By the way she responded, his best proved good enough. “You are sweet,” she said, as though reminding herself.
“I think the same thing—about you,” he added hastily, before she could tease him about thinking himself sweet. That was what he got for being precise most of the time.
He waited there in the darkness, wondering if Sosia would ask why he’d gone after Cristata if he thought she was sweet. But she didn’t. She just murmured, “Well, good,” rolled over on her side, and fell asleep. Lanius rolled over, too, in the opposite direction. His backside bumped hers. She stirred a little, but kept on breathing slowly and deeply. A few minutes later, Lanius also drifted off, a smile on his face.
A lieutenant from one of the river galleys on the Stura stood before King Grus. “Your Majesty, an awful lot of the Menteshe are sneaking south across the river. More and more every day, and especially every night. We’ve sunk half a dozen boats full of the stinking buggers, and more have gotten by us.”
This wasn’t the first such report Grus had heard. He scratched his head. Up until a few days before, Prince Ulash’s men hadn’t been doing anything of the sort. Sudden changes in what the Menteshe were up to made the King of Avornis deeply suspicious. “What have they got in mind?” he asked, though the lieutenant wasn’t going to know.
As he’d expected, the young officer shrugged and answered, “No idea, sir. We don’t get the chance to ask them a whole lot of questions. When we ram ’em, we sink ’em.” By the pride in his voice, he wanted to do nothing but sink them.
That suited Grus fine. He wanted his river-galley officers aggressive. He said, “Thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll see what I can do to get to the bottom of this.”
The officer bowed and left. Grus scratched his head again. He didn’t shake any answers loose. He hadn’t really thought he would. Being without answers, he summoned Pterocles. The wizard heard him out, then said, “That is interesting, Your Majesty. Why would they start going over the river now when they had seemed to want to stay on this side and fight?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Grus said. “Has there been a magical summons? Has the Banished One taken a hand in things?”
“I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.” Pterocles spoke cautiously. Grus approved of that caution. Pterocles recognized the possibility that something might have slipped past him. He said, “I have spells that would tell me if something has gone on under my nose. A summons like that lingers on the ether. If it was there, I’ll find out about it.”
“Good,” Grus said. “Let me know.”
When Pterocles came back that afternoon, he looked puzzled and troubled. “Your Majesty, if any sort of sorcerous summons came north, I can’t find it,” he said. “I don’t quite know what that means.”
“Neither do I,” Grus said. Had the Banished One deceived his wizard? Or was Pterocles searching for something that wasn’t there to find? “If you know any other spells, you ought to use them,” Grus told him.
Pterocles nodded. “I will, though I’ve already tried the ones I think likeliest to work. You ought to try to take some Menteshe prisoners, too. They may know something I don’t.”
“I’ll do that,” Grus said at once. “I should have sent men out to do it when I first called you. A lot of the time, the Menteshe like to sing.”
He gave the orders. His men rode out. But Menteshe were starting to get scarce on the ground. Even a week earlier, discovering so few of them on the Avornan side of the Stura would have made Grus rejoice. He would have rejoiced now, if his men were the ones responsible for making the nomads want to get back to the lands they usually roamed. But his men hadn’t driven the Menteshe over the Stura, and he knew it. That left him suspicious. Why were the Menteshe leaving—fleeing— Avornis when they didn’t have to?
“I know what it is,” Hirundo said when a day’s search resulted in no prisoners.
“Tell me,” Grus urged. “I haven’t got any idea why they’re going.”
“It’s simple,” the general answered. “They must have heard you were going to put a tax on nomads in Avornis, so of course they ran away from it.” He grinned at his own cleverness. “By Olor’s beard, I would, too.”
“Funny.” Grus tried to sound severe, but a smile couldn’t help creeping out from behind the edges of his beard—it was funny, even if he wished it weren’t. He wagged a finger at Hirundo, who kept right on grinning, completely unabashed. Grus said, “Do you have any real idea why they’re doing it?”
“No,” Hirundo admitted. “All I can say is, good riddance.”
“Certainly, good riddance.” But Grus remained dissatisfied, like a man who’d just enjoyed a feast but had an annoying piece of gristle stuck between two back teeth. “They shouldn’t be running away, though, not when we haven’t finished beating them. They’ve never done that before.
“Maybe they know we’re going to win this time, and so they want to save themselves for fights next year or the year after,” Hirundo suggested.
“Maybe.” Grus still didn’t sound happy—still wasn’t happy. He explained why, repeating, “They’ve never done that before.” The Menteshe usually did the same sort of things over and over again. If they changed their ways, they had to have a reason… didn’t they?
“Maybe the Banished One is telling them what to do,” Hirundo said.
“Of course the Banished One is telling them what to do,” Grus answered. He hated the idea, which didn’t mean he disbelieved it. “They’re his creatures. They’re proud to be his creatures. But why is he telling them to do that? And how is he telling them? Pterocles can’t find any of his magic.”
Hirundo considered, then brightened. “Maybe he’s trying to drive you mad, to make you find reasons for things that haven’t got any.”
“Thank you so much,” Grus said. Hirundo bowed back, as he might have after any extraordinarily meritorious service. The worst of it was, Grus couldn’t be sure the general was wrong. The king knew he would go right on wasting time and losing sleep until he found an answer he could believe. He sighed. “The more we go on like this, the plainer it gets that we need prisoners. Until we know more, we’ll just keep coming out with one stupid guess after another.”
“I don’t think my guesses were stupid.” Mock anger filled Hirundo’s voice. “I think they were clever, perceptive, even brilliant.”
“You would,” the king muttered. “When your men finally do bring back a captive or two, we’ll see how brilliant and perceptive you were.”
“They’re doing their best, the same as I am,” Hirundo said.
“I hope theirs is better than yours.” Grus made sure he smiled so Hirundo knew he was joking. The horrible face the general made said he got the message but didn’t much care for it.
Along with the cavalry, the men aboard the river galleys got orders to capture Menteshe if they could. If they could… Suddenly, the lands on this side of the Stura began to seem like a country where the birds had just flown south for the winter. They had been here. The memory of them lingered. They would come back. But for now, when you wanted them most, they were gone.
Grus had never imagined that winning a war could leave him so unhappy. He had questions he wanted to ask, questions he needed to ask, and nobody to whom to ask them. He’d snarled at Hirundo in play. He started snarling at people in earnest.