The Chernagor Pirates (35 page)

“And deprive you, Your Majesty? Gods forbid!” By the dramatic pose the general struck, he might have been a soldier in a besieged city offering his sovereign his last bit of bread. But the generous gesture turned out to be not quite as noble as all that, for he went on, “I've already found a lady friend or two down here. I don't think you've had the chance yet.”

“Well, no,” Grus admitted. The trouble he'd gotten into over Alca the witch left him leery of angering Estrilda again. On the other hand, Estrilda was far to the north, unlikely to learn he'd tumbled a barmaid.

“Then go on, if you feel like it—and if she feels like it.” Hirundo sounded as predatory here as he did on the battlefield. He might have sounded different if he'd had a wife back in the capital. But he didn't; he was single. And, knowing him, he might not have, too.

He drank up and strolled out of the tavern, clapping Grus on the back as he went. The king ostentatiously finished his mug of wine, too. When Alauda brought him the fresh one she'd poured, he said, “Drink with me, if you care to.”

“Sure,” she said, smiling. Her mouth was wide and generous. “When will I ever get another chance like this? I can bore people with the story until I'm an old granny.” She bent her back and hobbled as she went to get wine for herself. Grus laughed. So did she. He knew then taking her to bed wouldn't be hard.

When she came back with her mug, he sat her on his lap. She slipped an arm around his shoulder as though she'd expected nothing else. One thing did worry him. Pointing to the tavern keeper, he asked, “Will your cousin there be angry?” He didn't want an outraged male relative lurking and brooding and maybe trying to stick a knife in him. Sometimes such people tried to kill without caring whether they lived or died, which made them hard to stop.

But Alauda only stared in surprise. “No, Morus won't mind. It's not like I'm a maiden. And it's not like you're a goatherd, either. You're the
king.”

To make sure Morus didn't mind, she spoke with him after she'd emptied her cup. He looked from her to Grus and back again. Then he walked out of the tavern and closed the door behind him.

“You see?” Alauda said.

“I see.” Grus got to his feet. The room swayed when he did. He suddenly wished he hadn't had quite so much to drink. Wine could in-flame desire and ruin performance at the same time—and he wasn't as young as he had been.

He took Alauda in his arms. She tilted her face up to him—not very far up, for she was a tall woman. Her mouth was sweet with wine. His arms tightened around her. She molded herself against him. The kiss went on and on.

When it finally ended, Grus had a new reason for feeling dizzy. “Where?” he asked.

“Here, this way. Morus has given me a little room in back.”

The room couldn't have been much smaller. It barely held a bed. Grus was sure it had been a closet or storeroom before Alauda came to the tavern. Alauda threw off her tunic and long skirt. Naked, she was as round and ripe as Grus had thought she would be. He bent his mouth to the tips of her breasts. She murmured something wordless. He got out of his own clothes as quickly as he could. They lay down together.

Her legs opened. When he stroked her there, he found her wet and ready. He poised himself above her. “Oh,” she said softly when he thrust home. Her thighs gripped his flanks. Her arms squeezed tight. Their mouths clung.

It seemed more like a frenzy than any sort of lovemaking Grus had done lately. Alauda yowled like a cat. Her nails scored the flesh of his back. She threshed and flailed beneath him. He pounded away until pleasure almost blinded him.

When he returned to himself, he noticed the taste of blood in his mouth along with the wine they'd both drunk. Alauda stared up at him past half-lowered eyelids.
“So
nice to meet you, Your Majesty,” she purred.

He laughed. When he did, he flopped out of her. Regret flitted across her face, just for a moment. Grus certainly felt regret, too—regret that he wasn't twenty years younger, so they could have started over again right away. He kissed the smooth, white skin in the hollow of her shoulder. She giggled. He said, “You can bring me my wine—or anything else—any time you please.”

Alauda smiled. But then her expression darkened. She said, “Tomorrow or sometime soon, you'll be gone, won't you?”

“I can't stay here,” Grus answered, as gently as he could. “You know that, dear. I've got to drive back the Menteshe.”
If I can.

