Arch-Hallow Bucco lifted up his hands in prayer. “From cold, from hunger, from flood, and from the wrath of our foes, deliver us, O ye gods!” he prayed.
Not even Lanius could quarrel with that. When the ice finally melted, the capital’s drainage channels had faced a challenge as dangerous as any Therving siege. They’d guided away the floodwaters, and Lanius was glad to thank the gods that they had.
Standing next to him, though, his mother sniffed scornfully. “If Bucco said the day was sunny, I’d carry an umbrella,” Queen Certhia remarked, not bothering to hold her voice down.
Lanius laughed. So did several other people who heard her. Bucco peered toward the noise. When he saw it centered on Certhia, his mouth tightened, but he went on with the service. He’d had his time in the sun, had it and not succeeded. Now Lanius’ mother had her chance.
“We need to beat the Thervings again,” she told Lanius after they returned to the palace. “We need to, and we will. And you”—she pointed at him—“you will stay in the city of Avornis while our armies go do it.”
Sometimes even a king couldn’t escape the hand of fate. Lanius recognized this as one of those times. “Yes, Mother,” he said. If he’d been anxious to watch another battle, he might have made a bigger fuss—or he might not have, and quietly tried to arrange something with Lepturus instead. As things were, one introduction to the iron world of warfare would last him a lifetime.
“Everything should go well,” Certhia said. Lanius wondered whether she was trying to convince him or herself. But she went on, “Corax is leading a band of Heruls across the mountains, and Corvus will command our army.”
“And the Menteshe have been very quiet this spring,” Lanius added. “We made the Banished One thoughtful when we came through his dreadful winter so well. He thinks we’re strong, and so he doesn’t want anything to do with us for a while.”
Queen Certhia nodded. “Just so. I’m glad I thought to make sure the city was so well provisioned. Otherwise, who knows what might have happened?”
“Who knows?” Lanius echoed tonelessly. He raised an eyebrow as he eyed his mother. She looked back, smiling and candid. As far as he could tell, she really believed supplying the city of Avornis had been her idea. If she ever wrote her memoirs— something Lanius found unlikely, but even so—she would undoubtedly write that she’d had the idea to bring extra grain into the capital to ward against the harsh winter she’d seen coming. Later historians and chroniclers, believing her, would write the same thing. She might be remembered as Queen Certhia the Forethoughtful, or something of the sort.
Contemplating that made Lanius distrust every work of history he’d ever read. Were they all full of such foolishness? He would have to do more judging for himself. Plainly, he couldn’t believe everything that was written down.
He saw no point in arguing with his mother about it. He wouldn’t change her mind. He did ask, “Is it wise to have so much power resting in the hands of two brothers?”
“Corvus and Corax, you mean?” Certhia asked. Lanius nodded. His mother shrugged. “They’re both good officers, and they both have splendid blood.”
She waited for him to tell her, Yes, Mother, again. He didn’t. He said, “Isn’t that more likely to make them rebel, not less? Half the nobles in the kingdom think they deserve to be King of Avornis.”
“But without nobles, we’d have hardly any officers,” Queen Certhia pointed out—which, unfortunately, was also true. Certhia ruffled Lanius’ hair. He hated that. She went on, “If you’re looking for an officer who isn’t a noble, Commodore Grus is in charge of the river galleys that will bring the Heruls into the Thervings’ rear.” She sniffed, as she had in the cathedral. “His father’s called Crex the Unbearable, and I’m not sure even Crex himself knows who his father was.”
“Grus has done well,” Lanius said.
“Well, maybe he has, but even so…” His mother sniffed yet again. “It’s not as though he were a man to take seriously.”
A serving girl came up to them with a tray of cakes and wine. Lanius took a cake—they were glazed with honey and full of raisins—and a cup of wine. The girl smiled at him. He smiled back. He didn’t quite know how it had happened, but girls, lately, didn’t revolt him nearly as much as they had when he was younger.
His mother had noticed that, too. Frost filled her voice as she said, “You may go now, Prinia.”
