The Bastard King (30 page)

Alca frowned. "I can try, Your Majesty, but that's not an easy sorcery to bring off. And I could make mistakes. Sometimes someone can be unhappy with you without being a traitor. The spell I'd use would - or could, anyhow - find both kinds of people."

"I see." Grus nodded, less happily than he might have. "How about this? Can your magic find someone who really hates me and is hiding that, and tell him from someone who's just unhappy with me, from somebody who might or might not be disloyal?"

"Maybe." Alca sounded dubious. "I can try."

"I'll tell you what," Grus said. "Run the test on King Lanius first. He hides it pretty well for someone so young, but I know he doesn't love me and he never will."

"All right." Alca looked startled. "You're taking a certain chance, you know, depending on how
I
feel about you."

"You saved me once," Grus said.

"Ah, but you weren't a usurper then," the witch answered. "You were an officer the kingdom needed. Now you're someone who's put the ancient dynasty in the shade."

Grus studied her. If she'd been startled, he was astonished. "If you think I did that to the dynasty, what am I liable to do to someone who has the nerve to call me on it?"

Alca didn't flinch. "For one thing, I did save you, no matter why. I think you have honor enough to spare me on account of that. And if you don't... well, even kings ought to think twice before they strike at witches. Witches have ways of taking vengeance ordinary mortals don't."

"That might do me harm," Grus said, "but it wouldn't do you any good."

"True." Alca surprised him again, this time by smiling. "I am not an ordinary mortal, but I am a mortal. Witches are. Wizards are. So are kings."

"Test your spell on Lanius, as I said," Grus told her. "I don't punish people for speaking their minds to me, but I do want to know if they know what they're doing."

"If I didn't know what I was doing, why would you want me working any sort of magic for you?" Alca asked.

Grus laughed. "You don't know Turnix, the wizard who served with me when I was a river-galley skipper."

"Oh, but I do!" Alca said. "He isn't that bad a wizard." She stopped short of suggesting he was a good one. She was better, and they both knew it. Grus waved his hands, yielding the point. Alca asked, "Does it matter to you whether Lanius knows I'm testing him?"

"Go ahead and tell him," Grus answered. "I think he knows I know what he thinks of me." He listened to what he'd just said. "Did that come out right?"

"I think so," Alca said. "All right, Your Majesty. I'll attend to it."

Lanius stared at the bright-eyed witch. "You want to work
what
kind of magic on me?" he said.

"One that will measure the strength of a spell to detect dislike and disloyalty toward King Grus," Alca said again.

One that would give Grus an excuse for getting rid of me,
Lanius thought. "You wouldn't find anything," he said. "How can I dislike King Grus when I'm married to his daughter?" He was sure his life was at stake here.
If Grus can claim I'm plotting against him, he'll dispose of me as fast as he can.

"You misunderstand, Your Majesty," Alca told him. "King Grus told me he already has an idea of your feelings, and won't worry about what they are. All he cares about is using them to measure the way the spell works."

"He told you that, did he?" Lanius said suspiciously.

Alca nodded. "He did."

"Well, regardless of whether he told you that or not, why should I believe it?" Lanius demanded.

"May I speak frankly, Your Majesty?"

"Why not?" Lanius didn't bother trying to hide his bitterness. "It's not as though I can do anything to you any which way." He eyed the witch. She wasn't far from his mother's age, and seemed nice enough. A few years before, that would have made him want to trust her. Now it made him more suspicious than ever; he wondered whether Grus had chosen her to lull him into a false sense of safety.

But then she said, "Even so, Your Majesty. And Grus would need no special excuse to get rid of you ... if he wanted to do that. He could do it, and then give out whatever reason he chose after he had. Am I right or am I wrong?"

No one, not even Grus, had ever spelled out Lanius' helplessness quite that way before. Now, all at once, Lanius began to think he would hear truth from this woman. He said, "You tell me he will only use what you learn here to go after enemies he doesn't already know about?"

Alca nodded once more. "That is exactly what I tell you. Ask King Grus, if you like, and he will tell you the same."

"Never mind," Lanius said. "The point is, I believe you. Go ahead. Make your magic."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Alca said. "I'll be back directly, then. I need to bring a few things here."

