They met when and where they could. The floor of the storeroom wasn't the best place for such things, but it was better than a few they'd tried. Lanius didn't think Oissa was in love with him. He didn't think he was in love with her, either. He hadn't made that mistake since his first affair with a maidservant. He enjoyed what they did together even so. He tried his best to make sure Oissa did, too; he'd always thought it was better when his partner also took pleasure.

Afterwards, they both dressed quickly. "These to remember the day," Lanius said, and gave her a pair of gold hoops to wear in her ears.

"Thank you, Your Majesty," she said. "You didn't have to do that, though."

"I didn't do it because I had to. I did it because I wanted to," Lanius answered. He thought she meant what she'd said. She wasn't greedy or pushy. He didn't care for people who were. Nothing would make him break off a liaison faster than someone pushing him for presents.

He coughed once or twice. No, that wasn't quite true. Sosia finding out about an affair could make him break it off in nothing flat. He was reasonably, or even more than reasonably, discreet, and he tried to pick partners who wouldn't blab. It didn't always work. He didn't like remembering what happened when it didn't.

This dalliance wasn't going anywhere. Even if his wife didn't learn of it, Oissa would find someone she wanted to marry, or else Lanius would tire of her. But it was pleasant. He enjoyed the variety. What point to being a king if he couldn't enjoy himself once in a while?

After a last kiss, he slipped out of the little room. No servants were walking along the corridor. Lanius nodded to himself. No scandal this time – not even a raised eyebrow.

Had things been different, Grus might have gotten furious at him for being unfaithful to his daughter. But Grus had been known to enjoy himself every once in a while even before he became a king; Arch-Hallow Anser was living proof of that. And he hadn't stopped after he wore a crown. He was hardly one to tell Lanius what to do and what not to.

Lanius hoped everything down in the south was still going well. Grus' letters were encouraging, but they took longer to come back to the city of Avornis than Lanius would have liked. He knew the Avornans were over the Stura and disenchanting thralls. That they'd done so much was reason enough to celebrate. But Lanius wanted them to push on to Yozgat. Like Grus, he cared more about the Scepter of Mercy than anything else.

He could have known more, of course, if he'd campaigned with Grus. He shook his head at the mere idea. The one battlefield he'd seen was plenty to persuade him he never wanted to see another. Listening to vultures and ravens and carrion crows quarreling over corpses, watching them peck at dead men's eyes and tongues and other dainties, smelling the outhouse and butcher's-shop reek, hearing dying men groan and wounded men shriek… No, once was enough for a lifetime.

He supposed he ought to be grateful to Grus for going on campaign. The other king had already usurped half – more than half – the throne. He couldn't want anything else. If Lanius had had to send out generals to do his fighting for him, he would always have been as afraid of great victories as of great defeats. A great victory was liable to make a general think he deserved a higher station. Since only one higher station was available, that wouldn't have been good for Lanius. He didn't think many usurpers would have worked out the arrangement Grus had.

While he mused on bad usurpers and worse ones, his feet, almost by themselves, took him to the archives. He went inside eagerly enough. The smile on his face had only so much to do with the hope of finding that missing traveler's tale. As he had with other women before her, he'd brought Oissa here once or twice. It was quiet; it was peaceful; they were unlikely to be disturbed – and they hadn't been, at least not by anyone banging on the door. It was also dusty, here, though, and sneezing at the wrong time had put him off his stride and made Oissa laugh, which put her off hers.

"Business," Lanius reminded himself. The smile didn't want to go away, though. He let it stay. Why not?

Even smiling, he did want to look for that missing tale. What annoyed him most was that he usually had a good memory for where he'd put things. Not this time, though. Most of his pride revolved around his wits. When they let him down, he felt he'd failed in some fundamental fashion. It rarely happened, and was all the more troubling because of that.

"It has to be here," he said. Although true, that didn't help much. No one knew better than he how vast – and how disorganized – the archives were.

He pawed through crates and barrels and plucked documents off shelves. He had to look at each parchment or sheet of paper separately, because things got stored all higgledy-piggledy. A paper from his reign could lie next to or on top of a parchment centuries old. Before long, his smile faded. If he wasn't lucky, he'd be here forever, or half an hour longer.

That less than delightful thought had hardly crossed his mind before he let out a shout of triumph that came echoing back from the ceiling. There it was! He swore under his breath. That crate looked familiar – now. Not so long before, he'd moved it to get at some other documents, and forgotten he'd done it,

Lanius started to take the traveler's tale to a secretary who could make a fair copy. He hadn't gotten to the doorway before he stopped and shook his head. The fewer people who knew anything about what he had in mind, the better. I'll make the fair copy myself, he decided. Now he found himself nodding. Yes, that would be better, no doubt about it.

Before long, he would put carpenters and masons to work. But they wouldn't know why they were doing what they were doing. And what they didn't know, nobody could find out from them… not even the Banished One.

CHAPTER FIVE

Grus never got tired of watching Avornan wizards free thralls from the dark mists that had held them all their lives. Part of that was pride at the magic Pterocles had created that he and the other wizards were using. And part of it was simply that the spell of liberation was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen. The rainbows arising from the swinging crystal and then spinning around and into a thrall's head were wonderful enough by themselves. The expression on each thrall's face when the mists dissolved, though – that was even better.

"How does it feel to be a mother?" the king asked Pterocles after another successful sorcery.

The wizard frowned. "A mother, Your Majesty?"

"You're giving birth to people, aren't you?" Grus said. "I didn't think a man could. I should be jealous."

"Giving birth to people…" Pterocles savored the words. A slow smile spread over his face. "I like that."

"Good. You ought to. How well this would work was my biggest worry when we crossed the Stura," Grus said. "It's gone better than I dared hope. It's gone better than anyone dared hope, I think. What do you suppose the Banished One is thinking right now?"

"I don't know. Please don't ask me to try to find out, either." Pterocles sounded even more earnest than usual. "For me to get inside his mind would be like one of Lanius' moncats trying to understand my sorcery here. The Banished One… is what he is. Don't expect a mere mortal to understand him."

"All right." Grus had hoped the wizard might be able to do just that. But he had no trouble seeing Pterocles' point. "Let me ask it in a different way, then – how happy do you think he is?"

"How happy would you have been if the Menteshe had started turning peasants into thralls the last time they invaded Avornis?" Pterocles asked in turn.