The Chernagor Pirates

remembering how Prince Vasilko had risen against his father and helped the Banished One enter his city-state, did nothing to give Lanius peace of mind.

Normally, he would have talked things over with Sosia and found out how worried she was. Ortalis was her brother, after all; she knew him better than Lanius did. But she was still touchy—which put it mildly—about Cristata, and so Lanius didn’t want to provoke her in any way.

He thought about hashing it out with Anser, too. But Anser wasn’t the right man to deal with such concerns. With his sunny nature, he had a hard time seeing the bad in anyone else. And he didn’t know enough about the true nature of the Banished One, nor did Lanius feel like instructing him.

With nobody to talk to about Ortalis, Lanius did his brooding in privacy on the way back to the royal palace. He was used to that. Once upon a time, he’d resented being so much alone. Now he took it for granted.

When he and the rest of the royal family returned to the palace, they found the servants in a commotion. “He’s done it! He’s gone and done it!” they exclaimed in ragged chorus.

That sounded inflammatory. It didn’t sound very informative. “Who’s gone and done what?” Lanius asked.

The servants looked at him as though he were an idiot for not knowing. “Why, Prince Ortalis, of course,” several of them answered, again all at once.

Lanius, Sosia, Estrilda, and Anser all looked at one another. Crex and Pitta were too small to worry about what their uncle did, and ran off to play. Lanius said, “All right, now we know who. What has Ortalis done?” He braced himself for almost any atrocity. Had Ortalis hurt another serving girl? Had he decided to have a couple of moncats served up in a stew? The king wouldn’t have put anything past him.

But the servants replied, “He’s gotten married.”

“He has?” Now the king, two queens, and the arch-hallow all cried out in astonishment. That wasn’t just news; that was an earthquake. Grus had been trying to find Ortalis a bride on and off for years. He hadn’t had any luck, either. Ortalis’ reputation was too ripe. Grus had sent Lepturus, the head of the royal bodyguards, to the Maze for refusing to let his granddaughter marry the prince. And now Ortalis had found himself a wife?

“To whom?” Lanius asked. “And how did this happen?”

“How did it happen without us hearing about it?” Sosia added.

Bubulcus knew all the details. Lanius might have guessed he would. “He’s married to Limosa, Your Majesty. You know, the daughter of Petrosus, the treasury minister.” He seemed to sneer at the king for being in the dark.

They deserve each other, was the first uncharitable thought that went through Lanius’ mind. But that wasn’t fair to Limosa, whom he’d met only a couple of times. He disliked her father, who was stingy and bad-tempered even for a man of his profession.

“How did it happen?” Sosia asked again. She might have been speaking of a flood or a fire or some other disaster, not a wedding.

“In the usual way, I’m sure,” Bubulcus replied. “They stood before a priest, and he said the proper words over them, and then they…” He leered.

“Don’t be a bigger fool than you can help,” Lanius snapped, and Bubulcus, knowing he’d gone too far, turned pale. Lanius added, “You know what Her Majesty meant.”

“And which priest who wed them?” Anser added, sounding very much like the man in charge of ecclesiastical affairs. “He did it without the king’s leave, and without mine. He’ll have more than a few questions to answer—you may be sure of that.”

Perdix, who’d wed King Mergus and Queen Certhia after Lanius was born, had had more than a few questions to answer, too. He’d prospered while Lanius’ father lived… and gone to the Maze not long after Mergus died. He was years dead now.

“Well, I don’t know the name of the priest, though I’m sure you can find out,” Bubulcus said, implying that, if he didn’t know it, it couldn’t possibly be important. “But I do know they were wed in some little temple at the edge of town, not in the cathedral.”

“I should hope not!” Lanius said. “Wouldn’t that be a scandal? A worse scandal, I mean. He shouldn’t have wed at all, not on his own. It’s not done in the royal family.” A dozen generations of kings spoke through him.

“It is now,” Queen Estrilda said. “And it’s not the worst match he could have made, even if he shouldn’t have made it himself.”

“What do you want to bet Petrosus proposed it?” said Sosia, who liked the treasury minister no better than Lanius did. “He’s likely eager to make any kind of connection with our family.”

“Does he… know about Ortalis?” Anser asked.

“How could he not know?” Lanius replied.

“If he does, how could he do that to the girl?” the arch-hallow wondered. “I hope she won’t be too unhappy.”

Hoping Limosa wouldn’t be too unhappy was the kindest thing anyone found to say about the marriage. Lanius had seen omens he liked better.

Grus had just gotten off his horse when a messenger from the south galloped into the Avornan army’s encampment shouting his name. “Here!” he called, and waved to show the rider where he was.

General Hirundo had just dismounted, too. “Can’t we get a couple of days out of the city of Avornis without having one of these excitable fellows come after us, riding like he’s got a fire under his backside?”

“No, that’s me.” Grus made as though to rub the afflicted parts. Up came the messenger, and thrust a rolled-up sheet of parchment at him. “Thanks—I suppose,” the king said, taking it. “What’s this?”

“Uh, Your Majesty, it speaks for itself,” the messenger replied. “I think it had better talk and I’d better keep quiet.”

“Don’t like the sound of that,” Hirundo remarked.

“Neither do I.” King Grus broke the seal, slid off the ribbon holding the parchment closed, unrolled the sheet, and read the letter, which was from King Lanius. When he was done, he muttered a curse that didn’t come close to satisfying him.

“What is it, Your Majesty?” Hirundo asked.

“My son,” Grus answered. “It seems Prince Ortalis has taken it into his head to marry Petrosus’ daughter, Limosa. He hasn’t just taken it into his head, in fact—he’s gone and done it.”

“Oh,” Hirundo said. Seldom had a man managed to pack more meaning into a single syllable.

“My thoughts exactly.” Grus wanted to doubt Lanius, but the other king, no matter how clever, would never have had the imagination to make that up.

“What will you do about it?” Hirundo asked.

The more Grus thought about that, the less he liked the answers that occurred to him. “I don’t see what I can do about it, except tell Anser to land on the priest who married them like a landslide,” he answered reluctantly. “The wedding’s legal, no doubt about it. I can’t break off this campaign to go back to the capital and try to set things right. But oh, I wish I could.” The only reason Petrosus could have dangled Limosa in front of Ortalis was to gain himself more influence. No one else around the palace had been willing to use a daughter in a gambit like that. If Petrosus thought it would work, he would have to think again before too long.

“Yes.” Hirundo didn’t say any of the things he might have, which proved him an unexpected master of diplomacy. But the expression on his face was eloquent. “Maybe it will turn out all right.” He didn’t sound as though he believed it.

“Yes, maybe it will.” Grus sounded even less convinced than Hirundo, which wasn’t easy. And I’m talking about my own son. That was a bitter pill. If he’d sounded any other way, though, he would have been hiding what he really felt. He sighed. “I have to go on. We have to go on. Whatever happens back at the capital is less important than what we do against the Chernagors.”

Hirundo inclined his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.” If the king said it, they would go on. Grus was sure the news of Ortalis’ wedding was spreading through the army with the usual speed of rumor. No one but Hirundo seemed to have the nerve to beard him about it. That suited him fine.