“Yes, Your Royal Highness,” the girl said, and hurried away.
“Why did you snap at her like that?” Lanius asked. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Not yet,” Queen Certhia said dryly.
“I don’t understand,” Lanius said.
“I know,” his mother answered. “But you will. Very soon now, you will. And then life will get more complicated—though you may be having too much fun to think so.”
Lanius scratched his head. Sometimes his mother made no sense at all.
“Another ship, another stretch of the Tuola River,” Grus said with a sigh as he boarded the Bream. One river galley was much like another, but they weren’t all identical. The Bream had seen better days. Her planking was pale with age. She seemed sound enough, but somehow didn’t feel lucky. Grus eyed the sailors. They looked back at him and Nicator.
“We’ll do our job here, and then they’ll send us south to the Stura again,” Nicator said. He muttered something under his breath that had to do with horses, then, “Thervings or Menteshe. Thervings or Menteshe…”
“Gods grant we have an easy time for a change,” Grus said.
“That would be nice,” Nicator agreed. “What they’ve set us to sounds easy enough, anyhow. All we have to do is get Corax’s band of Heruls down the river and onto our bank of it so they can go on and pitch into the Thervings from behind. Should be simple as you please, so long as everything goes like it’s supposed to.”
“If everything went the way it was supposed to, the King of Avornis wouldn’t need to keep moving us around like pieces on the board,” Grus said. “And remember, this is Count Corax, dear Count Corvus’ brother.”
Nicator walked over to the rail and spat into the swift-running, cold water of the Tuola.
“That for dear Count Corvus, the cheap, power-grabbing bastard.” He spat again. “And that for his gods-cursed, arrogant brother.”
“As long as you’re there, spit once for the Heruls, too,” Grus said.
“Sure.” Nicator did. “Now tell me why.”
“Because I wouldn’t give better than about even money that they go kick King Dagipert in the ass once they’re on this side of the river,” Grus answered. “They’re liable to decide they’d have more fun murdering farmers and raping their wives and stealing their sheep.”
“Or maybe stealing their wives and raping their sheep,” Nicator suggested.
Grus rolled his eyes. “I don’t know anything about that, and I’m cursed glad I don’t. If you really want to find out, ask Count Corax.”
The Bream served as flagship for a good-sized flotilla of river galleys, smaller boats, scows, and barges—not a flotilla that could do too much fighting on its own, but more than good enough for taking an army along the Tuola and moving it to the other side. When the Bream’s oarmaster shouted out the command for them to leave the port where they were tied up, they all obeyed promptly enough to give Grus no reason to complain.
Their rendezvous with Count Corax lay downstream, and they would deliver the army farther downstream still. That showed good planning by those who’d put the flotilla together. Grus doubted whether a good many of the scows and barges could have gone upstream at anything faster than a crawl, if indeed they could have made headway against the current at all.
“What do you want to bet Count Corax and these savages aren’t even there when we get where we’re supposed to be?” Nicator said. “It’d be just like him to leave us stuck with nothing to do. He’s a noble, after all. Why should he care if ordinary people have to sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for him?”
But when the flotilla rounded the last bend in the river, there on the northwestern bank sat the Heruls’ encampment, large, messy, and unlovely. The wind wafted the stink of it to Grus’ nostrils. He coughed and wrinkled his nose. He knew what camps were supposed to smell like. This was even worse.
“Oh, by the gods!” Nicator pointed. “Look at ’em! They’re pissing upstream from where they drink.”
“Well, so they are,” Grus said. “Corax didn’t fetch them here because they were neat and tidy. He fetched them here because they could fight.”
“They won’t do much fighting if they all come down with the galloping shits,” Nicator retorted. “And if they keep doing that, they bloody well will. Don’t they know any better?” He answered his own question. “No, by the gods, of course they don’t know any better. That’s what being a barbarian’s all about, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” Grus did some pointing of his own now. “There’s the mighty Count Corax’s banner, see? I suppose we ought to pick him up. Then we can ferry the Heruls downstream and across, and then we can hope they do some good.”
