"Queen Quelea bless you! King Olor bless you!" she choked out between sniffles.
"It's all right. I'm glad I was able to do something, that's all."
When Grus tried to call on Quelea, the queen of the gods gave him nothing. She might as well not have been there up in the heavens. So Grus thought, but only for a moment. Yes, he'd succeeded by exercising his own will, not through her. But how had the Scepter of Mercy come to the material world, if not through the gods in the heavens? It wasn't the product of some human wizard of bygone days, and no one had ever been mad or arrogant enough to claim it was.
"More!" the little girl said, as imperiously as though she and not Estrilda or Sosia were Queen of Avornis.
As the woman turned toward the kitchen again, Grus said, "I don't think you need me here anymore. Take good care of her, and I hope she stays well from now on."
"Thank you, Your Majesty," the woman said. "I'm sure she will. How can she help it, once the Scepter has blessed her?"
"To be honest, I have no idea. There are a lot of things I don't know about the Scepter of Mercy – a lot more than I do know, as a matter of fact," Grus told her.
She looked at him as though she couldn't believe her ears. "How modest you are, Your Majesty!" she exclaimed, and then, "Who ever thought a king could be modest?"
That made him proud. His pride made the Scepter of Mercy perceptibly heavier. It didn't want him thinking what a wonderful fellow he was, at least not for reasons that had anything to do with it. He'd never been particularly modest, no matter what this grateful woman thought. He never had been, no, but now maybe he would have to be.
"Is everything all right, Your Majesty?" a guardsman called from outside the sad, shabby little house.
What would make everything all right here? About five times as much money as the woman had now. Grus couldn't just come out and say yes without making that woman liable to mock him – and without making himself deserve it. "Everything is – well enough," he said.
"Everything is wonderful!" the woman said. "Wonderful!" She kissed Grus on the cheek. Then she went over and kissed her little girl, who seemed as well and happy and bouncy as though she'd never been sick a day in her life.
Out in the street, the guardsmen and Pterocles were laughing. Grus hoped the little girl's mother never figured out why. The king's men knew his reputation, and at least wondered if the woman had given her all to pay him back. She'd offered it, all right, and he'd turned her down. Maybe I'm growing up at last, he thought. Some things you do because they need doing, not because of that.
Pterocles and the soldiers grinned at Grus when he came out. "Did you make the little girl feel better, Your Majesty?" a guardsman asked. "Did you make her mother feel better, too?" More laughter.
Grus also grinned. "The Scepter of Mercy cured the girl," he answered. "Seeing her better made the mother happy. And," he added hastily, "that's the only thing that made her mother happy."
The guards leered. They went right on teasing him as he walked back toward the riverside. Pterocles asked, "The Scepter of Mercy cured the little girl?"
"Yes, once I figured out what to do," Grus replied.
"I would have thought calling on Queen Quelea would do the trick," the wizard said.
"I thought the same thing, but that turned out to be wrong," Grus said. "The gods in the heavens really don't do much, or seem to want to do much, in the material world. When I used my own will instead of calling on Quelea, the girl got better."
"Interesting. Worth remembering," Pterocles said. "Of course, if it weren't for the gods in the heavens, the Scepter of Mercy wouldn't be here in the material world for us to use."
"That also occurred to me," Grus said. "I'm not going to try to get above my station. If I do, the Scepter probably won't let me use it at all." He eyed the talisman, as though wondering if it would agree with him.
Pterocles bowed to him. "Your Majesty, I don't think anyone will quarrel with you over how you've used the Scepter and how you will use it. I don't see how the Scepter itself could judge that you've done anything wrong, either."
"I hope not," was all Grus said. He didn't think the Scepter of Mercy would find he'd done anything wrong. About the rest of what the wizard had said… He wasn't so sure of that. Lanius would probably have ideas of his own about the Scepter and what to do with it. Lanius always had ideas; that was what he was best at. Here, the other king might well be entitled to see how those ideas went, too. If not for Lanius, the Scepter would still be inside Yozgat and the Avornans still besieging the place with no guarantee of success.
Grus wondered whether bringing home the Scepter of Mercy would impress Ortalis. He sighed. If the Scepter didn't impress his legitimate son, nothing ever would. Of course, on the evidence, it was entirely possible that nothing would.
Lanius climbed aboard one of the royal steeds – a sturdy gelding, not a stallion – to ride out of the city of Avornis and greet King Grus and the Scepter of Mercy. A few stalls down in the royal stables, Prince Ortalis was mounting a much livelier steed.
The great cathedral had its own stables. Its horses, no doubt, were greatly improved since Arch-Hallow Anser donned the red robes. Lanius couldn't help thinking someone holier should have worn those robes, so as to give the Scepter a proper blessing. But the Scepter seemed to have done just fine for itself regardless of who put on the arch-hallow's regalia.
Not far away, Prince Crex whooped with excitement. He would ride his own pony out to greet his grandfather, and couldn't have been prouder if he'd gone campaigning against the Menteshe himself.
Better still – as far as Crex was concerned, anyhow – Princess Pitta, being younger than he was and a girl besides, would ride out with Queen Sosia in a litter. That Crex had done that himself more than once did nothing to convince him it wasn't a babyish way to go.
"I think you're ready, Your Majesty," Lanius' groom said after checking the horse's trappings one last time.
"Let's go, then," Lanius said. He and Crex and Ortalis all emerged from their stalls at about the same time. Crex waved to his father. Lanius waved back. He also nodded to Ortalis.
However little he loved his brother-in-law – which was putting it mildly – he did try to be civil.
Ortalis nodded back. "So the Scepter of Mercy really is coming here, is it?" he said.
"Unless your father's been telling a lot of lies in his letters, it is," Lanius answered. "After more than four hundred years, it's finally coming home."
He thought the number would impress Ortalis. It certainly impressed him. But his brother-in-law only shrugged. "If we've done all right without it for all this time, I don't see why everybody's making such a fuss about getting it back now."
"We finally have a real weapon against the Banished One," Lanius said. "Why do you think the Menteshe stole it in the first place?"
"The Menteshe are way off… wherever they are," Ortalis said vaguely. Lanius was shocked and astonished to realize he didn't know, or care, whether the nomads lived to the south, the north, the west, or even the east, where Avornis had no neighbors save the sea. Ortalis went on, "Wherever they are, they aren't about to bother us here."
Against such invincible ignorance – and, worse, indifference – where could Lanius begin? Nowhere. Nowhere that he saw, anyway. He decided not to try, saying only, "Well, everyone else is pleased about it. You'll want to go along, won't you?"
"I'm here, aren't I?" Ortalis said irritably. "I'm not going to let my old man say I was off hiding somewhere when he came back. He'd score points off me for years if I did that." His chuckle was less than pleasant. "Unless I score 'em first, anyway."