summoned to defend the capital from Dagipert and the Thervings. By the way people applauded when he said it, they believed him, too.

He went on, "We have many enemies. I'll do everything I can to hold back the ones outside the kingdom. And the nobles inside the kingdom who want to take what isn't theirs also had better look out. They are no friends of Avornis."

The cheers he got then almost knocked him off the platform. He smiled a little. He'd hoped and thought ordinary people resented greedy nobles like Corvus and Corax. It was good to see he'd been right.

To his surprise, he saw King Lanius clapping his hands, too.
Isn't that interesting?
Grus thought.
I wonder what Lanius has against the nobility.

Meanwhile, though, he had to finish talking to the crowd. "With your help - with the help of the gods - Avornis will be a great kingdom again," he told them. "We can be. We aren't far from it, and you must know that. As long as we pull together and don't fight among ourselves, we have a chance. The Banished One wouldn't try so hard to lay us low if he weren't afraid of us."

Of course, the Banished One might have wanted to lay Avornis low for no more reason than that it stood in the way of his Menteshe. Having been cast down from the heavens, he thought the material world was his by right -
by divine right,
Grus thought, and shivered a little. The Banished One had never stopped being offended that any mere mortals wanted to keep on ruling themselves instead of letting him take them in his hands and do with them what he would. Grus looked toward the south.
Too bad,
was what went through his mind.

"At this time, I'd like to recognize Alca the witch, and to reward her with the post of chief sorcerous aide to the throne," Grus said. "Alca, step forward!" Alca ascended to the platform, waved, and went down again. Her husband put his arm around her. Pride filled his face. Grus continued, "Alca saved me from a wizardly attack, and deserves promotion. All those who serve me well will get what they earn. Those who don't will get what
they
earn, too."

Again, applause filled the square. Grus had left the impression the Banished One, not Queen Certhia, had launched that attack against him. He didn't want to humiliate Lanius in public, not unless he had to. Lanius nodded to him, ever so slightly. He recognized what Grus had said, and what he hadn't. Unless Grus mistook his expression, he was grateful for what hadn't been said.
Maybe we can work together,
Grus thought.
Maybe.

Lanius gave the moncats the chamber next to his bedroom. He'd named the male Iron and the reddish female Bronze. Then, two weeks later, he'd had to find another chamber for the male. When Bronze had her kittens - twins - Iron wanted to kill them, just as Yaropolk had warned he might.

The kittens each clung to Bronze's fur with all four hands, and wrapped their tiny tails as far around her as they would go, too. For their first couple of weeks of life, clinging and sucking were about all they could do. Bronze was almost as suspicious of Lanius as she had been of Iron before the king gave him a new home. Little by little, feeding her bits of pork and poultry, Lanius won her trust.

When the kittens' eyes opened, they came to take Lanius as much for granted as they did their mother. One was a male, the other a female. He wondered whether that was happenstance or the way moncats always did things. By then, though, Yaropolk had left the city of Avornis, and none of the Chernagors in the capital admitted to knowing the answer.

He called the male kitten Spider and the female Snitch - she had a way of reaching for anything she could get her tiny hands on and popping it into her mouth. With Grus running the kingdom, Lanius did enjoy having time to spend on the moncats.

He made sure he kept visiting Iron, too, to keep him tame. After sending him away from Bronze and the kittens, Lanius thought about renaming him the Banished One. He thought about it, but then put the idea aside. In Avornis, that was not a name of good omen, even in whimsy.

He was picking fleas off Spider when someone knocked on the door to the moncats' room. "Who's there?" he asked. With a little moncat purring on his lap, he didn't want merely human company just then.

But the answer was, "Grus."

Grus didn't throw the title he'd stolen in Lanius' face. He was doing what he could to get along with Lanius and work with him wherever he could. Lanius couldn't decide whether that made him dislike his fellow king more or less. Whichever the answer was, he couldn't ignore Grus. "Come in," he said.

When Grus did, his gaze traveled from Spider to Snitch to Bronze. He quickly closed the door behind him so the moncats couldn't get out. Yaropolk had been right about that, too - once loose, they were very hard to recapture. "Fascinating creatures, Your Majesty," Grus remarked. "Really fascinating. I see why you're so taken with them."

"Yes, they are," Lanius agreed. "Your Majesty," he added, a bit slower than he should have. He didn't like yielding Grus the title, but saw no way around it. "Did you come here just to tell me that?"

Grus shook his head. "Not at all. I came to ask you a question."

"Go on," Lanius said. Spider squirmed. He let the moncat go. It scrambled over to its mother. Bronze scooped up the kitten and held it in an amazingly humanlike embrace.

"You've met my daughter, Sosia," Grus said. Lanius nodded, puzzled - that wasn't a question. When Lanius did no more than nod, Grus
did
ask a question. "What do you think of her?"

In truth, Lanius hadn't thought much of Sosia, for good or ill. He'd noticed she wasn't far from his own age, and that was about all. He didn't much care for her brother, but he got the notion Grus didn't much care for Ortalis, either. "What do I think of your daughter?" he echoed now. "She's ... very nice." That seemed as safe an answer as he could give.