He sent the Bream’s boat to the far bank of the Tuola. Count Corax, now, wasn’t grubby in furs and leather. He wore a golden circlet that wasn’t quite a crown on his head and a cloth-of-gold robe more splendid than any Grus had ever seen adorning a King of Avornis. Nicator muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?” Grus asked.
“I said, now we know where all the money goes that Corvus and, looks like, Corax save by not keeping postal stations open on their lands.”
“Oh,” Grus said, and then, “Yes. He’s got his own army there, and he’s got his own raiment. When does he start stamping his own gold pieces and calling himself a king?”
“Pretty gods-cursed soon, by the look of him,” Nicator replied.
“Or here’s another question for you,” Grus said. “When does he take these Heruls, move on the city of Avornis with them, and start calling himself our king?”
The boat pulled up to the Bream. “Let’s see what Corax has to say for himself.” From their brief acquaintance, and from Count Corax’s being Corvus’ brother, Grus was ready to dislike him for any reason or none.
Corax scrambled up onto the deck of the Bream. “Hello, Commodore,” he said, striding back to greet Grus. “We meet again. Remind me of your name, if you’d be so kind.”
“Grus, Your Excellency,” Grus said tightly. He couldn’t order Corax flung into the Tuola no matter how much he wanted to. But, aboard his own river galley, he didn’t have to take that lying down—didn’t have to, and didn’t intend to. “Remind me of yours, if you’d be so kind.”
“What?” Corax turned red. “If that’s a joke, it’s not funny, friend. Everybody knows who I am.” The nobleman struck a pose.
“Not on the rivers,” Grus told him. “The rivers have buried men more famous than you’ll ever be.”
That might have been true, but it wasn’t calculated to endear Grus to Count Corax. From red, the Avornan nobleman went a dusky purple. “You had better hold your tongue, you insolent puppy, or I’ll paddle your backside for piddling on my shoes. I am in command of that army yonder, and I ought to turn them loose on you.”
“You’re welcome to try, Your Excellency,” Grus answered.
“I’m not used to having some jumped-up skipper from a fishing scow telling me what I can do and what I can’t. By Olor’s beard, I don’t intend to stand for it, either.” Corax set a hand on the hilt of his sword.
Nicator whistled shrilly. Several marines aboard the Bream nocked arrows and drew their bows back to the ear. The iron points on the arrowheads, all aimed at Corax, shone in the sun.
“You want to think about where you are and what you’re doing, don’t you, Your Excellency?” Nicator said.
The nobleman had nerve. He didn’t let go of the sword right away. Grus had rarely seen an Avornan noble he would have called a coward. A lot of them, though, sadly lacked sense. Corax proved not to belong to that school.
“Oh, good,” Grus said when Corax’s hand did at last fall to his side. “I wouldn’t want to see you all quilled like a hedgehog, Your Excellency, and blood’s hard to scrub out of the timbers. It will stain.”
“You are a funny man, aren’t you?” Corax growled. “Let’s see how funny you are when the King of Avornis sacks you.”
“I’m not losing any sleep over that,” Grus answered. “You’re the one who’s been robbing the king for years, not me.”
“Why, you lying sack of turds!” Corax shouted.
“You’re the liar, Your Excellency—you and your brigand of a brother.” Grus made Corax’s title of respect one of reproach. Corax gobbled and turned purple again. With savage relish, Grus went on, “I know the two of you don’t keep up the royal post on your lands. When was the last time you sent any taxes to the capital?”
“Taxes?” Corax’s gesture of contempt was, in its own way, magnificent. “You gods-cursed fool, taxes are for peasants!”
“Do you suppose the king would say the same?” By the king, Grus meant Queen Certhia and the rest of the regents, as Corax no doubt had before.
“You swine!” Corax yelled. “You rustic oaf! You—you enema syringe! You brawling, disobedient lump of guts! You pus-filled, poxy villain! You hairy-assed son of a whore! I piss on you!” He started to undo his fly.
