The Chernagor Pirates

had.”

Her eyes lit up. “Yes. I really think we have. He knows some things I never could have imagined. But then, he found out about them the hard way, too. To be struck down by the Banished One… I’d sooner have the dreams, and that’s the truth.”

“I believe it. I think you’re right.” Grus hesitated. “It’s dead, isn’t it? When I came to Pelagonia, I thought…” He shook his head. “But no. It really is dead.”

“You thought that, when you came here with another woman?” Alca shook her head, too—in disbelief. “You can still surprise me, Your Majesty, even when I ought to know better. But yes, it’s as dead as that table there.” She pointed. “And it would be even if you hadn’t brought her along. I know how big a fool I am—not big enough to let you hurt me twice, and I thank the gods I’m not.”

Suddenly Grus was much more eager to escape this provincial town than he ever had been to come here. “I won’t trouble you anymore,” he mumbled.

“I’ll work with your wizard,” Alca said. “I’ll do whatever I can to help Avornis. I told you that when I wrote to you. But I don’t think I ever want to see you again.”

“All right,” Grus said. Just then, it was more than all right. It came as an enormous relief.

Whenever a courier came into the city of Avornis from the south, King Lanius worried. His chief fear was that Grus might have met disaster at the hands of the Menteshe. That would have put him back on the Diamond Throne as full-fledged ruler of the kingdom, but only by ruining the kingdom. Some prices were too high to pay.

He had another worry, small only in comparison to that one. So far this fighting season, the Chernagor pirates had stayed away from the Avornan coast. If they descended on it while Grus was busy against the Menteshe… Lanius didn’t know what would happen then, but he knew it wouldn’t be good.

Reports from Grus came in regularly. He seemed to be making as much progress against the nomads as anyone could reasonably expect. And the coast stayed quiet. No tall-masted ships put in there. No kilted buccaneers swarmed out to loot and burn and kill—and to distract the Avornans from their campaign against Prince Ulash’s Menteshe.

Lanius wondered why not. If the Banished One’s hand propelled both the Menteshe and the Chernagors against Avornis, couldn’t he set both foes in motion against her at the same time? Failing there struck Lanius as inept, and, while he might wish the god cast down from the heavens made many such mistakes, he’d seen that the Banished One seldom did.

He asked Prince Vsevolod why the Chernagors were holding back. “Why?” Vsevolod echoed. “I tell you why.” Maybe the sour gleam in his eye said he thought Lanius should have figured it out for himself. Maybe it just said he didn’t care for the King of Avornis. In that case, the feeling was mutual.

“Go ahead,” Lanius urged.

“Are two reasons,” Vsevolod said. “First reason is, Avornan ships fight hard two years ago. Not all Chernagor ships get home. Many losses. They not want many losses again.”

“Yes, I follow that,” Lanius said. “What’s the other reason?”

“Magic.” The exiled Prince of Nishevatz spoke the word with somber relish. “This spring, they send supply ships to my city-state, send food to my cursed son. And they watch ships burn up. They see food burn, see sailors burn. Not want to see that off coast of Avornis. So they stay home.” Vsevolod jabbed a thumb at his own broad chest. “Me, I like to watch ships burn. Oh, yes. I like very much. Let me watch Vasilko burn—I like that better yet.”

Lanius believed him. All the same, the king wondered whether the Banished One could have set the Chernagors in motion against Avornis despite their hesitation. Evidently not. The Chernagors, or some of them, were his allies, yes, but not—or not yet—his puppets, as the Menteshe were.

We can still win, Lanius thought. Avornis wasn’t the only one with troubles. He tried to imagine how the world looked from the Banished One’s perspective. Avornis’ great foe was already doing all he could with the Menteshe. Up in the north, he’d managed to keep Grus from driving Vasilko out of Nishevatz and putting Vsevolod back on the throne there. But if he couldn’t get the Chernagors to work with the Menteshe, they had to make very unsatisfactory tools for him.

