The Chernagor Pirates

back. It had to be some local custom Avornis didn’t share. Then Beloyuz touched the torch to one corner of the pyre.

The blast of flame that followed sent him and Grus staggering back.

“Ahh!” said the watching Avornan soldiers, who, like their king, had seen a great many pyres in their day and eyed them with the appreciation of so many connoisseurs. When Grus watched an old man’s body go up in smoke, he always thought back to the day when he’d had to burn his father. Crex, who’d come off a farm in the south to the city of Avornis and found a position as a royal guardsman, was gone forever. But in the blood of that Crex’s great-grandson, another Crex, also flowed the blood of the ancient royal dynasty of Avornis. And that younger Crex would likely wear the crown himself one day.

Grus wondered what his father would have to say about that. Some bad joke or other, probably; the old man had no more been able to do without them than he’d been able to do without bread. He’d died before Grus won the crown, died quickly and quietly and peacefully. Days went by now when Grus hardly thought of him. And yet, every so often, just how much he missed him stabbed like a sword.

He blinked rapidly and turned away from Vsevolod’s pyre. The heat and smoke and fire were enough to account for his streaming eyes. He wiped them on the sleeve of his tunic and looked toward Nishevatz. The burly, bearded warriors on the wall were watching Vsevolod’s departure from this world as intently as the soldiers Grus commanded. He saw several of them pointing at the pyre, and wondered what they would be saying.

“Tell me,” he said to Beloyuz, “do your people have the custom of reckoning one pyre against another?”

“Oh, yes,” the Chernagor answered. “I think it must be so among every folk who burn their dead. Things may be different among those who throw them in a hole in the ground, I suppose. But a pyre, now, a pyre is a great thing. How could you not compare one to the next?”

“Prince Vsevolod will be remembered for a long time, then.” Grus had to raise his voice to make himself understood above the crackling of the flames.

“Yes. It is so.” Beloyuz nodded. “You have served him better in death, perhaps, than you did in life.”

Grus sent him a sour stare. “Do you think so, Your Excellency? Excuse me—I mean, ‘Your Highness.’ Do you truly think so? If I did not care what became of Vsevolod, why did I spend so many of my men and so much of my treasure to try to restore him to the throne of Nishevatz?”

“Why? For your own purposes, of course,” Beloyuz replied, with a shrug that could have made any world- weary Avornan courtier jealous.

“To try to keep the Banished One from gaining a foothold here in the Chernagor country. I do not say these are bad reasons, Your Majesty. I say they are reasons that have nothing to do with Vsevolod the man— may the gods guard his spirit now. He could have been a green goat, and you would have done the same. We are both men who have seen this and that. Will you tell me I lie?”

However much Grus would have liked to, he couldn’t. He eyed Beloyuz with a certain reluctant respect. Vsevolod had never shown much in the way of brains. Here, plainly, was a man of a different sort. And would different mean difficult? It often did.

A difficult Prince of Nishevatz, though, would be a distinct improvement. Vasilko, Vsevolod’s unloving son, wasn’t just difficult. He was an out-and-out enemy, as much under the thumb of the Banished One as anybody this side of a thrall could be.

“Let the Chernagors in the city know where you stand about this and that,” Grus told him. “Let them know you’re not Vsevolod, and let them know you’re not Vasilko, either. That’s our best chance to get help from inside the walls, I think.”

“Your best chance, you mean,” Beloyuz said.

Grus exhaled in some annoyance. “When you’re Prince of Nishevatz—when you’re Prince inside Nishevatz—I want two things from you. I want you not to bow down to the Banished One, and I want you not to raid my coasts. Past that, Your Highness, I don’t care what you do. You can turn your helmet upside down and hatch puffin eggs in it for all of me. Is that plain enough?”

Beloyuz sent him an odd look, and then the first smile he’d gotten from the Chernagor noble, “Yes, Your Majesty. That is very plain. The next question will be, do you mean it?”

Difficult, Grus thought. Definitely difficult. “You’ll see,” he told Beloyuz.

Lanius had almost gotten used to rustling noises and meows in the archives. He put away the diplomatic correspondence between his great-great-grandfather and a King of Thervingia and got to his feet. “All right, Pouncer,” he said. “Where are you hiding this time, and what have you stolen from the kitchens?”

No answer from the moncat. Difficult, Lanius thought. Definitely difficult. He made his way toward the place from which he thought the noise had come. Pouncer was usually pretty easy to catch, not least because he didn’t care to drop whatever he’d carried off. He would have been much more agile if he’d simply gotten rid of whatever it was this time when the king came after him. He hadn’t figured that out; Lanius hoped he wouldn’t.

“Come on, Pouncer,” Lanius called. “Where are you?” How many hiding places the size of a moncat did the vast hall of the archives boast? Too many, the king thought. If Pouncer didn’t make a noise or move when he was close enough for Lanius to see him, he could stay un-caught for a depressingly long time.

There! Was that a striped tail, sticking out from behind a chest of drawers stuffed full of rolled-up parchments? It was. It twitched in excitement. What had Pouncer spotted in there? A cockroach? A mouse? How many important documents had ended up chewed to pieces in mouse nests over the centuries? More than Lanius cared to think about—he was sure of that.

Pouncer… pounced. A small clunk said it hadn’t put down its prize from the kitchens even to hunt. Half a minute later, it emerged from concealment with a spoon in one clawed hand and with the bloody body of a mouse dangling by the tail from its jaws. Seeming almost unbearably pleased with itself, it carried the mouse over to Lanius and dropped it at his feet.

“Thank you so much,” Lanius said. Pouncer looked up at him, still proud as could be. Lanius picked up the mouse and then picked up the moncat. As soon as the mouse was in Lanius’ hand, Pouncer wanted it back. Since the king was carrying the moncat, it had, essentially, three hands with which to try to take the dead mouse away from him. Lanius didn’t try to stop it; he would have gotten clawed if he had.

Getting the mouse back, though, seemed much less important to Pouncer than trying for it. As soon as it belonged to the moncat and not to the king, Pouncer let it fall to the floor of the archives. Then the beast twisted in Lanius’ arms, trying to get away and recover the mouse again. Moncats and ordinary cats were alike in perversity.

Lanius held on to Pouncer. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. The moncat bared its teeth. He tapped it on the nose. “And don’t you try to bite me, either. You know better than that.” Pouncer subsided. The king had managed to convince the beast that he meant what he said. If the moncat had decided to bite, it could have gotten away easily enough. But, having made its protest, it seemed content to let the king carry it back to the chamber where it lived.

It did show its teeth again when Lanius took away the serving spoon it had stolen. That was a prize, just like the murdered mouse. Lanius tapped the moncat on the nose once more. Pouncer started to snap at him, but then visibly thought better of it. He unbarred the door and put Pouncer inside.

“I’m going to take this back to the kitchens,” he told the animal. “You’ll probably get loose again and steal another spoon, but you can’t keep this one.” Then he closed the door in a hurry, before Pouncer or any of the other moncats could get out.

He was walking down the corridor to the kitchens when Bubulcus came around a corner and started bustling toward him. He wondered if the servant had been bustling before spying him. He had his doubts; Bubulcus, from what he’d seen, seldom moved any faster than he had to.

Bubulcus pointed to the spoon in Lanius’ hand and asked, “Which the nasty moncat creature has stolen, Your Majesty?” When the king nodded, Bubulcus went on, “Which I had nothing to do with, not a thing.” He struck a pose that practically radiated virtue.

“I didn’t say you did,” Lanius pointed out.