“If he comes out, you’ll sing soprano the rest of his days,” Grus said through clenched teeth. Again, Corax stopped with the motion half complete. Grus gestured to the sailors and marines. “Take this foul-mouthed fool back to the barbarians. They seem to suit him well. May he have joy of them.”
“Yes, Commodore,” the men chorused. Heedless of Corax’s bellows, they bundled him back into the boat. When they got back to the northwestern bank of the Tuola, they showed what they thought by dumping him into the middle of a mudflat and letting him make his filthy, dripping way back to the Heruls.
“What do we do now, Skipper?” Nicator asked.
“I’ll stay here for a few days,” Grus answered, still seething. “If he shows any sign—any sign at all—of acting like a civilized human being, I’ll ferry him and the Heruls across the river.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“If he doesn’t? A pox on him and a plague on the barbarians, that’s what.”
“What about the fight with the Thervings?”
“Well, what about it?” Grus returned. “Do you think I should be the only one worrying about it? Let’s see if Corax cares about the kingdom, or if the only thing in the whole world Corax cares about is Corax.”
“Something’s gone wrong somewhere,” Lepturus said.
“What do you propose to do about it?” Queen Certhia demanded, blue eyes flashing fire.
The guards commander sent King Lanius an annoyed glance. He might have been saying, Pretty soon you’ll be old enough to rule on your own, and I won’t have to put up with this nonsense from your mother. That often worked well for him—often, but not always. And not today, for Lanius wanted to know exactly what was going on, too. “What do you propose to do about it?” he asked.
Lepturus sighed. “I don’t know just what I can do about it, Your Majesty,” he said. “All I know is, the Heruls didn’t cross the Tuola the way they were supposed to. You know what that means as well as I do. It means our army’s going to have to fight the Thervings without any help. Count Corvus keeps telling everybody what a great general he is. Pretty soon we find out if he’s right.”
He didn’t sound as though he believed Corvus were such a great general. He sounded as though he doubted whether the nobleman could find the fingers at the ends of his hands without a map. And he managed that without a word of open reproach for Count Corvus. Lanius admired him; he was used to more direct insults.
“But Corax is Corvus’ brother,” Queen Certhia said. “He’d come to his aid if he possibly could.”
“Maybe.” Lepturus didn’t sound as though he had much use for Corax, either.
“I think it’s Commodore Grus’ fault,” Certhia said. “I think he should come to the city of Avornis at once, and explain his disgraceful conduct.”
“For one thing, we don’t know it’s disgraceful, Your Majesty,” the guards commander said patiently. “Why don’t we wait and see how the campaign goes before we start throwing blame around like it was mud?”
Certhia fumed. “I am going to give orders that Grus come to the city of Avornis at once. At once, do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Your Royal Highness,” Lepturus answered wearily.
“Well, I am,” Certhia said, and hurried out of the chamber where the three of them were meeting.
“You don’t think that’s a good idea?” Lanius asked.
Lepturus shook his head. “No, I don’t. Too soon to start blaming. You ought to wait till a campaign’s over before you do that. Try doing it in the middle and you’re liable to end up looking like a first-class fool—meaning no disrespect to the lady your mother, of course.”
“Ah, of course,” Lanius said. Lepturus was better than anyone he knew at getting his point across by denying he had any point to get across. Lanius asked, “How do you think the campaign will turn out, Lepturus?”
“If you want to know ahead of time how things’ll turn out, Your Majesty, you talk to wizards or witches, not to soldiers,” the commander of his bodyguards replied. “They’ll be glad to tell you. Sometimes they’ll even be right.”
“I’m talking to you right now, Lepturus.” Lanius put an edge in his voice. “Do you think it will turn out well?”
Lepturus looked at him for a long time, then said, “No.”
“Well, Skipper, what are you going to do with that?” Nicator pointed to the parchment Grus held.
Grus read the parchment one more time. Then he crumpled it and tossed it into the Tuola. “There. That takes care of that. They never sent it. I never got it.”
“Commodore, that’s mutiny!” Turnix exclaimed.
