The Chernagor Pirates

his armor and forgot his bodyguards, who might prove at least as important in keeping him alive.

Promising himself he wouldn’t do that anymore, he pressed on now. He got away with it, too. When he found Hirundo, the general ordered half a dozen men to form up around him. Grus didn’t quarrel. Hirundo wagged a finger. “You’ve been naughty.”

“No doubt.” The king’s tone was dry—the only thing in the dripping landscape that was. “What do you propose to do about it?”

“Why send you to bed without supper, Your Majesty,” Hirundo answered with a grin. “Oh, and keep you safe, if I can, since you don’t seem very interested in doing that for yourself.” Unlike the guard, he had rank enough to point out Grus’ folly.

“Believe me, you’ve made your point,” Grus said. “I hope you’re not going to turn into one of those tedious people who keep banging on tent pegs after they’ve driven them into the ground.”

“Me? I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.” Hirundo was the picture of soggy innocence. “I hope you’re not going to be one of those tedious tent pegs that keep coming loose no matter how you bang on them.”

“Ha,” Grus said, and then, for good measure, “Ha, ha.” Hirundo bowed, unabashed as usual. The king pointed in the general direction of Nishevatz. “How would you like to try to attack the walls under cover of this rain?”

“I will if you give the order, Your Majesty.” Hirundo turned serious on the instant. “If you give me a choice, though, I’d rather not. Archery is impossible in weather like this, and—”

“For us and for them,” Grus broke in.

“Oh, yes.” The general nodded. “But they don’t need to shoot much. They can just drop things on our heads while we’re coming up the ladders. We need archers more than they do, to keep their men on the walls busy ducking while we’re coming up. And planting scaling ladders in gooey muck isn’t really something I care to do, either.”

“Oh,” Grus said. “I see.” To his disappointment, he did see. “You make more sense than I wish you did.”

“Sorry, Your Majesty,” Hirundo replied. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

“A likely story,” Grus said. “All right, then. If you don’t want to attack in a rainstorm, what about one of the fogs that come off the Northern Sea? Do you think that would be any better?”

Now Hirundo paused to think it over. “It might, yes, if you’ve given up on starving Vasilko out. Have you?”

“Summer’s moving along,” Grus said, which both did and did not answer the question. He continued, “It won’t be easy for us to stay here through the winter, and who knows how long Vasilko can hold out?”

“Something to that.” Hirundo sounded willing but not consumed by enthusiasm. “Well, I suppose we could get ready to try. No telling when another one of those fogs will roll in, you know. The more you want one, the longer you’re likely to wait.”

“You’re probably right,” Grus agreed. “But let’s get ready. We’ll see how hard they really want to fight for Vasilko.” He hoped the answer was not very.

How do we keep the Chernagor pirates from descending on our coasts? Lanius’ pen raced across the parchment. Since he’d started writing How to Be a King for Crex, he’d discovered he was good at posing broad, sweeping questions. Coming up with answers for them seemed much harder. He did his best here, as he’d done his best with every one of the questions he’d asked himself. He wrote about keeping the Chernagor city-states divided among themselves, about keeping trade with them strong so they wouldn’t want to send out raiders, and about the tall-masted ships Grus had ordered built to match those the men from the Chernagor country used. His pen faltered as he tried to describe those ships. He’d ordered them forth, but he’d never seen anything except river galleys and barges. I’ll have to ask Grus more when he comes back from the north, he thought, and scribbled a note on the parchment to remind himself to do that.

Once the note was written, the king paused, nibbling on the end of the reed pen. Some scribes used goose quills, but Lanius was better at cutting reeds, and was also convinced they held more ink. Besides, nibbling the end of a goose quill gave you nothing but a mouthful of soggy fluff.

After a few minutes of thought, he came up with another good, broad, sweeping question, and wrote it down to make sure he didn’t forget it before he could put it on parchment. How do we deal with the thrall who may cross into Avornis from the lands of the Menteshe, and with those we may find in the lands the Menteshe rule?

He almost scratched out the last half of the question. It struck him as optimism run wild. In the end, he left it there. He didn’t suppose he would have if the nomads weren’t fighting one another, but the civil war that had started among them after Prince Ulash died showed no signs of slowing down.

With or without the second half, the question was plenty to keep him thoughtful for some little while. What would Crex or some king who came after him need to know? Lanius warned that, while some escaped thralls came across the Stura seeking freedom, others remained under the Banished One’s enchantments in spite of appearances to the contrary, and served as the exiled god’s spies. Or sometimes his assassins, Lanius thought with a shiver of memory.

Lanius also warned Crex that spells for curing thralls were less reliable than everyone wished they were. Although, he wrote, lately it does seem as though these charms are attended with more success than was hitherto the case.

The king hoped that was true. He looked at what he’d written. He decided he’d qualified it well enough. By the time Crex was old enough to want to look at something like How to Be a King, everyone would have a better idea of how effective Pterocles’ spells really were.

After getting up and stretching, Lanius decided not to sit down again and go back to the book just then. Instead, he stored the parchment and pen and jar of ink in the cabinet he’d brought into the archives for them. At first, he’d been nervous each time he turned away from the book, wondering if he would be stubborn enough to come back to it later. By now, he’d gotten far enough into it to have some confidence he would keep returning and would, one day, finish, even if that day seemed a long way off.

When he came out of the archives in his plain tunic and breeches, several palace servants walked past without paying him the least attention. That amused him. Clothes make the man, he thought. Without them, he seemed just another servant himself.

When Bubulcus hurried past, oblivious to the rank of the nondescript fellow in the even more nondescript clothes, Lanius almost called him back. Showing the toplofty servant he didn’t know everything there was to know always tempted the king. But Lanius didn’t feel like listening to Bubulcus’ whined excuses—or to his claims that of course he’d known who Lanius was all along. Bubulcus, after all, had never made a mistake in his life, certainly not in his own mind.

Otus, now, Otus was a different story. The former thrall liberated by Pterocles’ magic seemed glad to be alive, glad to know he was alive. If he made a mistake, he just laughed about it. And, when Lanius came to his guarded room, he knew who the king was. Bowing low, he murmured, “Your Majesty.”

“Hello, Otus,” Lanius said. “How are you today?”

The thrall straightened, a broad smile on his face. “I’m fine, thank you. Couldn’t be better. Isn’t it a good day?”

To Lanius, it seemed a day no different from any other. But then, Lanius hadn’t lived almost his entire life under the shadow of thrall-dom. To Otus, today was different from most of the days he’d known, not least because he knew it so much more completely. Lanius said, “I’ve got a question for you.”

“Go ahead,” Otus said. If he noticed the guards who flanked King Lanius, he gave no sign. Lanius still didn’t trust the magic that had lifted the dark veil of thralldom. Did something of the Banished One lurk beneath the freed thrall’s sunny exterior? There had been no sign of it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Besides Otus’ behavior, there was other evidence against any lingering influence from the Banished One in him. The other thralls in the royal palace had calmly and quietly killed themselves before Pterocles could try his magic on them. Didn’t that argue that the Banished One feared its power? Probably. But was he ruthless enough