The Bastard King (53 page)

King Grus smiled at her. "I lived down here in the south for years and years. It seems like home to me, at least as much as the city of Avornis does. Red dirt's as good as brown. If you manure it well, it yields fine crops. I can talk this way as well as the way I usually do." For a sentence, he put on a nasal southern accent.

Alca made a face. "Maybe you can, but I don't see why you'd bother."

"And if you had the Menteshe right across the river from you," Grus went on, "don't you think you'd have an excuse for looking nervous, too?"

The witch couldn't very well argue with that. She didn't even try. "Something must be wrong, badly wrong, on the other side of the Stura," she said. "If it's stirred up the thralls" - she shuddered - "it must be truly dreadful."

"Maybe," Grus said.

"How could it be otherwise?" Alca asked.

"That's what you've come to find out - how it could be otherwise, I mean," Grus answered. "Or if it is otherwise."

"What else could it be but some upheaval?" Alca said.

"I don't know," Grus said. "The point is, you don't know, either."

Thralls worked their fields, took mates - they could hardly be said to marry - and endured whatever their Menteshe overlords chose to dish out to them, year after year after year, till they died. They wore clothes. They spoke - a little. Otherwise, they weren't much different from the beasts they tended. Most of what made men men was burned out of them. So it had been for centuries, in lands where the Menteshe ruled. So the Banished One wished it were all over Avornis.

Every so often, as the Avornans had seen, a thrall would by some accident shake off the dark spell that clouded his life. Then, if he could, he would flee north to Avornis.

But why would a still spellbound thrall suddenly flee over the Stura? Why would hundreds of such thralls come north into Avornis? Grus hoped Alca would be able to tell him. No answer he'd imagined for himself came close to satisfying him.

The witch said, "They'll have thralls here waiting for me to examine?"

"They'd better," Grus answered. "If they don't, someone's going to be very unhappy."

He looked across the Stura into the lands the Menteshe held. They looked no different from Avornan soil on this side of the river. Back before the Menteshe swarmed out of the south, they were Avornan soil, as the thralls' ancestors were Avornan farmers.

Local officials hurried up to the river galley. "Your Majesty," they murmured, bowing low to Grus. "Such an honor that you're here."

"It's good to be back in the south," Grus said. "I wish it hadn't been a problem that brought me here. Now, then - this is Alca the witch, one of the finest sorcerers in the city of Avornis."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Alca said.

"For what? For the truth? You're welcome." The king turned back to the dignitaries from Cumanus. "You have some of these thralls where the witch can look them over? I'll want to see them, too. I didn't come all this way to twiddle my thumbs."

"Oh, yes, Your Majesty," said the garrison commander, a colonel named Tetrax. "We've got'em in the amphitheater. It holds a lot of them, and we don't have much trouble guarding 'em there, either."

"That's fine." Grus knew Cumanus' amphitheater well. It was a large semicircular pit scooped out of the ground, with a stage at the bottom and benches along the ground sloping up to the level of the surrounding streets. Tetrax was right; a handful of guards could keep captives there from getting away. "Suppose you take us to them, then. The sooner we understand what's going on here, or start to, the better off everyone will be."

Tetrax nodded. "Come along then, Your Majesty. And you, too, of course, Mistress Alca."

Soldiers from the other river galley formed a guard force around the king and the witch as they made their way through the streets of the city. Shopkeepers and housewives and drunks stared at the procession. A few people cheered. Most just gaped.

When someone shouted that Grus was coming, the guards around the amphitheater stiffened to attention. Even so, their eyes never left the thralls down at the bottom of the excavation. Grus came up to the edge and, Alca at his side, peered down into the pit. He'd never seen so many thralls on this side of the Stura. He hoped he never would again.

They ambled around down there, altogether unconcerned about the guards and the King of Avornis above them. Loaves of bread and pitchers of water (or would it be beer, to keep them from coming down with a flux of the bowels?) stood on a table in the middle of the stage. It might have been a scene from a play, most likely a farce.

The resemblance was heightened when two men seized the same loaf at the same time. They both tugged on it, shouting what might or might not have been words. They clenched their fists. They looked to be on the very point of fighting. Then the loaf tore in two. The thralls, each content with what he had, relaxed and began to eat.

