Unlike people, though, places could come back to life. Grus turned to Hirundo. "Do you know what we ought to do?"
"I've got a list as long as your arm, Your Majesty," the general said. "Most of it is things I need to do day before yesterday. The less important bits, though, I can get away with doing yesterday. So what's yours?"
He sounded as serious as he ever did. Grus explained, finishing, "If we're going to take this land away from the Menteshe, we've got to do something with it for ourselves. If we could bring it back to the way it was before the nomads swept down on it…"
"Don't get your hopes up too high," Hirundo said. "Back in the old days, they didn't have to worry about the Menteshe at all. Even if we do drive 'em back, they'll be right over the border, just waiting to pounce when they see the chance. We can't clear them out of this whole country. It's too big, and there are too cursed many of them."
Grus wished he could find some way to contradict that, but he couldn't.
"If things work out the way we want them to, though, people will remember us for as long as Avornis lasts." Grus supposed that kingdoms flourished and then grew old, too, the same way people and towns did. Not wanting to think that might happen to Avornis in years yet to come, he went on, 'That's about as close to living forever in this world as we're likely to come."
"There are children," Hirundo pointed out.
"Well, yes. So there are." Grus let it lie there. He was disappointed in his son, and feared he always would be disappointed in Ortalis. His hopes along those lines ran through Sosia and his grandson. He didn't like having more faith in his daughter and her line than in the one he'd always wanted to be his heir.
He also didn't know what Crex would turn out to be like. The boy was still too young to make that plain. The one thing Grus could say was that he didn't seem to be vicious. He wished more than anything that he could say the same about Ortalis. He'd tried to believe Ortalis would outgrow whatever gave him the need to hurt things, tried long after it should have been obvious that his legitimate son's ways were set. He didn't believe it anymore. I may have been foolish to expect he'll ever have it in him to give. I was foolish. But there's a difference between foolish and blind.
Did King Olor, looking down from the heavens, have the same sort of thoughts about mankind as a whole? Grus shrugged. He couldn't do anything about that. He didn't look up past the sky. He looked south, toward the mountains where the Banished One lived. The Banished One doubtless had his own thoughts about mankind, too. Grus aimed to prove him wrong.
CHAPTER SIX
Tinamus the architect looked up in surprise from the sheaf of notes King Lanius had just given him. "These are… very detailed. Your Majesty."
"I wanted to have them as exact as I could," Lanius said. "Would you have liked it more if they were vaguer?"
Tinamus didn't answer. All the same, Lanius realized that he would have. The architect wasn't a courtier, and didn't have the courtier's knack for hiding what he thought. His long, thin, rather pale face showed each thought flitting across it. Lanius found that more refreshing than otherwise.
"I'm not just doing this for my amusement, you know," the king said.
"So I gather." Tinamus flipped through the notes. His hands were long and thin and pale, too – clever hands. "Why are you doing it, if you don't mind my asking?"
Lanius hesitated. He didn't want to lie to the architect, but he didn't want to tell him the truth, either. At last, he said, "It might be better if you didn't know. It might be safer – not for me, but for you."
"Safer, Your Majesty?" Tinamus' eyebrows jumped in surprise. "Who except maybe another builder could care whether I do this for you? The other builders here in the city of Avornis may be jealous of the commission you pay me, but I don't think any of them would try to knock out my brains with a plumb bob or anything like that."
"Good. I'm glad to hear it. I wouldn't want to believe our architects were wild and unruly men." Lanius smiled at Tinamus, who seemed one of the least unruly men he'd ever met. "Can you do it? Will you do it? Or should I ask one of your ferocious colleagues?"
"It doesn't seem difficult. One of them could probably do it as well as I can." No, Tinamus was no courtier. Anyone used to the ways of the court would have loudly proclaimed he was the only person in the whole world who could possibly handle this job. He wagged a finger at Lanius. "But I tell you this, Your Majesty – any of them will be as curious as I am, and will want to know why you say that what looks like a straightforward piece of work may not be safe."
"Mmp." Lanius wished he could have made a happier noise than that. However much he didn't want to admit it even to himself, Tinamus had a point. If the work was going to endanger him, he had a right to know why. Sighing, Lanius said, "The less you know about why you're doing what you're doing, the less likely you are to have trouble from the Banished One."
Tinamus' eyebrows leaped again. His eyes, gray as granite, opened very wide. "The… Banished One, Your Majesty?" He stuck a finger in his right ear, as though to show he didn't believe he'd heard straight.
Lanius only nodded. "That's what I said."
The architect's left hand twisted in the gesture that was supposed to keep the exiled god's glance far away. Lanius used it, too, though he was far from sure it did any good. Tinamus asked, "Why on earth would… he care about what I build for you?"
"I won't answer that," Lanius said. "As I told you, the less you know, the better off you'll probably be. Whatever the reason, though, what you're doing may interest him."
"That's the craziest thing I ever heard." Tinamus laughed out loud. "When I tell me wife – " He broke off before Lanius could even open his mouth, and said, "Oh. If this has to do with the Banished One, and if I shouldn't know very much, she should know even less, shouldn't she?"
He was quick. Lanius liked that. He said, "Not telling her much – or anything – might be a good idea, yes. The fewer people who know and the less they know, the better off they're likely to be."
"What about the stonemasons and bricklayers and carpenters and pick-and-shovel men who work on this? What shall I tell them?" Tinamus asked.
"Tell them whatever you please. Tell them you think the king's gone round the bend," Lanius answered. By the look in the architect's eye, he wasn't far from thinking that. Lanius grinned. "Go ahead. Enjoy yourself. By the gods, I swear I'll never punish you for lese-majeste."
Tinamus grinned back. "Now that I've got your oath, I ought to go screaming rude things from the housetops."
"Go ahead. I'm sure you'll get people to believe them." Lanius laughed to show he was joking. And so he was – mostly. But some people were still more inclined to believe bad things about him than they would have been for some other king. He'd never quite lived down his father's scandalous seventh marriage and the days when, as a boy, he'd been reckoned a bastard on account of it. The scars he bore because of those days had faded, but they'd never disappeared.
The captain of King Grus' scouts was a tough little man named Strix. Most of the scouts were tough little men. Tough big men did other things in the army. Little men put less weight on their horses than did their larger counterparts. That gave the horses a bit more speed, a bit more endurance, and let them come closer to matching what the Menteshe mounts could do.
Right now, Strix was a tough little man with a worried look on his weathered, sharp-nosed face. He said, "Your Majesty, we've got three scouts missing."
"Missing?" Grus said sharply. "You mean the Menteshe have them?" That would be bad. Grus had trouble imagining anything worse. When the nomads took prisoners, they often made sport of them, and showed a fiendish ingenuity in their amusement. The Banished One would have been proud of them. The Banished One probably was proud of them.