Lanius didn’t give it to the moncat. He held it just beyond the reach of Iron’s little, almost-clawed hands. The moncat swiped at it, but missed. Those amber eyes sent Lanius a baleful stare.
He’d seen that before. The glare had more force than an ordinary cat’s pique; Lanius still wasn’t impressed. Iron was going to do what Lanius wanted, not the other way around.
So he thought, anyhow. Then, as Iron was coming down to take the tidbit, the door to the moncat’s room opened. A servant said, “Excuse me, Your Majesty, but—”
Quick as a wink, Iron streaked past the startled servitor and out into the hallway.
“You idiot!” Lanius shouted.
“Your Majesty!” the servant said reproachfully. Lanius was almost always polite to the servants, more as though they were equals than subjects.
Not here. Not now. “You idiot!” the king said again, even louder. “By the gods, Bubulcus, don’t just stand there! Help me catch him!”
“Which way did he go?” Bubulcus asked. “I wasn’t paying any attention to the stupid—” He broke off.
“He could be anywhere by now!” Lanius groaned. “Come on!” He pushed by Bubulcus and looked up and down the hallway. Iron had already turned at least one corner, for Lanius couldn’t see the beast. Down on the ground, the moncat was about as quick and nimble as an ordinary cat. And once Iron found somewhere to climb… Lanius groaned again. “If he gets away, you’ll be sorry,” he told the servant.
Bubulcus turned pale. Lanius had always been mild, but he’d read in histories and chronicles about things some of his predecessors had done to serving men and women who’d displeased them. He doubted Bubulcus had read any of those things. He had no idea whether Bubulcus could read at all. But stories of what kings in a temper might do had probably passed from one generation of palace cooks and sweepers and tailors to the next.
“Come on!” Lanius said. “Let’s go after him.” He started up the hallway. He wasn’t sure he was going in the right direction. All he knew was that he had no chance at all of catching Iron if he just stayed where he was. If he went somewhere, he had an even-money chance of proving right.
And he did prove right. A startled squawk from a serving woman up ahead told him he’d picked the proper direction. When he rounded the corner, he almost ran over her—she was a laundress, bending to pick up linens she’d dropped. “That horrible, gods-cursed thing nipped my ankle when it ran by,” she said, “and everything went flying. If I got a shoe into its ribs, it’d go flying, let me tell you it would.”
“A good thing you didn’t, then,” Lanius said. “Come on, Bubulcus. You, too, girl. Worry about the laundry later. Iron is more important.”
“I can’t imagine why,” the laundress said, but she came.
Before long, Lanius led a procession of seven or eight servants through the corridors of the royal palace, all of them shouting and pointing and tripping over one another. The moncat darted and dodged and scurried and, once, ran back through all the pursuers.
Iron swarmed up a tapestry toward the ceiling. Lanius cursed as Iron sprang out from the wall, seized the stem of a candelabra, swung up to a cornice—and then discovered he had nowhere else to go.
The king murmured a silent prayer of thanks that Iron hadn’t knocked down the candelabra. All those burning candles falling… Lanius shivered. The whole palace might have gone up.
Iron, meanwhile, snarled and bared needle-sharp teeth at the panting king and the servants who’d brought it to bay. “Easy, there,” Lanius said soothingly. Then he remembered the scrap of meat he’d been about to feed the moncat. He looked down. Sure enough, he’d never dropped it. He held it out to Iron. “Here, boy.”
“Which it doesn’t deserve, not after all the trouble it’s caused,” Bubulcus said.
“Who helped him?” Lanius retorted. “What wouldn’t wait?”
“I just wanted to know what you intended to wear to the reception tonight,” Bubulcus answered.
“And for that you turned the whole palace upside down?” Lanius wanted to hit the servant over the head with a rock. “You are an idiot.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know the miserable moncat would run wild?” Bubulcus sounded indignant.
So did Lanius. “Why do you suppose there’s a rule against bothering me when I’m in with any of the moncats, not just Iron?”
“I don’t know why you have the stupid creatures in the first place. What are they good for?”
“Thank the gods I don’t ask the same question about you,” Lanius replied. He held out the strip of meat to Iron. The moncat reached for it with little sharp-nailed hands. Lanius pulled it back out of reach. Iron’s eyes flashed. Lanius took no notice. He let Iron see the meat and smell it.
“Rowr?” the moncat said.
Lanius took another step back. Iron jumped down to his shoulder. The moncat’s hands and thumbed feet gripped Lanius’ tunic. Its nails weren’t out. One hand reached for the piece of meat.
This time, Lanius let the moncat have it. He got a firm grip on Iron. The moncat, intent on tearing at the meat, didn’t notice till too late and wasn’t too upset when it did notice.
“I think that’s that,” Lanius told the servants. “I hope that’s that. Thank you all for your help. Well, almost all.” He sent Bubulcus a last sour look.
“I didn’t do anything, I’m sure,” Bubulcus protested.
“Yes, you did—you opened that miserable door,” Lanius answered. He looked down at Iron. “It’s a good thing I managed to lure you down, or Bubulcus would have found out what trouble really is.”
The moncat purred.
Grus drummed his fingers on the top of the table behind which he sat. “One of these days,” he said, “I have to do something about the nobles. If another count takes it into his head to raise a rebellion like Corvus and Corax’s, he’ll probably have the men to do it. They all want to hang on to their peasants and keep the tax money that should come in to the city of Avornis.”
Nicator and Hirundo both nodded. “That’s true. Every word of it’s true, by the gods,” Nicator said. “Those bastards all think they’re little kings. They don’t care what happens to Avornis, as long as they get to do what they want.”
“True enough,” Hirundo said. “But what can the man who really is King of Avornis do about it?”
“There ought to be laws against letting nobles buy up small farmers’ land and turning the farmers into their own private armies,” Grus said.
Even Nicator, normally the most tractable of men, gave him an odd look then. “Who ever heard of a law like that?”
“I don’t think anybody’s ever heard of anything like that,” Hirundo added.
“I suppose not.” But Grus kept right on drumming his fingers. “Maybe somebody ought to hear of a law like that.”
Nicator looked unhappy. “I can’t think of any faster way to get nobles up in arms with you. If you sent out a law like that, you might touch off the uprisings you were hoping you’d stop.”
“He’s right, Your Majesty,” General Hirundo said.
“Maybe he is,” Grus said. “But maybe he isn’t, too. What we have now is a problem, no doubt about it. Maybe we’d have another problem with a law like that—”
“By the gods, you’d have a problem getting the nobles to pay any attention to a law like that,” Nicator said.
No doubt he was right there. Still, Grus said, “We ought to do something, or try to do something, anyhow. Leaving the fanners at the mercy of the nobles isn’t doing Avornis any favors. And if we’re going to put in that kind of law, when better than now? After we’ve beaten Corvus and Corax, the rest of the big boys out in the provinces will be on their best behavior for a while.”