Alca watched them intently. "Bring them both up to me," she said. "Do they speak Avornan or the language of the Menteshe?"

"Avornan, ma'am, after a fashion," Tetrax answered. He nodded to some of the guards. "Go get'em, boys. The lady's a witch, come to try and figure out what those nasty thralls are doing swimming the Stura."

That got the guards moving. One of them said, "I hope she'll figure out how to send the buggers back, too."

When they took the thralls by the elbows, they were careful not even to seem to be trying to take the bread away from them.

The thralls' hair and beards were long and unkempt. By the ripe stench wafting from them, Grus wondered if they'd ever bathed.

"I've never seen them close-up before." By the way Alca said it, she would have been just as happy never to see them again.

"Can you tell anything about them?" Grus asked.

"They're hungry and filthy," Alca answered. "If you mean sorcerously, no. The spell that makes them thralls lies at the very root of their minds and spirits. If it didn't - if it were further up, you might say, where a wizard could sense it more easily - it would be easier to fight, easier to get rid of." She spoke to one of the thralls. "You! Why are you here in Avornis?"

He stared at her. He scratched, caught something, and popped it into his mouth. Alca gulped. The thrall looked her up and down. "Pretty," he said. He wore a shirt and trousers as grimy as he was. The bulge at his crotch said he found Alca more than just pretty.

If the witch noticed that, she gave no sign. She turned to another thrall. "Why did you come to Avornis?"

"Afraid," he answered, and cowered away from her as though she were about to start beating him.

"Afraid of what?" she asked. The thrall didn't answer. "Afraid of what?" Alca repeated, this time more to Grus than to the scrawny, dirty man from across the Stura. "Is he afraid of me? Is that what he means? Or did he come to Avornis because he was afraid of what was happening on the other side of the river?"

"
I
don't know," Grus said. "How do you aim to find out?"

"Questions won't do it - that's plain enough. I'll have to use wizardry." Alca looked unhappy. "I don't like using wizardry to investigate spells the Banished One uses. You saw why, back in the city of Avornis."

"Well, yes," Grus said. "But sometimes these things are important. Don't you think this is?"

Alca sighed. "I wish I could tell you no. But you're right, Your Majesty. This
is
important. I'll do the best I can."

"Thank you," Grus told her.

"I'm not at all sure you're welcome," she answered.

At her command, the guards hauled one of the thralls a few steps farther out of the amphitheater. He stood there, looking around Cumanus with the same dull-eyed lack of curiosity an ox might have shown.
How can she hope to learn anything from him?
Grus wondered.
And even if she does, how can she hope to cure him?
Come to think of it, maybe she couldn't. She'd said, and Grus knew, making men out of thralls was anything but easy.

The witch took a crystal from the sack of sorcerous gear she'd brought. "Is that the one that makes rainbows?" Grus asked. "The one you used on the bowls of snow back in the capital?"

She nodded. "That's right. Now maybe we'll see something interesting. Maybe, mind you, Your Majesty."

Holding the crystal high so it caught a sunbeam, she drew a rainbow from it once again. Grus wondered how the crystal did that; Alca had made it plain the doing there wasn't hers. She twisted the crystal this way and that, and the rainbow moved with it. At last, she made the rainbow fall on the thrall's eyes.

Those eyes got very wide. The man grunted in astonishment. "Do you understand me?" Alca asked him.

"Understand!" he said. Alca nodded. So did Grus. He could hear something new in the thrall's voice. Though the fellow still used only one word, he sounded more like a real man, a full man, and less like a beast of burden that happened to walk on two legs.

"Why did you come here?" Alca asked him, keeping the rainbow shining on his face.

"Had to," the thrall answered.

He seemed to think that was all the reply he needed. "May I ask him something?" Grus said softly. The witch nodded once more. Grus turned to the thrall. "Why did you have to? Why couldn't you just stay where you were?"

This time, the thrall didn't answer right away. He frowned, his face a mask of intense concentration. How much effort did he need, even with Alca's wizardry aiding him, to use words in something close to the way a free man might? "Had to," he repeated. "Had to go. Had to ... leave." Sweat ran down his face, leaving little clean rills in the filth. "Had to leave. Orders."

