Her belly seemed to bulge more every day now. The baby was still a couple of months away, which meant that belly would be even bigger by the time it was born. She carried a chunk of raisin loaf in one hand.
"I'll be all right," she said. "I'm just getting to where all I want is for this to be over. Pretty soon, it will be."
"I remember Sosia saying the same thing," Lanius said.
"I feel like I'm carrying around a great big melon, except melons don't kick," Ortalis' wife said, setting the hand without the raisin loaf just above her navel.
She was another likable one. Lanius cordially loathed her father, and wasn't a bit sorry when Grus sent Petrosus to the Maze. She was wed to a man who'd alarmed the king for as long as he'd known him. She carried a baby that could throw the succession into turmoil. All the same, Lanius didn't dislike her. He worried about her, but that wasn't the same thing.
"Everything will be fine," Lanius said.
Limosa nodded. "Oh, I think so, too. It's not a lot of fun when it finally happens, but it does usually turn out all right. If it didn't, there wouldn't be any more people after a while. And when it is over" – her face softened – "you've got a baby. Babies are fun."
Babies were a lot more fun if someone else did the cleaning up after them. Limosa took that for granted. Since Lanius did, too, he didn't call her on it. He only smiled and nodded and said, "I remember."
"Crex and Pitta are getting big now," Limosa said. "You and Sosia ought to have another baby yourselves."
Since Lanius wasn't currently welcome in Sosia's bed, prospects for a new royal prince or princess lay nowhere in the immediate future. If Limosa didn't already know that, Lanius didn't feel like explaining it to her. He just said, "Maybe one of these days."
"It would be nice," Limosa said. If she worried about the succession, or about a son of hers threatening Crex's place, she didn't show it. Maybe that was good acting on her part. Petrosus had surely grafted her onto Lanius' family in the hope that a grandson of his would wear the crown. But even Lanius had trouble believing she attached enormous importance to it.
"So it would," he said. She wasn't wrong – he'd enjoyed Crex and Pitta very much when they were small.
"May I ask you something, Your Majesty?" she said.
"You can always ask. Whether I answer depends on what the question is," Lanius replied.
Limosa nodded. "Of course. All I want to know, though, is what you're doing out in the country. Why do you want to build what sounds like a slice of a city?"
She wasn't the only one wondering about that. Even Tinamus, the architect responsible for it, wondered. Wondering was harmless. Knowing? Knowing was all too likely to be anything but. With what Lanius hoped was a harmless smile, he said, "It's a hobby, that's all. Why does Ortalis like to go hunting?"
For some tiny fraction of a heartbeat, alarm spread over Limosa's face. She knew the answer to that question, then. It was something on the order of, He hunts animals so he doesn't hunt people. Lanius started to apologize; he hadn't meant to embarrass her. But maybe what he'd said wasn't so bad after all. She didn't press him about what he was building anymore.
Instead, she murmured, "Hobbies," made as though to curtsy again without actually doing it, and went on up the corridor.
Lanius shook his head. If things didn't work out the way he hoped, plenty of people would be unhappy with him for wasting so much time and money. For now, though, he didn't have to worry about that. Even Grus agreed what he was doing was worth a try. As soon as the building was finished, he and Collurio could get down to some serious work there. In the meantime…
In the meantime, shrieks empted from the kitchens. Maybe that meant one of the cooks had stuck a knife in another. Such things happened every once in a while. More like, though…
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!" A cook came running toward Lanius, waving her arms in the air. "Oh, there you are, Your Majesty! Come quick! It's that horrible creature of yours, Your Majesty! It's stolen a big silver spoon!"
"Sooner or later, we'll get it back," the king said. "Pouncer hardly ever loses them."
"Miserable thieving animal." None of the cooks had a good word to say for moncats. "Nothing but vermin. We ought to set traps."
"You will do no such thing." Most of the time, Lanius was among the mildest of men. When he wanted to, though, he could sound every inch a monarch. The cook blinked, hardly believing her ears. He went on, "You will not. Do you understand me?"
The cook turned pale as milk. "We won't do it, Your Majesty. Queen Quelea's sweet mercy on me, I was only joking."
"All right, then." Lanius knew he'd hit too hard. But she'd alarmed him. He asked, "Is the moncat still in the kitchens, or did it run off?"
"It went up the wall like it was a big, furry fly, and then in through some crack or other. It's gone." The cook regained a little spirit. "And so is that stinking spoon." She sounded as indignant as though she'd bought it herself.
"Maybe I can lure it back. Let's go see, shall we?" Lanius said. "A few scraps might do the trick."
Warmth from the fires and ovens surrounded him when he walked into the kitchens. So did the savory smells of roasting meat and baking bread. A pastry cook was drizzling honey over some fruit tarts. The cooks, men and women, sassed one another in a lively slang enriched by more obscenity and profanity than any this side of the royal army.
The old crack near the ceiling had been sealed up. The cook pointed to another likely one. The king clambered up on a ladder, a lamp in one hand, some scraps of beef cut from a joint in the other. That left no hands free in case he slipped. He resolved not to slip. This is very undignified, he thought, but only after it was far too late to do anything about it.
He held the lamp up to the crack, hoping to see Pouncer's eyes glowing yellow somewhere not far away. No such luck. All he could make out was a spiderweb with the pale spider that had made it squatting near the edge. The spider ran away when his breath shook the web. He climbed down the ladder and shook his head. "He's gone."
"Well, it's not like that's a big surprise," the cook said, but then, recalling to whom she was talking, she added, "Thank you for trying, Your Majesty."
"It's all right," Lanius said. "Sooner or later, the spoon will show up. Pouncer doesn't keep them."
She nodded. The cooks did know that. The moncat had lost a couple, but only a couple. Things could have been worse. As it was, Pouncer's thieving gave the kitchens something to complain about. Everyone needed something to complain about. It was as much fun as.. stealing spoons.
The past few years, Grus had spent every summer in the field. Coming back to the city of Avornis – coming back to the rest of the royal family – always took adjusting. This fall, it seemed to take more than usual. Estrilda greeted him with, "Any new mistresses I should know about?"
"No," he answered at once. He would have said the same thing had the answer been yes. He fought battles in the summertime; he didn't want to fight more of them after he got back to the palace.
His wife greeted his declaration with something less than a ringing endorsement, inquiring, "Any mistresses I shouldn't know about?"
"None of those, either," he told her. She sniffed. Here, though, he was at least technically truthful. The last mistress he'd had that Estrilda shouldn't have known about – and didn't – was Alauda, a widow he'd met during the Menteshe invasion of Avornis' southern provinces. Estrilda also shouldn't have known – and didn't know – about Grus' bastard boy named Nivalis. Grus made sure his son and the boy's mother lacked for nothing money could buy. He'd never seen Nivalis. He wanted to, one of these days.
Estrilda looked at him. "Why not?" she asked him, something approaching true curiosity in her voice. "Are you really getting old?"