"Good," Pterocles said. "Then you'll be ready, or as ready as you can be. I didn't know the king – uh, the other king – could draw so well."
"Neither did I," Grus admitted. "Lanius.. will surprise you every now and then."
He set out on a circuit of the Avornan lines, carrying the sketch and looking from it to the walls and the city beyond them every fifty paces or so. The other king said in his letter that he'd been as precise as he knew how. Grus believed him. Lanius was precise even when he didn't particularly aim to be. When he did, he was bound to be very precise indeed.
He was bound to be – and he was. Grus looked up from the sketch to the walls after another few steps, then slowly nodded to himself. He rolled up the sketch again. He needed to go no farther. "Here," he said. "Right here."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lanius paced through the palace in an agony of anxiety. Every time a courier came in, he met the man and snatched the message tube out of his hands. Every time the message turned out to be something ordinary from the provinces, the king snarled in frustration. Lanius was not usually given to snarling. People sent him odd, even frightened, looks.
Rumors didn't take long to start swirling. People talked about him when they didn't think he was listening. Sometimes, though, he was just around a comer in the corridor. Some of the servants thought he and Sosia had had another fight.
Other servants were convinced he'd either quarreled with a new mistress or gotten her pregnant. Since he didn't have a mistress at the moment, that wasn't true, either. If they'd known he was worrying about whether a letter and a sketch had gotten down to Yozgat safely, they would have been convinced he'd lost his wits.
But Lanius couldn't help being snappish. The servants walked softly around him. Had his temper been of a different sort, he might have enjoyed stirring up alarm in the palace and punishing people when they did anything wrong, no matter how small. As things were, he regretted their fear when he noticed it.
Three days later, the letter he'd been waiting for finally came. He all but tackled the courier who handed him the message tube. When he recognized the royal seal on the letter, he whooped. When he broke the seal and unrolled the letter and recognized Grus' strong, simple script, he whooped again.
Your Majesty, with the gods' help I have your letter and your sketch, the other king wrote. I may even mean that instead of sticking it in for the sake of padding or decoration. The sketch is quite good, good enough to be used for its intended purpose. When all else is in readiness, we shall go forward. And, because the gods watched over what you last sent me, I dare hope they will go on looking out for our endeavors. His signature was a hasty scrawl nothing like the rest of his handwriting.
"Ha!" Lanius said, and then, "Ha!" again.
"Is the news good, Your Majesty?" the courier asked.
"The news is very good," Lanius answered. "Yes, by Olor's beard, very good indeed." He fumbled in his belt pouch. As usual, he never knew what in the way of money he would find there. A handful of silver seemed to do the job. He pressed it on the courier, saying, "And this for the good news."
"I thank you, Your Majesty." The man bowed and left.
For a little while, Lanius was as happy as he had been anxious. Some of the serving women exclaimed among themselves, guessing – wrongly – why he seemed so pleased. However mistaken, their guesses were funny and lewd, and Lanius once more had trouble not laughing out loud when he overheard them.
But his worries came back sooner than he would have liked. Grus had gotten his letter and the sketch that went with it – good. The other king would have had a harder time going forward without them. But, by themselves, they weren't enough to let him go forward. Until Lanius knew he could.. well, what was there to do but worry?
Grus eyed the newcomers to the siege line around Yozgat with no small curiosity. The two men closely resembled each other, but for a generation's difference in age. Each of them had a long face and a big nose. The older man's mustache was shot with gray, the younger one's just losing the downy look of youth. They even stood alike. They both had a slightly stagy manner, as though they never stopped performing.
And, at the moment, they both put down cups of wine as fast as they could. The older man said, "Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but if we'd known the trip down here would be the way it was, I don't think you could have found enough gold in the world to get us to make it."
"Why is that, Collurio?" Grus asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
The animal trainer drained his cup before replying. He filled it again from the jar of wine in Grus' pavilion. "Why?" he repeated. "I'll tell you why – because I thought we were going to get killed a dozen times, that's why."
"Only a dozen?" his son murmured.
"Well, I don't know. I lost track after a while," Collurio sail "It all started when a log hit the boat we were in while we were crossing the Stura and almost pitched us into the river. By the gods in the heavens, I don't know what I would have done – I never learned to swim."
"Ah?" Grus said. "How were you saved?"
"Well, the rowers pulled like madmen, and the log swung little right at the last instant, so it smacked into the very back of the boat – "
"You mean the stern," Grus said, thinking, Landlubber.
"Whatever you call it." Collurio wasn't inclined to be fussy; "Anyhow, the log just glanced off, you might say, and swung us around, but it didn't tip us over."
He'd had no reason ever to learn the word capsize. Grus didn't suppose he would want a vocabulary lesson now. The king didn't think that log had come sliding down the Stura by accident. He hoped it hadn't swerved at the last instant by accident, either. "What happened next?" he asked.
Collurio nudged his son. "You tell it, Crinitus."
"All right," the younger man said. "That was when the wagon had to run for a fort about half a bounce ahead of the Menteshe."
"That was the first time, you mean," Collurio said.
"Well, yes." Crinitus nodded. "The first time. But a few lancers rode out from the fort, and for some reason the nomad didn't keep coming after us. They must have thought the soldiers were going to pitch into them. It didn't look to me like there were enough Avornans for that, but I'm not going to complain, believe me."
"Neither will I," Collurio said. He looked at Grus. "I thought the same thing my son did. It was nothing but Queen Quelea's mercy that saved us."
I hope you're right, Grus thought. What he said was, "I gather you had some other narrow escapes?"
"A wagonload of 'em," Collurio said, and laughed at his own wit. "Some of the riders and drivers we talked to said those kinds of things happen all the time. If they do, though, I don't see how anything ever gets here, and that's the truth."
"Sometimes things don't," Grus said. "I'm glad the two of you did. And, meaning no offense to you, I'm even gladder the moncat did."
Collurio scratched his plowshare of a nose. "King Lanius kept going on and on about how the beast was more important than I understood. I would have told him he was daft if he wasn't the king – I probably shouldn't say that to you, should I, eh, Your Majesty?"
"I've had the same thought about King Lanius now and again," Grus replied, "but I have to admit I've been wrong more than I've been right."
"It could be. Yes, it could be," Collurio replied, pouring more wine for himself and Crinitus. He and his son would be drunk in short order if they kept that up. He went on, "Other thing besides him being king that made me keep my fool mouth shut was those dreams. You know about those dreams, Your Majesty? King Lanius said you did."