Dan Chernenko - The Chernagor Pirates

“If you hadn’t slammed the door, Bubulcus, you’d be on your way to the Maze right now,” Lanius said.

Where nothing else had, that got through to Bubulcus. Kings of Avornis had exiled people who dissatisfied them to the swamps and marshes east of the capital for years uncounted. The servant’s smile tried to seem ingratiating, but came out frightened. “Your Majesty is joking,” he said, sounding as though he hoped to convince himself.

“My Majesty is doing no such thing,” Lanius replied. “Do you want to see if I’m joking?” Bubulcus shook his head, looking more frightened than ever. This is the power Grus knows all the time, Lanius thought. Am I jealous? He didn’t need to wonder long. Yes, I’m jealous. But that too would have to wait. “Where did the moncats go?”

“Out of that room—that’s all I can tell you,” Bubulcus answered, as self-righteous as ever. “Nobody could keep track of those… things once they get moving. They aren’t natural, you ask me.”

Lanius wished he knew which moncats had gotten out. Maybe his special calls would have helped lure them back. Or maybe not; moncats could be as willful and perverse as ordinary felines. As things were, elegant solutions would have to fly straight out the window. “Go to the kitchens,” he told Bubulcus.

“To the kitchens?” the servant echoed. “Why should I do that?”

“To get some raw flesh for me to use to catch the moncats.” Lanius suddenly looked as fierce as he knew how. “Or would you rather have me carve some raw flesh from your carcass?”

Bubulcus fled.

When he got back, he had some lovely beef that would probably have gone on the royal table tonight. And he proved to be capable of thought on his own, for he also carried a couple of dead mice by the tail. “Good,” Lanius murmured. “Maybe I won’t have to carve you after all.”

He walked through palace hallways near the moncats’ room, clucking as though it were general feeding time and holding up the meat and the mice. Only when servants’ eyes went big did he stop to reflect that this was a curious thing for a King of Avornis to do. Having reflected, he then quit letting it bother him. He’d done all sorts of curious things. What was one more?

As he walked, he eyed wall niches and candelabra hanging from the ceiling. Unlike ordinary cats, moncats climbed at any excuse or none; they lived their lives in the trees. That made them especially delightful to catch when they got loose. It was also the reason Lanius had told his servants not to come into the animals’ rooms—not that Bubulcus bothered remembering anything so trivial as a royal order.

A woman saw the meat in Lanius’ hand and waved to him. “Your Majesty, one of those funny animals of yours is around that corner over there. It hissed at me, the nasty thing.”

“Thank you, Parula. You’ll have a reward,” Lanius said. He glowered at Bubulcus. “What you’ll have…”

“ I didn’t do anything, Your Majesty.” Bubulcus sounded affronted. The next time he did do something wrong would be the first, as far as he was concerned.

Lanius hurried around the corner at which Parula had pointed. Sure enough, the moncat was there. It was trying to get out a window. Since the royal palace was also a citadel, the windows were narrow and set with iron bars. The moncat couldn’t get out that way, though it might have dashed out a door.

“Rusty!” Lanius called.

“How can you tell one of the miserable creatures from another?” asked Bubulcus, who’d trailed along behind him.

“How?” Lanius shrugged. “I can, that’s all.” From then on, he ignored Bubulcus. Dangling one of the dead mice by the tail, he called the moncat’s name again.

Rusty turned large green eyes his way. Moncats were smarter than ordinary cats; they did come to learn the names Lanius called them. And the offer of a mouse would have tempted any feline small enough to care about such a morsel. Rusty dropped down from the window and hurried over to the king.

He gave the moncat the mouse. Rusty held the treat in its hind feet—whose first toes did duty as thumbs—and used the claws of its front feet and sharp teeth to butcher it. The moncat ate the mouse in chunks. It didn’t scratch or bite when Lanius picked it up and carried it off to the room from which it had escaped.

“There. That’s all taken care of,” Bubulcus said happily, as though he’d caught the moncat instead of letting it escape.

“No.” Lanius shook his head. “This is one moncat. Two got away, you said. If the other one isn’t caught soon, you will be very, very sorry. Do you understand me?” He sounded like a king who ruled as well as reigned. Bubulcus looked unhappy enough to make Lanius feel like that kind of king, too.

King Grus stared up at the frowning walls of Nishevatz. He still had no sure notion of what had happened to the Avornans and Chernagors he’d tried to sneak into the city. Prince Vasilko hadn’t gloated about them from the wall or shot their heads out of catapults or anything of the sort. He gave no sign of knowing they’d tried to enter Nishevatz. In a way, that silence was more intimidating than anything blatant he might have done. What had his men done to them? Or, worse, what were they doing to them?

Not knowing gnawed at Grus. Still, he had to go on. With one effort a failure, he tried another. An interpreter, a squad of guards, and Prince Vsevolod at his side, he approached the Chernagor fortress.

“Here is your rightful prince!” he called, and pointed to Vsevolod. The interpreter turned his words into those of the throaty Chernagor tongue.

Faces, pale dots in the distance, peered down at Grus from the top of the frowning wall. Here and there, the sun sparkled off an iron helmet, or perhaps a sword blade. No one on the wall said a word. The wind blew cold and salty off the gray sea beyond the city-state.

“Here is your rightful prince!” Grus said again. “Cast down the ungrateful, unnatural son who has stolen your throne. Do you want the servants of the Banished One loose in your land? That is what Vasilko will give you.”

Vsevolod strode forward. Despite his years, he still stood very straight, very erect. He looked every inch a prince. He shouted up at the warriors on the wall. He surely knew a lot of them as men, not merely as Chernagors.

“What does he say?” Grus asked the interpreter.

“He says he will not punish them if they yield up Vasilko to him,” the Chernagor answered. “He says he knows they were fooled. He says he will not even kill Vasilko. He says he will send him into exile in Avornis, where he can learn the error of his ways.”

“Hmm.” Grus wondered how Vsevolod had meant that. He didn’t much want Vasilko in his kingdom, not even in the Maze. But he supposed Vsevolod was doing the best he could. If the old man had promised to torture his son to death the minute he got his throne back, which of them was really likely to have fallen under the influence of the Banished One?

That thought brought on another. How do I know Vasilko really is the man the Banished One backs? Grus wondered. He sent Vsevolod a sudden hard stare. He’d always believed the old lord of Nishevatz. Why would Vsevolod have summoned him up to the Chernagor country, if not to fight the forces of the Banished One? Why? What if the answer is, to lure me into a danger I can’t hope to escape?

“He is calling on them to open the gates,” the interpreter said. Grus knew he’d missed a couple of sentences. That jolt of suspicion had driven everything else out of his mind for a moment. The older he got, the more complicated life looked. He eyed Vsevolod again. By the time he got that old, how would things seem? Would he be able to find any straight paths at all, or would every choice twist back on itself like a snake with indigestion? The interpreter added, “He says he will not harm any of them, if they return to his side now. He also says you Avornans will go home then.”