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 throne – somewhere close to three hundred years ago now. The war seemed to have been a draw. Considering how fierce the Thervings could be, that wasn't bad. One King of Thervingia – Lanius couldn't remember which – had had a luckless Avornan general's skull covered in gold leaf and made into a drinking cup.

Lanius suddenly realized he'd wasted half an hour poking through the action reports. They weren't what he wanted, which didn't mean they weren't interesting. He put them back on their shelf, not without a twinge of regret.

Here? No, these were new. The shipwrights who'd built deep-bellied, tall-masted ships like the ones the Chemagor 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, I'll 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. Sometimes – often – he didn't 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 he'd gone in just a little while before… But he hadn't. His belly was growling, and all at once he noticed he desperately needed to piss.

Sosia was going to be angry at him. He hadn't 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 traveler's 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 didn't 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 who'd tried invading the lands the Menteshe claimed as their own hadn't come back again.

That could happen to me, Grus thought. That will happen to me unless Pterocles' magic really works – and I can't find out for sure whether it works till we cross the river and start trying it on thralls.

"Well, gentlemen, this is going to be an interesting campaigning season." By the way Hirundo said it, he might have been talking about training exercises on the meadows outside the city of Avornis.

"We can do it." That wasn't Grus – it was Otus. The escaped thrall sounded confident. The trouble was, he would also sound confident if the Banished One still lurked somewhere deep inside his mind. He would want to lead the Avornans on so the Menteshe and his dark master could have their way with them. He continued, 'This land should be free. It deserves to be free."

"We'll do our best," Grus said. Suddenly, harshly, he waved to the trumpeters who waited nearby. They raised long brass horns to their lips and blared out a command.

River galleys raced across the Stura. Marines leaped out of them and rushed forward, bows at the ready. No more than a few Menteshe riders had trotted back and forth south of the river. The nomads were – or seemed to be – too caught up in their civil war to care much what the Avornans were up to. Grus hoped they would go right on feeling that way. He hoped so, but he didn't count on it.

Barges followed the river galleys. Riders led horses onto the riverbank, then swung aboard them. They joined the perimeter the marines had formed. Most of the cavalrymen were archers, too. Anyone who tried to fight the Menteshe without plenty of archers would end up in trouble.

The royal guards came next. They were lancers, armored head to foot. The Menteshe couldn't hope to stand against them. But then, the Menteshe seldom stood and fought. They were riders almost by instinct. Grus hoped he could pin them down and make them try to hold their ground. If he could, the royal guards would make them pay. If not… He refused to think about if not.

Instead of thinking about it, he nodded to the general, the wizard, and the man who'd lived most of his life on the far side of the Stura. "Our turn now," he said.

They descended from the wall. Grus' boots scuffed on the gray-brown stone of the stairs. Out through the river gate he and his comrades went, out onto the piers, and aboard the Pike, the river galley that would take them over the Stura. The captain raised an eyebrow to Grus. The king waved back, urging the skipper to go ahead at his own pace.

"Cast off!" the captain shouted. The ropes that held the Pike to the quay thudded down onto the ship's deck. As Grus had waved to the captain, so the captain waved to the oarmaster. The oarmaster set the stroke with a small drum. The rowers strained on their benches. The oars dug into the water. The Pike began to move, slowly at first, then ever swifter. Soon, very soon, she lived up to her name, gliding over the chop with impressive speed and agility. "She's going to beach," Grus said, bracing himself against the coming jolt. His companions, lubbers all, lurched and almost fell when the pike went aground. Grus had all he could do not to laugh at them. "I told you that would happen."

"You didn't say what it meant, Your Majesty." Otus sounded reproachful.

"Well, now you know," Grus said. "The next time I tell you, you'll be ready." Or maybe you won't. Making a sailor takes time.

At the skipper's shouted orders, sailors lowered a gangplank from the river galley's side. It thudded down onto the muddy bank. With a courtier's bow, Hirundo waved for Grus to descend first. The king did. He took the last step from the gangplank to the ground very carefully – he didn't want to stumble or, worse, to fall. That would set the whole army babbling about bad omens.

There. He stood on the southern bank of the Stura, and he stood on his own two feet. No one said anything about omens. He knew everybody who could see him was watching, though. "We've started," he called.

Up at the top of the gangplank, Pterocles and Hirundo argued about who should go next. Each wanted the other to have the honor. At last, with a shrug, the wizard came down by Grus. "Just standing here doesn't feel any different," Pterocles murmured. "I wondered if it would."

It felt no different to Grus, either, but the wizard could sense things the king couldn't. Hirundo descended, and then Otus. The ex-thrall still had no special rank, but everyone who did was convinced of his importance. By the look on his face, he too was trying to tell any difference from what he'd known before. He found only one. "Now I'm here as a whole man," he said. "I hope all the thralls get to see this country the way I do."

Attendants led up horses for Grus and Hirundo, mules for Pterocles and Otus. Sailors sprang out of the Pike and shoved the river galley back into its proper element. Grus mounted his gelding. He looked back across the Stura toward Anna. The Avornan town seemed very far away. The barges on the river – some full of men, others with horses, still others carrying wagons loaded with supplies – were less reassuring than he'd thought they would be.

He looked south again. He'd advanced less than half a mile from Anna's walls. Suddenly, as though he'd gone in the other direction, everything in the Menteshe country seemed much farther away than it had.

Several sessions of sifting through the archives hadn't yielded the traveler's tale Lanius wanted. He refused to let himself get angry or worried. If the mice hadn't gotten it, it had to be in there somewhere. Sooner or later, it would turn up. It wasn't anything he needed right this minute.