The Scepter's Return Read online

  “No. There are times I wish it were, but it isn’t. You’re right about that,” Lanius said. “But I saw you could train ordinary cats, and I’ve already trained Pouncer a little.”

  “It can be done, yes,” Collurio said. “It takes longer, though, and it’s not so easy. It’s not so reliable. A cat does what it wants, not what you want.”

  “Really? I’d never noticed that,” Lanius said.

  Collurio gave him an odd look. Then, realizing the king was joking, the trainer smiled. He said, “You can get cats to do what you want. You just have to make sure it’s what they want, too. For instance …”

  Standing there beside him on a sturdy base was a pole as thick as his arm and about as tall as he was. He showed Pouncer a scrap of meat, then ostentatiously put it on the pole’s flat top. As the moncat swarmed up the pole, claws digging into the wood, Collurio loudly clapped his hands. Pouncer flinched, but went on climbing. The beast perched at the top of the pole to eat its treat.

  Collurio waited till it had finished, then lifted it and set it on the floor again. He produced another bit of meat and put it on top of the pole. As Pouncer climbed, Collurio clapped his hands once more.

  “That didn’t scare him as much as the first time,” Lanius said.

  “No, it didn’t,” Collurio agreed as Pouncer captured the prize and gobbled it up. “After we do it a few more times, it won’t frighten him at all. And pretty soon he’ll get the idea that when I clap my hands he’s supposed to go up the pole, because something good will be waiting for him when he does.”

  “And he’ll go on up even if it’s not,” Lanius said.

  “Yes, he will,” the animal trainer said. “You don’t want to make him do that too often, though, or he’ll get confused. Keep things as simple as you can with beasts.” He chuckled. “Come to that, keep things as simple as you can with people, too.”

  Lanius started to say something pleasant and nearly meaningless. Then he stopped and thought about it for a little while. He set a hand on Collurio’s shoulder. “Do you know, that’s some of the best advice I ever heard.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” This time, Collurio’s chuckle sounded distinctly wry. “It’s easy to say. Lots of things are easy to say. Doing it … Well, if doing it were easier, then everybody would, don’t you think?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Lanius replied. “And speaking of things that are easy to say but not so easy to do, I haven’t found what I was looking for in the archives yet, either.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Collurio said. Lanius wished he were sure he would. The trainer went on, “Meanwhile, we’ll do as much as we can without it, that’s all.”

  He didn’t fuss. He didn’t complain. Lanius admired his attitude. Then the king realized Collurio was getting paid—and getting the prestige of working in the palace—regardless of whether that misplaced document ever turned up. That being so, why should he fuss or complain? Lanius kept things simple, though, by pretending not to notice that. He said, “Very good. Do you want to give Pouncer some more work on this trick?”

  “Yes, we can do it a few more times,” Collurio answered. “After that, he’ll start to fill up. Then he won’t care about the signals we give him. You don’t want that to happen when you’re training an animal, either.”

  Pouncer went up the pole to get some scraps of meat. He went once on the strength of Collurio’s handclap alone. And he climbed it once all by himself, just to see if he could find a treat at the top. Lanius laughed at that. He scratched the moncat behind the ears. “Hello, there. You’re a fuzzy optimist, aren’t you?” Pouncer gave back a rusty purr.

  “He is an optimist,” Collurio said. “He’s a clever optimist, too—you were right about that. He learns very fast. He’s quicker to see things and understand things than a dog is, no doubt about it.”

  “I should hope so.” Lanius scratched Pouncer again, or tried to—the moncat snapped at him. The king wasn’t especially surprised. He didn’t push his luck. Instead, he said, “He’s also much more charming than a dog. You can see that for yourself.”

  “Charming.” Collurio eyed the moncat, which remained perched on top of the pole. Pouncer stared right back, as though to say, Well? Come on, cough up the meat. You think I climbed all the way up here for the fun of it? Collurio wagged a finger at the beast. “You get treats when we say you get them, not whenever you want them. That’s one more thing you have to learn.”

