The Chernagor Pirates

Avornan soldiers with open arms. The other half seemed just as ready to fight them to the death. Maybe that showed the hand of the Banished One. Maybe it just showed that the Chernagors didn’t welcome invaders of any sort.

And the palace still buzzed with whatever had happened or might have happened or someone imagined had happened between Prince Ortalis and a serving girl (or two or three serving girls, depending on who was telling the story and sometimes on who was listening). Lanius hadn’t yet sent Grus that delightful news. His father-in-law was already worrying about enough other things.

Sighing because things had fallen into his lap, Lanius decked himself in his most splendid robes. The sunlight pouring through an open window gleamed and sparkled off pearls and jewels and gold thread running through the scarlet silk. Admiring him, Sosia said, “You look magnificent.”

“I don’t feel any too magnificent.” Lanius picked up the heavy crown and set it on his head. “And I’ll have a stiff neck tomorrow, on account of this miserable thing.”

“Would you rather you didn’t wear it?” his wife asked sharply.

“No,” he admitted. His laugh was rueful. Up until now, he’d chafed at being king in name without being king in fact. Now, with Grus away, what he said did matter, and he felt that weight of responsibility much more than he’d expected to. He went on, “And I have to keep the Menteshe from noticing anything is bothering me. That should be… interesting all by itself.”

But sitting on the Diamond Throne and looking down the length of the throne room helped steady him. He was king. Farrukh-Zad was only an ambassador. Whatever happened, he would soon go back to the south. Lanius laughed again, there on the throne. No matter what kind of a mess I make of this meeting, Grus is the one who’ll have to pay the price.

Courtiers stared at him. But then the guardsmen in front of the throne stiffened to alertness, and Lanius pulled his face straight. Prince Ulash’s ambassador advanced up the long central aisle of the throne room. He strode with a conqueror’s arrogance. That clumping march would have seemed even more impressive had he not been badly bow-legged. He was swarthy and hook-nosed, with a black mustache and a hawk’s glittering black eyes in a forward-thrusting face sharp as the blade of an ax. He wore a fur cap, a fur jacket, and trousers of sueded leather. A saffron cloak streamed out behind him.

Three other Menteshe followed in his wake, but Lanius hardly noticed them. Farrukh-Zad was the man who counted. And doesn’t he know it? Lanius thought. Just seeing the Menteshe was plenty to make Lanius’ bodyguards take half a step out from the throne toward him. Farrukh-Zad noticed as much, too, and smiled as though they’d paid him a compliment. To his way of thinking, they probably had.

When Prince Ulash’s envoy reached the throne, he bowed so low, he made a mockery of the ceremony. “Greetings, Your Majesty,” he said in excellent Avornan. “May peace lie between us.”

“Yes. May there be peace indeed,” Lanius replied. Even polite ritual had its place. It was no more than polite ritual. He and Farrukh-Zad surely both knew as much. Ulash’s Menteshe and Avornis might not fight every year, but there was no peace between them, any more than there was peace between the gods and the Banished One.

Farrukh-Zad bowed again, even more sardonically than before. “I bring greetings, Your Majesty, from my sovereign, Prince Ulash, and from his sovereign…” He did not name the Banished One, but he came close enough to make an angry murmur run through the throne room. Then he went on, “They send their warmest regards to you, King Lanius, and to your sovereign.…” He did not name King Grus, either, but the salutation was no less insulting on account of that.

He is trying to provoke me, Lanius thought, and then, He is doing a good job. “I am King of Avornis,” he remarked.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Farrukh-Zad said, in a tone that could only mean, Of course not, Your Majesty.

“For example,” Lanius continued, affecting to ignore that tone, “if I were to order you seized and your head struck off for insolence, I would have no trouble getting my guards to obey me.”

Farrukh-Zad jerked, as though something had bitten him. So did one of his retainers. That may be the wizard, Lanius thought. His own stood in courtier’s clothing close by the throne. The Menteshe ambassador said, “If you did, that would mean war between Avornis and my folk.”

“True,” Lanius agreed. “But I have two things to say there. First is, you would not see the war, no matter how it turned out. And second, when Prince Evren’s Menteshe invaded Avornis last year, they hurt themselves more than they hurt us.”

“Prince Ulash is not Prince Evren,” Farrukh-Zad said. “Where his riders range, no crops ever grow again.”

“That must make life difficult in Ulash’s realm,” King Lanius said. “Perhaps if his riders bathed more often, they would not have the problem.”

Avornan courtiers tittered. Farrukh-Zad was not swarthy enough to keep an angry flush of his own from showing on his cheeks. He gave Lanius a thin smile. “Your Majesty is pleased to make a joke.”

“As you were earlier,” Lanius replied. “Shall we both settle down to business now, and speak of what Prince Ulash wants of me, and of Avornis?”

Before answering, Farrukh-Zad gave him a long, measuring stare. “Things are not quite as I was led to believe.” He sounded accusing.

“Life is full of surprises,” Lanius said. “I ask once more, shall we go on?”

“Maybe we had better.” Farrukh-Zad turned and spoke in a low voice with one of the other Menteshe—the one who had started when Lanius warned him. They expected me to be less than I am, Lanius thought. That must be why the embassy came when Grus was away. I’ve surprised them. That was a compliment—of sorts. The ambassador gave his attention back to the king. “In the name of my sovereign, Prince Ulash, I ask you what Avornis intends to do with the thralls who have left his lands and come to those you rule.”

“Do you also ask that in the name of Prince Ulash’s sovereign?” Lanius inquired, partly to jab Farrukh-Zad again, partly because he did want to know. Thralls—the descendants of the Avornan farmers who’d worked the southern lands before the Menteshe conquered them— were less than full men, only a little more than barnyard animals, thanks to spells from the Banished One. Every so often, thralls escaped those dark spells and fled. Every so often, too, the Banished One and the Menteshe used thralls who feigned escaping those spells as spies and assassins.

Again Farrukh-Zad conferred with his henchman before answering. “I am Ulash’s ambassador,” he said, but his hesitation gave the words the lie. “These thralls are Ulash’s people.”

“When they wake up, they have a different opinion,” Lanius said dryly. He wished Avornan wizards had had better luck with spells that could liberate a thrall from his bondage. The Banished One’s sorceries, though, were stronger than those of any mere mortals. If all of Avornis fell to the Menteshe, would everyone in the kingdom fall into thrall-dom? The thought made Lanius shudder.

Farrukh-Zad said, “You have in your hands—you have in this very palace—many who fled without awakening. What do you say of them?”

“Yes, we do,” Lanius agreed. “One of them tried to kill me this past winter, while another tried to kill King Grus. We hold your sovereign’s sovereign to blame for that.”

“You are unjust,” the Menteshe envoy said.

“I doubt it,” Lanius said. “Thralls who stay thralls usually stay on the land. Why would these men have crossed the Stura River into Avornis, if not through the will of the Banished One?” There, he thought. Let Farrukh-Zad know I’m not— much— afraid to speak his master’s name.

Now the ambassador’s companion leaned forward to speak to him.

Nodding, Farrukh-Zad said, “If you admit that these men belong to the Fallen Star, then you must also admit you should return them to him.”

Lanius would sooner have been pawing through the archives than playing verbal cut-and-thrust with a tool of a tool of the Banished One. No help for it, though. He said, “I did not admit that. I said the Banished One had compelled them to cross the river. Compulsion is not the same as ownership, and certainly not the same as right.”