He didn't need long to realize that Lanius and Sosia had reconciled. Neither his son-in-law nor his daughter said much about it, but their manner with each other spoke louder than words could have. Grus suspected Marinus' arrival had a good deal to do with that, but whatever the reason, he hoped it lasted. And so it would – till Lanius found another serving girl attractive and Sosia found out about it. Grus didn't know what he could do about that. Seeing trouble ahead didn't always mean seeing any way to stop it.

Grus had had that thought down south of the Stura, when Otus plucked his woman from a village of freed thralls and decided to bring her up to the city of Avornis. The king had nothing against Fulca, who seemed nice enough and very capable. He also had nothing against Calypte, with whom Otus had taken up while Fulca remained a thrall. And Otus himself was solid as the day was long. But when one of his women found out about the other one…

When that happened, it proved as hard on Otus as it would have on anyone else whose two women suddenly discovered neither of them was his one woman. A lot of men, in a mess like that, would have lost both of them. Otus didn't. While Calypte departed in a crockery-throwing huff, Fulca stuck by him. But she was furious, too.

"What was I supposed to do, Your Majesty?" Otus asked plaintively after the dishes stopped flying. "Was I supposed to act like a dead man while I was far away from Fulca and I thought I would never see her again? Once I'd found she'd been freed and found her, was I supposed to pretend I'd never known her?"

"I suppose not, and I suppose not." Grus answered each question in turn. "But I didn't think you would be able to keep both of them once they found out about each other. Things don't usually work that way."

"Why not?" Otus said. "They should."

"Well, suppose Calypte had taken another lover while you were south of the Stura with me," Grus said. "Would she have been able to keep two men?"

"I don't think so!" Otus sounded indignant.

'There, then. Do you see?" Grus said. Otus didn't, or didn't want to. Few men wanted to when the shoe was on the other foot. Grus set a hand on the ex-thrall's shoulder. "Be thankful Fulca is sticking by you. You don't have to start over from the beginning."

"Even she wants to knock me over the head with something," Otus said. "Shouldn't she be glad I came looking for her and took her out of the village?"

"Oh, I think she is," Grus said. Otus hadn't told her anything about his other woman when he took her out of the village. She'd thought – not unreasonably, as far as Grus could see – she was his only woman, and that he had no others. No wonder she was none too happy to discover she was wrong. "If the two of you really love each other, you'll figure out how to patch things up." And if you don't patch them up, it wouldn't be the first time things fell apart. Grus kept quiet about that. Otus wouldn't appreciate it.

"I don't know what to do," Otus said sorrowfully.

A lot of that sorrow was no more than self-pity. Grus knew as much. Even so, he soberly answered, "Congratulations."

Otus stared at him. Grus hadn't expected anything else. "Congratulations, Your Majesty?" the ex-thrall echoed. "I don't understand."

"Not knowing what to do, not being sure, needing to figure things out for yourself – all this is part of what being a free man is all about," Grus explained. "You wouldn't have said anything like that when you were a thrall, would you?"

"No, I don't suppose I would." Otus shook his head. "No, of course I wouldn't. I knew everything I needed to know then. It wasn't much, by the gods, but I knew it." He spoke with a certain somber pride.

"That's about what I thought," Grus told him. "You have more things to know and to try to figure out now that you're on your own. Not all of it's going to be easy. It won't be much fun some of the time, especially when you get yourself into a mess like the one you're in now. But this is part of what being free is all about. You're free to make an idiot of yourself, too. People do it every day."

"Freedom to get in trouble, I think I could do without," Otus said.

"I don't know how you're going to separate it from any other kind," Grus said. "You've done a good job of getting the hang of being your own person. You didn't have years and years to learn how, the way ordinary people do. You had to start doing it right away after Pterocles lifted the spell of thralldom from you. Now Fulca has to do the same thing, and do it just as fast as you did – maybe faster. Remember, it won't always be easy for her, either."

"I suppose not," Otus said, and then, "Thank you, Your Majesty."

"For what?" Grus said. "I don't have any real answers for you. I've landed in this exact same trouble myself, and more than once." So has Lanius, he thought. It's something that happens, all right.

"For listening to me," the freed thrall said with a rueful smile. "Just for listening to me. That was something neither of my women wanted to do."

"Oh. Well, you're welcome." Grus fought hard to hide a smile. "Between you and me, when a man's women find out about each other – or when a woman's men find out about each other, which happens, too – they aren't usually in a listening mood."

"Yes, I'd noticed that." By the way Otus said it, it was for him some strange natural phenomenon, like the fogs that afflicted the Chernagor country or the tides that swept the sea in and back along Avornis' coastline.

"Good luck," Grus told him. "Part of what makes being free, being a whole man, worthwhile is that it isn't simple. You may not always believe that, or want to believe it, but it's true."

Otus went on his way scratching his head. Grus hoped he would work things out with Fulca, for her sake as much as for his. She didn't know enough yet to have an easy time as a free woman. If she had to, though, Grus suspected she would get along. Just how much would Avornis gain from the suddenly released talents of so many thralls? More than a little – he was sure of that.

At the midwife's suggestion, Limosa had nursed Marinus for the first few days after he was born. Lanius remembered Netta giving Sosia the same advice after she bore Crex and Pitta. She'd said babies whose mothers did that ended up healthier. That had persuaded Sosia, and it persuaded Limosa, too.

After those first few days, Limosa let her own milk dry up and brought in a wet nurse. With Sosia as grumpy as she was, Lanius wondered how she would react to a woman who often bared her breasts in the palace. That turned out not to be an issue. The wet nurse Limosa hired was almost as wide as she was tall, and had eyes set too close together, a big nose, and a mean mouth. Maybe Limosa was taking no chances with Ortalis, too.

Not long after Marinus' birth, the winter turned nasty. Three blizzards roared through the city of Avornis one after another, snarling the streets, piling roofs high with snow, and making Lanius wonder whether the Banished One had decided to use the weather as a weapon after all. As the city began to dig out, several people were found frozen to death in their homes and shops. That happened after almost every bad storm, but it worried the king all the same.

And then the sun came out. It got warm enough to melt a lot of the snow – not quite springlike, but close enough. Here and there, a few prematurely hopeful shoots of grass sprouted between cobblestones.

Lanius laughed at himself. Plucking one of those little green shoots outside the palace, he held it under Grus' nose. 'This probably won't be a winter like that dreadful one," he said.

He must have held the shoot too close to Grus' nose, for the other king's eyes crossed as he looked at it. "I'd say you're right," Grus answered. "Of course, there's still some winter left. Other thing is, just because he's not sending snow and ice at us doesn't mean he won't do something."