Whenever wagons reached the Avornan army besieging Yozgat, Grus let out a sigh of relief. The Menteshe did their best to harass his communications with the north. Sometimes that best was alarmingly good. In theory, he controlled everything between Yozgat and the Stura. Theory was wonderful. In practice, the nomads could nip in and raid when and as they chose.
To make them regret it, he ordered a special wagon train to come down to Yozgat. The wagons didn't carry sacks of wheat and beans. Instead, archers lay under the usual canvas covers. It was an uncomfortable trip for the men, but not an unprofitable one. Sure enough, the nomads attacked the wagons and the riders escorting them.
As always, the Menteshe were fierce and dashing and intrepid. They charged the wagons as though they were wolves and those wagons full of raw meat. Very often, that kind of charge routed the escorts and let the Menteshe do as they pleased with the wagons and the men who drove them.
Very often – but not this time. Avornan officers shouted words of command. Off popped the canvas covers. Up popped the archers, who hadn't had an easy or pleasant time of it in hiding. They were ready to make the Menteshe pay. They poured volley after volley into the onrushing nomads at close range.
The Menteshe, those who survived the trap, galloped away even more wildly than they'd advanced on the wagon train. Word of the ploy must have spread fast, because after that attacks on the wagons eased for a while. When the triumphant archers came into the lines around Yozgat, Grus gave every one of them a bonus of twenty silverpieces.
Meanwhile, the siege ground on. Grus decided against another all-out assault on the walls. The defenders had been too tough for him to find success at all likely. Instead, he tried something different. He had soldiers who spoke the Menteshe language shout to the men besieged in Yozgat that they could freely leave the city if they surrendered, and that the only thing they were defending was Prince Korkut's vanity.
He didn't expect immediate results – a good thing, too, for he didn't get them. He hoped the trapped nomads would start talking among themselves and eventually decide they didn't have much chance of getting out alive if they kept on fighting.
"They've got to be worried in there – don't they?" he asked Hirundo.
"Nobody has to be anything," the general replied, which wasn't what Grus wanted to hear. Hirundo did add, "I tell you, though, Your Majesty – if I was cooped up in there, I'd be worried."
That was more like it. "I was thinking the same thing," Grus said. "Maybe they'll turn on Korkut. Maybe they'll even do it before.." His voice trailed away.
"Before what?" Hirundo asked.
"Before we try something else," Grus said – an answer that was no answer.
Hirundo, nobody's fool, realized as much at once. "What sort of other things have you got in mind, Your Majesty? From what you and the engineers and Pterocles have said, undermining the walls doesn't look like it'll work. I'm ready to try to storm them again whenever you give the word, but I don't know how good our chances are there. Or…" He snapped his fingers and grinned at the king. "You've figured out some way to give our men wings after all."
"I wish I had," Grus said. "It would make this business of war a lot easier – until the Menteshe and the Chernagors and the Thervings figured out how to fly, too."
"There's always that," the general agreed. "It wouldn't take long, either. But what have you got in mind, if they're not shipping wings down from the city of Avornis?"
Grus found himself oddly reluctant to go into detail. He shook his head. Reluctant wasn't the right word. Embarrassed came much closer to the truth. "When I start – if I start – I'll tell you, I promise," he said. "Right now… well, who knows if.. he's listening?"
"I know what you're telling me. You're telling me you don't want to talk about it," Hirundo said. "You've come up with something strange, haven't you? I bet I know what it is. I bet it's something King Lanius dredged out of the archives, isn't it?"
"No," Grus said. "That it isn't. I can tell you the truth there, and I'll take oath on it if you like."
Hirundo only shrugged. "Never mind, Your Majesty. If King Lanius isn't getting strange, then I expect you are. I'm not so sure I want to know about that." Still shaking his head, he walked off.
Grus laughed. If Hirundo had really worried about the state of his wits, the general wouldn't have been shy about saying so. Hirundo was rarely shy about saying anything. For now, he seemed willing to believe Grus knew what he was doing. Grus wished he were so sure of that himself.
