Dan Chernenko - The Bastard King

Bronze’s belly bulged with what would be two more kittens before much longer. Lanius wasn’t sure which younger moncat had sired them. He hoped it was the one he’d named Rusty, a beast even redder than the reddest red tabby. Rusty resembled neither Bronze nor Iron very much; Lanius wondered from which of them, and how, he’d inherited his looks. They had to come down from one of the original pair of moncats or the other—that much, at least, seemed clear.

Rusty, at the moment, seemed to be doing his best to kill himself, swinging about on boards and sticks with what in a human would have been reckless disregard for his life. Even the monkeys might not have been able to match his acrobatics, for he had claws to help him hold on and they didn’t. Lanius took out a piece of meat and clucked to him. He had different noises to tell each moncat when a treat was for it—one more thing their burgeoning population threatened to disrupt.

Another moncat, a brownish female, tried to steal the tidbit. “Not for you!” Lanius said, and jerked the meat away. The female gave him a hard look. He was convinced moncats thought and remembered better than ordinary cats. Maybe they were even more clever than his monkeys. He wondered about that, but hadn’t found a way to test it.

Down dropped Rusty, fast enough to raise Lanius’ hackles. As soon as the moncat came to the floor, it hurried over to Lanius and started trying to climb him. He gave Rusty the piece of meat. The moncat crouched at his feet while it ate. Rusty knew Lanius wouldn’t let any of the other animals steal its meat. That made the King of Avornis deserve a little extra affection in the moncat’s eyes.

As Lanius often did, he bent down to stroke Rusty. He tried to tame the moncats as much as he could. The Chernagors had warned him the beasts were less affectionate than ordinary cats—a depressing thought if ever there was one—and the sea-rovers hadn’t been joking. Every so often, though, a moncat would decide to act like a pet instead of a wild animal.

This was one of those lucky moments. Rusty—again, probably happier than usual because of the treat it had just enjoyed— not only purred but also rolled over and over like a lovable pussycat encouraging its owner to pet it. Rusty even let Lanius rub his stomach, though it and the other moncats usually scratched and bit when the king took such a liberty.

Emboldened, Lanius squatted. He picked Rusty up and put it in his lap. To his delight, the moncat let him get away with that. In fact, Rusty purred louder than ever. Lanius beamed. He hadn’t imagined a moncat could act so lovable.

Rusty purred so loud, the King of Avornis didn’t notice the knocking on the door for some little while. Even after noticing, he did his best to ignore it. He wanted that moment to last forever. But the knocking went on and on.

“Yes? What is it?” Lanius said when he couldn’t ignore it anymore. If some stupid servant was having conniptions about something unimportant, he intended to cut off the fellow’s ears and feed them to the moncats.

The door opened. That made Lanius think it was Grus—the servants knew better. Even as Lanius muttered a curse, his hand kept stroking Rusty. The moncat kept purring.

It wasn’t Grus. It wasn’t any of the servants Lanius recognized, either. After a moment, though, he realized he did recognize the man, even if not as a servant. The fellow was one of the thralls Grus and Alca had brought back from Cumanus.

Lanius marveled that he did know him for who—for what— he was. Thralls’ faces usually bore the blank stares that could as easily have belonged to barnyard animals. Not here. Not now. Purpose informed this man’s features. His eyes glittered as he stared straight at Lanius. The long, sharp knife he held in his right hand glittered, too.

Still eyeing Lanius, the thrall strode into the moncats’ room. The animals gaped at him. They weren’t used to seeing anybody but the king. The thrall took another slow, deliberate step. Lanius thought he saw the Banished One peering out through the man’s eyes.

He’s come to kill me, the king thought without undue surprise and—he was surprised about this—without undue fear. He wondered whether by that he he meant the thrall or the Banished One, who impelled the fellow forward as surely as a merely mortal puppeteer worked his puppet’s strings.

Rusty let out a small, questioning mew. Lanius kept hold of the moncat. He came to his feet and took a step back, toward the far wall of the room. Smiling, raising the knife, the thrall came after him.

I’m going to die here, Lanius thought. He didn’t know how the thrall had gotten out of the room where Alca had studied him and his fellows—and where they’d stayed, largely ignored, after she left the city of Avornis. How didn’t seem to matter at the moment. He was out, and he had a knife, and, smiling, he took another purposeful step toward the king.

Only later did Lanius decide the thrall—and, through him, the Banished One—wanted to watch and savor his fear. Just then, no such elaborate thoughts filled his mind.

He threw Rusty in the thrall’s face.

The moncat squalled with fury, and with fear of its own. Up till a moment ago Lanius had been friendly, even loving, and Rusty had returned those feelings as well as an animal could. And now this!

Rusty clung with all four clawed hands—and with tail, as well. The thrall let out a gurgling shriek of pain, surprise, and fury of his own (or of his Master). He grabbed for the moncat to try to tear it loose. Rusty sank needle-sharp teeth into his hand. The thrall shrieked again.

Having had one good idea, Lanius got another one. He fled. Dodging the thrall was no problem. Not even with some part of the Banished One’s spirit guiding him could the thrall commit murder with a frenzied, clawing moncat clinging to his head.

Other moncats had already escaped from the chamber. That was one more thing Lanius knew he would have to worry about later. Meanwhile, he burst out into the corridor, crying, “Guards! Guards! An assassination!” He wished the crucial word weren’t five syllables long; it took forever to say.

Ordinary servants started shouting, too. Out came the thrall. He’d finally gotten rid of Rusty, but his face looked as though he’d run full speed through a thousand miles of thorn bushes. His left hand bled, too. He kept shaking his head to keep blood from running into his eyes.

Guards pounded up the hallway. “Seize that man!” Lanius shouted. “Take him alive for questioning if you can.”

Without a word, the guards rushed at the thrall. He tried to rush at Lanius. Restraining him didn’t work. He fought so fiercely, he made them kill him. Lanius cared much less than he’d thought he would. Staring down at the pool of blood spreading across the mosaic work floor, all he said was, “I hope that was the only mischief afoot here.”

A woman’s scream rang down the corridor.

A servant said, “You do remember, Your Majesty, that you were going to lunch with Her Majesty?”

“Yes, I remember.” Grus didn’t look up from the pile of parchments he was wading through.

“You should have gone some little while ago,” the servant said.

“I suppose I should,” Grus admitted. But he and Estrilda were still so fragile together, even going through petitions for tax relief seemed preferable to eating with her. Still, if he didn’t go at all, he’d insult her, and that would only make things between them worse—if they could be worse.

Shaking his head, he rose and went up the hall toward the chambers he still shared with his wife, though much less intimately than he had in the past. “Oh, Your Majesty, aren’t you dining with the queen?” asked a servant coming the other way. “A rather strange-seeming fellow was asking after you, and I sent him in that direction.”