"Whose orders?" Grus and Alca said it together.

"Orders." The thrall seemed to have to say things more than once, perhaps to keep them straight in his own mind, such as it was. After a moment, sweating harder than ever, he got out:
"His
orders."

"Whose?" Alca asked. But then the rainbow on the thrall's face began to redden, as had happened with the sorcery back in the capital. The man who'd fled over the Stura groaned. He clutched at his forehead. Alca dropped the crystal. The rainbow vanished. But the thrall crumpled to the ground. A guard felt his wrist, then shook his head. The thrall was dead. He'd given no answer. But Alca and Grus had gotten one even so.

The baby yowled. Lanius stared fondly down at her in her mother's arms. Had she been someone else's, the noise would have driven him crazy. He was sure of that. But, since Pitta was his, he didn't mind ... too much.

Sosia said, "I wish she would have been another boy. Babies don't always stay healthy." That was a careful way of saying they died all too easily.

"I do know that," Lanius said. "I was sickly myself. I think one of the reasons my uncle, Scolopax, never did anything to me was that he thought I wouldn't live to grow up anyhow. But I did, and he died not too long after my father. Crex is healthier than I ever was."

"King Olor and Queen Quelea keep him that way," Sosia said. "And the gods watch over you, too, Pitta."

"Yes," Lanius agreed. Pitta kept right on crying. Raising his voice, the king went on, "We should hear from your father soon."

"He's staying down in the south longer than I thought he would," Sosia said.

"We have a real problem down there," Lanius said. "What are we supposed to do with so many thralls?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Sosia answered.

"Nobody else does, either," Lanius said.

A wet nurse took Pitta from Sosia and bared her breast. The baby settled down to suck. The wet nurse was stolid and plain. Lanius realized all Pitta's wet nurses were stolid and plain. Come to think of it, Crex's had been, too. He laughed. He couldn't help seeing their uncovered breasts. Sosia evidently didn't want him getting any ideas on account of that.

"What's funny?" his wife asked.

"You are," Lanius answered. She gave him an odd look. He didn't explain, not while the wet nurse could hear. She might have known she was stolid, but probably didn't think of herself as plain. Who did, woman or man?

A messenger came into the royal bedchamber. Bowing to Lanius, he said, "Beg pardon, Your Majesty, but I have a letter here from King Grus." He held out a sealed roll of parchment.

Lanius took it. "Thank you," he said. The messenger bowed again and went out. Lanius broke the seal on the letter and unrolled it.

"What does he say?" Sosia asked.

"'Congratulations, Your Majesties, on the birth of your daughter. I hope the girl is well, and I hope you are well, too, my dear Sosia. Hearing that both these things are so will make my stay down here much more pleasant than it is now. We know little, disappointingly little, and the Banished One is doing his best to keep us from learning more. His best, as you know, is all too good. Still, when Alca can keep him from noticing what she is about, she does learn by bits and pieces. One day before too long, she hopes she can fit the pieces together. May she prove right, for I wish I were back in the city of Avornis with my new granddaughter, my grandson, and the two of you. With fond regards, King Grus.'"

Even in a letter to his daughter, he called himself the king. He knew Lanius would be reading it, too, and wanted to remind him who he was, who had power. Lanius understood that very well indeed.

The wet nurse's nipple slid out of Pitta's mouth. The woman hoisted the sleepy baby to her shoulder and patted her on the back. Pitta gave forth with a resounding belch. "That should keep her happy," the wet nurse said.

It would keep me happy,
Lanius thought. A belch like that among his bodyguards would provoke loud laughter. The wet nurse rocked the little princess in her arms for a few minutes, then laid her in the cradle. Pitta didn't start howling again, which proved how tired she was.

Lanius and Sosia yawned, too, both of them at the same time. They were also tired. Sosia was still getting over childbirth. Lanius had no such excuse. But a new baby disrupted the lives of all the people most intimately concerned with it. Even if, being king, he didn't have to take care of Pitta, she kept him up at night. He suspected she kept half the palace up on bad nights.