But it turned out not to be safe enough. Grus beamed at him.

"I'm glad to hear you say so, Your Majesty. By the gods, I'm very glad. I'll announce the betrothal tomorrow."

"Betrothal?" Lanius squeaked. He hadn't even seen the trap till it flipped him up into the air and left him dangling upside down.

Grus nodded vigorously. "Certainly, a betrothal. What better way to tie our two houses together than a wedding between them?"

"King Dagipert wanted to marry me to his daughter, too," Lanius said.

Had Grus wanted to take that the wrong way, he could have made Lanius sorry - very sorry - he'd ever said it. As things were, the other king answered mildly, saying, "Dagipert is a foreigner, a barbarian, an enemy to Avornis. I hope you'll agree I'm none of those things."

You'd better agree I'm none of those things,
his tone warned. And he was an Avornan, no doubt of that. Still... "I'm not sure I want to marry at all," Lanius said, trying to escape the snare.

"Oh, of course you do," Grus said. "You've found out about women, haven't you?" He was gentle. He was genial. He was also implacable. Lanius hadn't imagined how formidable he could be.

I can't even lie. He knows better
. "Yes," he said unhappily.

"Well, then." Grus smiled a wide, cheerful smile. Lanius supposed it was a father-in-lawish kind of smile. He didn't have standards of comparison there, though. He'd never seen Dagipert smile, although he supposed Arch-Hallow Bucco had. Grus went on, "Don't you think it would be better to get yourself a wife and not have to worry about chasing after serving girls when you're in the mood?"

"I don't know," Lanius answered honestly. Then he asked a question of his own. "Didn't you do some chasing of your own even after you got yourself a wife?"

By the look Grus gave him, the other King of Avornis hadn't expected that. But Grus soon steadied himself. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. As you'll probably have heard - you seem to have heard all sorts of things - I have a bastard boy in the south. He's not far from your age, as a matter of fact. I spent a lot of time away from home, you know."

Lanius didn't know. Except for his one brief campaigning foray, he'd never spent
any
time away from home. "What's his name?" he asked. That wasn't just his usual curiosity. Grus' illegitimate son might soon become a sort of relative by marriage.

"He's called Anser," Grus replied. "He seems a likely lad, or reasonably so. I've been giving his mother money to raise him for years. Now that I've ... come up in the world a bit, I'll have to do more than that."

Lanius didn't say anything. If this Anser
was
a likely lad, he could fill one of any number of posts, and perhaps fill it well. If he turned out not to be so likely, would that stop Grus from appointing him to a position where what he did mattered? Lanius filed that away. He'd have to see what Grus did, and what Anser did after Grus decided where to put him.

Meanwhile, Grus wasn't about to ease the pressure on Lanius himself. "What do you say?" he asked. "I want to announce the betrothal as soon as I can."

I'm sure you do,
Lanius thought. The more tightly Grus grafted his family to the longtime reigning dynasty, the harder he'd be to pry loose. Lanius considered simply telling him no. Then he looked at Grus' face. On second thought, that didn't seem so wise.
What kind of accident or illness would you arrange for me?
he wondered. Bucco had tried it. Lanius had managed to foil him. He didn't think he could foil Grus, who seemed alarmingly capable.
Maybe I'd better become his son-in-law. He might not want to arrange any misfortune for me if I'm married to his daughter.

But despite that thought, Lanius asked, "What does Sosia think about marrying me?"

"She thinks you're very nice," Grus answered, which might have meant his daughter thought Lanius was very nice, or might have meant Grus hadn't bothered getting his daughter's opinion. But then Grus added, "And I believe she also thinks joining our two houses would be a good idea."

That, if true, interested Lanius. Unlike the other, it wasn't something Grus had had to say.
"Does
she?" Lanius asked.

His fellow king nodded. "Yes. Sosia's a clever girl. She'll do what needs doing."

Had he said she was beautiful, Lanius would have known he was lying. He'd seen her himself. She was pleasant, but far from gorgeous. Cleverness, though ... Cleverness did pique Lanius' curiosity. He didn't know much about what he wanted in a wife, but he didn't think he could put up with a stupid woman. "Well," he said, "let's see what happens."

"Do we really have to do this?" Estrilda asked.

Grus stared at his wife. "Where do you think we'll get a better match for Sosia? How
can
you get a higher match than the King of Avornis?"

"I don't say you can get a higher match. Of course you can't. But better?" Estrilda shrugged. "How can you know? I wouldn't have wanted to marry anybody like Lanius when I was a girl. He thinks too much."

"Well, you never said I did anything like that," Grus answered, trying to tease a smile from Estrilda. It didn't work. Frowning himself, Grus went on, "It's the best thing we can do for the family."

"How often do men'help' the family by making their women miserable?" his wife returned. "You didn't even ask Sosia if this was what she wanted to do. You just went and told Lanius he'd wed her. That's no way to do things."

"All right, then - we'll ask her," Grus said. "If she tells us yes, we'll go ahead. If she says no ..." His voice trailed away. He didn't know what he'd do if Sosia said she didn't want to marry Lanius. Probably see if he could talk her into changing her mind. He'd have to do that when Estrilda wasn't listening.