Everything else moved sweetly when Alauda nodded. “Oh, yes. Gods only know what they would have done if your soldiers hadn't chased them away from this place. That wasn't what I meant. I hope I'm not that silly. But … couldn't you take me with you? I wouldn't be any trouble, and if I did make trouble you could just leave me somewhere. I'd land on my feet. I always have. And in the meantime—” She wriggled to show what they might do in the meantime.

Grus started to say no. Then he hesitated. Like anyone who hesitated, he was lost. Trying not to admit it even to himself, he warned Alauda, “You know I have a queen. You won't come back to the city of Avornis with me, no matter what.”

“Yes, of course I know that,” Alauda said impatiently. “I told you, I hope I'm not silly. And by the gods, Your Majesty, I'm not out for what I can get, except maybe this.” She took hold of him, then sighed. “It's been a bit since my husband died. I'd almost forgotten how much I missed it.”

“You say that now,” Grus told her. “Some people say things like that, and then later on they forget what they've said. I wouldn't be very happy—and neither would you—if that happened.”

“You've got a bargain,” Alauda said at once. “Does that mean the rest of it's a bargain, too?” Before he could answer, she went on, “I'll keep up my end.” She laughed again. “And I'll keep up your end. That's part of the bargain, isn't it?”

“I hope so,” Grus answered. “I was just thinking I'm not so young anymore—but yes, I do hope so.”

Summer heat beat down on the city of Avornis. People who'd spent time in the south said it wasn't all that bad, but it was plenty bad enough to suit Lanius. Plants began to wilt and turn yellow. Flies and other bugs multiplied as though by magic. Little lizards came out of what seemed to be nowhere but were probably crevices in boards and holes in the ground to eat the bugs, or at least some of them.

King Lanius and everyone else in the royal palace did what they could to beat the heat. He doffed the royal robes and plunged into the river naked as the day he was born. That brought relief, but only for a little while. However much he wanted to, though, he couldn't stay in the water all the time.

Arch-Hallow Anser and Prince Ortalis disappeared into the woods to hunt for days at a time. Anser tried to talk Lanius into coming along, but the king remained unconvinced that that was a good bargain. Yes, the woods were probably cooler than the city, but weren't they also going to be buggier? Lanius thought so, and stayed in the royal palace.

The monkeys flourished in the heat. Even their mustaches seemed to stick out farther from their faces than before. They ate better than they ever had, and bounced through the branches and sticks in their rooms with fresh energy. As far as they were concerned, it could stay hot forever.

Not so the moncats. The Chernagor merchant who'd brought the first pair to the palace had told Lanius they came from islands in the Northern Sea—islands with, the king supposed, a cooler climate than that of the city of Avornis. They drooped in the heat the same way flowers did. Lanius made sure they had plenty of water and that it was changed often so it stayed fresh. Past that, he didn't know what he could do.

One thing could jolt the moncats out of their lethargy. Whenever a lizard was foolish enough to show itself in their rooms, they would go after it with an enthusiasm Lanius had hardly ever seen from them. They got the same thrill from chasing lizards as Anser did from chasing deer (Lanius resolutely refused to think about what sort of thrill Ortalis got from chasing deer). And, like Anser, they got to devour their quarry at the end of a successful hunt.

Lanius suddenly imagined the arch-hallow, in full ecclesiastical regalia, with a still-twitching lizard tail hanging from the corner of his mouth. He started laughing so hard, he frightened the moncats and made servants out in the hallway pound on the door and ask what was wrong.

“Nothing,” he called back, feeling like a little boy whose parents demanded out of the blue what he was doing when it was something naughty.

“Then what's that racket, Your Majesty?” The voice on the other side of the door sounded suspicious, even accusing. Was that Bubulcus out there in the hallway? Lanius thought so, but couldn't be sure.

Whether it was Bubulcus or not, the king knew he had to say, “Nothing,” again, and he did. He couldn't expect the servants to find that blasphemous image funny. He was more than a little scandalized that he found it funny himself, but he did, and he couldn't do anything about it.

“Are you
sure,
Your Majesty?” the servant asked dubiously.

“I'm positive,” Lanius answered. “One of the moncats did something foolish, and I was laughing, that's all.” That wasn't quite what had happened, but it came close enough.

