“Wine!” King Scolopax shouted. Servants rushed to obey. When the wine cup was in his hands, Scolopax threw back his head and roared laughter. It echoed from the ceiling of the throne room. He gulped down the wine, then thrust the cup at the closest servant. A moment later, it was full again. Scolopax drank it dry once more.
He’d never imagined life could be so sweet. It wasn’t that he hadn’t drunk before. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been drunk before. As the younger brother of the king—as the despised, distrusted younger brother of the king—what else did he have to do? But now what he did wasn’t what a despised, distrusted younger brother did. Now what he did was what the king did. And that made all the difference in the world.
“Avornis is mine!” he chortled. “Mine, I tell you!”
If he’d ever said anything like that before, the servants would have made sure Mergus knew about it. Scolopax was in many ways a fool, but he knew what his brother would have done to him. That had been especially true after Lanius was born. If the brat hadn’t been on the sickly side, Mergus might have done it anyway. Scolopax had therefore never even let himself think such thoughts, for fear they would come out when he was drunk. Now he didn’t have to run away from them. He didn’t have to hide them. He could come right out and say them. And they were true.
All the servants in the throne room bowed very low. “Yes, Your Majesty,” they chorused. Scolopax laughed again. Only a couple of weeks before, they’d hardly bothered hiding their scorn for him. These days, they had to be hoping he’d been too sodden to remember. Oh, life was sweet!
He sat on the Diamond Throne, drinking, looking out across the chamber at the heart of the palace. It seemed bigger, grander, even brighter from here than it had before. He hated Mergus all the more for holding him away from this delight for so long.
Presently, one of Mergus’ ministers—Scolopax, in his cheerful drunkenness, couldn’t be bothered recalling the man’s name—approached the throne and bowed even lower than the servants had. “Your Majesty, how shall we deal with the Thervings?” he asked.
“Give ’em a good swift kick in the ass and send ’em to bed without supper,” Scolopax answered—the first words that popped into his head. He laughed again, loudly and raucously. So did the nearby servants.
Mergus’ minister— my minister now, Scolopax thought—did not laugh. He said, “King Dagipert will be looking to see what kind of example you set, Your Majesty. So will all the princes of the Menteshe, down in the south.” He lowered his voice. “And so will the Banished One, behind them.”
Scolopax didn’t want to think about the Banished One. He didn’t want to think about anything except being King Scolopax. “So will the Chernagors, on their islands in the Northern Sea, and the barbarians beyond the mountains,” he said.
Mergus’ minister looked pleased. “That’s true, Your Majesty. They will. Everyone will. What sort of example do you intend to set?”
“Wine!” King Scolopax shouted. “Some for me, some for him.” He pointed to the minister.
“No, thank you, Your Majesty,” the fellow said. “The healers forbid it. My liver…”
“You won’t drink with me?” Scolopax said ominously. “I ask no man twice. I need ask no man twice. You are dismissed. Get out of my sight. Get out of the palace. Get out of the city of Avornis.”
With immense dignity, Mergus’ minister bowed before departing. Scolopax wondered for a moment with whom he should replace him. Then he shrugged and laughed. The fellow was plainly useless. Why bother replacing him at all?
“And speaking of useless…” The new king snapped his fingers. The palace servants all looked attentive and eager. Scolopax laughed again. So this was the world Mergus had known for so long, was it? No wonder he’d kept it all to himself. It was too fine to share. The king pointed to the closest servant. “You! Fetch me Certhia, miscalled the queen. Hop to it, now.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the man said, and off he went. King Scolopax marveled. No insolence, no back talk, no delay. Ah, to be the king!
In due course, Certhia entered the throne room. Still in mourning for dead Mergus, she wore black, but her gown was of glistening silk, and worth a not so small fortune. Sour-faced bitch, Scolopax thought as she curtsied. And when she murmured “Your Majesty,” she might have been saying, You swine.
But she was only Lanius’ mother. Scolopax was—king. “Your marriage to my brother will not stand,” he said.
“Hallow Perdix wed us,” Certhia answered. “Arch-Hallow Megadyptes has declared the marriage fitting and proper.”
“This for Arch-Hallow Megadyptes.” Scolopax snapped his fingers. “And this for that pimp of a Perdix.” He made a much cruder gesture.