“No.” Grus shook his head. “If I ordered every river galley on all the Nine Rivers to make for the city of Avornis and throw little King Lanius out of the royal palace on his backside, that would be mutiny. I don’t intend to do any such thing.”
“But you’re disobeying an order.” The wizard, at times—the most inconvenient times, generally—showed a remorselessly literal mind.
“How can I disobey an order I never got?” Grus asked.
“But they’ll find out you did, and then you’ll be in even more trouble,” Turnix said.
“That won’t be for a while. I’ll worry about it later,” Grus said. Turnix threw his hands in the air and walked up the deck of the Bream toward the bow.
Nicator said, “Skipper, if you did order all the river galleys to make for the capital, do you suppose their captains would do it?”
“I don’t know,” Grus answered. “I don’t want to find out. I don’t want to have to find out.”
“Well, no,” his captain admitted. “But if you did, I think they might. You’ve won victories, and the blue-blooded generals mostly haven’t. It’d make all those blue bloods who look down their pointy snoots at the navy think twice, eh? You just bet it would.”
He was right, Grus knew. The Avornan navy was and always had been a stepchild. It was there. It was sometimes useful. But it wasn’t where careers were made. It wasn’t where heroes were made. The cavalry came first, then the foot. River galleys? A long way after either. A man with a father called Crex the Unbearable could never have risen to high rank on land, as Grus had in the lesser service.
“I hope it never comes to that,” Grus said. “And I hope they hang Corax from the tallest tree they can find. But he’s the one who wants to be King of Avornis, not me.”
“All right, Skipper. All right.” Nicator nodded. “I know why you have to talk like that. But like I said, if you ever did give the order, I bet the other captains would follow it.”
“Who knows? I’m not going to give it, so what’s the point of wondering?” He had to say that, too.
But river galleys had one advantage over foot soldiers and even horsemen. They were swift, swift, swift. If he ever chose to move against the capital—and if his captains chose to move with him—he could move fast. He rubbed his chin. He could…
He’d never wanted to strike for the royal power. Only in the past couple of years had he realized he might strike for it, it might be within his grasp. Yes, he was the son of Crex the Unbearable. Yes, he was only a commodore, not a general—not even an admiral, since the Avornan navy rarely gave out such an exalted rank. But if he seized the capital, if he seized the palace, who could stop him from putting the crown on his own head? Nobody, not so far as he could see.
“What happens if you get another letter that says you have to go to the city of Avornis?” Nicator asked.
“I don’t know,” Grus said. “Maybe I’ll lose that one, too. I won’t worry unless they try to take my command away.”
“What do you think will happen to Corvus’ army without Corax and the Heruls coming along to give it a hand?”
“I don’t know that, either.” Grus shrugged. “You’re just full of inconvenient questions today, aren’t you?”
“I don’t think Commodore Grus is coming to the palace,” Lanius remarked to Lepturus.
“I don’t think he is, either,” the commander of the royal bodyguards replied. “If I were him, I don’t think I would have.”
“But doesn’t that turn him into a traitor?” Lanius asked. “Mother heads the regency council, after all. Till I come of age, she rules Avornis.”
Lepturus coughed. “If your mother goes and pushes things, she can probably make Commodore Grus into a traitor, make him a rebel. If she doesn’t, he’s just an officer who had a quarrel with another officer and fears the other fellow has more clout than he does.”
“What’s the difference?” Lanius asked.
“I’ll tell you what the difference is, Your Majesty. If he’s somebody who’s had a quarrel with another officer, he’ll go on obeying any orders he gets that don’t put him straight into danger from his own side. If he’s a traitor, he won’t. He’ll rebel. What with King Dagipert and the Thervings marching on us, we don’t really want to have to fight a rebel, too.”
“Oh.” Lanius pondered that, and then reluctantly nodded. “Yes, I suppose you make sense there.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Lepturus said. “I’m not good for much—especially these days, on account of I’m getting old.” His eyebrows waggled. Sure enough, those hairy caterpillars had gray in them that hadn’t been there a couple of years earlier. “But I’ve always had pretty fair luck at making sense, and I’m glad you think I do even yet.”