After he went to bed that night, the Banished One appeared to him in a dream. Seeing those coldly perfect features before him, Grus had another wish – that there was a better word to describe these manifestations. Dream didn't begin to do them justice.
"You plot against me," the exiled god declared without preamble.
"Well, of course I do." Grus saw no point in denying it.
"You think you can outsmart me." The Banished One fleered laughter. "As well think a cat can outsmart you. You are nearer to a cat – you are nearer to a worm – than you are to me.
He was probably right about that. Grus had never partaken of divinity. All the same, plenty of cats had outsmarted him at one time or another. He didn't say that to the Banished One.
Having the exiled god thinking along those lines was the last thing he wanted. All he did say was, "I'll take my chances."
"You raise up serpents behind you, and you know it not," the Banished One said.
"I'll take my chances," Grus repeated stolidly. The less he gave, the better.
"Whatever you seek to bring against me, I will seize it before it reaches you."
"Maybe." Grus knew he was still asleep. He felt himself shrugging all the same, as though he and the Banished One really were face-to-face and not separated by miles and by the barrier of consciousness. "If you could do everything you say you can, though, you would have conquered Avornis a long time ago."
"You will see what I can do. You will see what your own flesh and blood, your own kith and kin, can do. And may you have joy of it." More laughter burst from the exiled god. Grus woke up with sweat running down his face. His heart thudded as though it would burst from his chest.
Slowly, ordinary awareness returned. A lamp burned inside the pavilion, casting a dim, flickering light and filling the air with the smell of hot olive oil. Grus got to his feet. A mosquito whined.
He cocked his head to one side and listened. Here and there, men talked quietly. A little farther off, a horse – or possibly a mule – snorted. It was the middle of the night. Everyone and everything with any sense was asleep.
The sentries outside Grus' pavilion had to stay awake and alert. One of them spoke in a low voice to the others. After a moment, Grus made out what he was saying. The king laughed softly. He'd first heard that joke when his beard was no more than fuzz on his cheeks. Some things grew new again for each generation.
He pulled his nightshirt off over his head and put on tunic and baggy breeches again. The nightshirt was more comfortable, but he would scandalize the guards if he stayed in it. When he stepped out of the pavilion into the darkness beyond, he scandalized them anyhow. "What are you doing up, Your Majesty?" one of them demanded, as though he were a toddler caught running around in the night by its mother.
"Bad dream." Grus' answer sounded like the one a toddler might give, too.
"You should go back to sleep." But the sentry couldn't pick him up and put him into bed, the way a mother could with a wandering little boy. When the king walked out into the night, his guardsmen could only accompany him at a discreet distance.
Grus looked toward the walls of Yozgat. Torches flickered along them. In the light those torches cast, he could see men moving here and there. He'd thought about a night attack against the Menteshe in the city. That didn't look like a good idea. The defenders seemed much too alert. What a shame, he thought.
He hadn't planned to go over to Pterocles' tent, but his feet had a mind of their own. He wasn't astonished when the tent flap opened and the wizard came out, either. Pterocles was in his nightshirt – he didn't care what people thought. Nor did he seem surprised to see Grus. "Hello, Your Majesty," he said; they might have been meeting at breakfast.
"Hello." Grus also sounded matter-of-fact. "Bad dream?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact," the sorcerer said. "You, too, I gather?"
"That's right." Grus nodded. "He's… annoyed at us." He managed a wry shrug. "Breaks my heart."
"Mine, too." Pterocles also tried to seem casual. He didn't have such good luck. "Uh – do you know why he's annoyed at us?"
"I have some idea, yes," Grus admitted. Pterocles sent him an annoyed look. "Would you care to tell me why?"
"Because we're trying to get the Scepter of Mercy back."
Now annoyance turned to exasperation. "Thank you, Your Majesty. I already suspected that. Why is he particularly annoyed now?"