Certhia’s eyes widened. “May I be excused, Your Majesty?”
“You are not excused. You are dismissed, just like what’s-his-name was,” King Scolopax declared. “Get out of the palace. At once. If you show your nose around here again, I’ll make you sorry for it.”
“But—my son,” Certhia said.
“I shall tend to my nephew, that little bastard.” Scolopax turned to the wonderfully pliant servants. “Throw her out. Don’t let her come back. Do it right this minute.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” they chorused, and they did it. Watching them obey was almost more fun than drinking wine. Almost.
Scolopax pointed to yet another servant—he seemed to have an unending supply of them. “You! Go tell the so-called Arch-Hallow Megadyptes he is to come before me at once. And you!”—this to another man—“Draft a letter for delivery to the Maze, summoning that wise, holy, and pious fellow, Arch-Hallow Bucco, back here to the capital as fast as he can get here. Go!” They both bowed. They both went.
Megadyptes was gaunt and frail, a man with more strength of character than strength of body. When he came before Scolopax, the palpable aura of holiness that shone from him gave the king pause. Bowing, he said, “How may I serve Your Majesty?”—and not even Scolopax could find the faintest hint of reproach in his voice.
But that didn’t matter. Scolopax knew what he knew. “You made my brother’s marriage legitimate. You made his brat legitimate.”
“Why, so I did, Your Majesty,” Megadyptes agreed, showing the king nothing but calm. “King Mergus had, till then, no heir but you. The gods gave him no son till the autumn of his years. They have given you no son at all, I am sorry to say.”
He did sound sorry. That didn’t keep King Scolopax’s wrath from rising, though the arch-hallow had spoken nothing but truth. Scolopax’s wife was a sour harridan named Gavia. But she could have been the sweetest woman in the world, and it wouldn’t have mattered much. Scolopax had married her because his father made him marry her. He’d always spent more time with his favorites among the guardsmen than with Gavia or any other woman. His current favorites were two stalwart mercenaries from the Therving country, Waccho and Aistulf.
“You never mind me,” Scolopax growled. “You mind the gods.” That wasn’t quite what he’d meant to say. At least, it wasn’t quite how he’d meant to say it. But he was the king. He didn’t have to take anything back. He didn’t have to, and he didn’t.
Megadyptes looked at him with sorrowful eyes. “I do mind the gods, as best I can,” he said. “And I mind the kingdom, as best I can. I did what I did for Avornis’ sake.”
“Avornis is mine!” Scolopax shouted.
“For now, Your Majesty,” Arch-Hallow Megadyptes said calmly. “For now.”
“Mine!” Scolopax yelled again, even louder than before— loud enough to bring those echoes from the ceiling. But even that wasn’t enough for him. He sprang down from the throne, seized Megadyptes’ long white beard with both hands, and yanked with all his strength. The Arch-Hallow of Avornis let out a piteous wail of pain. Scolopax yanked again. “You are deposed!” he cried. “Get out, you wretch, before I give you worse!”
Tufts of Megadyptes’ beard, like bits of wool, fluttered out from between the king’s fingers and down to the floor. The arch-hallow’s cheeks and chin began to bleed. “I will pray for you, Your Majesty,” he said.
Courtiers and servants looked this way and that—every way but at King Scolopax. The king was too furious to notice, or to care. “Get out!” he screamed. Megadyptes bowed once more, and departed. An enormous silence settled over the throne room once he had gone.
Later that day, Aistulf told Scolopax, “Don’t worry about it, Your Majesty. You did the right thing. Whatever you want to do, it is the right thing.” The guardsman was tall and blond and muscular and handsome, with a bristling mustache and a chin shaved naked. Scolopax found that most exciting.
“Of course I did,” the king answered. “How could I do anything else?”
And when Scolopax slept that night, he saw in his dreams a supremely handsome face studying him. The face was splendid enough to make even Aistulf (even Waccho, who was handsomer still) seem insipid—but cold, cold. Scolopax stirred and muttered. Something in those eyes… Then the watcher murmured, “Well done,” and smiled. That should have made the king feel better. Somehow, it only made things worse.
Lanius recited the alphabet perfectly. His tutor beamed, “That’s very fine,” the man said. “Now, can you write it for me, too?”
