Dan Chernenko - The Chernagor Pirates

“It’s the prince,” she said. Terror gripped Lanius’ heart—had something happened to Crex? Then the serving woman added, “He’s done something truly dreadful this time,” and Lanius’ panic eased. Crex wasn’t old enough to do anything dreadful enough to raise this kind of horror in a grown woman. Which meant…

“Ortalis?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the woman said.

“Oh, by the gods!” Lanius said. “What has he done?” Which serving girl has he outraged, and how badly? was what he meant.

But this serving woman answered, “Why, he went and killed a man. Poor Bubulcus.” She started to cry.

“Bubulcus!” Lanius exclaimed. “I was just thinking about him.”

“That’s all anybody will do from now on,” the serving woman said. “He had a wife and children, too. Queen Queleas mercy on them, for they’ll need it.”

“How did it happen?” Lanius asked in helpless astonishment. The woman only shrugged. Lanius spread his hands. “You were going to take me to him. You’d better do that.”

She did. They had to push through a growing crowd of servants to get to Ortalis, who still stood over Bubulcus’ body. A whip lay on the floor behind the prince. Blood soaked the servant’s tunic. It pooled beneath him. His eyes stared up sightlessly. His mouth, Lanius was not surprised to find, was open. In character to the last, the king thought.

The bloody knife in Ortalis’ right hand was a small one, such as he might have used for cutting up fruit. It had sufficed for nastier work as well.

“What happened here?” Lanius demanded as he shoved his way to the front of the crowd. “And put that cursed thing down, Ortalis,” he added sharply. “You certainly don’t need it now.”

Grus’ son let the knife fall. “He insulted me,” he said in a distant— almost a dazed—voice. “He insulted me, and I hit him, and he jeered at me again—said his mother could hit harder than that. And the next thing I knew… The next thing I knew, there he was on the floor.”

Lanius looked around. “Did anyone see this? Did anyone hear it?”

“I did, Your Majesty,” said a sweeper with a grizzled beard. “You know how Bubulcus always likes—liked—to show how clever he was, to see how close to the edge he could come.”

“Oh, yes,” Lanius said. “I had noticed that.”

“Well,” the sweeper said, “he sees that there whip in His Highness’ hand—”

“I’d just come in from a ride,” Ortalis said quickly.

“In this horrible fog?” Lanius said. He wished he had the words back as soon as they were gone. He could guess what Ortalis had really been doing with the whip. With whom, and did she like it? he wondered, feeling a little sick.

“Anyways,” the sweeper went on, “Bubulcus asks him if that’s the whip he uses to hit little Princess Capella. And that’s when His Highness smacked him.”

“I… see,” Lanius said slowly. Had he been in Ortalis’ boots, he thought he would have hit Bubulcus for that, too. Using a whip on a willing woman was one thing. Limosa thinks Ortalis is wonderful, Lanius reminded himself, gulping. Using the same whip on a baby girl was something else again. Not even Ortalis would do such a thing— Lanius devoutly hoped.

If Ortalis had let it go there, Lanius didn’t see how anyone could have said anything much. But Bubulcus had had to make one more crack, and then… “After that,” the sweeper said, “His Highness punctured him right and proper, he did.”

Chastising an offensive servant and killing him were also two different things. Lanius’ sole relief was that Ortalis didn’t seem to have done it for his own amusement. Again, killing in a fit of rage was different from killing for the sport of it.

A servant who killed in a fit of rage would be punished. He might lose his head. King Grus’ son, Lanius knew, wouldn’t lose his head for slaying Bubulcus. But Ortalis shouldn’t get off scot-free, either. For all Bubulcus’ faults—which Lanius knew as well as anybody—he hadn’t deserved to die for a crude joke or two.

“Hear me, Ortalis,” Lanius said, his tone more for the benefit of the murmuring servants than for his brother-in-law. “When you killed Bubulcus, you went beyond what was proper.”

“So did he,” Ortalis muttered, but he didn’t try to deny that he’d transgressed. That helped.

“Hear me,” Lanius repeated. “Because you went beyond what was proper, I order you to settle on Bubulcus’ widow enough silver to let her and her children live comfortably for the rest of their lives. That will repair some of what you have done.”

He waited. Two things could go wrong with his judgment. Ortalis might prove arrogant enough to reject it out of hand, or the servants might decide it wasn’t enough.

Ortalis did some more muttering, but he finally said, “Oh, all right. Fool should have known when to shut up, though.” That struck Lanius as the most fitting epitaph Bubulcus would get.

The king’s gaze swung to the servants. None of them said anything right away; they were gauging what he’d done. After a bit, one of the men said, “I expect most of us wanted to pop Bubulcus one time or another.” Slowly, one after another, they began to nod.

Lanius let out a small sigh. He seemed to have gotten away with it on both counts. “Take the body away and clean up the mess,” he said. The scarlet pool under Bubulcus’ corpse unpleasantly reminded him how much blood a body held. “Let Bubulcus’ wife—his widow—know what happened. And let her know Prince Ortalis will also pay for the funeral pyre.”

Ortalis stirred, but again did not protest. Most of the servants drifted away. A few remained to carry out Lanius’ orders. One of them said, “You took care of that pretty well, Your Majesty.” A couple of other men nodded.

“My thanks,” Lanius said- “Some of these things, you only wish they never would have happened in the first place.”

Even Ortalis nodded. “That’s true. If he’d just kept quiet…” He still didn’t sound sorry Bubulcus was dead. Expecting him to was probably asking too much. And the servants had seemed satisfied that he would pay compensation. It could have turned out worse.

Then Lanius realized it wasn’t over yet. I have to write Grus and let him know what his son’s done now. He would almost rather have gone under a dentist’s forceps than set pen to parchment for that. No help for it, though. Grus would surely hear. Better he should hear from someone who had the story straight.

Two men carried Bubulcus’ body away. Women went to work on the pool of blood. Ortalis scowled at Lanius. “How much silver will you steal from me to pay for that wretch’s worthless life?”

“However much it is, you can afford it better than he can afford what you took from him.” Lanius sighed. “I know he could drive a man mad. More than once, I almost sent him to the Maze. Now I wish I would have. In the Maze, he’d still be breathing.”

“If he made you angry, he was too big a fool to hope to live very long,” Ortalis said. “You’re too soft for your own good.”

“Am I?” Lanius said.

His brother-in-law nodded. “You let the servants get away with murder.”

No, you’ve just gotten away with murder, Lanius thought. No ordinary man would have come off so lightly. But Ortalis wasn’t an ordinary man, not when it came to his family connections. That he’d paid any price at all probably surprised the palace servants.

Grus’ son stooped and picked up the knife he’d used to stab Bubulcus. “What will you do with that thing?” Lanius asked. If Ortalis wanted to keep it for a souvenir, he would have to change his mind. The king made up his mind to be very firm about that.