King Lanius eyed him. “That’s the oddest sort of modesty I think I’ve ever heard.” Lepturus snorted and spluttered. The king went on, “How well will Count Corvus do—how well can Count Corvus do—fighting the Thervings without Corax and this army of Heruls that was supposed to attack them from the rear?”
“We drove them back last summer, you know,” Lepturus said.
“Yes, but Corvus wasn’t commanding our army then. You were,” Lanius said.
“Count Corvus has his connections with the Heruls, and he makes a pretty fair soldier, when he pays attention to what’s going on around him,” the guards commander said. “And now, Your Majesty, if you’ll excuse me—” He left before King Lanius could ask him how often Corvus paid attention and how often he didn’t.
With a sigh, Lanius got to his feet and walked through the hallways of the palace. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular. He should have been doing his lessons, but writing verses wasn’t his favorite part of them. He would sooner have poked around in the archives. He would have gotten his shirt and breeches dusty, which would have annoyed his mother, but so what? But his tutor was a conscientious man, and would insist that he do the verses.
Later, Lanius thought, and kept on wandering.
When he went by, servants bowed if they were men, curtsied if they were women. “Your Majesty,” they would murmur. It was almost as though he really ruled Avornis—almost, but not quite.
“Good morning, Your Majesty,” a serving girl said. She smiled at him.
“Oh. Good morning, Marila,” Lanius answered. He smiled, too. Marila was a couple of years older than Lanius. But she didn’t smile at him as though he were just a little boy, as so many of the servants did.
“Where were you going, Your Majesty?” she asked. “What were you doing?”
“Nowhere much,” he said. “Nothing in particular.” He took a deep breath. “Would you… ?” he began, and then stopped. His ears felt as though they were on fire. Try as he would, he couldn’t go on.
Marila curtsied. “Would I what, Your Majesty?” she said, and gave him another smile.
That encouraged Lanius to try again. “Would you… like to come with me?” The last few words came out in a rush.
Her eyes got big. They were very blue—not as blue as his mother’s, which would have alarmed him, but very blue even so. “All right, Your Majesty,” she said. “Where will we go?”
Panic rolled over him. “I—I—I don’t know,” he whispered.
Marila laughed. Had she laughed at him, he would have run away. But she didn’t—or he didn’t think she did. She asked, “Well, where would you go if I wasn’t coming along?”
That, he could answer. “To the archives,” he said at once.
The serving girl blinked. Whatever she’d expected, that wasn’t it. She nodded, though, and then brushed back a lock of hair—somewhere between brown and auburn—that had fallen down in front of her face. “All right, Your Majesty, we’ll go to the archives.”
They weren’t far. Lanius’ feet might have been leading him there even when the rest of him had no idea that was where he planned to go. He opened the door, then stood aside to let Marila go in ahead of him.
.She looked at him as though he were utterly mad. “You’re the king!” she exclaimed.
“Well,” he said. Feeling foolish, he walked in. She followed. He closed the door.
They were the only ones in there. He would have been surprised had it been otherwise. The room was surprisingly large. Halfhearted sunshine filtered in through a skylight and a couple of windows high up on the southern wall that hadn’t been washed for a long time. Books and ledgers and scrolls and maps—some a few months old, some a few years old, some a few centuries old, and a few even older than that—were piled, stacked, or sometimes just thrown on or into tables and chests and trunks and cases. The air smelled of leather and parchment and ink and dust. Motes danced in pale sunbeams.
“What a funny place!” Marila said. “What do you do here? Uh, Your Majesty?”
“I come here to look through things,” Lanius answered. “When I go through these parchments, I never know what’ll be on them. Sometimes it’s interesting—things nobody’s seen for years and years. Sometimes it’s boring.”
“What do you do then?” the serving girl asked.
Lanius shrugged. “Then I look at another one.”
“How funny,” Marila said. If she’d laughed then, he would have taken her out of the room and that would have been that. But she didn’t. In the dim light, her eyes seemed enormous. Her voice dropped. “It’s so quiet here.”