“Of course I can.” Lanius hardly bothered hiding his scorn.
“Can you?” The tutor was brand new in the palace. He’d spent the last several years trying to educate the sons of the nobility, most of whom were as resistant to learning as a cesspit cleaner’s children were to disease. To find a pupil not only willing but eager felt like something close to a miracle. He pulled pen and ink and parchment from his wallet. “Show me.”
“I will.” And Lanius did. As soon as he took hold of the pen, the tutor knew he told the truth. His letters staggered and limped as much as any five-year-old’s, but they were all properly shaped. “There!”
“That’s… very good indeed,” the tutor said.
No one had praised Lanius since his father died and his mother went away. It went straight to his head, as wine would have in a grown man. “I can do more than that,” he said. “I can write words, too.”
“Oh, you can, can you?” Again, the tutor had trouble believing him. He was a solemn child, small for his age, with eyes as big in his face as a kitten’s. When he nodded, he showed disconcerting wisdom. The tutor said, “Well, why don’t you let me see that, too?”
I want my mother to come back to the palace. I miss her, Lanius wrote. Again, the letters were of a child. The thought behind them was simple, but how many children his age could have put it forth so accurately? Not many, and the tutor knew it full well.
“You really can write!” he exclaimed. “That’s wonderful!”
Again, Lanius blossomed with the praise. But then he looked at the tutor once more with those eyes wise beyond his years. “If I already know these things,” he asked, “why do I need you?”
The tutor coughed. However arrogant the question, he thought he’d better give it a serious answer. “Well, for one thing, you know a lot—an amazing lot—but I still know more.”
Lanius wasn’t at all sure he believed that. He asked, “What else?”
Now the tutor laughed. “For another, Your Highness, if I go away, who will tell you how clever you are?”
“You’re right,” Lanius said at once. “You must stay.” The tutor had praised him. If he could get praise for being clever, he would show the man he was very clever indeed. “Teach me!”
“I… will.” No one had ever spoken to the tutor with such urgency. “What would you like to learn?”
“Anything. Everything! Teach me. I’ll learn it. Where do we start?”
Lanius seemed desperate, like a drowning man grabbing for a spar. The tutor could no more help responding to such eagerness to learn than he could have helped responding to a pretty girl’s different eagerness in bed. “Your Highness,” he said, “I’ll do everything I can for you.”
“Just teach me,” Lanius told him.
Grus was glad to get out of the city of Avornis. He wished he could have gotten his family out of the capital, too. He didn’t like the way people were choosing between Arch-Hallow Bucco and former arch-hallow Megadyptes. That also meant they were choosing sides about whether Lanius was a bastard or King Mergus’ legitimate son—and so the likely heir and possible rival to King Scolopax. No matter how it ended, it would be messy.
Thanks to his victories over the Menteshe, Grus had been promoted to commodore—a captain commanding a whole flotilla. Nicator, his lieutenant aboard the Tigerfish in days gone by, now commanded Grus’ flagship. “That last one will take care of itself,” Nicator told him when he grumbled as the flotilla stopped in the town of Veteres one evening.
“How?” Grus asked. “Either you’re for one of ’em or the other. You can’t very well be for both, and nobody’s about to change sides.”
“I know, I know,” Nicator said patiently. “But Megadyptes is such a holy old geezer, he’s got to fall over dead one day soon. Then everybody will be for Bucco, on account of what choice will they have?”
“The people who follow Megadyptes will make a party, that’s what. They’ll say Scolopax never should have thrown him out, the way people were saying Mergus never should have thrown Bucco out. They’ll riot—you wait and see if they don’t.”
“And Scolopax’ll turn soldiers loose on ’em, and that’ll be the end of that.” Nicator saw the world in very simple terms.
“Well… maybe.” Grus didn’t think things were so simple, but he didn’t feel like arguing with his friend, either. He set a silver groat on the tavern table in front of him and rose to his feet. “Come on. Let’s get back to the ships.”
“Right,” Nicator said. “I’m with you.”
Veteres lay on the upper reaches of the Tuola River, heading up toward the foothills of the Bantian Mountains. River galleys couldn’t go much farther west. Some of the hill country beyond the Tuola belonged to Avornis. As in the south, the kingdom had once held more land. Over the past few years, though, King Dagipert and the Thervings ruled what had been western provinces of Avornis.
