Lanius shook his head. The road to Yozgat ran through Trabzun, and he had to think about Trabzun now.
Dust rose in choking clouds when the king pulled a crate off a shelf. Coughing, he carried the crate to a table. He thought he remembered finding papers from Trabzun – or rather, from Trapezus – in it. As he pulled out documents and started reading them, he happened to look down at himself. His tunic, though old, had been clean when he put it on. Now dust and dirt streaked and spotted it. He tried to brush off some of the dust with his hands, and raised a small cloud around himself without getting the tunic much cleaner.
The king began to wonder whether he knew what he was talking about. The crate didn't seem to have any of the documents he was looking for. Were they really somewhere else? Was he misremembering? He'd done that when he was looking for papers from Yozgat. Once could happen to anybody. Twice? Didn't twice suggest his memory wasn't as good as he thought it was? For a man who prided himself on his wits – not least because he didn't have a whole lot of other things on which to pride himself – that was a disheartening notion.
"Ha!" he exclaimed as he got near the bottom of the crate. There they were! He'd buried them under other documents that had seemed more interesting the last time he went through them.
Tax registers from Trapezus wouldn't do Grus any good. The people who'd dutifully paid those taxes (or not so dutifully tried to evade them) were hundreds of years dead. Their descendants, if they had any, were probably thralls. But…
"Ha!" Lanius said again, and plucked a parchment from the crate. Here was a map of Trapezus long ago, showing which of those taxpayers – recalcitrant or otherwise – owned which properties in the city. Again, those property owners were ashes for a very long time. Many of the buildings were bound to have fallen down between then and now. Odds were, though, that the streets still ran as they had in those far-off days, which meant Grus might find the map worth having.
Lanius sighed once more. Part of him still resented working for the man who'd stolen half his throne and far more than half his power. But he couldn't deny, however much he wanted to, that Grus had done a good job with that power. If, say, Ortalis had been the usurper… Lanius shook his head. No, he didn't want to think about that.
Below the map lay a report from an officer in Trapezus on the walls, and on repairs that had been made after an earthquake. Lanius decided to send that along, too. Maybe there had been more earthquakes since, but it might prove useful.
He was sure Grus would be interested in some of the things he'd found out about Yozgat. He would tell his father-in-law about those when Grus got back to the city of Avornis. He didn't want to put them in writing. They would have to travel a long way south of the Stura before they got to Grus. Lanius knew Menteshe raiders bedeviled the route by which supplies and letters went down to the Avornan army. If he went into too much detail and the dispatch happened to be captured – that wouldn't be good at all.
And it could end up a lot worse than merely no good at all. A captured dispatch from one King of Avornis to the other might end up in the Banished One's hands. That would do for a catastrophe until a more emphatic word came along. If the Banished One suspected any of what Lanius had in mind, all his carefully laid plans would fall to pieces then and there.
He heard another skittering noise and looked up, hoping it was Pouncer. But no moncat came out hoping for a treat. Just another mouse, he thought. He'd tried setting traps in the archives, traps that would smash any mouse taking the bait. The next dead mouse he saw in any of them would be the first. He had almost smashed his own foot in one; only a hasty backward leap saved him. After that, he took out the traps.
Thinking of that fiasco made him start to laugh. What if he'd forgotten one and left it here? How long would it be before some other king – or perhaps some scholar – prowled through the archives the way he liked to do? A hundred years from now, or two hundred, would the man who went through the archives have any idea the trap that had smashed his foot was set by a King of Avornis? Lanius didn't see how he could.
Sosia gave him a peculiar look when he told her about the thought later that day. "You find the oddest things to worry about," she said.
"I wasn't worried. I just thought it was… interesting," Lanius said.
"Interesting!" His wife snorted. "Who in the world could care about what happens a hundred years from now?"
The Banished One could, Lanius thought. But he didn't want to be compared to the exiled god, and the Banished One wasn't in the world willingly. There was another answer he could give her, though. "I do. The dynasty reaches back further than that. I'd like to see it reach forward further than that, too." He pointed a finger at her. "Wouldn't you? You're part of the dynasty yourself, you know."
Sosia looked surprised. Then she nodded. "You're right. I am," she said, wonder in her voice.
Lanius knew why she looked surprised and sounded wondering. She thought of herself as part of Grus' family. Grus had wed her to Lanius not least so she could keep an eye on him. She would back him against Ortalis – he was sure of that. Nobody liked Ortalis, though (except Limosa, Lanius thought uneasily). But would Sosia back him against Grus?
That was the wrong question. The right question was, would it matter if she did? Lanius feared it wouldn't. A good thing, then, that he and Grus both aimed at Yozgat and not at each other.
CHAPTER NINE
Much of the dirt dug out of the tunnel approaching Trabzun went to strengthen the inner and outer fieldworks surrounding the town. That was Hirundo's idea, and King Grus liked it very much. It gave the Avornans somewhere inconspicuous to conceal the spoil from the mine. As the amount of dirt dug out grew greater and greater, that became ever more important.
After being beaten back once, the Menteshe outside Trabzun did not return for another attack on the besiegers. That relieved Grus, and also rather surprised him. One evening, he remarked, "I hope they've gone back to fighting their civil war again."
"That would be nice," Hirundo agreed. He fanned himself with the palm of his hand. "I'll tell you something else that would be nice – it would be nice if it got cooler around here."
"So it would," Grus said. The air was still and breathless. Things farther than a few hundred yards away shimmered in a heat haze. A drop of sweat tickled as it trickled through his beard. A bird called. Even the noise seemed flat and dispirited – or maybe that was Grus' imagination, as overheated as everything else that had to do with Trabzun. He went on, "Don't expect anything different, though, not till summer finally decides to let up."
"Oh, I don't. I've seen what the weather's like around here." Hirundo swatted at a bug that landed on his bare arm. He killed it, and wiped his hand on his tunic. "Knowing it doesn't mean I have to like it."
"No, I suppose not. I don't much like it myself." Grus snapped his fingers. "Did I tell you? No, of course I didn't, because it just happened today. I got a plan of the streets inside Trabzun."
"Did you, by the gods?" The general beamed. "That's good news. Where did you get it from? Did Pterocles pull a new spell out of his belt pouch?"
Grus shook his head. "No. He was just as surprised as you are. I got it from Lanius. He found it in the archives back at the palace."
Hirundo laughed so loud, several soldiers stared at him. "He's all the way back there, and we're here, and he knows more about this stinking place than we do? That's funny, is what that is." He paused. "That plan will be older than dirt, if he pulled it out of the archives. D'you think it's still good?"
"Funny you should ask. He warned me about that. He said he didn't know what the buildings were like in there, but the way the streets ran shouldn't have changed much."