The Chernagor Pirates

me!” he said loudly. It subsided. Most of the moncats knew what that meant, because most of them had tried biting him at one time or another.

Feeling like a soldier who’d just finished a triumphant campaign, Lanius carried the moncat—and the spoon, which it refused to drop— back to its room. Once he’d returned it to its fellows, he sent a couple of servants after Bubulcus.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” Bubulcus asked apprehensively. Even servants rarely sounded apprehensive around Lanius. He savored Bubulcus’ fear—and, savoring it, began to understand how an ordinary man could turn into a tyrant. Bubulcus went on, “Is it… is it the Maze for me?”

“No, not that you don’t deserve it,” Lanius said. “I caught the missing moncat myself, so it isn’t missing anymore. Next time, though, by the gods… There had better not be a next time for this, that’s all. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Your Majesty! Thank you, Your Majesty! Gods bless you, Your Majesty!” Blubbering, Bubulcus fell to his knees. Lanius turned away. Yes, he understood how a man could turn into a tyrant, all right.

The Chernagor stared at Grus. Words poured out of him, a great, guttural flood. They were in his own language, so Grus understood not a one of them. Turning to the interpreter, he asked, “What is he saying? Why did he sneak out of Nishevatz and come here?”

“He says he cannot stand it in there anymore.” The interpreter’s words were calm, dispassionate, while passion filled the escapee’s voice. Grus could understand that much, even if he followed not a word of what the man was saying. “He says Vasiiko is worse than Vsevolod ever dreamed of being.”

Grus glanced over toward Vsevolod, who stood only a few feet away. Vsevolod, of course, didn’t need the translation to understand what the other Chernagor was saying. His forward-thrusting features and beaky nose made him look like an angry bird of prey—not that Grus had ever seen a bird of prey with a big, bushy white beard.

More excited speech burst from the Chernagor who’d just gotten out of Nishevatz. He pointed back toward the city he’d just left. “What’s he going on about now?” Grus asked.

“He says a man does not even have to do anything to oppose Vasiiko.” Again, the interpreter’s flat, unemotional voice contrasted oddly with the tones of the man whose words he was translating. “He says, half the time a man only has to realize Vasiiko is a galloping horse turd”—the Chernagor obscenity sounded bizarre when rendered literally into Avornan—“and then he disappears. He never has a chance to do anything against Vasiiko.”

“You see?” Vsevolod said. “Is how I told you. Banished One works through my son.” Now grief washed over his face.

“I see.” Grus left it at that, for he still had doubts that worried him, even if he kept quiet about them. Some of those doubts had to do with Vsevolod. Others he could voice without offending the refugee Chernagor. He told the interpreter, “Ask this fellow how he managed to escape from Nishevatz once he decided Vasiiko was… not a good man.” He didn’t try to imitate that picturesque curse.

The interpreter spoke in throaty gutturals. The man who’d gotten out of Nishevatz gave back more of them. The interpreter asked him something else. His voice showed more life while speaking the Chernagor tongue than when he used Avornan. He turned back to Grus. “He says he did not linger. He says he ran away before Vasiiko could send anyone after him. He says—”

Before the interpreter could finish, the other Chernagor gasped. He flung his arms wide. “No!” he shouted— that was one word of the Chernagor speech Grus understood. He staggered and began to crumple, as though an arrow had hit him in the chest. “No!” he shouted again, this time blurrily. Blood ran from his mouth—and from his nose and from the corners of his eyes and from his ears, as well. After a moment, it began to drip from under his fingernails, too. He slumped to the ground, twitched two or three times, and lay still.

Grimly, Vsevolod said, “Now you see, Your Majesty. This is what my son, flesh of my life, now does to people.” He covered his face with his gnarled hands.

“Apparently, Your Majesty, this man did not escape Vasilko’s vengeance after all.” The interpreter’s dispassionate way of speaking clashed with Vsevolod’s anguish.

“Apparently. Yes.” Grus took a gingerly step away from the Chernagor’s corpse, which still leaked blood from every orifice. He took a deep breath and tried to force his stunned wits into action. “Fetch me Pterocles,” he told a young officer standing close by. He had to repeat himself. The officer was staring at the body in horrified fascination. Once Grus got his attention, he nodded jerkily and hurried away.

The wizard came quickly, but not quickly enough to suit Grus. Pterocles took one look at the dead Chernagor, then recoiled in dread and dismay. “Oh, by the gods!” he said harshly. “By the gods!”

Grus thought of Milvago, who was now the Banished One. He wished he hadn’t. It only made Pterocles righter than he knew. “Do you recognize the spell that did this?” the king asked.

“Recognize it? No, Your Majesty.” Pterocles shook his head. “But if I ever saw the man who used it, I’d wash my eyes before I looked at anything else. Can’t you feel how filthy it is?”

“I can see how filthy it is. Feel it? No. I’m blind that particular way.”

“Most of the time, I pity ordinary men because they can’t see what I take for granted.” Pterocles looked at the Chernagor’s corpse again, then recoiled. “Every once in a while, though, you’re lucky. This, I fear, is one of those times.”

Bowing nervously before King Lanius, the peasant said, “If my baron ever finds out I’ve come before you, I’m in a lot of trouble, Your Majesty.”

“If the King of Avornis can’t protect you, who can?” Lanius asked.

“You’re here. I live a long ways off from the capital. Wasn’t that I had a cousin move here more than twenty years ago, give me a place to stay, I never would’ve come. But Baron Clamator, he’s right there where m at.”

That probably—no, certainly—reflected reality. Lanius. wished it didn’t, but recognized that it did. “Well, go on…” he said.

Knowing the pause for what it was, the peasant said, “My name’s Flammeus, Your Majesty.”

“Flammeus. Yes, of course.” Lanius was annoyed with himself. A steward had whispered it to him, and he’d gone and forgotten it. He didn’t like forgetting anything. “Go on, then, Flammeus.” If he said it a few times, it would stick in his memory. “What’s Baron Clamator doing?” He had a pretty good idea. Farmers usually brought one complaint in particular against their local nobility.

Sure enough, Flammeus said, “He’s taking land he’s got no right to. He’s buying some and using his retainers to take more. We’re free men down there, and he’s doing his best to turn us into thralls like the Menteshe have.”

He didn’t know much about the thralls, or about the magic that robbed them of their essential humanity. He was just a farmer who, even after cleaning up and putting on his best clothes, still smelled of sweat and onions. He wanted to stay his own master. Lanius, who longed to be fully his own master, had trouble blaming him for that.

Grus had issued laws making it much harder for nobles to acquire land from ordinary farmers. He hadn’t done it for the farmers’ sake. He’d done it to make sure they went on paying taxes to Kings of Avornis and didn’t become men who looked first to barons and counts and dukes and not to the crown. Lanius had seen how that helped him keep unruly nobles in line.

And what helped Grus could help any King of Avornis. “Baron Clamator will hear from me, Flammeus,” Lanius promised.

“He doesn’t listen any too well,” the farmer warned.

“He’ll listen to soldiers,” Lanius said.

“Ahh,” Flammeus said. “I figured King Grus would do that. I didn’t know about you.” Courtiers stirred and murmured. Flammeus realized he had gone too far, and quickly added, “Meaning no disrespect, of course.”

“Of course,” Lanius said dryly. Some Kings of Avornis would have slit the farmer’s tongue for a slip like that. Lanius’ own father, King Mergus, probably would have. Even Grus might have. Lanius, though, had no taste for blood—Bubulcus, luckily for him, was living proof of that. “I will send soldiers,” the king told Flammeus.