A couple of Thervings led a string of hill ponies through the streets of Veteres toward the market square. They were big, broad-shouldered men, bigger than most Avornans. They wore their fair hair down to their shoulders, but shaved their chins. Grus thought that looked silly. Foreigners had all kinds of odd notions. There was nothing silly about the sword on one Therving’s hip, though, or about the battle-ax the other one carried. Grus kept his mouth shut. Avornis and Thervingia weren’t at war—now.
Nicator muttered, “Miserable bastards.” But he made sure the Thervings didn’t hear him.
Down by the riverside, three or four more Thervings strode along the bank from one pier to the next. Their eyes were on Grus’ flotilla, so much so that they didn’t even notice Nicator and him coming up behind them. Pleasantly, Grus asked, “Help you with something?”
The big men jumped. One of them spoke in slow, accented Avornan. “We are just—how you say?—taking the air. Yes.” He nodded. “Taking the air.”
“That’s nice,” Commodore Grus said, still pleasantly. “Why don’t you take it somewhere else?”
He didn’t put his hand anywhere near his own sword. The Thervings could have given him and Nicator a hard time before more Avornans came to help. They didn’t. They went and took the air somewhere else. “Spies,” Nicator said.
“What else would you expect?” Grus said blandly.
Nicator pointed to a warehouse roof pole that stuck out from the building for some little distance. “We ought to hang them right there,” he said.
“Why?” Grus asked.
Nicator stared at him. “Olor’s throne, man!” he said. “We hang them because they’re spies.”
“But they’re very bad spies,” Grus said. “If we do hang them, King Dagipert will only send more, and the new ones may know what they’re doing.”
After chewing on that for close to a minute, Nicator finally decided to laugh. He said, “You’re a funny fellow, Skipper.”
Now it was Grus’ turn to be puzzled. “But I wasn’t joking,” he said.
With another man, or another pair of men, that might have started an argument, even a fight. Grus and Nicator ended up laughing about it. They got along even when they disagreed.
No bridges spanned the Tuola. A long time ago, when Avornis was stronger, there had been some. After the Thervings came, the Avoraans wrecked them—why make invasion easier? The Thervings found it easy enough even without bridges. It was still the custom, though, for Therving embassies to come down to the Tuola where the ruined end of a bridge still projected six or eight feet into the water. In the old days, embassies had crossed by that bridge. The custom had outlived the span.
A flag of truce flew above the embassy. Grus studied the Thervings from the deck of his river galley—an ambassador with a gold chain of office around his neck, a wizard, half a dozen guards. An Avornan embassy would have included a secretary, too, but not many Thervings knew how to write.
“Who are you? What do you want? Why do you come into Avornis?” Grus called. As the highest-ranking Avornan present, he asked the formal questions.
“I am Zangrulf,” the ambassador answered in good Avornan. “I come from King Dagipert, the mighty, the terrible, to King Scolopax to talk about renewing the tribute Avornis pays to Thervingia.”
Grus sighed. Most of him wished his kingdom didn’t pay tribute to the Thervings, even if it was cheaper than fighting. But, from what he’d heard and seen of Scolopax, he didn’t like the idea of his going to war against a sly old fox like Dagipert. “I will send a boat,” he said. “Then I will take you to Veteres, and you can go to the city of Avornis on the royal highway.”
Zangrulf and the wizard put their heads together. The ambassador waved out to the river galley. “I agree. Make it so.”
He had no business giving Grus orders, but Grus kept quiet. Thervings always acted as though they owned the world. The boat went to the riverbank. It wasn’t a big boat, and needed two trips to bring the whole embassy back to the galley. Zangrulf’s wizard came in the second trip.
Except for two rings in the shape of snakes—one silver, one gold—he wore on his little fingers, he looked like any other Therving: big, fair, long-haired, smooth-chinned. But his eyes—clever eyes—narrowed when he looked at Grus. Then he looked a little longer, and those clever eyes went wide. He spoke in Thervingian to Zangrulf.
The ambassador looked at Grus, too. He said, “Aldo says you are a great man.”
