Dan Chernenko - The Scepter_s Return

"Oh? What?" Lanius asked. "It's one more than I see, I'll tell you that."

"Winter is coming," Pterocles said. "People don't travel as much in the wintertime. Even if a plague starts, it won't spread as fast as it would if it got going during the summer."

"That will give us something to look forward to when the weather warms up, won't it?" Lanius said.

The wizard winced. "I wish you hadn't put it quite like that."

Thinking about it, Lanius also wished he hadn't said it like that. "Do the best you can, that's all. And if I come across anything in the archives that has to do with plagues, I'll pass it on to you."

Anser and Ortalis would have laughed at him. Sosia would have rolled her eyes at the time he wasted in the archives (she would have done more than that if she'd known how he occasionally spent time there). Grus would have rolled his eyes, too, though he knew Lanius often found things worth knowing as he poked around. Pterocles nodded eagerly. "Thank you, Your Majesty. I appreciate that, believe me. You never can tell what might turn up."

"No, you never can." Some of the things Lanius had learned in the archives – both royal and ecclesiastical – he wished he never would have found. The name Milvago went through his mind again. This time, he didn't say it aloud. Somehow, it seemed all too potent just the same.

Pterocles bowed to him once more. "I'm glad you and King Grus are alert to the possibilities," he said. "That's bound to help when… whatever happens, happens."

Lanius wasn't so sure. Suppose the plague killed both kings in the space of a few days. Then Crex would take the crown, assuming he lived – and assuming Ortalis didn't try to steal it. Ortalis would be regent if he wasn't king.

Lanius had been a little boy when his father died and King Mergus' younger brother, Scolopax, succeeded him. Scolopax had ruled briefly and badly. Lanius didn't see Ortalis doing any better. The king shivered. With luck – and, he hoped, with the aid of the gods still in the heavens – it wouldn't come to anything like that.

He hoped Olor and Quelea and the rest of the gods in the heavens were paying attention to what was going on in the material world. They often seemed to give it as little notice as they could get away with. Would they have cast the Banished One down here if they'd taken seriously the material world and what happened in it? Lanius didn't think so.

The king wished Avornis boasted an arch-hallow who held his seat because of his holiness, not because he happened to be the other king's bastard. Like everybody else, Lanius liked Anser. Even Ortalis, in whom the milk of human kindness had long since curdled, liked Anser. Even Estrilda, who should have despised him as the living symbol of her husband's betrayal, liked Anser. However likable he was, though, he found deer more dear than Queen Quelea, and King Olor more boring than boar.

But then again, maybe it wouldn't matter one bit. If the gods in the heavens were so nearly indifferent to what went on in the material world, how much would they care whether the arch-hallow was a refined and subtle theologian or a crackerjack archer? Maybe less than Lanius hoped they did.

And in that case…

"In that case," the King of Avornis muttered, "it's up to Grus and me and Pterocles and Collurio and Tinamus and Otus and Hirundo and – " He broke off. He could have gone on naming names for quite a while. On the other hand, he could have stopped after the ones to whom the Banished Ones had sent dreams. They might have been enough by themselves.

Or maybe no one and nothing would be enough. How could anyone do more than hope when confronting an exiled god? Sometimes even holding on to hope seemed hard as holding up the weight of the world on his shoulders.

When he stood up, he was a little surprised, or maybe more than a little, to find he labored under no literally crushing burden. He walked slowly down the corridor that would take him to the kitchens if he followed it all the way. He didn't really intend to; he wasn't really going anywhere at all. He was just ambling along, thinking about what might happen, what he could do, what would be possible if things went the way he wanted, and what he would have to do if they didn't.

Servants bowed and curtsied. Lanius noticed them just enough to bow in return. But when Limosa started to drop him a curtsy, he came back to the real world with a snap. "Don't bother," he said quickly. "You might not be able to get up again if you do."

Her belly seemed to bulge more every day now. The baby was still a couple of months away, which meant that belly would be even bigger by the time it was born. She carried a chunk of raisin loaf in one hand.

"I'll be all right," she said. "I'm just getting to where all I want is for this to be over. Pretty soon, it will be."

"I remember Sosia saying the same thing," Lanius said.

"I feel like I'm carrying around a great big melon, except melons don't kick," Ortalis' wife said, setting the hand without the raisin loaf just above her navel.

She was another likable one. Lanius cordially loathed her father, and wasn't a bit sorry when Grus sent Petrosus to the Maze. She was wed to a man who'd alarmed the king for as long as he'd known him. She carried a baby that could throw the succession into turmoil. All the same, Lanius didn't dislike her. He worried about her, but that wasn't the same thing.

"Everything will be fine," Lanius said.

Limosa nodded. "Oh, I think so, too. It's not a lot of fun when it finally happens, but it does usually turn out all right. If it didn't, there wouldn't be any more people after a while. And when it is over" – her face softened – "you've got a baby. Babies are fun."

Babies were a lot more fun if someone else did the cleaning up after them. Limosa took that for granted. Since Lanius did, too, he didn't call her on it. He only smiled and nodded and said, "I remember."

"Crex and Pitta are getting big now," Limosa said. "You and Sosia ought to have another baby yourselves."

Since Lanius wasn't currently welcome in Sosia's bed, prospects for a new royal prince or princess lay nowhere in the immediate future. If Limosa didn't already know that, Lanius didn't feel like explaining it to her. He just said, "Maybe one of these days."

"It would be nice," Limosa said. If she worried about the succession, or about a son of hers threatening Crex's place, she didn't show it. Maybe that was good acting on her part. Petrosus had surely grafted her onto Lanius' family in the hope that a grandson of his would wear the crown. But even Lanius had trouble believing she attached enormous importance to it.

"So it would," he said. She wasn't wrong – he'd enjoyed Crex and Pitta very much when they were small.

"May I ask you something, Your Majesty?" she said.

"You can always ask. Whether I answer depends on what the question is," Lanius replied.

Limosa nodded. "Of course. All I want to know, though, is what you're doing out in the country. Why do you want to build what sounds like a slice of a city?"

She wasn't the only one wondering about that. Even Tinamus, the architect responsible for it, wondered. Wondering was harmless. Knowing? Knowing was all too likely to be anything but. With what Lanius hoped was a harmless smile, he said, "It's a hobby, that's all. Why does Ortalis like to go hunting?"

For some tiny fraction of a heartbeat, alarm spread over Limosa's face. She knew the answer to that question, then. It was something on the order of, He hunts animals so he doesn't hunt people. Lanius started to apologize; he hadn't meant to embarrass her. But maybe what he'd said wasn't so bad after all. She didn't press him about what he was building anymore.

Instead, she murmured, "Hobbies," made as though to curtsy again without actually doing it, and went on up the corridor.