Harry Turtledove - The Scepter's return

Numerius came. He looked surprised at himself, but Pipilo, like a good general, could make himself obeyed when he wanted to. Hirundo had the gift. Grus did, too. It had to do with speaking in a tone that suggested nothing but obedience was possible.

Half an hour later, Numerius emerged in the plain brown robe of an ordinary monk. With his dirty but fine secular garb went a lot of his arrogance. As the abbot had said, he was just one among many now. The robe emphasized that, both to others and to himself.

Pipilo came out, too, and walked over to Grus. "I hope he will not trouble you as some of the other brethren did," he said quietly.

"I don't think so," Grus answered. "I wasn't the one who ordered him here, after all. I couldn't very well be, could I? I was already here myself when he got in trouble once too often."

"Once too often?" Pipilo's eyebrows rose. "You sound as though you knew him."

"No, not really. But I knew of him," Grus said. "He was always a man who would grab for everything he could — and for quite a few things he wasn't supposed to. I hope he won't cause you trouble."

The abbot smiled an experienced smile. "Men of that sort are not rare, here as in the wider world. I have met more than a few. If Brother Numerius proves troublesome, rest assured I have ways to bring him to heel."

"All right, Father Abbot. You know your business best," Grus said. And it's not my worry. Not one bit of it's my worry, he thought. He'd carried the worries, the weight, of the whole kingdom for many years. Now that burden was gone. Getting sent here had lifted it from his shoulders. He felt as though he were straighter and taller without it.

He almost owed Ortalis a debt for taking the weight away. The trouble was, Ortalis hadn't really intended to put it on his own shoulders. He would probably have ended up dropping it somewhere and watching moss grow on it.

Well, Avornis wouldn't have to worry about that. Lanius' shoulders were on the narrow side, but he was a conscientious man. When he saw a burden that needed lifting, he picked it up. And he wouldn't set it down until they laid him on his pyre.

And then Crex would pick it up, as long as he stayed healthy. If he didn't, Sosia was going to have another baby — maybe she'd already had it — and she could have more. One way or another, things would go on. He missed Estrilda, but a lot of that was habit, too.

They'll go on without you, Grus said to himself, tasting how that felt. A few years earlier, it would have troubled him enormously. Now? He found himself shrugging. Things would have gone on without him before many years passed any which way. A little sooner, a little later — what difference did it make? None he could see.

Realizing that, he also realized he had his answer to Abbot Pipilo's question. If that ship had come for him, he would have stayed in the monastery. What point was there to coming out again? Things would go on without him no matter where he was, so this made as good a place as any — better than most. Here he would stay.

Lanius took the latest letter from Abbot Pipilo to the archives himself. He wasn't sorry to get away from Elanus' crying. The new baby was healthy, but he cried more than Crex and Pitta had put together. Or maybe I just don't remember. It's been a while now, Lanius thought. Either way, he could escape to the archives. Sosia had no place like that to go, though serving women and a wet nurse gave her a lot of help with her new son.

Pipilo remarked that Baron Numerius' transition to Brother Numerius was not going as smoothly as it might have. The king didn't intend to worry about that. He doubted whether Numerius would ever escape from the monastery, which meant he had the rest of his life to get used to being a monk. If he'd paid his taxes and not tried to turn peasants into his personal dependents, he wouldn't have brought the change in way of life on himself. Since he had, he could just make the best of it.

One of these days, one of these years, one of these centuries, someone poking through the archives might come across the abbot's letter and the other documents about Baron Numerius' decline and fall. Lanius tried to keep all of them together, so some curious king or scholar in times to come could get the whole story. He wished some of his predecessors had followed the same rule. The archives held lots of unfinished tales, or at least tales where he'd found no ending. There were also some where he had no beginning, and others with the vital middle missing.

He closed the archives' heavy doors behind him. A smile stole over his face. This was where he belonged, as surely as Anser was made for the woods and the chase. The watery sunlight, the dancing dust motes, the slightly musty smell of old parchment, the quiet… What could be better? Nothing he'd ever found.

Pipilo's letter went into a case stuffed with documents on the struggle Avornis had had with its greedy nobles. Grus had started the struggle, and he'd won it. These days, the nobles recognized the superiority of the monarchy. The ones who hadn't were in monasteries or beyond human judgment.

No one before Grus had seen a problem in the rising power of the nobility — not even King Mergus, and Lanius' father had been both clever and ruthless. Grus had seen it, taken action against it, and done something about it. He deserved a lot of credit for that. Lanius wondered if chroniclers in years to come would give it to him.

"Between us, we made a fine king," Lanius murmured. He hadn't been able to come to the archives as often as he wanted lately. He'd been too busy dealing with royal affairs large and small. Grus would have handled a lot of them while he was still in the palace. Having someone else to handle them was the only reason Lanius could see even to think about recalling his father-in-law.

For the moment, he put aside all thoughts of royal affairs- even the ones about serving girls. He poked through the jumble of documents at random, looking for anything interesting he might turn up. He found mention of a small scandal involving his many-times-great-grandfather and a black-eyed maidservant. The arch-hallow of the time had preached a very pointed sermon in the great cathedral. Lanius wondered if his ancestor had had to put aside his lady friend. The archives didn't say — or if they did, the document with the answer wasn't with the rest. One more story without an end.

Lanius heard a noise. It came from somewhere in the bowels of the archives, from the cases and crates in the shadows near the edge of the enormous room.

"Pouncer!" he called. "Is that you?"

Calling a moncat usually did as much good as calling any other kind of cat. Every once in a while, though, you got lucky. Lanius did this time. "Mrowr?" Pouncer said blurrily.

"Come here, you ridiculous animal." Lanius knew that was no way to talk to the beast that had brought the Scepter of Mercy out of Yozgat. He knew, but he didn't care. It was a perfectly good way to talk to a cat that was making a nuisance of itself — and Pouncer was.

He heard Pouncer moving through the archives, with luck, toward him. The moncat wasn't as quiet as it might have been; he could follow its progress by clunks and the occasional clank. Did that mean…? Up until now, Pouncer hadn't raided the kitchens since coming back from the south — or hadn't gotten caught raiding the kitchens, anyhow.

Out came the beast. When Lanius saw it, he started to laugh. He couldn't help himself. Pouncer held a good-sized silver spoon in one small, clawed hand, for all the world as though it were the Scepter of Mercy. In its jaws, the moncat carried a dead mouse. No wonder that meow had sounded odd.

Plop! Pouncer dropped the mouse at Lanius' feet. The king knew that was an honor from the moncat, even if it was one he could have done without. "Oh, yes, you're a brave fellow, a hero among moncats," he said, which happened to be true. He could have called Pouncer a soup tureen full of giblet gravy and it wouldn't have mattered to the moncat, as long as he used the proper tone of voice. It had to sound like praise.