“Tell him thank you,” Grus answered, smiling. “Except for my wife, he’s the only one who seems to think so.”
He also evidently followed Avornan, though he chose not to use it with Zangrulf. King Dagipert’s envoy spoke for him once more. “He also says you will be an even greater man, if you live.”
“Does he?” Grus wondered exactly what that was supposed to mean. “Well, I’m likelier to be a greater man if I live than if I don’t.”
Zangrulf chuckled. Aldo didn’t. Again, he spoke in Thervingian. Again, the ambassador translated. “He says yes, that is true. But he also says there are men, and more than men, who will not want you to live. He says, beware.”
Grus started to answer that with another joke. The words stuck in his throat. It had been years since the Banished One appeared in his dreams, but he’d never forgotten—however much he wished he could.
Prince Lanius bowed to his tutor as a peasant might have bowed to the King of Avornis. “Please!” the prince said. “I’ll work twice as hard tomorrow if you let me see the Thervings today!”
He’d had to learn flattery. Some of his lessons said that people flattered princes, not the other way round. Maybe that was true for other princes. It wasn’t true for Lanius.
His tutor didn’t answer right away. The man plucked at his beard, thinking things over. At last, he said, “Let me ask His Majesty’s chamberlains. It’s not really up to me. It’s up to the king.”
Hope died in Lanius. “He won’t let me. He never lets me do anything I want. He won’t even let me see my mama.” He’d just lost his first tooth. His tongue kept exploring the hole where it had been. Once there, now gone. Having Queen Certhia banished from the palace left the same sort of hole in his life. He would grow a new tooth. How could he grow a new mother?
“Let me ask,” the tutor said again. “You are King Scolopax’s heir, after all.” That meant little to Lanius. From everything he’d seen, it also meant little to Scolopax. But when the tutor came back, he was smiling. “It’s all arranged. You can do it. You have to put on your fancy robe and your coronet, but you can do it.”
“Oh, thank you!” Lanius cried. The robe, heavy with gold thread, made his skinny shoulders sag and hurt from its weight. The coronet was too small for him, and most uncomfortable. He didn’t care. Getting something he really wanted didn’t happen very often. He intended to enjoy it as much as he could.
He had a place not far from the throne, across the aisle from Arch-Hallow Bucco. Even that couldn’t rain his day, although the arch-hallow kept glaring at him as though he had no right to exist.
King Scolopax sat impassive on the sparkling Diamond Throne. His robes, of cloth-of-gold, put Lanius’ to shame. His golden crown, set with rubies and sapphires and emeralds, was far heavier than Lanius’ coronet. His expression might have been regal calm. On the other hand, he might have been slightly sozzled.
But then Lanius forgot all about his uncle, the king. Here came the Thervings. Their ambassador wore a fur jacket, leather trousers, and boots that clomped on the marble throne-room floor. Avornan soldiers in gilded chain-mail shirts surrounded him and his companions. Lanius wished they would go away. They made it hard for him to see the Thervings.
A herald bawled out the ambassador’s name—Zangrulf. He bowed very low to King Scolopax. The other Thervings, the ones who served the ambassador, bowed lower still. Lanius wanted to imitate them. Only the thought that he would probably get a spanking if he did made him hold still.
“Avornis has paid tribute to Thervingia for many years,” the ambassador said in fluent if accented Avornan. “The last treaty for the tribute is going to expire. King Dagipert expects you to renew it at the same rate.”
Behind Lanius, his tutor, dressed in a robe so fine it was surely borrowed, let out a soft hiss of anger. “He bargains over kingdoms the way an old woman in the vegetable market bargains over beets.”
Lanius hardly heard him. He was watching his uncle, up there on the Diamond Throne. Scolopax looked every inch a king. He sat hardly moving, staring down at the Therving ambassador like a god looking down on creatures some other, clumsier, deity had made. When Zangrulf finished, Scolopax deigned to speak one word: “No.”
At that one word, whispers almost too soft to hear raced through the throne room. Lanius felt the surprise and excitement, though he didn’t know what they meant. Zangrulf spelled that out for him like his tutor spelling out a new, hard word. “If you refuse, Your Majesty, King Dagipert will be within his rights to go to war against you, to go to war against Avornis.”
