Once he'd leveled the mountain of earthenware, he went out into the courtyard. Petrosus was watering the garden. He eyed Grus, but again didn't speak to him. Petrosus had been snapping every time Grus came out of the kitchens. His silence seemed doubly welcome because it was so unexpected.

Here came Ortalis. He looked discontented – but then, he usually did. He minded work, but Abbot Pipilo didn't care whether he minded or not. He got it either way, and he got punished when he didn't do it well enough to suit Pipilo or whoever else was set over him. That did nothing to improve his temper.

He gave Grus a curt nod and kept walking. Caught by surprise, Grus nodded back. He and his son quarreled even more readily than he and Petrosus did. They had, anyway, ever since Ortalis' brief reign collapsed and he ended up here along with his father. Grus had looked for yet another barb from Ortalis. He scratched his head, wondering why he didn't get one.

After quiet persisted for a few days, Grus approached Pipilo in his office and asked him if he'd had anything to do with it. The abbot gravely shook his head. "No, Brother Grus, not I. I said not a word to either of them or to you, figuring whatever I said would do no good and might make things worse."

"It wouldn't have made them worse with me. All I want is peace and quiet," Grus said.

Pipilo smiled thinly. "One man's notions of peace and quiet are not always the same as another's." He held up his hand before Grus could reply. "I don't intend to offend anyone by saying this."

"Oh, you don't offend me, Father Abbot," Grus said. "I know that's true. Anyone who's had anything to do with more than a few people will know it's true."

The abbot smiled again. "Yes, you would have had that kind of experience before you, ah, joined us, wouldn't you? Well, Brother, if you've sent prayers up to the gods for tranquility, maybe you've had them answered."

"Maybe I have." Grus couldn't see how else he could respond to Pipilo, and he couldn't see where else to go from there. Since he couldn't, he bowed and left the office – which was, no doubt, just what Pipilo wanted him to do.

Even so, he grappled with the small problem – not that silence from Ortalis and Petrosus was a problem, even if the reason for their silence was – as stubbornly as he'd grappled with the problems King Dagipert or the Chernagor pirates posed for Avornis. Past their eventually delivering the Scepter of Mercy into his hands, he didn't see that the gods in the heavens listened to prayers very often, let alone answered them.

That left him shaking his head and laughing at the same time, which made his fellow monks send him puzzled, even wary, glances. He didn't care. He wondered whether any other monk in the long history of this monastery had ever had a less reverent attitude toward the gods in the heavens.

But if Olor and Quelea and the rest of the heavenly host hadn't inspired his son and his son's father-in-law to leave him alone, who or what had? Grus couldn't believe Ortalis and Petrosus had suddenly decided on their own to back off; that wasn't like either one of them, let alone both at the same time.

It was a nice puzzle. He realized he'd missed having something to ponder since he came here. Now he did, and found he was enjoying himself while he pondered. The more he did, the more perplexed he got. He didn't mind that; at least now he had something to wonder about.

Life at the monastery went on. One of the monks died – not an old man with a white beard, but one scarcely half Grus' age, of an attack of belly pain that led to fever. The surviving brethren, Grus among them, stood around his pyre and prayed that his soul might rise to the heavens with the smoke of his burning. This will be my end, too, Grus thought. The idea worried him less than he'd expected it to. He'd already lived a long life. And, while few people if anyone outside the monastery would remember poor Brother Mimus, his own name would last.

Though Ortalis went on leaving Grus alone, he got into a brawl with another monk. He broke one of his knuckles giving the man a black eye; the other man broke Ortalis' nose. Pipilo put them both on bread and water for a week. Dishonors were judged to be about even on both sides.

A couple of new monks came in. One of them, a skinny young man with a scraggly beard, really wanted to be there. He'd grown up not far away, and had wanted to join the monastery ever since he was a boy. Grus wondered how he'd like his wish now that he had it. The other was a city governor who'd thought living far from the city of Avornis let him get away with fattening his belt pouch. Grus was glad Lanius had proved him wrong, and took that as a good omen for his son-in-law's sole reign.

Lanius was a clever fellow, no doubt about it. Grus had always wondered whether the other king would be strong enough to rule on his own. He'd had his doubts about that. Maybe Lanius would prove him wrong after all.

And sometimes being clever sufficed. Grus was lying down on his thin mattress one evening when, instead, he sat bolt upright. The gods in the heavens surely couldn't care less if he and Ortalis and Petrosus squabbled. But the idea might bother Lanius, and the king knew there was trouble from Grus' petition. If he decided to pick up the Scepter of Mercy…

Would he use it for as small a thing as stopping a nasty quarrel? Grus nodded to himself, there in the darkness. Lanius didn't like unpleasantness. It was untidy. And he might well feel he owed Grus enough to make sure the other king got at least some peace now that he was king no more.

"Thank you," Grus murmured. He wasn't supposed to speak after lying down, but he wasn't pious enough to get upset at breaking a small rule, either. If one of the other monks had caught him at it, he would have had to do something unpleasant for penance, but the brothers nearby were all snoring.

He nodded again. Now he was pretty sure he had an answer to his riddle. The world wouldn't have ended even if he hadn't gotten one – hardly! – but he still felt better knowing. Maybe he wasn't so different from Lanius after all. He rolled over and fell asleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Lanius was amazed at all the correspondence Grus had dealt with. Letters addressed to the other king kept coming in weeks and months after Grus went to the monastery. Now Lanius had to deal with them.

Some of them didn't get dealt with; Lanius wasn't the administrator Grus had been. He consoled himself by thinking people would write again if anything really important fell through the cracks. Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn't. Either way, it made him feel better.

He did try to read everything that came in addressed to Grus. One letter, in a scrawl just this side of illiteracy, talked about how a boy named Nivalis was flourishing. It also complained – deferentially – that payment for the boy's expenses was overdue. It was signed by a woman named Alauda.

"Well, well," Lanius said, and then again, "Well, well." He'd never heard of Nivalis or Alauda.

So Grus had another bastard out there, did he? Did he? If he did, he must have fathered the boy when he was down in the south fighting the Menteshe. It wasn't impossible. Before sending money to a woman who might be trying to deceive, though, Lanius wrote to Grus in the monastery.

The answer came back as promptly as such things could. Please pay her, Your Majesty, Grus wrote. The boy is mine, and I promised her she would not want. I do not care to be forsworn on something like this, and the expense is not large. And besides, who knows what Nivalis may grow up to become?

There was an interesting thought. The boy would know his heritage. His mother would make sure of that. He might come to the city of Avornis for an education, or to serve as a soldier. If he had any reasonable part of Grus' abilities, he could prove formidable. Avornis needed formidable people; there were never enough to go around.