“Huh,” came from the corridor. That made Lanius more nearly certain it was Bubulcus out there. Whoever it was, he went away; the king listened with no small relief to receding footsteps. When Lanius came out of the moncats' room, no one asked him any more questions. That suited him fine.

Two days later, the hot spell broke. Clouds rolled down from the north. When morning came, the city of Avornis found itself wrapped in chilly mist. Lanius hurried down to the monkeys' room and lit the fire that he'd allowed to die over the past few days. They needed defense against the cold once more, and he made sure they got it.

It started to rain that afternoon. To his horror, Lanius discovered a leak in the roof of the royal archives. He sent men up there to fix it, or at least to cover it, in spite of the rain. There were certain advantages to being the King of Avornis. A luckless homeowner would have had to wait for good weather. But Lanius couldn't stand the notion of water dripping down onto the precious and irreplaceable parchments in the archives. Being who he was, he didn't have to stand for it, either.

Grus looked down from the hills on a riverside town. Like a lot of riverside towns, it had had its croplands ravaged. He'd seen far worse devastation elsewhere, though. The landscape wasn't what kept him staring and staring.

“Pelagonia,” he murmured.

Hirundo nodded. “That's what it is, all right,” he said. “Looks like a provincial town to me.”

“And so it is,” Grus agreed. But that wasn't all it was, not to him. Just seeing it made his heart beat faster.

Pterocles understood, but then Pterocles had a wizard's memory for detail. “This is the place where you sent the witch,” he said. “Will you ship me back to the city of Avornis and turn her loose on the Menteshe?”

It had crossed Grus' mind. Shipping Alauda back to her cousin's tavern had also crossed his mind. He hadn't seen Alca for three years, not since his wife made him send her away.
Life gets more complicated all the time,
he thought, and laughed, even though it wasn't funny.

“Well, Your Majesty?” Pterocles spoke with unwonted sharpness. “
Will
you?”

He'd had trouble standing up against the Banished One. Of course, so had Alca. Any mortal wizard had trouble standing up against the Banished One. Grus found his answer. “No, I won't,” he said. “We're all on the same side in this fight, or we'd better be.”

He waited to see what Pterocles would say to that. To his relief, the wizard only nodded. “Can't say you're wrong. She acts like she's pretty snooty, but her heart's in the right place.”

Grus bristled at any criticism of his former lover. Fighting to hold on to his temper, he asked Hirundo, “Can we reach the town tonight?”

“I doubt it,” the general replied. “Tomorrow, yes. Tonight? We're farther away than you think.”

Grus stared south. Only the keep and the spires of the cathedral showed above Pelagonia's gray stone walls. In the nearer distance, a handful of Menteshe rode through the burnt fields in front of the town. They would flee when the Avornan army advanced. Grus knew a lot about fighting the nomads. Unless they had everything their own way, they didn't care for stand-up fights. Why should they? Starvation and raids unceasing worked well for them.

“Tomorrow, then,” the King of Avornis said, reluctance and eagerness warring in his voice—reluctance at the delay, eagerness at what might come afterwards.
Alca.
His lips silently shaped the name.

As he'd thought they would, Prince Ulash's men withdrew at the Avornan host's advance. He and Hirundo picked a good campground, one by a stream so the Menteshe couldn't cut them off from water—a favorite trick of theirs. He also made certain he scattered sentries widely about the camp.

“Is something wrong?” Alauda asked in his tent that night.

“No,” Grus answered, quicker than he should have. Then, hearing that too-quick word, he had to try to explain himself. “I just want to make sure the town is safe.”

The explanation sounded false, too. Alauda didn't challenge him about it. Who was she—a barmaid, a whim, a toy—to challenge a king? No one, and she had sense enough to know it. But she also had the sense to hear that Grus wasn't telling her the truth, or all of the truth. No, she said not a thing, but her eyes showed her hurt.

When they made love that night, she rode Grus with a fierce desperation she'd never shown before. Maybe she sensed he worried more about someone inside Pelagonia than about the city itself. Was she trying to show him he needed to worry about her, too? After the day's travel and after that ferocious coupling, Grus worried about nothing and nobody, but plunged headlong into sleep, one arm still around Alauda.