Those whispers raced through the throne room again. This time, they had a little more weight to them. This time, too, that one word was loud even in the quiet. War.
“No,” King Scolopax repeated. “That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant. You can tell it to your precious king, or to anyone else you please.”
“Think twice, Your Majesty,” Zangrulf said. “Think three times. King Dagipert is fierce, and dangerous to anger. The armies of Thervingia are brave, and ready for battle. King Mergus did not refuse us. He—”
Lanius could have told the Therving that mentioning his father was not the way to get his uncle to go in a direction he wanted. He could have told that to Zangrulf, but he never got the chance. King Scolopax did it for him. When Scolopax said “No!” this time, he shouted the word out at the top of his lungs. Then he pointed to the door. “Get out!” he yelled. “Get out, and be happy you still keep your head on your shoulders. Get out!”
As though the embassy had gone just the way he’d hoped, Zangrulf bowed again. So did his retainers. They turned and trooped out of the throne room. The Avornan guards surrounded them, as they had before. Lanius wanted to clap his hands. All through his life, he would love a parade.
“He did what?” Commodore Grus said when news of the fiasco in the throne room got to Veteres.
“He turned down Dagipert’s ambassador,” said the man with the news. “Turned him down flat, by the gods.”
Grus gulped his wine. “Now what? Is it war with the Thervings?”
“It had better not be war,” Nicator exclaimed. “If it is, how do we fight it? We haven’t got enough soldiers, and we haven’t got enough river galleys, either.”
“You know that,” Grus said. “I know that. Why doesn’t King Scolopax know that?”
“Beats me.” Nicator drained his mug and waved to the barmaid for another. “He’s king, after all. He’s supposed to know things like that. He’s supposed to know everything that’s going on in Avornis.”
“I should say so,” Grus exclaimed. “I know everything that’s going on in my flotilla—that’s my job. The whole kingdom is his job.”
“There’s a certain kind of captain who doesn’t think that way,” Nicator said. “You know the kind I mean. He’ll say ‘Do this. Do that. Do the other thing,’ but he won’t bother to find out if you’ve got the men or the gear or the money or the time to carry out his orders. That’s not his worry—it’s yours. But then you get the blame if what he says turns out to be impossible.”
Grus nodded. “Oh, yes. I know officers like that. I run them out of my service just as fast as I can.”
“I know you do, skipper,” Captain Nicator said. “A lot of buggers like that, though—they’re nobles, and they’re not so easy to get rid of.”
“Don’t remind me,” Grus said. He’d come as far as he had because he’d proved he was good at what he did. Nobles who’d gotten their posts because of who their grandfathers were had to obey his orders. That didn’t keep them from looking down their noses at him.
The barmaid came over to the table with a pitcher of wine. She filled Nicator’s mug. Grus shoved his across the table toward her. She poured it full, too.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Nicator said, and patted her on the bottom.
She drew back. “You can buy the wine,” she said, “and I’ll be glad to see your silver. But you can cursed well keep your hands to yourself. That’s not for sale. If I could line up all the bastards who make filthy jokes about barmaids so I could swing a sword once and take off all their empty heads, I’d do it.” She stomped away.
“Whew!” Nicator said, and took a long pull at his mug. “She had steam coming out of her ears, didn’t she?”
“Just a little,” Grus answered. “I think I’m going to keep my mouth shut for about the next ten years.” He’d been known to make jokes about barmaids. He’d been known to do more than joke. He had a bastard boy down in Anxa. Every quarter, he sent gold to the boy’s mother. Estrilda knew about that. She’d given him her detailed opinion of it when she found out, but she’d eventually forgiven him. Grus shook his head. That wasn’t true. She hadn’t forgiven him, but she had decided to stop beating him over the head.
Three days passed before Zangrulf the Therving arrived on his return journey to King Dagipert. Escorting his party was an Avornan officer named Corvus, a fellow whose gilded armor, fancy horse, and supercilious expression said he had more land and more money than he knew what to do with. “Take these nasty fellows over the river,” he told Grus, an aristocratic sneer in his voice. “We’re well rid of them, believe me.”
Zangrulf wasn’t supposed to hear that, but he did. He looked down his nose at Corvus. “We’ll be back one day soon,” he said. “See how you like us then.”