The spell proved much more formidable than Lanius had expected. The witch peered at him through peacock feathers, and through what looked like picture frames first of horn and then of ivory, while she chanted and made passes. She had a couple of retorts bubbling over braziers during the spell. One of them sent up yellowish smoke, the other reddish. Lanius expected to smell the sweetness of incense, but the odors that reached his nose were harsher, more acrid. He coughed once or twice.

Alca's chant rose and fell, rose and fell. The spell took longer than Lanius had thought it would, too. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and said, "It doesn't
have
to be this showy, does it?"

"I don't know what you mean, Your Majesty," Alca said when she found a moment to pause in her enchanting.

"I think you do," he said. "I think you're making this magic fancy on purpose, to overawe the people you aim it at."

She paused. Her eyes gleamed as she peered at him in a new and thoughtful way. He wasn't sure he wanted anybody looking at him like that, but realized he'd invited it. After that long, thoughtful silence, she said, "You see through things, don't you?"

"You mean, the way a wizard sees through things?" Lanius shook his head. "I have no gift along those lines. I wish I did."

Alca shook her head. "No, that isn't what I meant, Your Majesty," she answered. "I can tell you will never make a wizard, yes. But what of that? A man who is learned and wise sees through things in his own way, too."

"Do you think so?" Lanius won praise so seldom, he wanted to blossom like a flower in sunlight when he did. But praise also made him suspicious. He was King of Avornis, after all. What did someone who flattered him want?

If the witch wanted anything from him, she hid it very well. "I do, Your Majesty," she answered, and then said, "And now, if you'll excuse me ..." When Lanius didn't say no, she packed up her sorcerous apparatus and left without another word.

King Grus stood before his assembled captains and couriers in the square in front of the palace, Alca the witch at his side. He bowed to her as to an intimate friend. She dropped him a fine curtsy in return. He spoke with unusual formality to the men through whom he ran Avornis. "Alca is an extraordinary woman, and has served me extraordinarily well. Not only did she save my life when foul wizardry beset me, but, through her own rare magical talent, she has found a perfect way for me to test the hearts of those in my command, and to know exactly who is in the pay of the Thervings, or of Corvus and Corax the traitors ... or of the Banished One."

Alca stirred beside him when he said that. "Your Majesty, when a mortal pits his sorceries against those of the Banished One, he usually loses," she whispered. "You shouldn't tell them that I - "

"Hush," he said, also quietly. "You may know I'm not telling the whole truth, but they don't, do they?"

"Ah." Ever so slightly, the witch's eyes widened. Still speaking in that tiny whisper, she went on, "You're sneakier than I thought."

With a bland smile, Grus answered, "Me? Sneaky? I haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about." Alca rewarded him with a noise halfway between a snort and a snicker. She knew him well enough not to take that too seriously.

His officers and ministers, on the other hand ... Looking as regal as he could, Grus stared out at them. His face might have been carved from marble, like the relief portraits of long-dead Kings of Avornis set into the palace walls as decoration - and perhaps to intimidate the kings who came after them.

The men's faces were livelier and more interesting. Some of them, like Nicator, looked delighted that he could sniff out enemies with the witch's help. Others, like Lepturus, showed little - but then, Lepturus never showed much. Three or four tried to look delighted and ended up looking bilious instead. A couple seemed angry.
Angry that I presume to spy on their thoughts, or angry that I might discover their treason?
Grus wondered. And one or two looked terrified. The king knew that didn't necessarily prove anything, but noted who they were even so.

"Before long, Alca will call in each of you and work her magic," he said. "And we will go on and beat our foes. For now, my friends, you're dismissed." He waved, as though shooing them out of the square.

In a low voice, Alca said, "You know, Your Majesty, you might be able to get the same result if I knew no magic at all. So long as those people think I know what's in their hearts, they'll behave as though I really do."

"Yes, that occurred to me," Grus answered. "We'll go on from here, and we'll see what happens next."

