Dan Chernenko - The Scepter_s Return

Lanius' nightmares were of a different sort, and from a different source. But he nodded his thanks at Sosia's brisk, practical advice. "You sound a lot like your father – do you know that?" he said.

"Do I?" Sosia thought about it. Then she nodded, too. "Well, maybe I do, some. Is that such a surprise? He raised me – when he wasn't out on one of the Nine Rivers, anyhow." Her mouth twisted. Lanius thought he knew why, and didn't ask to find out if he was right. One of the things Grus had done while he was out on one of the Nine Rivers was father her bastard half brother, the current Arch-Hallow of Avornis.

What Lanius did say was, "I meant it as a compliment. Your father is a shrewd man. Nobody would say anything else." Not even he could say anything else, and he was the man whose crown Grus had… not stolen, since he still wore it, but brushed aside.

"Do you think he can bring the Scepter of Mercy back from the south?" Sosia asked.

That surprised Lanius; she seldom asked about affairs of state. "I hope he can," the king said after a brief pause. "He has a better chance than any other King of Avornis since we lost the Scepter all those years ago. I'm doing everything I can to help him."

"You haven't been in the archives so much lately," Sosia said. "You've been fooling around with your moncats instead. You can't tell me they've got anything to do with getting the Scepter of Mercy back." By her tone, she was as sure of that as she was that he couldn't give her any sort of good explanation for his fooling around with maidservants.

If he tried to tell her anything different, he'd just end up with an argument on his hands. He didn't want any arguments. Getting away from the palace had meant getting away from them. Even when Sosia came to check on him, they hadn't quarreled. He hadn't given her anything to quarrel about. He just shrugged and said, "I enjoy seeing what Pouncer can learn."

"Well…" Sosia paused. Lanius waited for her to say something rude about how useless or how foolish that was, but she didn't. When she resumed, what came out was a grudging, "It's better than some hobbies you could have, I suppose."

Better than seducing serving girls, she doubtless meant. And she had a point. Training Pouncer was certainly more challenging than pursuing maidservants, many of whom hardly required seducing. Going after the serving girls, though, was more fun. Lanius kept that opinion to himself.

Even keeping it to himself didn't help. Sosia wagged a finger at him and said, "I know what you're thinking, you wicked wretch." She tried to sound angry and severe, and – almost – succeeded.

"You can't prove a thing." Lanius tried to sound naive and innocent. He – almost – succeeded, too. They both started laughing. It was the first time they'd ever done that when they were talking about his going after other women. He hoped it meant Sosia wasn't angry at him anymore. That was probably too much to expect, though. Maybe she wasn't very angry…

Grus never got tired of watching wizards free thralls. The beauty of the spell drew him. The rainbows that swirled around the heads of men and women lost to themselves, lost in darkness, would have been enough by themselves to attract his eye. But the look on the thralls' faces when the darkness fell away like a discarded cloak and they were thralls no more – that, to him, eclipsed even the rainbows.

The Avornan wizards he'd taken south of the Stura never seemed to tire of casting the liberation spell, either. Even the bumblers and the bunglers among them came away smiling when they succeeded – and constant practice meant even they got the spell down pat and succeeded almost all the time.

"They're so grateful, Your Majesty," one of the wizards said after a woman who would have been pretty were she cleaned and combed kissed him as soon as she came fully into herself.

"I've seen that, yes," Grus said. By the smoky looks the woman sent the sorcerer, she would have been glad to go on from kisses. Grus didn't think taking advantage of women who didn't yet fully know their own minds was sporting. He suspected not all the Avornan wizards and soldiers were so scrupulous. They were men (and most of them were much younger than he was), they were a long way from home, and they had.. admirers. He hoped not too much trouble would spring from that.

"I know me!" the newly freed thrall exclaimed. She pointed to her well-rounded chest. "I know me!" She kissed the wizard again. "Thank, thank, thank!" Like most of her kind, she didn't have a lot of words, but she made the most of the ones she did have – and she would soon start picking up wagonloads of new ones.

"You're welcome, sweetheart," the wizard murmured. The glance he sent Grus said he wished the king were busy doing something, anything, else. Maybe he didn't care how grimy the girl was.

Grus hadn't issued any orders about fraternizing with freed thralls. He saw no point to giving orders he couldn't enforce. That being so, he took himself elsewhere.

The village was the same sort of tumbledown ruin as all the other thralls' villages he'd seen on this side of the Stura. Some of the houses looked as though they hadn't been repaired since the days before the Menteshe took this land away from Avornis. Some of them looked as though their roofs hadn't been thatched since those days. That had to be an exaggeration… Grus supposed.

Scrawny chickens scuttled through the narrow, filth-clogged streets. An even scrawnier dog yapped around a corner from Grus. Ordinary Avornan peasants would have hanged themselves for shame over the way livestock here was treated – not because ordinary peasants particularly loved their animals (they didn't) but because treating the beasts so badly meant they yielded less than they would have with a little more effort turned their way.

As Grus got upwind of the village, he shook his head. That wasn't right. It wouldn't have taken more effort to do right by the animals – indeed, to do right by the whole village. It would have taken a little more attention. By the nature of what the dark sorcery did to thralls, though, attention was the last thing they could give.

Royal guardsmen bowed to Grus as he came up. Pterocles and Otus were talking outside the wizard's tent, which had gone up next to the bigger and grander royal pavilion. Pterocles waved to Grus. The king waved back and ambled over. The breeze chose that moment to shift, blowing the stink from the village over the encampment. Grus made a face. "How does anybody stand living with a stench like that?" he asked.

"Your Majesty, I didn't even notice it when I was a thrall," Otus said. "It was just part of the air I breathed."

"A nasty part," Grus said.

Otus nodded gravely. "I think so, too – now. In those days, I didn't think about it any more than a dog thinks about rough ground under its feet."

Grus remembered the dog he'd heard in the village. With all the bad smells, the poor beast had to be in torment – or else, thinking about the way some dogs liked to roll in filth, it was having the time of its life.

Pterocles said, "Otus has asked me to teach him his letters. I'm glad to do it."

"I'm sure you would be," Grus said, and then turned toward the freed thrall. "Why do you want to learn them? Most men born free can't read and write, you know." There had been Kings of Avornis who needed to use a stencil to sign their names to decrees. Not all of them were bad kings, either.

"Fulca is a long way away now," Otus said. "We can't talk anymore. If I am going to say anything to her, I have to say it with words I write down. Someone back at the palace will read them to her. She will say what she wants to answer, and someone will write it down."

He didn't want to dictate a letter. That gave Grus an idea. "Maybe Fulca will learn her letters, too," he said.