  Moncats had hands, too. Pouncer pointed back with a clawed forefinger. Even the beast’s severe expression mimicked the trainer’s. Lanius snorted. “This is a ridiculous creature,” he said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” But Collurio kept on eyeing Pouncer. “He knows what he’s doing, though, or some of it. He … really is quicker than a dog, isn’t he?” He acted as though he expected the moncat to answer for itself.

  “I’ve always thought so,” Lanius answered. “But you’re right that he’s more difficult than a dog, too. Moncats … are what they are. You can’t make them into something they’re not.”

  “Maybe we can persuade this one that he wants to go where we want to take him,” Collurio said.

  Lanius nodded. “That’s what I’m hoping for.”

  In all his years, in all he’d done, Grus hadn’t found a pleasure finer than watching freed thralls begin to discover they were full-fledged human beings after all. Watching children grow up was the only thing he’d ever known that even came close. But children found out what they were, grew into what they were, much more gradually. Thralls were kept artificially childlike—artificially beastlike, really—their whole lives long. Seeing them blossom once taken from the dark shadows of the sorcery that had unnaturally trapped them was like seeing children spring to adulthood all at once.

  Seeing them throw off thralldom also reassured the king that Pterocles and the other wizards really did know what they were doing. He’d had faith in Pterocles, much less in the others, who hadn’t been tested. Now he’d seen that they could do what Pterocles had said they could. That was a relief.

  Watching Otus with the newly reawakened thralls wasn’t the least fascinating thing Grus had ever run across, either. He might have been big brother or kindly uncle to them. He knew the road they were on because he’d walked it himself. He was quick to give them a word when they needed one but didn’t know what it was, and to show them such things as washing themselves and the filthy rags they wore.

  “So many of them have lived this way for so long,” he told Grus one evening. “So many of them lived out their whole lives without ever knowing there could be anything better. That’s wrong, Your Majesty!” He wasn’t a very big man or a very tough-looking one, but fury blazed from his eyes—eyes that had been as dull as a cow’s till Pterocles lifted the spell of thralldom from them.

  “We’re doing what we can,” Grus answered, munching on flatbread, hard cheese, and onions—campaign food. “Till we had this magic, there wasn’t much we could do. If we came south of the Stura without it, we would have ended up as thralls ourselves. More than one Avornan army did. That’s why we stopped trying to fight the Menteshe down here.”

  “I understand your reasons,” Otus said. “I can’t tell you I like them.”

  Not many of Grus’ subjects would have spoken so freely. Maybe Otus didn’t realize how much deference he owed a king. Or maybe he would have behaved this way even if he’d grown up in Avornis and never had his spirit darkened.

  He paused to gnaw off a bite of chewy flatbread. “Even the food tastes better now!” he exclaimed. “Being a thrall stood between me and all my senses.”

  “Maybe this is just better than what you ate while you were a thrall,” Grus suggested.

  “Oh, that, too,” Otus said. “But the days seem brighter. Birdcalls have music in them—they’re not just noise. I used to ignore stinks. Now I can’t. And when I’m with a woman … That’s better, too.” He sighed. “If we find my woman down here …”

  He had a lady friend b
ack in the palace. The freedom to be a man and not a thrall could make life more complicated, too. Grus didn’t tell him so. He’d have to find that out for himself. The king did ask, “Where is the village you came from? If we can, we’ll free it.”

  Otus jumped to his feet so he could bow very low. “You are kinder to me than I deserve, Your Majesty! My village is west of here. I know now that it lies toward the sea. When I was the way I was before, I did not even know there was such a thing as the sea.”

  “I said we’d free it if we could, remember,” Grus warned. “I don’t know that we’ll have soldiers going over there any time real soon.” He doubted the Avornans would—not unless the Menteshe attacked from that direction and made him respond. But he didn’t have the heart to crush Otus’ hopes.

  The ex-thrall nodded. “I understand that, too, Your Majesty. You will do what you need to do before you do what you want to do, yes?”

  “Yes,” Grus said, glad Otus had taken it so well.

  When they set out again the next morning, Grus noticed that the Argolid Mountains to the south reared higher in the sky than they had when he’d first crossed the Stura. The jagged peaks showed more brown and green and less purple haze of distance than they had, too. Long ago, Avornan rule had run almost to their foothills. That was before the Menteshe spilled through the passes and swallowed a third of the kingdom.

