didnât think it was good enough.
Here? No, these were tax registers from his fatherâs reign. He didnât remember his father well; King Mergus had died when he was a little boy. What he remembered was how things changed after Mergus died. Heâd gone from being everyoneâs darling to a lousy bastard the instant Mergusâ younger brother, Scolopax, put on the crown. Lanius still bristled at the word. It wasnât his fault his mother had been his fatherâs seventh wife, no matter what the priests had to say about it. Avornans were allowed only six, no matter what. To get a son, a legitimate son, Mergus broke the rule. But they had wed. If that didnât make him legitimate, what did?
Plenty of people had said nothing did. Over the years, the fuss and feathers about that had died down. Some priests had been forced into exile in the Mazeâthe swamps and marshes not far from the city of Avornisâon account of it, though, and a few were still there. Others preached in small towns in out-of-the-way parts of the kingdom, and would never be welcome in the capital again.
Lanius went on to another case he thought likely. It held the pay records and action reports from a border war against the Thervings just before his dynasty took the throneâsomewhere close to three hundred years ago now. The war seemed to have been a draw. Considering how fierce the Thervings could be, that wasnât bad. One King of ThervingiaâLanius couldnât remember whichâhad had a luckless Avornan generalâs skull covered in gold leaf and made into a drinking cup.
Lanius suddenly realized heâd wasted half an hour poking through the action reports. They werenât what he wanted, which didnât mean they werenât interesting. He put them back on their shelf, not without a twinge of regret.
Here? No, these were new. The shipwrights whoâd built deep-bellied, tall-masted ships like the ones the Chernagor pirates sailed across the sea had sent King Grus reports on their progress. Grus, a sailor himself, had no doubt appreciated the papers. To Lanius, they might have been written in guttural Thervingian for all the sense they made. When Grus comes back to the palace, Iâll have to ask him about them, he thought.
He was squandering more time. He muttered to himself. The trouble was, everything in the archives interested him. He had to make himself put aside one set of documents to go on to the next. Sometimesâoftenâhe didnât want to.
The sunbeams slipping through those ever-dusty skylights slid across the jumble of the archives. Lanius found himself blinking in mild astonishment. How had it gotten to be late afternoon? Surely heâd gone in just a little while before.⦠But he hadnât. His belly was growling, and all at once he noticed he desperately needed to piss.
Sosia was going to be angry at him. He hadnât intended to spend the whole day in here. He hardly ever intended to. It just ⦠happened. And he still had no idea where that miserable travelerâs tale was.
Grus, Hirundo, Pterocles, and Otus all solemnly looked at one another on the walls of Anna. Grus peered across the Stura toward the southern bank. It still didnât look any different from the land on this side of the river. But it was. Oh, yes. It was. No King of Avornis had set foot on the far bank of the Stura for a couple of hundred years. The last king whoâd tried invading the lands the Menteshe claimed as their own hadnât come back again.
That could happen to me, Grus thought. That will happen to me unless Pteroclesâ magic really works â and I canât find out for sure whether it works till we cross, the river and start trying it on thralls.
âWell, gentlemen, this is going to be an interesting campaigning season.â By the way Hirundo said it, he might have been talking about training exercises on the meadows outside the city of
Here? No, these were tax registers from his fatherâs reign. He didnât remember his father well; King Mergus had died when he was a little boy. What he remembered was how things changed after Mergus died. Heâd gone from being everyoneâs darling to a lousy bastard the instant Mergusâ younger brother, Scolopax, put on the crown. Lanius still bristled at the word. It wasnât his fault his mother had been his fatherâs seventh wife, no matter what the priests had to say about it. Avornans were allowed only six, no matter what. To get a son, a legitimate son, Mergus broke the rule. But they had wed. If that didnât make him legitimate, what did?
Plenty of people had said nothing did. Over the years, the fuss and feathers about that had died down. Some priests had been forced into exile in the Mazeâthe swamps and marshes not far from the city of Avornisâon account of it, though, and a few were still there. Others preached in small towns in out-of-the-way parts of the kingdom, and would never be welcome in the capital again.
Lanius went on to another case he thought likely. It held the pay records and action reports from a border war against the Thervings just before his dynasty took the throneâsomewhere close to three hundred years ago now. The war seemed to have been a draw. Considering how fierce the Thervings could be, that wasnât bad. One King of ThervingiaâLanius couldnât remember whichâhad had a luckless Avornan generalâs skull covered in gold leaf and made into a drinking cup.
Lanius suddenly realized heâd wasted half an hour poking through the action reports. They werenât what he wanted, which didnât mean they werenât interesting. He put them back on their shelf, not without a twinge of regret.
Here? No, these were new. The shipwrights whoâd built deep-bellied, tall-masted ships like the ones the Chernagor pirates sailed across the sea had sent King Grus reports on their progress. Grus, a sailor himself, had no doubt appreciated the papers. To Lanius, they might have been written in guttural Thervingian for all the sense they made. When Grus comes back to the palace, Iâll have to ask him about them, he thought.
He was squandering more time. He muttered to himself. The trouble was, everything in the archives interested him. He had to make himself put aside one set of documents to go on to the next. Sometimesâoftenâhe didnât want to.
The sunbeams slipping through those ever-dusty skylights slid across the jumble of the archives. Lanius found himself blinking in mild astonishment. How had it gotten to be late afternoon? Surely heâd gone in just a little while before.⦠But he hadnât. His belly was growling, and all at once he noticed he desperately needed to piss.
Sosia was going to be angry at him. He hadnât intended to spend the whole day in here. He hardly ever intended to. It just ⦠happened. And he still had no idea where that miserable travelerâs tale was.
Grus, Hirundo, Pterocles, and Otus all solemnly looked at one another on the walls of Anna. Grus peered across the Stura toward the southern bank. It still didnât look any different from the land on this side of the river. But it was. Oh, yes. It was. No King of Avornis had set foot on the far bank of the Stura for a couple of hundred years. The last king whoâd tried invading the lands the Menteshe claimed as their own hadnât come back again.
That could happen to me, Grus thought. That will happen to me unless Pteroclesâ magic really works â and I canât find out for sure whether it works till we cross, the river and start trying it on thralls.
âWell, gentlemen, this is going to be an interesting campaigning season.â By the way Hirundo said it, he might have been talking about training exercises on the meadows outside the city of
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