Harry Turtledove: Wisdom of the Fox

"Are you making prophecies now?" Selatre asked. "Perhaps I should have worried about whether Biton would take you back to Ikos and set you on the throne of pearl."

"Thank you, no," Gerin said. "I'm right where I belong, not doing what I'd hoped to be doing, maybe, but doing something that needs doing—and I'm just happy you think you belong here, too."

"That I do," Selatre agreed. "And now, if you're not going to drag me upstairs, I'll go up by myself and wade through that scroll on Kizzuwatnan hepatomancy I was trying to make sense of the other day."

"That one doesn't make much sense to me, either," Gerin said. "My guess is that it either didn't make much sense to the Sithonian who wrote it in the first place or to the Elabonian who put it into our language. I've tried foretelling a few times from livers of cows or sheep we've slaughtered, but what I divined had nothing to do with what ended up happening. Something's been lost somewhere, I think."

"Maybe it will come clear if I keep studying it," Selatre said, and headed back into the great hall.

Gerin smiled as he watched her go. Though she didn't put it the way he had, she also believed in working at something till you got it right. Even without hepatomancy, he knew a good omen when he saw one.

The way she'd teased him about dragging her upstairs he took for a good omen, too. With Elise, anything involving the bedchamber had been a deadly serious business. With Fand, he'd never known whether he was in for a grand time or a fight. Making love with someone neither earnest nor inflammatory was new to him, but he liked it.

Drifting after Selatre, he walked into the great hall himself. Van sat at one of the tables there, a roast chicken—mostly bones now—in front of him, a pitcher of ale within easy reach. He nodded to the Fox and said, "Grab yourself a jack, Captain, and help me get to the bottom of this."

"I don't mind if I do." Gerin sat down across from the outlander, who poured him a full jack.

Van raised his own and said, "To the Prince of the North—maybe one day to the King of the North!" He poured the ale down his throat, then stared sharply at Gerin. "You'd better drink to that."

"So I should," Gerin said, and obediently drank. He smacked his lips, partly tasting the ale, partly Van's words. King of the North? "If I'm lucky, my grandson may wear that title."

Van plucked at his beard. "I don't know, Fox. All's topsy-turvy here, and you're a young man yet. If you live, you may do it."

Gerin shifted uncomfortably on the bench, as if he'd got a splinter in his backside. "I don't know that I want to do it. A title like that . . . It'd be an open invitation to all the other lords in the northlands to gang together and pull me down."

"I don't know," Van repeated. "Me, I don't think Aragis would lift a finger against you, for fear you'd call down the gods and turn him into a lump of cheese, or some such. Same with Adiatunnus. And without them, who'd raise a proper fight?"

"They're wary of me now, aye," Gerin said, "but that'll fade by the time the first snow falls. I can't make myself king before then; I'm too weak. And taking the title when I haven't the strength to back it up—" He shook his head. "Aragis wants to be king. I think he'd fight for pride's sake if I went and put on a crown."

"Have it your way—you generally do," Van said. "From where I sit, looks like you could bring it off." He poured the last of the ale into his jack, drained it, got up, and headed for the stairs.

He'd left one of the wings on the roast fowl uneaten. Gerin pulled it off the carcass, gnawed on it thoughtfully. He shook his head after a little while, still convinced he was right. All the same, he sent a resentful look toward the stairway: Van had kindled his ambition, and he'd known just what he was doing, too.

"Not yet," Gerin said. His lands had suffered too much from the monsters, and from the fights with Adiatunnus. He wanted time to wed Selatre and to enjoy life with her (though the calculating part of his mind said being married to the former Sibyl of an Ikos now miraculously restored would also foster his prestige among his neighbors). No, not yet.

But who could say? The time might come.

Maps

THE END