The Chernagor Pirates by Harry Turtledove Page A

to kill King Grus. We hold your sovereign’s sovereign to blame for that.”
    â€œYou are unjust,” the Menteshe envoy said.
    â€œI doubt it,” Lanius said. “Thralls who stay thralls usually stay on the land. Why would these men have crossed the Stura River into Avornis, if not through the will of the Banished One?” There, he thought. Let Farrukh-Zad know I’m not — much—afraid to speak his master’s name.
    Now the ambassador’s companion leaned forward to speak to him. Nodding, Farrukh-Zad said, “If you admit that these men belong to the Fallen Star, then you must also admit you should return them to him.”
    Lanius would sooner have been pawing through the archives than playing verbal cut-and-thrust with a tool of a tool of the Banished One. No help for it, though. He said, “I did not admit that. I said the Banished One had compelled them to cross the river. Compulsion is not the same as ownership, and certainly not the same as right.”
    â€œYou refuse to give them back, then?” Farrukh-Zad’s voice was silky with danger.
    Avornan wizards still studied the thralls, learning what they could from them. Maybe the Banished One wanted them back because he was afraid the wizards would find out something important. Maybe. Lanius didn’t know what the odds were, but he could only hope. “I do,” he said. “As long as they have done no wrong in Avornis, they may stay here.”
    â€œI shall take your words back to Prince Ulash,” the envoy said. “Do not believe you have heard the last of this. You have not.” His last bow held enough polite irony to satisfy even the most exacting Avornan courtier. Having given it, he didn’t wait for any response, or even dismissal, from King Lanius, but simply turned and strode out of the throne room, the other Menteshe in his wake.
    Lanius stared after him. He’d always thought about the power that went with being king in fact as well as in name. As he began to use it, he saw that worry went with the job, too.
    Riding as usual at the head of his army, Grus got his first good look at Nishevatz. Seeing the town did not delight him. If anything, it horrified him. “Olor’s beard, Hirundo, how are we supposed to take that place?” he yelped.
    â€œGood question, Your Majesty,” his general replied. “Maybe the defenders inside will laugh themselves to death when they see we’re crazy enough to try to winkle them out.”
    It wasn’t quite as bad as that, but it wasn’t good. Nishevatz had originally been a small island a quarter of a mile or so off the coast of the mainland. Before the Chernagors took the northern coast away from Avornis, the townsfolk had built a causeway from the shore to the island. The slow wheel of centuries since had seen silt widen the causeway from a road to a real neck of land. Even so, the approach remained formidable.
    King Grus tried to make the best of things, saying, “Well, if it were easy, Vsevolod wouldn’t have needed to ask us for help.”
    â€œHuzzah,” Hirundo said sourly. “He was still in charge of things when he did ask us here, remember. He’s not anymore.”
    â€œI know. We’ll have to see what we can do about that.” He called to Vsevolod, who rode in the middle of a small party of Chernagor noblemen not far away. “Your Highness!”
    â€œWhat you want, Your Majesty?” Vsevolod spoke Avornan with a thick, guttural accent. He was about sixty, with thinning white hair, bushy eyebrows, and an enormous hooked nose.
    â€œDo you know any secret ways into your city?” Grus asked. “We could use one about now, you know.”
    â€œI know some, yes. I use one to get away,” Vsevolod replied.
    â€œVasilko know most of these, too, though. I show him, so he get away if he ever have trouble when he ruling prince. I not show him this one, in case I have