The Bastard King (45 page)

Having thought about it, he eyed Grus with a good deal more respect. He himself took the kingship for granted. Why not, when he was the dozenth of his line to hold it? But to Grus, gaining the crown had to feel like climbing a mountain covered with nails and thorns and nettles. And yet he hadn't murdered his way to the throne. He hadn't slain Lanius, and he hadn't even slain Lanius' mother, who'd done her best to kill him.

"Thank you," Lanius said suddenly, out of the blue.

Grus looked back at him as though knowing exactly what he was thinking. And maybe the older man did, for he nodded, set a hand on Lanius' shoulder, and said, "You're welcome." Lanius nodded back. He still wasn't sure he would ever like his overbearing father-in-law, but the beginning of understanding brought with it the beginning of respect.

The peasant bowed low before King Grus. He looked nervous. In fact, he looked scared to death, as any peasant coming before the King of Avornis was liable to look. "It's all right, Dacelo," Grus reassured him. "By King Olor's beard, I promise nothing will happen to you, regardless of whether I decide to do anything to your baron. But I want to hear from your own lips what Fuscus is up to."

"All right," Dacelo said, his tone suggesting it was anything but. "He's buying up our plots of land on the cheap, turning us from freeholders into his tenants. Some men let him, and sell out. Some hold their land as long as they can. And some, like me, figure it's no good either way there and try to make our living somewhere else."

"That's why you came to the city of Avornis?" Grus asked.

"Sure is, sir," Dacelo answered. A secretary taking notes of the conversation coughed. Dacelo turned red. "Uh, Your Majesty," he amended.

"It's all right." Here, Grus was more interested in finding out what was going on than in standing on ceremony. "You know Baron Fuscus was breaking the law I put out after Corvus and Corax rebelled against me?"

Dacelo nodded. "Yes, sir - Your Majesty." He caught himself this time.

"Did anyone in his barony point this out to him?" Grus asked.

"One fellow did," Dacelo replied, and then, after a pregnant pause, "He's dead now."

"Is that so?" the king said, and the peasant nodded again. Grus scowled. "I don't like seeing my laws flouted. Do you suppose Baron Fuscus breaks them because he thinks I don't mean them, or just because he thinks they're wrong?"

"Sir, I think he breaks'em because he thinks he can get away with it," Dacelo said.

"I think you're dead right, Dacelo," Grus said. "And I think I'm going to have to show Baron Fuscus he's dead wrong."

Despite his bold words, he didn't want to start another civil war on the heels of the last one. He reflected on the old saw about different ways to kill flies, and sent Fuscus an elaborately formal invitation to the royal palace "so that I might gain the benefit of your wisdom."

"Why on earth are you telling him that?" King Lanius demanded. "You don't care what he thinks. You only want to land on him with both feet."

Grus smiled. In a way, seeing his fellow king so naive was reassuring. He wondered whether explaining would be wise. In the end, he decided to, and said, "If I tell him I want to land on him with both feet, Your Majesty, he won't come. If I say nice things to him, maybe he will - and
then
I'll land on him."

Once Lanius understood, he nodded. He might be naive, but he was anything but stupid. "I see," he said. "And if he says he won't come after an invitation like that, he's put himself in the wrong and declared that he's a rebel."

"Just so." Grus nodded, too.

And Baron Fuscus not only came to the city of Avornis, he brought his whole family with him. They rented a large house near the royal palace, as though Fuscus had not the smallest doubt that Grus would want his advice for a long time to come. He had a few bodyguards with him, but only a few, and he left them behind when Grus summoned him to the palace.

"At your service, Your Majesty," Fuscus said after making his bows. He was in his early forties - not far from Grus' age - with a handsome, fleshy face and an unconscious arrogance about him. "You tell me what needs doing, and I'll tell you how to do it." By the way he made it sound, Grus had no hope of doing anything without him.

Hiding annoyance, Grus said, "Well, one problem I have is getting the nobles in the provinces to pay their taxes and to leave their farmers alone."

"Yes, they're a wicked lot, aren't they?" Fuscus said.

"Some of them are," Grus agreed. "You know, I've made laws against that sort of thing."