  Somewhere in those mountains, the Banished One was supposed to have his abode. Did he dwell in the mountains because they were closer to the heavens? Or was that where he’d fallen to earth, somehow leaving him unable to go anywhere else? Maybe the Menteshe knew. No Avornan did.

  Before Grus’ army had gone very far, it came upon a battlefield where the nomads had fought one another a year or two before. The bones of men and horses lay bleaching in the sun. Not much more than bones remained. As always happened, the winners—whichever side had won—had plundered the bodies of the fallen. Grus spied one skull with an arrow still sticking up from it. No need to wonder how that man had died.

  Hirundo said, “The more they kill each other, the fewer left to fight us.”

  “That thought had crossed my mind, yes,” Grus said.

  Toward evening, scouts brought a lone Menteshe to the king. “He came up to us with a flag of truce, Your Majesty,” one of them said. “He claims he’s an ambassador from Prince Sanjar.”

  “Does he?” Grus eyed the nomad—a swarthy, bearded, hook-nosed man in a leather jacket, breeches, and boots. The Avornan scouts now held whatever weapons he’d carried, most likely one of the deadly Menteshe bows and a saber and dagger for close work. “Go on,” Grus told him. “I’m listening.”

  “I am Qizil son of Qilich, Your Majesty,” the Menteshe said in gutturally accented Avornan. “You will know, of course, that Prince Sanjar is the rightful heir and successor to his mighty father, Prince Ulash.”

  “I’ve heard that said, yes,” Grus replied. Prince Korkut, of course, made exactly the same claim. Korkut was older, Sanjar the son of Ulash’s favorite concubine. Neither could bend the knee to the other now, not without putting his own head on the block right afterwards.

  “It is the truth,” Qizil declared. “Prince Sanjar wishes to join you to help cast out the vile usurper. He will reward you well for your services.”

  Till Sanjar and Korkut went to war with each other, no Avornan had ever heard any Menteshe talk like that. The nomads always wanted to take, never to give. Now, voice studiously neutral, Grus said, “He will?” Qizil nodded emphatically. The king asked, “What will he give?”

  Qizil son of Qilich swept out his arms in a grand, even theatrical, gesture. “Why, whatever your heart desires. Gold? It is yours. Herds of cattle and sheep out to the horizon? They are yours. Fine horses? We have a great plenty. Pretty women? Take them as well, and use them as you would.” In a few words, he outlined the nomads’ notion of the good life.

  “Let him give me the Scepter of Mercy with his own hands,” Grus said. “Then I will believe he is serious, not just telling lies to help himself.”

  Qizil’s eyes went very wide. Whatever he’d expected the King of Avornis to ask for, that caught him by surprise. “Your Majesty is joking,” he blurted.

  “I have never been more serious in my life.” Grus meant every word of that. If he could win the Scepter of Mercy by allying himself with Sanjar, he would do it. If he could win it by allying with Korkut, he would do that, too. And if winning it meant standing aloof from both of them, he would do that.

  “It is impossible,” Qizil said.

  Grus folded his arms across his chest. “Then we have no more to say to each other, do we? The scouts will take you out beyond our lines. My compliments to your master, but there will be no alliance.”

  “You do not understand,” Qizil said urgently. “The prince cannot give you what he does not have. The Scepter of Mercy is in Yozgat, and Korkut holds it.”

  The king had known where the Scepter was, of course. Yozgat still lay far to the south. He hadn’t been sure which unloving half brother controlled what had been Ulash’s capital. Some of the prisoners he’d taken claimed one did, some the other. But if Sanjar’s envoy admitted Korkut held it …

  “If you aid my master, we can speak of this again after he has triumphed,” Qizil suggested.

  “No,” Grus said. “This is a price he would have to pay in advance. Once he’d won the war, he would surely try to do me out of it.”

  Qizil made elaborate promises that Sanjar was the very image of honesty. The more he promised, the less Grus believed him. “I’m sorry,” the king said at last, which seemed more polite than saying he was bored. “I don’t think we have anything to talk about. As I told you, you have a safe-conduct till you’re outside of our lines. If things change farther south, maybe Prince Sanjar will talk to me again.”

