"I'll throw a rock at him if he sticks his nose anywhere near me!" Sosia said. "My own brother! My brother did that! My brother did it to my father! Some fine family we turned out to be, isn't it?"

Lanius aimed to go on looking at the bright side of things as long as he could. "He sent your father to the Maze," he said. "He didn't do anything more than that, and I suppose he could have. He hasn't done anything to either one of us, and he hasn't done anything to the children."

His wife's hands automatically went to her belly, as though to protect the new life growing there. "He'd better not! He'll be sorry if he tries!"

"Well, he hasn't, and he could have done that, too," Lanius said. "If he hasn't, it probably means he doesn't want to."

"He'd better not," Sosia repeated darkly. "King Ortalis!" Her laughter had a hysterical edge. "Olor's beard, Lanius, he hasn't got any more business running this kingdom than one of your moncats does."

He has less business running the kingdom than Pouncer does, I think. Pouncer was able to pick up the Scepter of Mercy. Can Ortalis? Lanius kept that to himself. It wasn't that he didn't want Sosia to know about his doubts. They might have helped set her mind at ease. But she might have let her brother know about them. Lanius didn't want Ortalis having any idea that he had doubts. He wanted his brother-in-law confident that he could handle the Scepter.

If Ortalis wasn't confident, if he thought something might go wrong, or if he thought Sosia thought Lanius thought something might go wrong, he'd invent some excuse not to try to take it in his hands. He might be able to get away with that, too, at least for a while.

What if he stands in front of the Scepter of Mercy, sets his hand on it – and up it comes? That was Lanius'… oh, not quite nightmare, but worry. If the Scepter judged Ortalis worthy of being King of Avornis, Lanius knew he would have to do the same, as he'd said he would.

And then his long, slow, patient, often painful task would have to start all over again. He'd needed years to win back even a fraction of the kingship from Grus. Would he have to begin anew with Ortalis, who would probably be even more suspicious of him than Grus had been? Could he steal out of the shadows an inch at a time again?

Grus in the Maze! Grus in a monastery! Lanius tried to imagine that, but the picture didn't want to form in his mind. Grus was made for giving orders. If he was suddenly made into a monk, he'd have to take them instead. How would he like that? Would he be able to do it at all? Lanius had a hard time believing it.

He wondered if he ought to tell Ortalis about How to Be a King. He shrugged. If the Scepter accepts him, maybe I will. Ortalis could use a book about how to rule Avornis. Lanius thought Sosia was right – her brother had no idea on his own. But would he care to look at it, or would he only laugh?

Ortalis, from what Lanius had seen, got few ideas of any kind on his own. The ones he did have often involved hurting people or beasts. How had he pulled off such a neat, smooth usurpation? It was almost as though he'd had someone else, someone competent, whispering in his ear all the way through it.

"Your Majesty," the Voice whispered. King Ortalis had liked hearing that from his subjects the past few days. He liked just about everything about being king – he'd especially liked sending his father to the Maze. But most of all, he thought, he liked hearing the Voice acclaim him.

As always, what he saw in these dreams was better than what he saw in real life. The sky was bluer. The sun was brighter. The air smelled sweeter. The land was greener. And, in these dreams, the Voice told him what a wonderful fellow he was. And when the Voice told him something, he had to believe it, because how could a Voice like that lie?

"Your Majesty," it whispered again, caressingly. "You see, Your Majesty? Everything went just the way you hoped it would."

"Yes," Ortalis murmured. "Oh, yes." He wriggled with pleasure. Nothing compared to this, not even taking the lash in his hands.

The voice might have said, Everything went just the way I told you it would. That would have been as true. Without the Voice urging him on, Ortalis never would have had the nerve to move against his father. The price for failure was too high. And he would have failed; he could feel it. He wasn't very able most of the time, and was miserably aware of it. But with the Voice behind him, with the Voice seeing things he missed, he hadn't made a single mistake. And so he was King of Avornis, and his father was… a monk. Good riddance, too!

"Now all I need to do is take care of the stupid Scepter, and then I'll be king for – a long, long time," he said happily. He'd almost said, for the rest of my life, but he didn't want to think about life ending. He wanted to think about doing what he wanted, and about making everybody else do what he wanted.

He wondered which he would enjoy more. Both, he thought, and wriggled again.

"Take care of… the Scepter?" the Voice asked after a longer pause than usual. Maybe Ortalis was imagining things (well, of course Ortalis was imagining things – this was a dream, wasn't it?), but it didn't seem quite as smooth as usual.

"That's right," Ortalis said. "It's nothing, really. I've got to keep Lanius happy, that's all. He can pick up the stinking thing, and my miserable excuse for a father could pick up the stinking thing, so now I'll pick up the stinking thing, too, and then I'll go on doing what I was going to do anyway."

"You – agreed – to this with Lanius?" No, the Voice didn't sound smooth anymore. It didn't sound happy, either. If Ortalis hadn't known better, he would have said it sounded angry and disgusted.

He nodded even so, or his dream-self did. "Sure. Why not?" he said. "One more stupid thing to take care of, that's all."

Suddenly, the sun in his dreamscape wasn't just bright. It was too bright. The sky was still blue – as blue as a bruise. The leaves on the trees remained green – the green of rotting meat. The air smelled of carrion, and carrion birds flew through it – toward Ortalis.

"You fool!" the Voice cried thunderously. "You idiot! You imbecile! You ass! Better to kill Lanius, better to slaughter him, than to play his games!"

"But everybody expects it now," Ortalis protested. Trying to tell the Voice something it didn't want to hear was much tougher than going along with everything it said. He did his best to gather himself. "Don't worry. I can do it."

"Lanius tricked you – that cowardly wretch," the Voice growled. "Better, far better, you should have slain him when you pushed aside your father."

"I don't think so," Ortalis said. "His family's given Avornis kings for a long time. There'd be trouble – big trouble – if I knocked him off. Even my old man never had the nerve to do that."

He made the Voice backtrack. He never understood what a rare achievement that was. "All right," it said grudgingly. " All right. If you must be soft, then I suppose you must. I thought you would have enjoyed the killing, but if not, not. Still, you would have done better to send him to the Maze along with Grus."

"Maybe," Ortalis said, not believing it for a minute. Lanius in the palace could be a puppet, but he was still visibly king. That was how Grus had worked things. Ortalis' father could go to the Maze and stop being king without having too many people pitch a fit. He was only a usurper himself, if a highly successful one. But if Lanius went into exile.. Riots didn't come to the city of Avornis very often. Ortalis wasn't sure enough soldiers would go on backing him to keep him safe if people rioted for Lanius.

The Voice sighed a heavy sigh. The dream-landscape around Ortalis came back toward what it had been – but not quite far enough back. Nor was the Voice back to its usual smooth self when it said, "I suppose we shall just have to hope for the best – but oh, what a feckless fool you are!"