“Here.” Marshal Lepturus’ joints creaked and crackled as he sat down on a marble bench outside the door to the steam bath. “What can I do for you?”
Lanius sat down beside him. He looked around before he answered. No servants were in sight. He spoke in a low voice— fortunately, Lepturus’ ears, unlike Nicator’s, still worked fine. “Now that Grus has left the city, I want your help with something.”
The guards commander leaned toward him. “What have you got in mind? I’m listening.” He too spoke so quietly, no one but Lanius could possibly have heard him.
“I want to bring my mother back from the Maze,” Lanius said.
Marshal Lepturus looked at him for a long time before answering, softly and sadly but very definitely, “No.”
“What?” Lanius couldn’t remember the last time Lepturus had said that to him, certainly not on anything this important. “In the name of the gods, why not?”
“Do you aim to fight your own civil war against King Grus, Your Majesty?” Lepturus asked. “We’ve been over that ground before, you know.”
“Civil war? No, of course not,” Lanius said. “All I want to do is set my mother free.”
“That may be all you want, but that’s not all you’d get.” Lepturus spoke with mournful certainty. “What’s Grus going to do when he hears Queen Certhia’s back in the royal palace, eh? She did try to kill him, you know. He’s bound to figure she’ll try it again, first chance she gets. Wouldn’t you, in his boots?”
“It could be all right,” Lanius said. “It really could. He’s King Grus now. Nobody would try to take that away from him. Things aren’t the same as they were before.”
He was trying to convince himself as well as Lepturus. He believed what he was saying. Lepturus, plainly, didn’t. “If you bring your mother back, one of two things happens. Either she ends up dead—and maybe you along with her, depending on how it all works out—or Grus ends up dead. Those are your choices. I know which way I’d bet, too.”
“Wouldn’t you back me?” Lanius yelped. Lepturus’ saying no shook him to the core.
“I shouldn’t, not if you go ahead and try anything that stupid,” Lepturus said. “I won’t help you get your mother. I’ll tell you that right now, straight out. If you do somehow get her here without my help… you’d be a gods-cursed fool. My help wouldn’t do you any good, anyhow. You’d still lose. Certhia’d end up dead, you’d likely end up dead, and I’d likely end up dead, too. Happy day.”
“Is this the thanks I give her for giving me life?” Lanius asked bitterly. “Do I let her get old in a convent in the Maze?”
He’d meant it for a rhetorical question. But, to his surprise, Lepturus nodded. “I’m afraid it is, Your Majesty. It’s the best thanks you can give her. If you bring her out of the Maze, she won’t get old. That’s what I was telling you.”
“Yes.” Lanius tried a different tack. “Don’t you think she’d want to take the chance?”
Marshal Lepturus surprised him again, this time by smiling. “Yes, I think she would. I’d bet money on it, matter of fact. She’s got nerve—and to spare, your mother does.” He sounded very fond—and very knowing. Lanius suddenly wondered if the two of them had been lovers after King Mergus died. He’d never wondered anything like that about his mother before. If they had been lovers, they’d kept quiet about it; there’d never been the faintest whisper of scandal, and people had always been ready to do more than whisper—they’d been ready to shout.
Before Lanius could wonder how to ask or even whether to ask, Lepturus went on, “But that’s why you’ve got to have the sense to leave her where she is. If you bring her out of the Maze—if you bring her back to the city of Avornis—odds are you’ll just get her killed. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not. Don’t you think I could win? Don’t you think we could win?”
“You watched Grus against Corvus and Corax. What do you think?”
Lanius winced. While he’d watched Grus against the rebels, he’d been convinced he would lose if he tried to rise up against his father-in-law. When Grus had let him go back to the city of Avornis while besieging Corvus, he hadn’t tried to hold the capital against Sosia’s father. For one thing, Nicator and a good-sized host of marines had come back to the city of Avornis with him. But, for another, he simply hadn’t dared. He’d been too sure he would lose.
Why did he think differently now? Only one answer occurred to him—he would have his mother at his side. Would having Queen Certhia with him make enough difference to let him beat Grus? When he looked at that with his heart, he felt it would. When he looked at it with his head, he knew it wouldn’t.
And when he looked at Lepturus… The guards commander hadn’t quite answered his question before. He asked it again. “You wouldn’t help, would you?”
Regretfully, Lepturus shook his head. “I want you to stay alive, and I want Certhia to stay alive, and I’ve got this low, sneaking yen to stay alive a while longer myself.”
“Curse you, Lepturus,” King Lanius said wearily. Lepturus bowed his head, as though Lanius had praised him. Maybe, in the end, Lanius had, though he would never have admitted that even to himself. He made a fist and slammed it down on his thigh, again and again. “All right. All right. I’ll leave it alone.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You won’t be sorry.”
“No? I’m sorry already.” Lanius rose from the marble bench and hurried away. No one, not even a man who’d known him his whole life long, should have to see a king cry.
“We beat the Thervings last year,” Grus told his men. “We beat them when we had a civil war simmering, too. This year, our back is safe. When we meet them again, let’s beat them again.”
The soldiers raised a cheer. Grus nodded approval. They weren’t where he wanted them to be as far as fighting strength went, but they didn’t quake in their boots at the prospect of facing King Dagipert’s men, either. That would do.
General Hirundo said, “We’re gaining, Your Majesty.”
“Just what I was thinking, as a matter of fact,” Grus answered. “If we can keep from getting overrun and massacred, we’ll have ourselves a pretty fair army in a couple of years.”
“Er… yes.” Hirundo gave him a curious look. “That’s a cheery thought you had there.” He pretended to shiver to show just how cheery he thought it.
“We’re going out against the Thervings. We’re not staying behind the walls of the city of Avornis,” Grus said. “Year before last, we’d have waited for him to quit tearing up the countryside and go away, and we’d have hoped he didn’t do too much harm while he was tearing things up. So, yes, it is a cheery thought if you look at it the right way.”
“Well, I’d rather look at it like that than think of the Thervings overrunning us, I will say,” Hirundo replied. “Thinking about that for too long puts a crimp in your day.”
“If we think about it, we can think about ways to keep it from happening,” Grus said. “That’s what I want to do. If we don’t think about it… If we don’t think about it, then we might as well bring Corvus out of the Maze and put him in charge of the army again.”
“No, thanks, Your Majesty,” Hirundo said. “We tried that once, and it didn’t work out very well.” He waved. “We can still see just how well it worked.”
“I know,” Grus said. Here, not far from the Tuola River, the Thervings had done a lot of burning and looting. They hadn’t come so far east this year, but the land remained empty, almost barren. They’d killed a lot of the farmers who’d worked it, and carried others back to Thervingia with them. One of these days, when things were safer, Grus knew he would have to try to resettle this land. But not yet. First, he’d have to work to make things safer. And he had a lot of work ahead of him.