“So you have heard, then,” Beloyuz said.
“Yes, Your Excellency, I’ve heard,” Grus said, though he hadn’t heard very much. He asked, “How is His Highness this morning?” With a little luck, that would tell him more than he already knew.
But Beloyuz only shrugged and answered, “About the same. He has been about the same since it happened.” Grus nodded as though he understood what the Chernagor meant. Beloyuz went on, “I suppose you want to see him.”
“That is why I’m here,
Beloyuz didn’t argue. He and the other exiles simply stood aside. Surrounded by his bodyguards, Grus went on to Vsevolod’s tent. He felt like scratching his head. The Chernagors seemed more resigned than furious. Were they finally fed up with Vsevolod, too? If they were, why had Beloyuz refused to supplant the prince? Things didn’t add up.
And then, as soon as Grus got a glimpse of Vsevolod, they did. The Prince of Nishevatz lay on a cot much like the one in which Grus slept. He recognized Grus. The king could see it in his eyes—or rather, in his right eye. His left eye was half closed. The whole left side of his face was slack. The left corner of his mouth hung down in an altogether involuntary frown. He raised his right hand to wag a finger at Grus. The left side of his body seemed not to be under the control of his will anymore.
He tried to speak. Only gibberish came out of his mouth. Grus couldn’t even tell if it was meant for the Chernagor language or Avornan. One of his guardsmen muttered, “Gods spare me from such a fate.”
The guard was young and vigorous. Grus remained vigorous, but he was no longer young. Every now and then, his body reminded him it wouldn’t last forever. But this… He shivered. This was like looking at living death. He completely agreed with the guard. Next to this, simply falling over dead was a mercy. “Gods spare me indeed,” he said, and left the tent in a hurry.
“You see,” Beloyuz said when Grus came out into the sunshine again.
“I see,” Grus said heavily. “When did it happen?”
“After I told him what you wanted from me,” Beloyuz replied. “He was angry, as you would guess. He was furious, in fact. But then, in the middle of his cursing, he said his head ached fit to burst. And he fell down, and he has been like—that—ever since.”
“Has a healer seen him?” Grus asked.
“Yes.” Beloyuz nodded. “He said he could do nothing. He also said the prince was not a young man, and it could have happened at any time. It could have.”
He did not sound as though he believed it. But he also did not come right out and blame Grus to his face, as he easily might have. The king was grateful for his forbearance; he hadn’t expected even that much. “I will send for my chief wizard,” Grus said. “I don’t know how much help he can give, but we ought to find out, eh?”
“Thank you.” Now Beloyuz was the one who sounded surprised. “If I had thought you would do this, I would have come to you sooner. I thought you would say, ‘Let him suffer. Let him die.’ ”
“That’s what the Banished One does,” Grus replied. “By the gods in the heavens, Beloyuz, I would not wish this on Vsevolod. I would not wish this on anyone. It’s the people of Nishevatz who don’t want him as their prince, but that’s a different story. You should not be angry with me for trying to get around it.”
The Chernagor noble didn’t answer. Grus sent one of his guardsmen to find Pterocles. The wizard came to Prince Vsevolod’s tent a few minutes later. Grus told him what had happened to the prince. “You want me to cure him?” Pterocles asked. “I don’t know if I can do anything like that.”
“Do your best, whatever it turns out to be,” Grus said. “Whatever it is, I don’t think you’ll hurt Vsevolod.” He turned to Beloyuz. “If you want to say anything different, go ahead.”
“No, not I,” Beloyuz answered. “I say, thank you. I say, gods be with you.”
Pterocles ducked his way into Vsevolod’s tent. Grus heard the stricken prince yammering wordlessly. He also heard Pterocles begin a soft, low-voiced incantation. Vsevolod fell silent. After a little while, the rhythm of Pterocles’ spell changed. When the wizard came out of the tent, his face was grave.
“What did you do?” Grus asked.
“Not as much as I would have liked,” Pterocles answered. “Something is… broken inside his head. I don’t know how to put it any better than that. I can’t fix it any more than the healer could. The spell I used will make him more comfortable, but that’s all. I’m sorry.”
“Even this is better than nothing,” Beloyuz said, and bowed to the wizard. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do enough to make it worth your while to thank me,” Pterocles said. “I only wish I could have.” He bowed, too, and walked away kicking at the dirt.
Grus and Beloyuz looked at each other. After a moment, the king said, “You know what I’m going to ask, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Beloyuz looked even less happy than Pterocles had. “It makes me feel like a carrion crow, like a vulture.”
“I understand that,” Grus said. “But can you tell me it isn’t needful? Nishevatz will need a prince who isn’t Vasilko. Who better than you?”
“Vsevolod,” the nobleman said at once.
“I told you no to that before,” Grus answered. “You thought I was wrong then. You can’t very well say I’m wrong now.”
Beloyuz’s face twisted. “I need to think this over,” he said.
“Don’t take too long,” Grus warned.
Three days later, Vsevolod died. After that, Beloyuz had no excuses left.
Most of the time, Lanius was content being who and what he was. He had seen a battlefield when he was still a boy, and he never wanted to see another one. He never wanted to hear another one, either, nor to smell one. Every so often, that particular stink showed up in his nightmares.
But he sometimes had moments when he wished he could be, if not in the action, then closer to it than he was while staying in the royal palace and the city of Avornis. Those moments came most often when the latest dispatch from Grus in the Chernagor country or from the officers in the south reached the capital.
He didn’t want to go into the field. But he wanted to know more about what went on there than he could find out from reading reports in the comfortable shelter of the palace. He would sometimes question the couriers who brought them. Some of the men who came down from the north had actually seen the things Grus was talking about. They helped make them seem real for Lanius.
The king had less luck with the dispatch riders who brought word of the civil war among the Menteshe up from the south. One of them said, “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but we have to piece this together ourselves. We don’t have our own people down by Yozgat watching the battles. We wait until word comes up to our side of the river, and then we try to figure out who’s lying and who isn’t.”
“How do you go about doing that?” Lanius asked.
“Carefully,” the courier answered, which made the king laugh. The other man went on, “I wasn’t joking, Your Majesty. All sorts of rumors bubble up about what’s going on between Sanjar and Korkut. We try to pop the bubbles and see which ones leave nothing but a bad smell behind.”
“Shame Avornis can’t do more,” Lanius remarked.
Very seriously, the courier shook his head. “We’re ordered
That gray wisdom sounded like Grus. “All right,” Lanius said. “Just my impatience talking, I suppose.”
His brother-in-law had a different sort of impatience driving him. “I can’t wait for Limosa to have her baby,” Ortalis said one hot summer afternoon.
“Ah?” Lanius said. If Ortalis started going on about how much he wanted a son, Lanius intended to find an excuse to disappear. He didn’t want to hear about a baby that might prove a threat to his own son’s position.
But that wasn’t what was on his brother-in-law’s mind. Ortalis nodded like a hungry wolf thinking about meat. “That’s right,” he said. “There are things you can’t do when a woman’s carrying a child.”
“Ah?” Lanius said again. “Such as what?” Certain postures had been awkward after Sosia’s belly bulged, but they’d gone on making love until not long before she bore Crex and Pitta.