"Because we're going to try something new and different," Grus replied.
"Aha! Now we come down to it," the wizard said. "What are we going to try that's new and different?"
"Certainly is warm tonight, isn't it?" Grus said.
He waited for Pterocles to splutter and fume. That was one of the more engaging spectacles of camp life. But Pterocles disappointed him. All he said was, "Since I'm alleged to be a sorcerer, and even a fairly decent one, don't you think I have the right to know?"
Grus smiled. "Why, when this has nothing to do with sorcery?"
"I see." Pterocles' bow was a masterpiece of sarcasm. "You're just going to walk in, pick up the Scepter of Mercy, say, 'Thank you very much, Your Highness,' to Prince Korkut, and saunter on out again."
"As a matter of fact," Grus answered, "yes."
Lanius was putting the finishing touches on a sketch when Ortalis came into the little north-facing audience chamber he was using as a studio and looked over his shoulder. "What's that?" Grus' legitimate son asked.
"What does it look like?" Lanius said.
"A mess." Ortalis rarely bothered with tact. After further study, he added, "It's not the city of Avornis. What's the point of drawing anywhere else?"
"I thought it was interesting. I wanted to draw a place that wasn't anything like this one here," Lanius said.
His brother-in-law grunted. "Well, you did that, all right. It doesn't look anything like anywhere. So you made it up out of your head, did you?"
"You might say so." Lanius hadn't said so. He'd just agreed that Ortalis might. He waited to see whether Ortalis would notice.
To his relief, Ortalis didn't. He said, "You come up with the weirdest ideas sometimes," and walked away.
That suited Lanius fine. He went back to the sketch, pausing every now and then to check with the ancient manuscript he'd taken from the archives. He laughed softly. When he started drawing, back in the days when Grus didn't trust him at all, he'd done it to sell sketches and make a little extra silver. He'd done moncats then, not cityscapes.
He stepped back and looked at this one. Ortalis was right. It didn't look a bit like the city of Avornis. What he really needed to be sure of was that those three towers were properly aligned. He'd done the best he could, going by what this manuscript and a couple of others told him. If they were wrong… If they were wrong, he'd wasted a lot of money and effort and time, that was all.
When he had things the way he wanted them – the way he was convinced they ought to be – he wrote Grus a letter, explaining exactly how the other king should use the sketch. He put both his artwork and the letter into a message tube. "Pass the word on to others who take this south – you may be troubled by bad dreams," he told the courier to whom he gave the tube.
"I'm not afraid of dreams, Your Majesty," the man replied. "I don't think anybody is, at least after he grows up."
"These dreams will frighten a grown-up," Lanius said firmly. "Pass the word along. I'm not imagining this. They won't hurt you, but you won't know what being frightened is until you've had one."
"All right, Your Majesty." The courier sounded more as though he was humoring him than anything else, but that was all right, as long as he remembered what Lanius told him.
But then he was gone, and Lanius couldn't do anything but worry. He went over to the great cathedral to pray to the gods in the heavens. He didn't know how much good that would do, but he didn't see how it could hurt.
Of course, when the King of Avornis visited the great cathedral, he didn't go alone. Guardsmen accompanied him. So did a secretary, to write down whatever he said that might need writing down. And he couldn't simply visit and pray. He had to be announced to the arch-hallow. In his crimson robes of office, Anser looked every inch a holy man. When he came up to talk with Lanius after the king finished praying, the guards and even the secretary withdrew to a discreet distance.
"You don't look very happy, Your Majesty," he said.
"Truth to tell, I'm not." Lanius didn't feel he could go into detail; like Sosia and Hirundo, Anser was one whom the Banished One had not troubled with visits in the night.
"I know what you need to do," the arch-hallow said now.
"Oh? What?" Lanius asked.
Another man in the red robes would have spoken of cleansing his spirit, of setting aside his will and accepting the decrees of the gods. Anser? Anser said, "You ought to go hunting. Nothing like hunting to take your mind off things."
