Dan Chernenko - The Chernagor Pirates

Lanius had wondered the same thing. But no one had ever found anything connecting Ortalis to those disappearances—except for the couple of maidservants who’d gone back to the provinces well rewarded for keeping their mouths shut afterwards. Cristata, evidently, didn’t want to go that way. Lanius asked her, “What do you think I should do?”

“Punish him,” she said at once. “You’re the king, aren’t you?”

The real answer to that question was, yes and no. He reigned, but he hardly ruled. Explaining his own troubles, though, would do Cristata no good. He said, “King Grus would be a better one to do that than I am.”

Cristata sent him a look he was more used to feeling on his own face than to seeing on someone else’s. The look said, My, you’re not as smart as I thought you were, are you? Cristata herself said, carefully, “Prince Ortalis is His Majesty’s son.” Sure enough, she might have been speaking to an idiot child.

“Yes, I know,” Lanius answered. “But King Grus, please believe me, doesn’t like him doing these things.” Cristata looked eloquently unconvinced. Sighing, Lanius added, “And King Grus, please believe me, is also the one who has the power to punish him when he does these things. I am not, and I do not.”

“Oh,” she said in a dull voice. “I should have realized that, shouldn’t I? I’m sorry I bothered you, Your Majesty.”

“It wasn’t a bother. I wish I could do more. You’re—” Lanius stopped. He’d been about to say something like, You’re too pretty for it to have been a bother. If he did say something like that, it would be the first step toward complicating his life with Sosia. And, all too likely, Cristata would have heard the same sort of thing from Ortalis. She’d believed it from him, and been sorry afterwards. What did she think Lanius might do to her if she were rash enough to believe again?

Even though he’d stopped, her eyes showed she understood what he’d meant. Now she was the one who sighed. Perhaps as much to herself as to him, she said, “I used to think being pretty was nice. If you’d told me it was dangerous…” She shrugged—prettily. “I’m sorry I took up your time, Your Majesty.” Before Lanius could find anything to say, she swept out of the little chamber.

The king spent the next few minutes cursing his brother-in-law, not so much for exactly what Ortalis had done as for making Lanius himself embarrassed to be a man.

No one knew the river galleys that prowled Avornan waters better than King Grus. The deep-bellied, tall-masted ships that went into and out of Nishevatz were a different breed of vessel altogether, even more different than cart horses from jumpers. Sailing on the Northern Sea was not the same business as going up and down the Nine Rivers that cut the Avornan plain.

“We need ships of our own,” Grus said to Hirundo. “Without them, we’ll never pry Vasilko out of that city.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the general answered. “We do need ships. But where will we get ’em? Build ’em ourselves? We haven’t got the woodworkers to build ’em or sailors to man ’em. We haven’t got the time, either. We might hire ’em from the Chernagors, except the next Chernagor city-state that wants to let us use any’ll be the first.”

“I know,” Grus said. “They think if we have ships, we’ll use ’em against them next.”

Hirundo didn’t reply. Many years before, the Chernagor city-states had belonged to Avornis. A strong king might want to take them back again. Grus liked to think of himself as a strong king. That the Chernagors evidently thought of him the same way was a compliment of sorts. It was, at the moment, a compliment he could have done without.

His chief wizard walked by. “How are you, Pterocles?” Grus called.

“How am I?” Pterocles echoed, his voice and expression both vague. “I’ve… been better.”

He hadn’t been the same since the sorcerer inside Nishevatz laid him low. Grus still marveled that he’d survived. So did all the other Avornan wizards who’d since helped him try to recover. Maybe the same thing would have happened to Alca—exiled from the capital, if not from Grus’ heart—had the same spell struck her. Maybe.

Did the power that had smashed Pterocles mean the magic came from the Banished One himself, and not from one of his mortal minions? Like Vsevolod, the Avornan wizards seemed to think so. They didn’t want to commit themselves—one more reason Grus wished he had straight-talking Alca at his side—but that was the impression he got.

“Can you work magic at need?” Grus asked.

“I suppose so.” But Pterocles didn’t sound as though he fully believed it.

Grus didn’t fully believe it, either. Pterocles still looked and acted like a man who’d been hit over the head with a large, pointy rock. Sometimes he seemed better, sometimes worse, but even better didn’t mean the same as good.

Under his own tunic, Grus wore an old protective amulet, one he’d had since before becoming King of Avornis. It had helped save his life once, when Queen Certhia, Lanius’ mother, tried to slay him by sorcery. Would it protect him if the Banished One tried to do the same thing? Grus had his doubts. He knew he didn’t want to find out the hard way.

Pterocles said, “Half of me makes more of a wizard than a lot of these odds and sods, Your Majesty—or half of me would, if I didn’t feel so… empty inside.” He tapped the side of his head with his fist. It didn’t sound like a jar from which all the wine was gone, but Grus— and maybe Pterocles, too—thought it should have.

“You’ll be all right.” Grus hoped he was telling the truth. When he added, “You are getting better,” he felt on safer ground. On the other hand, how much of a compliment was that? If Pterocles hadn’t gotten any better, the sorcerous stroke he’d taken would have laid him on his pyre.

A messenger came up to Grus. He stood there waiting to be noticed. When Grus nodded to him, he said, “Your Majesty, a sack of letters from Avornis is here.”

“Oh, good,” Grus said. “I do want to keep track of what’s going on back home.” He’d already stayed out of the kingdom longer than he’d intended. Back in the capital, Lanius behaved more like a real king every day. If he wanted to try ousting Grus, he might have a chance now. From what Grus had seen, though, Lanius didn’t like actually governing. Grus chuckled, not that he really felt amused. That was a small, flimsy platform on which to rest his own rule.

He turned to walk back to his tent and look at those letters. He hadn’t gone far, though, before another messenger ran up to him. This one didn’t wait to be noticed. He shouted, “Your Majesty, they’re coming!”

“Who’s coming?” Grus asked.

“Chernagors! A whole army of Chernagors, from out of the east!” the messenger answered. “They aren’t on their way to ask us to dance, either.”

“No?” Grus slid gracefully from heel to toe and back again. The messenger stared at him. He sighed. “Well, probably not. Tell me more.”

“We sent men to them to find out if they were coming to help us and Prince Vsevolod,” the messenger said. “They shot at our men.”

“Then they probably aren’t.” Grus’ eyes involuntarily went back to the walls of Nishevatz. “If they aren’t coming to help Vsevolod, Vasilko will be glad to see them. Nice to think someone is, eh?”

“Er—yes.” The messenger didn’t seem to think that was good news. Grus didn’t think it was good news, either. Unlike the messenger, he knew just how bad it was liable to be.

He ordered his own army into line of battle facing east. Things could have been worse. He supposed they could have been worse, anyhow. The army could have gone on about the business of besieging Nishevatz without sending scouts out to the east and west. That would have been worse, sure enough. The Chernagors from the east might have crashed into his force unsuspected. Instead of a mere disaster, he would have had a catastrophe on his hands then.