The Chernagor Pirates

and thralls don’t?”

“Fill the emptiness?” Pterocles laughed. That wasn’t mirth coming out, or no sort of mirth with which Grus wanted to be acquainted. Pterocles went on, “If I knew how to fill emptiness, Your Majesty, don’t you think I would fill my own? I wish I could. I wonder if I ever will.”

“Have you learned anything by watching the thralls?” Grus asked. “Would you like to go in among them and study them at close quarters?”

“Empty. So empty,” Pterocles said, and then, “If I went in, how would you tell me apart from them?”

“It wouldn’t be hard,” Grus answered. “You would be the one acting like an idiot. They wouldn’t be acting. They really are idiots.”

Again, the laugh that came from Pterocles only raised Grus’ hackles. The wizard bent, backside in the air, and peered down at the thralls again. His face bore an expression of horrified fascination. He might have been asking himself whether he was or was not one with them.

After a little while, Grus elbowed him out of the way and looked down at the thralls again on his own behalf. He expected them to be doing what they usually did, which was not very much. Like cats, they spent a lot of time sleeping. Several of them stretched out on couches, snoring or simply lying motionless. One, though, stared up at the peephole with as much interest as Grus showed looking in the other direction.

Alarm ran through Grus. This wasn’t the way thralls were supposed to behave. Thralls that acted like thralls were harmless, pitiable things. Thralls that didn’t were deadly dangerous, not least because no one expected them to strike.

This one turned away after meeting his eye. It was as though the thrall cared nothing for him. It had been interested when Pterocles was looking down at it, though. What did that mean? Grus hoped it didn’t mean the Banished One looked out through the thrall’s eyes.

When he asked Pterocles about it, the wizard gave back a vague shrug and answered, “We understand each other, he and I.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Grus demanded. Pterocles only shrugged again.

Grus asked more questions, but Pterocles’ answers only got vaguer. At last, the king threw his hands in the air. He went off to his desk to get some work done. If he didn’t keep a thumb on Avornis’ pulse, who would? Lanius? Grus didn’t want his son-in-law getting experience at running the kingdom. He also didn’t want Pterocles staying close to the thralls if he wasn’t there. He made sure the wizard came away with him. Pterocles looked unhappy, but didn’t argue.

When Grus sat down behind the great marble-topped desk from which Kings of Avornis had administered their realm for years uncounted, he found a leather courier’s sack on top of it. A note on a scrap of parchment was tied to it. Brought back from the land of the Chernagors, it said. Letters inside with seals still intact.

“What the…?” Grus muttered. Then he snapped his fingers. This had to be the bundle he’d gotten just before learning the Chernagors from the eastern city-states were marching on his army. What with everything that had happened since, he’d forgotten all about it. Some diligent clerk hadn’t.

He thought about chucking the sack. What were the odds any of the letters would matter? In the end, though, sighing, he poured the parchments out onto the broad desktop. I can go through them in a hurry, he told himself, and popped the wax seal off the first one with his thumbnail.

A moment later, that letter lay in the trash bin by the desk. It touched on something Lanius had long since dealt with. The second letter followed the first. So did the third. The fourth had to do with a land-tenure case down in the south that had dragged on for years. Grus set it aside to add to the stack he already had on that case.

The fifth letter was from Pelagonia, a medium-sized city down in the middle of the southern plains. From a king’s point of view, Pelagonia’s chief virtue was that not much ever happened there. Rulers needed places like that, places they didn’t have to worry about. Grus couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a petition from Pelagonia. And yet the script on the outside of the parchment, the script that addressed the letter to him, looked somehow familiar.

“No,” he said as he broke the seal. “It can’t be.” But it was. Estrilda had insisted that he send Alca away from the city of Avornis when she discovered his affair with the witch. He’d picked Pelagonia for her, not least because it was such a quiet, sedate town.

Your Majesty, Alca wrote, I send this as from a worried subject to her king, not because of anything else that may have happened between us. Grus grunted at that. As soon as Alca mentioned it, even to disclaim it—maybe especially to disclaim it—she also claimed it. He sighed. He couldn’t do anything about that. And if he’d known how big a disappointment Pterocles would prove, he would have thought twice about sending Alca away at all.

She continued, I am afraid the investigation of the thralls may not be going as well as it should. I should have left more behind in writing, to guide those who would come after me. I would have, if I had known I was leaving the capital so suddenly. Grus mumbled something under his breath. If that wasn’t a dig, he’d never run into one.

I hope that all is well for you and for yours (the last three words were inserted above the line, with a caret to show where they should go) in the city of Avornis. I hope also that wizards are still studying the thralls. I have heard how two thralls turned on you and Lanius. I rejoice that you are both safe. The thralls still in the palace, I think, can be as dangerous as the ones who already attacked. Unless I am altogether mistaken, the Banished One reaches them in this way.

The sorcerous charms and calculations that followed meant nothing to Grus. He hadn’t expected them to. He knew nothing of magic. Alca went on, I hope you will show this to a wizard you trust. He will be able to judge whether I am right.

“I can do that,” Grus said, as though she stood there before him. He wondered what Pterocles would make of those scribbled symbols. He also wondered if Pterocles was in any condition to make anything of them.

What I have shown here may also give new hope to returning thralls to true humanity, Alca finished. The spells will not be easy to shape. Here is a new road, though, and Avornis has long needed that. What I need… is something I may not have. I knew that when we began. I cannot imagine why, all this time later, it comes as such of a surprise. With — A scratched- out word, and then a scrawled signature.

He stared at it for a long time. Because of the calculations, he couldn’t even throw the letter away. He made a fist and brought it down hard on the marble desktop, over and over again.

“What did you do to yourself?” Lanius asked Grus; his father-in-law’s right hand was puffy and bruised.

“Banged it,” Grus said uninformatively.

“Well, yes, but how?” Lanius asked.

“Oh, I managed,” Grus answered.

Lanius sent him an exasperated look. Why couldn’t Grus just say he’d dropped something on it or caught it in a door or whatever he’d really done to himself? How could you be embarrassed about hurting your hand? Grus evidently was.

Too bad he didn’t hurt it knocking some sense into Ortalis, Lanius thought. But then he remembered Grus had done his best to knock sense into Ortalis. He probably would have done better if he’d started years earlier. He had tried this time, though. And Ortalis had done his best to stay invisible ever since. That suited Lanius fine.

He tried another question, asking, “What are you going to do when spring comes around again?”

Grus didn’t evade there. “Go back to the country of the Chernagors with a bigger army,” he answered. “I’m not going to let Vasilko keep Nishevatz any longer than I can help it. That would be like letting someone carrying a plague set up shop across the street from the palace. Life hands you enough troubles without your asking for more.”

“Can you take enough soldiers north to beat all the Chernagors?” Lanius inquired.

“You’re full of questions today, aren’t you?” Grus gave him a quizzical look. “While you’re at it, why don’t you ask me about my love life, too?”

“How’s your love life?” Lanius said, deadpan.