“I know. That’s one of the reasons I like this place,” Lanius answered. “It’s just me and… whatever I can find. I’ve seen parchments in here that go back to the days before the Banished One was banished. I could show you.” He ought to do something with the girl besides stand there and gab at her.
“If you want to.” Now Marila shrugged—a motion more complex and interesting to look at than Lanius’ simple gesture had been. She giggled. “I thought you brought me in here for something else.”
“You did?” he said. “What?”
“I could show you.” More than half to herself, Marila added, “You’ll need some showing, won’t you?” She giggled again.
“What are you talking ab—?” Lanius began. That changed to a sudden, startled bleat. “What are you doing?”
Marila pulled her tunic off over her head. She slid out of her long wool skirt, then eased off her breastband and let her drawers fall to the floor. She stood before Lanius, naked and smiling. “I could show you, if you like,” she said again.
Lanius stared. He’d started to notice girls, yes, but hardly more than theoretically. In that same theoretical way, he knew what went on between men and women. But it was all theory. “Are—are—are you sure?” he quavered.
“You’re the king. You can do whatever you want,” Marila answered. “Besides, I think you’ll like it.”
“All right,” he said warily. “I’ll… try.”
Years later, he realized Marila must have done a lot of acting in the next few minutes. He also realized how clumsy and puppyish he must have been himself. At the time, every moment brought a new discovery, a new astonishment, a new pleasure: a first kiss, the softness of Marila’s skin, the funny way the tips of her breasts crinkled up when he put his mouth on them, and then… He’d never imagined his body could feel like that.
“Let me up, Your Majesty,” Marila said from beneath him.
“Oh! I’m sorry!” If she hadn’t said something, Lanius would gladly have stayed there forever.
The serving girl dressed. More slowly, Lanius followed suit. She smiled at him again. “Everything’s fine,” she said. “You were sweet.”
She didn’t say he’d been good, or that she’d enjoyed it. He was too amazed to notice. “So this is why people sing about love,” he said.
“Of course it is. Didn’t you know?” Marila answered her own question before the king could. “No, you didn’t.” Lanius could never remember that without a blush, either.
At the time, he just answered, “No.” Then, slower than it should have, something else occurred to him. “When can we do that again?” he asked.
“Why, whenever you want to, Your Majesty.” Marila batted her eyelashes. “How could I say no to the king?”
“Nobody else in the palace seems to have any trouble,” Lanius answered.
This time, she definitely blinked. It wasn’t coquettish, only surprised. “But you’re the king!” she exclaimed.
“Sort of. After a fashion. In a manner of speaking,” Lanius said. “I can do whatever I want, all right, as long as it’s someone else’s idea.” Too late, he realized that lying down with Marila had been her idea, not his. He didn’t want her to think he hadn’t liked it. Oh, no—he didn’t want her to think that at all! He tried to make amends. “That’s the best idea anybody’s ever had.”
“I’m glad, Your Majesty. Maybe you’ll… think of me again, a little later.” Marila kissed him on the cheek, then slipped out of the archives.
“Now what did she mean by that?” Lanius asked himself. He was tempted to shuffle through parchments till he found the answer. A sated laziness he’d never known before fought against his wits but he didn’t need long before he found his answer. “She wants a present,” he murmured. Half the treasury seemed about right. But that would cause talk. A trinket of silver or gold would probably do the job.
He left the archives, too. As he closed the door behind him, he stopped as though frozen. If Marila had given herself to him, might other serving women—Prinia, say—do the same? “I’ll have to find out,” he whispered. “I really will.”
And then he suddenly started laughing again. A few years earlier, Arch-Hallow Bucco had said that when he became a man, he might find Princess Romilda of Thervingia more interesting and attractive than he thought. He’d mocked the notion. The marriage wouldn’t happen now. Even so, Lanius shook his head in slow, understanding wonder. “Gods curse you, Bucco,” he said. “Gods curse you, but you were right.”