  “If things change farther south, the prince will not need to talk to you,” Qizil said venomously. “He will drive you from this country like the dog you are.”

  That sounded more like the Menteshe Grus was familiar with. “I love you, too,” he said, and had the small satisfaction of startling Sanjar’s emissary again. Qizil sprang up onto his pony’s back. He rode away at such a pace, the Avornan scouts had a hard time staying with him. He was so angry, he might have forgotten his weapons.

  “Too bad,” Hirundo remarked. “That would have made things a lot easier.”

  “Well, so it would,” Grus said. “I had to try. All right—he told me no. Now we go on the way we would have before.”

  “So Korkut holds Yozgat,” Hirundo said musingly. “If he sends someone to you to ask for help against Sanjar …”

  “Yes, that could be interesting,” Grus agreed. “Both of them have sent envoys up to the city of Avornis, so I suppose it could happen. I’ll know the right thing to ask if it does, anyhow.”

  “What will you do if Korkut says he’ll send you the Scepter?” Hirundo asked.

  Faint, was what crossed Grus’ mind. “The first thing I’d do is make sure he sent me the real Scepter of Mercy and not a clever counterfeit,” he said, and Hirundo nodded. The king went on, “If it was the real Scepter … If it was, I do believe I’d take it and go back to Avornis. It means more to me—and to the kingdom—than anything else down here.”

  “Even freeing the thralls?” Hirundo asked slyly.

  Grus looked around. When he didn’t see Otus, he nodded. “Even that. If we have the Scepter of Mercy, we can worry about everything else later.” I think we can. I hope we can. How do I know for sure, when no King of Avornis has tried to wield it for all these years? He blinked when he realized he didn’t know. What he had to go on was Lanius’ certainty. No matter how fine a scholar the other king had proved himself, was that really enough? All at once, Grus wondered.

  With a laugh, Hirundo said, “The Banished One wouldn’t be very happy if Korkut sent you the Scepter to win his civil war.”

  He could speak lightly of the Banished One. The exiled god had never appea
red in his dreams. He didn’t know—literally didn’t know—how lucky he was. Grus, who did, said only, “No, he wouldn’t.” His doubts left him. The Banished One wouldn’t worry about losing the Scepter of Mercy if it weren’t a weighty weapon against him.

  Hirundo stared south. The dust Qizil and the Avornan scouts had kicked up as they rode away still hung in the air. “For now, I guess you’re right—the only thing we can do is go on,” the general said.

  “There’s nothing else to do,” Grus said.

  Lanius had a reputation as a man interested in everything. The reputation held a lot of truth, as he knew better than anyone else. It also came in handy in some unexpected ways. He knew that better than anyone else, too.

  Had, say, King Grus poked his nose into one of the little rooms in the palace that held bed linens, any servant who came down the corridor and saw him would have been astonished. Gossip about Grus’ odd behavior would have flashed from one end of the palace to the other before an hour went by.

  But it wasn’t odd for Lanius to go into a room like that. He poked around in the kitchens, and in the archives, and anywhere else that suited his fancy. A servant who saw him opening one of those doors would just shrug and go about his business. It had happened before, plenty of times.

  No servants were coming down the corridor now. That did make things simpler. Lanius opened the door to the storeroom, and quietly closed it behind him. He smiled to smell the spicy scent of the cedar shelves on which the linens rested. The cedar was said to help hold moths at bay.

  And he smelled another sweet scent—a woman’s perfume. “Why, hello, Your Majesty,” Oissa said, as though they’d met there by chance.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Lanius said, and took her in his arms. The serving girl was short and round, with curly, light brown hair, big gray eyes, cheeks always rosy even though she didn’t seem to use rouge, and a dark beauty mark by the side of her mouth. She tilted her face up for a kiss. Lanius was glad to oblige.

  They met when and where they could. The floor of the storeroom wasn’t the best place for such things, but it was better than a few they’d tried. Lanius didn’t think Oissa was in love with him. He didn’t think he was in love with her, either. He hadn’t made that mistake since his first affair with a maidservant. He enjoyed what they did together even so. He tried his best to make sure Oissa did, too; he’d always thought it was better when his partner also took pleasure.