The Avornan nobleman turned red. “I’m not afraid of you,” he said. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Stupid twit,” Captain Nicator said in a low voice. Grus nodded.
Aldo the wizard came up to Zangrulf and muttered something in the Thervings’ tongue. Zangrulf laughed out loud. Pointing at Corvus, he said, “He tells me you’ll get just what you deserve.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” Corvus’ hand fell to the hilt of his sword. “Tell him to keep his stinking mouth shut, or I’ll give him just what he deserves.”
“I’ll take you and your men across the river,” Grus said to Zangrulf, before a war broke out on the spot. King Dagipert’s ambassador nodded. All the way back to the ruined bridge, though, Aldo kept looking first at Grus, then back toward Corvus. He kept laughing, too.
King Scolopax celebrated his third year on the throne with a party that lasted for eight days. He hated Mergus more than ever, for depriving him of this pleasure for so long. He’d spent too much of his life doing what Mergus told him to do. Now he was king, and everyone—everyone!—had to do as he said.
In fact, only one thing still troubled him a little. “I wish I had a proper heir, an heir of my own body,” he complained to Aistulf one day. “That horrid wart Lanius gives me the shivers. His pointed little nose is always in one book or another, and he’s Mergus‘, not mine.”
“An heir of your own body?” the king’s favorite murmured. “Well, there is a way to arrange that, you know, or at least to try.”
Stroking him, Scolopax shook his head. “Not for me, or so it seems. I do try every now and again—by the gods, every wench in the palace throws herself at me these days—but I don’t rise to the occasion.”
“Too bad, Your Majesty,” Aistulf said. “Women can be fun, too.”
“I’ve got you, and I’ve got Waccho,” King Scolopax said. “If I had any more fun, I’d fall over.” Aistulf laughed. These days, everyone laughed when Scolopax made a joke. The king went on, “Besides, that wart won’t put his scrawny little backside on the throne till after I’m dead, and I don’t expect I’ll care about it then.”
“That’s so,” Aistulf agreed. Everyone agreed with Scolopax these days. He liked that, too.
He said, “Shall we go out to the meadow and knock the ball around?” He was an avid polo player. Considering his years and thick belly, he was a pretty good one, too.
“Whatever you like, Your Majesty,” Aistulf said. Polo wasn’t high on his list, or on Waccho’s. But keeping Scolopax happy was.
“Yes,” the king said—happily. “Whatever I like.”
Before long, he was galloping across the meadow, wild as a Menteshe nomad. The cavalrymen who rode with him and his favorites played hard. Scolopax couldn’t be bothered with running Avornis—the Thervings had been ravaging the west for a year now, and he had yet to send much of a force against them; that was what he had generals for, after all—but polo was different. Polo was important. No one who thought otherwise got to play with the king twice.
His horse thundered past his last opponent. He swung his mallet with the power of a man half his age. The mallet caught the ball exactly as he’d wanted. He couldn’t have aimed it any better if he’d rolled it into the net. “Goal!” he shouted joyously, and threw his arms up in triumph.
“Well shot, Your Majesty,” said the defender he’d beaten.
“A perfect shot, Your Majesty,” said Aistulf, who didn’t want anyone but himself—and perhaps Waccho—flattering the king.
And then, quite without his bidding it, Scolopax’s mallet slipped from his fingers and fell to the trampled meadow. He swayed in the saddle. He tried to bring up his right hand to rub at his forehead, but it didn’t want to obey him. He used his left instead. He swayed again, and almost fell.
“Are you all right, Your Majesty?” Aistulf asked.
“I have a terrific headache,” Scolopax answered. His whole right side seemed numb—no, not numb, but as though he had no right side at all. He couldn’t keep his balance. Slowly, he slid off the horse. He gazed up at the sky in mild surprise, the smell of dirt and grass in his nostrils.
“Your Majesty!” Aistulf shouted, and then, “Quick! Go fetch a healer!”
Scolopax heard someone galloping away. He hardly noticed, for he saw, or thought he saw, a face full of cold, cold beauty staring down at him. “Too bad,” the Banished One said. “Oh, too bad. And I had such hopes for you.” Scolopax tried to answer, but couldn’t. Though it was noontime, the sky grew dark. Very, very soon, it grew black.