"Laws are no good," Fuscus told him. "Who pays attention to laws? The weak and the fearful, nobody else. A strong man ignores useless laws and does what he needs - or else what he pleases."

"You enlighten me," Grus said, and Baron Fuscus preened. The king went on, "Is that why
you've
ignored my laws, Your Excellency?"

Fuscus opened his mouth to answer before realizing just what the question was. He looked around. All of a sudden, he seemed to realize he had no guards of his own, and that Grus' men - all of them ex-marines, and thoroughly loyal to their sovereign - surrounded him. His mouth slowly closed.

"You don't say anything," Grus remarked.

"I - I don't really know what you're talking about, Your Majesty." Fuscus no longer sounded so self-assured. He sounded like someone who was lying, and not doing such a good job of it.

"What about the man who reminded you of my laws, the man who's no longer among the living?" Grus asked.

Fuscus went pale. "I still don't know what you're talking about," he said, a little more conviction - or perhaps desperation - in his voice this time.

"I'd like to believe that," Grus said. Fuscus looked relieved. Then Grus continued, "I'd like to, but I can't." He unfolded the parchment on which the secretary had written down Dacelo's charges and read them out in detail, finishing, "What do you have to say about that, Your Excellency?"

"That it's all a pack of lies, Your Majesty," Fuscus declared.

"Then you haven't bought up lands from the farmers around your estates? Then no one who tried not to sell to you suddenly lost his life in strange circumstances?"

"Of course not," the baron said.

"Then if I checked here in the city of Avornis, I wouldn't find any peasants you'd bought out for next to nothing, peasants who sold you their land and came here because they knew something nasty would happen to them if they didn't?" Grus persisted. "I wouldn't find anybody else who knew about this fellow who was murdered by ruffians?"

"That's what I'm telling you," Baron Fuscus said.

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" Grus pulled out more parchments. "But just because you say it doesn't make it so. Here is the testimony of three farmers from your barony, men you bought out in the past six months. They say you did do what you say you didn't. I've had wizards check what they say, too. The wizards say they're telling the truth. Shall I have wizards check you, too?"

He wondered whether Fuscus would have the gall to play it out to the bitter end. But the baron glared and shook his head. "No, you've got me, gods curse you," he snarled. "Who would have thought anybody could expect a nobleman to take an idiot law like that seriously? It's not a proper law - more like a bad joke."

"Stealing farmers from the kingdom is a bad joke, Your Excellency. They aren't yours - they're Avornis'," Grus said. "And Avornis is going to keep them. You, on the other hand, are going to the Maze, and so is your family. Generous of you to bring everybody along with you when you came to the city."

Fuscus invited him to do something he wasn't physically able to manage. The deposed baron added, "And see if the next nobleman you invite to the capital is dumb enough to come."

He had a point there, no doubt about it. But King Grus only shrugged. "With you as an example, maybe the rest of the nobles will think I don't issue laws for the sake of making bad jokes." He nodded to his guards. "Take him away."

Off Fuscus went, into captivity. Grus nodded to himself. He might be the son of a guardsman, the grandson of a small farmer. But he was King of Avornis now, regardless of whether the nobles with their old bloodlines and fancy pedigrees liked it or not. And if they thought they could pretend his laws didn't apply to them, he was going to teach them just how wrong they were.

The city of Avornis went through a hard winter, almost as hard as the winter where the Banished One had tried to bring the capital to its knees. The weather was bad enough to make King Lanius suspicious, bad enough to make him mention his suspicions to his father-in-law.

Grus looked thoughtful. "I was down in the south then myself," he said, "so I don't know the details of that. But maybe we ought to find out about this business, eh? I wonder what a wizard or witch would have to say."

"So do I." Lanius nodded. "I think it would be worth knowing."

"Yes, me, too." Grus also nodded. "And I have someone in mind who might be able to tell us."

"Alca the witch?" Lanius asked. When Grus nodded again, he had a startled expression on his face. Smiling to himself, Lanius went on, "She's the one who shut down the spring that kept Corvus' castle drinking, isn't she?"

"How did you know that?" his father-in-law demanded. "You were already on your way back here to the capital by then."

"I know. I found out later," Lanius answered, more than a little smugly. "I like to find out about as much as I can."

