"Well, so it isn't." Serinus smiled. It was not the sort of smile Grus wanted to see – more the sort a wolf would have worn just before it sprang. The young officer bowed to Grus. "But you see, Your Majesty, that's part of what's going on." He nodded to the soldiers. The ones who carried swords drew them. The ones who carried spears pointed them at Grus. "You can come along with us quietly or" – he shrugged – "the servants will have to clean a mess off the floor. Up to you."

"You can't do this!" Grus blurted. "You can't expect to get away with it, either."

"Oh, but we can. And we do. And we will." Serinus sounded as though he had all the answers. At the moment, he certainly had more of them than Grus did.

"Where do you aim to take me?" Grus asked. In his nightshirt, without even an eating knife on his belt – without even a belt! – He couldn't do much about it no matter where it was.

His best hope was that somebody would come by and notice this… this kidnapping. But no one except Serinus and his men seemed to be up and about.

"Why, to the Maze, of course." Serinus certainly had the answer to that question. "You've sent enough people there yourself. High time you find out what it's like, don't you think?"

Grus thought nothing of the sort. Still more outraged than afraid, he filled his lungs to shout for help. Some of the soldiers saw him doing it. They shook their heads. A couple of them brandished their weapons. He didn't shout.

"Smart fellow." Serinus nodded approval. "They say blood is so hard to get out from between these little mosaic tiles." His voice lost its good humor and assumed the snap of command. "Now get moving. If anybody sees us and tries to stop us, you'll be the one who's sorriest. I promise you that."

Believing him, Grus did get moving. He couldn't help asking, "Who put you up to this? King Lanius?"

Serinus laughed uproariously. So did his henchmen. "By the gods in the heavens, no," the officer answered, laughing still. "We serve King Ortalis."

"King -?" Associating his son with sovereignty was so ridiculous; Grus couldn't do it even now. He wanted to laugh himself, at the absurdity of the idea. He wanted to, but he couldn't. Ortalis and these men evidently didn't think it was absurd. I should have paid more attention to Hirundo, Grus thought, much too late for it to do him any good.

Serinus and the soldiers hustled him out of the palace. They bundled him onto a horse and tied his legs beneath him. They had horses, too. Out of the city they rode, as slick as boiled asparagus.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Your Majesty, the other king wants to see you in the small dining room as soon as you can get there," a guard outside Lanius' chamber told him as soon as he opened the door.

"Does he?" Lanius said around a yawn. The soldier nodded. Lanius yawned again, then asked, "Did he tell you what it was about?"

"No, Your Majesty, but I think you'd better hurry. I've got the feeling it's important," the guard answered.

He knew more than he was letting on. Lanius didn't have to be a genius to figure that out. The king wondered if he ought to press the soldier. In the end, he decided not to. He would find out soon enough from Grus. He wondered what had happened. The other king hadn't summoned him like this in quite a while.

Scratching his head, Lanius went to the room where he usually ate breakfast. Ortalis sat there, sipping on a cup of wine and fidgeting a little. "Oh, hello," Lanius said. "The guard must have gotten his signals crossed. I thought your father would be here."

"What did he say?" Ortalis asked. The silver goblet shook in his hand – not very much, but enough for Lanius to notice. "What exactly did he say?"

Lanius thought back. He prided himself on being able to get things like that straight. "He said the other king wanted to see me in here as soon as possible." That wasn't word for word, but it caught the meaning well enough.

Ortalis nodded and smiled – a surprisingly nervous smile for so early in the day. "Good. He did get it right then," he said. "That's what I told him to tell you, all right."

"What you told him to tell me?" Lanius' wits weren't working as well as he wished they were.

"What I told him to tell you, yes." Ortalis sounded a little more confident this time. Without rising from his stool, he struck a pose. "I'm the new King of Avornis."

"You're what?" No, Lanius wasn't at his best. He didn't laugh in Ortalis' face, but held back only by the tiniest of margins. "What's happened to your father?" That worry was the main thing that made him not show everything he was thinking.

He waited for Ortalis to tell him Grus was desperately ill, or even that he'd died in the night. Grus had seemed in good health the last time Lanius saw him, but the other king wasn't a young man. Such things could happen, and happen all too easily.

But, a certain ferocious glee in his voice, Ortalis answered, "I packed him off to the Maze, that's what."

Now Lanius frankly stared. "You.. sent your father to the Maze?" He couldn't believe it. Grus had overcome every foe in sight, from rebellious Avornan nobles to King Dagipert of Thervingia to the Banished One himself. How could he possibly have fallen to his own son, a far less dangerous opponent?

As soon as Lanius asked himself the question that way, the likely answer became clear. As far as Grus was concerned, would Ortalis have been a visible opponent at all? Grus had always made allowances for his legitimate son, and never taken him very seriously. He had to be regretting that now.

"You'd best believe I did," Ortalis growled. "He had it coming, too. This is my kingdom now, by Olor's beard."

"Yours?" Lanius said. "What about me?"

"What about you? I'll tell you what about you," his brother-in-law answered. "You can be king, too, if you want. You can go on wearing the crown, if you want. Whenever my old man said, 'Frog,' you'd hop. As long as you keep on hopping for me, everything will be fine." He smiled, as though to say he was sure Lanius wouldn't mind an arrangement like that.

Back when Grus first put the crown on his own head, all the power had been in his hands. Lanius had been a figurehead, nothing more. Grus would have gotten rid of him if he could have done it without inflaming people by ending Avornis' ancient dynasty. He hadn't even bothered pretending anything different.

Little by little, though, Lanius had gathered bits and pieces of power into his own hands. Grus' going out on campaign so often hadn't hurt things, not one bit. Grus had needed someone who could run things here in the capital while he was away. To whom else would he have given the job? Ortalis? Ortalis hadn't wanted it. And so it came to Lanius, and more and more came with it.

Had Ortalis ever bothered to notice Lanius really was a king in his own right? It seemed unlikely.

Lanius almost asked him, And what happens if I don't feel like hopping? He almost did, but he didn't. The look on Ortalis' face gave him all the answer he needed. If you don't, I'll hurt you. I'll enjoy hurting you, too. Have you got any idea how much I'll enjoy it?

What Lanius did say was, "I'll work with you the way I worked with your father on one condition."

"Condition?" Ortalis' face had been ugly before. It got uglier now. "What kind of condition? You don't tell me what to do, Lanius. No one tells me what to do now. I've had a bellyful of that from everybody."

"This isn't much," Lanius said, which might have been true and might not have.

"What is it, then?" Suspicion still clotted Ortalis' voice.

"If the Scepter of Mercy accepts you, I will, too," Lanius said. "Your father could use it. So can I. If you can, too, then I know you'll be good for Avornis, and I won't say a word about anything at all." After a moment, inspired, he added, "And the soldiers will want to see that you can wield it, too. They spent a lot of time and a lot of work and a lot of blood bringing it back from the Menteshe country, you know."