Lanius didn't laugh. He'd always known Anser wasn't the spiritual leader Avornis needed in a time of trouble. He wasn't what the kingdom needed – but he was what it had. And Avornis had done some great things with him as arch-hallow. How much he had to do with all that was liable to be a different question.
"You really should," he persisted. "Yes, even you. I know you don't care about the hunt, but how can you not like the woods?"
"If you liked the woods any better, you'd grow hair all over and start going around on all fours," Lanius said. Anser laughed good-naturedly. The king went on, "Besides, I really can't right now. Too much is going on down in the south. I can't leave the palace."
"Why not?" Anser asked. "Nothing you do up here will change the way things go down there, will it?"
I hope it will, Lanius thought. Aloud, he said, "I want to know."
"Well, all right." The arch-hallow sounded patient and amused, both at the same time. He also sounded very much like his father, which amused Lanius. Anser went on, "If you've got to keep up with everything every hour of the day and night, you can send couriers out from the woods to the palace. That way, you won't hear the news much later than you would if you stayed here. And I don't suppose the riders would spook the game very much." He sounded like a man making a formidable sacrifice, and no doubt thought he was.
Because he worked so hard to meet Lanius halfway, the king didn't see how he could say no without sounding rude. "All right. You've talked me into it," he said, and Anser grinned enormously.
"Good. Let's go. I'll meet you in front of the palace as fast as I can change clothes and call my beaters," he said. Any excuse for getting out of the city was a good one, as far as he was concerned. His ecclesiastical duties worried him not even for a moment.
Laughing, Lanius held up a hand. "Let's make it first thing tomorrow morning," he said. "I don't know about you, but I have some things I need to take care of before I leave."
"Spoilsport." But Anser was laughing, too. "All right, Your Majesty – tomorrow morning it is. You'd better not give me any excuses then, that's all I've got to say, or I'll get up in the pulpit and start screaming about heretics."
If he'd meant that, Avornis would have needed a new arch-hallow. Leading clerics who got up in the pulpit and caused kings trouble had to be replaced. Otherwise, they thought they were the ones running the kingdom. Arch-Hallow Bucco had, back when Lanius was a boy. For a while, he'd been right – he'd led the regency council. He hadn't led it any too well, unfortunately.
But Anser had no ambitions along those lines. If ruling Avornis would have meant all the hunting trips and all the deer he wanted, he might have taken the idea more seriously. As things were, not a chance.
"Have fun," Sosia said when Lanius told her where he was going. "You're not chasing serving girls when you go out with Anser." If he wasn't doing that, she didn't mind whatever he did.
He nodded. "No, that's your brother."
Sosia grimaced. "I didn't mean like that," she said. If Ortalis chased serving girls through the woods, he was as likely to shoot them for the fun of it as he was to do anything else with them.
"Tonight, I'll show you what I do for fun," Lanius said.
"Oh, you will, will you?" Sosia gave him a sidelong look.
He did, too, and enjoyed it as much as he'd hoped. By all the signs, his wife did, too. After a last kiss, they both rolled over and fell asleep. The next thing Lanius knew, he was looking into the Banished One's inhumanly handsome face. "Worm, you think you can trick me!" the exiled god roared.
"How could I do that?" Lanius said, as innocently as he could. "I'm only a man. You must know so much more than I do, anything I try will be plain as day to you."
"Do you mock me? Do you dare mock me? You will pay for that!"
"I'm already paying for so many things," Lanius said. "After all of them, what's one more?"
"My curse shall fall all the more heavily upon you and your miserable joke of a kingdom, all built of mud and straw and sticks." The Banished One sounded ready to explode with fury. How long had it been since anyone had the nerve to twit him? Since he was cast out of the heavens? Lanius wouldn't have been surprised.