"What else did you find out about what Alca and I did there?" King Grus asked.

He sounded ominous. Lanius wondered why. When he tried to make sense of Grus' expression this time, he couldn't. "What else should I have found out?" he inquired.

"Oh, nothing." Grus sounded much too casual to be convincing. But, since Lanius couldn't figure out what he was missing, he saw nothing to do but let it go.

Alca didn't look happy when Lanius and Grus summoned her. "You want me to try to learn whether the Banished One is behind this winter weather?" she said. "I wish you'd give me something else to do. I think I've said this before" - she eyed Grus in a way Lanius couldn't quite fathom - "but mortals who measure themselves against the Banished One's magic often end up wishing they hadn't."

Lanius said, "If he dares to use his magic and we don't dare use ours, how can we hope to stand against him?"

The witch let out a long sigh. "Your Majesty, that is the question that has led many mortals to use magic when they felt they had to. It is also the question that has led many of them to be sorry they did."

"Will you try, or won't you?" Grus asked. "I won't order it of you, but I wish you would - for Avornis' sake." Lanius would have ordered her. He wondered why Grus, usually so hard, declined to do so.

Alca sighed again, a sound more wintry than the freezing wind that moaned around the palace. "For Avornis' sake," she repeated in a gray voice. "Yes, that is a key to undo a witch's locks, isn't it?" Grus stirred, but didn't answer. At last, with another sigh, Alca nodded. "I will see what I can do."

"Thank you," Grus said soberly.

"Yes, thank you," Lanius said. "You may not know how important this is."

The witch looked at him - looked through him. "Your Majesty, you may not know how dangerous this is." She didn't raise her voice. She didn't even sound angry. Lanius' cheeks and ears heated, even so. He hadn't been dismissed like that since he was a very little boy. Turning to Grus, Alca asked, "May I be as indirect as I possibly can, Your Majesty? The less of myself I show, the better my chances of living to work some other wizardry one day."

"As you think best, of course," Grus answered. "I don't want your blood on my hands - you know that."

"Do I?" Alca said, still in those gray tones. But then she nodded once more. "Yes, I suppose that's true. If you wanted it, you've had plenty of excuses to take it."

Lanius looked from one of them to the other. They knew what they were talking about, and he didn't. They knew, and spoke obliquely so he wouldn't. He asked Alca, "How soon will you be able to cast your spell?"

"A few days," she said. "I have a lot of studying to do before I try it. And even after I cast it, how much good will knowing do you? If the Banished One if making the weather worse, how do you propose to stop him? I know of no spells to let a mortal wizard change the weather."

"Knowing is always better than not knowing," Lanius said.

Alca raised an eyebrow. "Always, Your Majesty?"

"Yes, of course." Lanius believed it with every fiber of his being. He was, of course, still very young.

Grus said, "I think King Lanius is right here. We may not be able to stop the Banished One, but taking his measure, finding out how much he hates us at the moment, is worth doing."

"Maybe." The witch didn't sound convinced. But she dropped them both curtsies - first to Grus, then to Lanius, who resented taking second place to his father-in-law. "You are the kings. I will give you what you think you want." Lanius didn't like the sound of mat. Before he could make up his mind to say so, Alca walked out of the chamber, her back very stiff. But she paused in the doorway. "Will either of you want to watch the spell as I cast it?"

"I will." Lanius' magpie curiosity made him speak up at once.

"It may be dangerous. Anything that has to do with the Banished One is dangerous," she said. He shrugged. He wouldn't back away while she and Grus listened.

"I'll come, too," Grus said. "Lanius isn't the only one who wants to know what's going on."

"The more fools both of you," Alca said, and went her way before either one of them could answer her.

More than a week went by before she let the two kings know she was ready. That was longer than she'd said the spell would take to prepare. Lanius almost sent her a message, asking her about the delay. In the end, he didn't. As she'd said, even if they learned the Banished One lay behind the hard winter, what could they do to him? Nothing. That being so, where was the rush?

When Lanius walked into the cramped little room where she'd try her magic, he was surprised to see a large bowl full of snow sitting on top of a battered, stained, and scarred wooden table. But then he exclaimed, "Oh! The law of contagion!"