What could he do about that? Lanius wondered if thralls would start showing up in the land of the Chernagors. In an odd way, he hoped so. If anything could frighten the Chernagors who followed the Banished One into changing their allegiance, that might do the trick. Down in the south, the Menteshe wizards had made Avornan peasants into thralls. That bothered the nomads not at all. They would have abused those peasants any which way. But in the north, thralls would have to be Chernagors, not members of an alien folk, and that could work against the Banished One. Despising his mortal opponents, he did sometimes overreach himself. Why not in the north, where things weren’t going just as he wished?

Vsevolod said, “When you end this silly war in south? When you go back to what is important? When you drive Vasilko from Nishevatz? Two times now, you lay siege, then you quit and go home. Another time, you go home before you lay siege. For me, is like being woman with man who is bad lover. You tease, you tease, you tease—but I never go where I want to go.”

Perspective. Point of view, Lanius thought again. Vsevolod’s was invincibly self- centered—not that Lanius hadn’t already known that. With some asperity, he said, “I don’t think driving invaders out of our southern provinces is a silly war. What would you do if someone invaded Nishevatz?”

“No one invades Nishevatz,” Vsevolod said complacently. “Chernagors rule seas. Even Avornis does not dare without me at your side.” He struck a pose.

Lanius felt like hitting him. Plainly, the King of Avornis had no chance of making things clear to the Prince of Nishevatz. “Your turn will come,” Lanius said. Only after the words were gone did he wonder how he’d meant them. Better not to know, maybe.

“Not come soon enough,” Vsevolod grumbled, proving he hadn’t taken it the way Lanius feared he might. He gave Lanius a creaky bow. “Not soon enough,” he repeated, and lumbered out of the room.

As a matter of fact, Lanius agreed with him. The sooner the king got the prince out of the city of Avornis and back to Nishevatz—or anywhere else far, far, away—the happier he would be. Lanius wondered if he could send Vsevolod to the Maze until Grus was ready to campaign in the Chernagor country again. He wouldn’t tell Vsevolod it was exile; he would tell him it was a holiday—a prolonged holiday. Maybe he could bring it off without letting Vsevolod know what was really going on.

With a sigh of regret, Lanius shook his head. Vsevolod would figure out he’d been insulted. His beaky nose smelled out insults whether they were there or not. And Grus would be furious if Vsevolod thought he was insulted. The other king needed Vsevolod as a figurehead when he fought in the north. Otherwise, he would seem an invader pure and simple.

Or would he? Vsevolod had henchmen, several of high blood, in the city of Avornis. If anything happened to him, one of them might make a good enough cat’s-paw. Slowly, thoughtfully, Lanius nodded. Yes, that might work. And if it did prove enough, if the king found a cooperative Chernagor, couldn’t he do without the obnoxious Vsevolod? He didn’t know, not for certain, but he did know one thing—he was tempted to find out.

King Grus looked down into the valley of the Anapus, the river just north of the Stura. He let out a long sigh of relief. He’d spent a lot of time and he’d spent a lot of men coming this far, clearing the Menteshe from several valleys farther north. They’d left devastation behind them, but it was—he hoped—devastation that could be repaired if the nomads didn’t come back and make it worse.

Hirundo looked down into the valley, too. “Wasn’t too far from here that we first met, if I remember right,” the general remarked.

“I thought it was down in the valley of the Stura, myself,” Grus answered.

“Was it?” Hirundo shrugged. “Well, even if it was, it wasn’t too far from here, not if you’re looking from the city of Avornis. I know one thing for certain—we were both a lot younger than we are now.”

“Well… yes.” Grus nodded. “I think time is what happens to you when you’re not looking. Except for a few things, I don’t feel any older now than I did then—but how did the gray get into my beard if I’m not?” He plucked a hair from the middle of the chin. It wasn’t gray. It was white. Muttering, he opened his fingers and let the wind