What happened next was that two ministers and three officers slipped out of the city of Avornis. Grus wasn't surprised to hear they'd surfaced with Corvus. He was a little surprised when one of Arch-Hallow Bucco's aides disappeared from the capital. So, by all appearances, was Bucco. "I never thought the man anything but a hard-working, holy priest," the arch-hallow said.

"I believe you," Grus told him. "Just to be on the safe side, though, I'd like you to let Alca test you with her spell."

"You cannot doubt
me,
Your Majesty!" Bucco exclaimed. "After all, I put the crown on your head."

"And you would have put it on Corvus', if he hadn't made a hash of his chance," Grus answered. "We both know that's true, don't we? So I had better find out what's in your heart."

He didn't say what he would do if Bucco refused to let the witch use her wizardry. He didn't have to say anything. Letting Bucco draw his own pictures worked much better. Several men had fled before Alca could see their secrets. The arch-hallow didn't. He went to his sorcerous appointment with the air of a cat going into a washtub, but he went. When he and the witch emerged, Alca said, "He is tolerably loyal to Your Majesty."

"Good," Grus said heartily. "I expected nothing else."

That made Bucco bristle. "If you expected nothing else, why did you put me through that humiliating ordeal?"

Grus' smile seemed to show as many teeth as a moncat's. "Because what you don't expect can hurt you worse than what you do." Bucco bowed stiffly and left the palace as fast as his old legs would carry him.

"Whom shall I examine next, Your Majesty?" Alca asked.

The smile Grus gave her was of a different sort. "For the time being, I think you can let your spell rest. If you use it too often, you're liable to cause more disloyalty than you root out."

She nodded. "I knew that. I wasn't sure you did."

"Oh, yes," Grus said. "Oh, yes, indeed."

"Do you mind if I ask you something?" Lanius said to Sosia.

"Mind? Why should I mind?" she answered. "You're my husband."

Things weren't quite so simple. Lanius knew as much. He was sure she did, too. Even so, he asked, "Do you know why your brother" - he didn't want to call Ortalis
Prince Ortalis,
but didn't dare leave off the title when speaking of him by name, either - "has that bandage on his right hand?"

"I don't
know,
no," Sosia said. "But I don't think he had it before he went into the room where you keep Iron these days."

Ice walked up Lanius' back. "That's what I thought, too. But Iron's still all right. I bet it bit him or scratched him before he could hurt it. What am I going to do?"

"Talk to my father," she said at once. "If anyone can put a stop to it for a while, he can."

It wasn't a long answer. Still, Lanius had seldom heard one that gave him more to chew on. That
for a while
was truly frightening. But so was the prospect of talking to King Grus. "Why should he do anything at all?" Lanius asked bitterly. "Ortalis ... Prince Ortalis is his son. I'm just... me."

"Oh, he knows about Ortalis," Sosia said. "He's known about Ortalis and animals for a long time. He can make Ortalis fear the gods ... for a while. I don't think anyone can make Ortalis do any more than that. It's like he has a demon inside, and every so often it comes out - or maybe more like he has a hole inside himself, and every so often he falls into it. If you want to keep the moncats safe, you'd better talk to my father."

Where nothing else would have, that did it. More than anything else, Lanius did want to make sure the moncats stayed safe. And so, nervously, he spoke to Grus. To his surprise, the man who'd stolen part of his throne and all of his power heard him out. The more Grus heard, the colder and harder his face got. When Lanius finished, Grus said, "Thanks for telling me. Don't worry about the beasts. He won't bother them again."

"How will you stop him?" Lanius asked. "What will you do?"

"Whatever I have to," Grus said grimly. For the first time, Lanius began to believe Sosia had known what she was talking about.

The next time he saw Prince Ortalis, his brother-in-law scuttled out of his way. Ortalis moved as though in some little pain, or perhaps some not so little. And he stayed away from the rooms where the moncats lived for a long time afterward. There, at least, Grus kept his promise.

Colonel Hirundo watched King Grus with more than a little amusement. Grus' mount was a bay gelding calm as a pond on a breezeless day, but the king clutched the reins and gripped the horse with his knees as though afraid of falling at any moment - which he was. "Meaning no offense, Your Majesty, but you'll never make a horseman," Hirundo remarked.