Somehow, the exiled god didn't leave the king quite as terrified as usual. Or maybe Lanius realized, even in a dream, that having the Banished One angry at him was liable to be better than having him angry at Grus. All Lanius' mental faculties were intact, as they always were in dreams the Banished One sent. That usually made those dreams worse for him. Here, now, he turned it to his advantage. "I know why they sent you down to earth," the king said.
"Do you?" The Banished One seemed to lean toward him. Even if Lanius was less frightened now than he had been in some other dreams, that alarmed him. In a deadly voice, the Banished One asked, "Why?"
"Because you're a bore," Lanius' dream-self said.
The Banished One's roar of fury was so enormous, Lanius thought for a moment that it was a real sound, not an imaginary one. He burst from sleep as though shot from a stone-thrower, the way he'd gotten used to doing when escaping one of the exiled god's dreams. Sweat ran down his face and trickled along his sides from his armpits. His heart drummed madly.
"What's the matter?" Sosia asked, sleep blurring her voice.
"Bad dream." Lanius' answer, as usual, was true but inadequate.
"You've had a lot of those lately." His wife sounded as sympathetic as she could around a yawn.
"Maybe I have." Lanius knew he had. The Banished One sensed he was doing something out of the ordinary, and tormented him because of it. So far, the Banished One hadn't worked out what the king had in mind. More than anything else, Lanius wanted that very partial ignorance to go on.
Sosia patted the pillow. "Well, go back to bed." She yawned again.
"Later, maybe." As usual after one of these jolts, Lanius was too excited to sleep. He got up and started for the door. He'd put a hand on the latch before noticing he was naked. That would have given any servants going through the palace corridors in the middle of the night something to talk about.
He slipped on the lightest, plainest robe he had, one made of a blend of silk and linen. No one would expect him to wear a heavy robe of state at whatever hour this was. He opened the door, slipped out, and closed it behind him as quietly as he could.
The palace was dim and quiet. Only a few torches were lit, which saved fuel. A little moth fluttered around one of the ones that still flickered. It would be sorry if it flew into the flame.
And what about me? he wondered. Am I flying into the flame when I go against the Banished One? Many before him had burned themselves up. He didn't think he would. But how many of the others had thought so? Hadn't they been sure they were doing something wonderful, something that would make Avornans remember their names until the end of time? Of course they had. The only trouble was, they'd been wrong. He had to hope he wasn't.
Someone came around the comer. It was Ortalis. He seemed as surprised to see Lanius as Lanius was to see him. "Oh, hello," Grus' son said. "What are you doing up at this time of night?"
"I might ask you the same question," Lanius said. "As for me, I had a dream that woke me." That would do. He didn't want or intend to go into details.
One of Ortalis' eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Did you? As a matter of fact, so did I."
"Really?" Lanius was not only surprised but also frightened. A dream bad enough to get Ortalis out of bed was likely to come from the Banished One. Why would the exiled god want to send Ortalis dreams? For no good reason – Lanius would have staked his life on that. Cautiously, he asked, "Was the nightmare very bad?"
"Nightmare?" Ortalis gaped at him as though he'd suddenly started babbling in Thervingian. "Nightmare?" he repeated; he might not have believed his ears. "This was the most wonderful dream I ever had in my life."
"Was it?" Lanius said, surprised all over again.
"It certainly was!" Ortalis had never spoken of anything, even hunting, with such enthusiasm before. Lanius laughed at himself. He'd jumped to a good many wrong conclusions. This looked to be one of the wrongest. Well, good, he thought.
"Here you are, Your Majesty." A weary-sounding courier handed Grus a message tube.
"Thanks," the king said, and then, sympathetically, "Have any trouble coming down here?"
"Did I ever!" The courier got livelier remembering. "This bunch of nomads started chasing me, and I was afraid they'd catch me before I could get to our next little fort. But then this other bunch of Menteshe came out from the side, and I really thought I was a goner. Instead of going after me, though, they pitched into each other, and I got away."
"Good for you!" Grus said. "Nice to know the civil war between Korkut and Sanjar is still going on."
Knowing that was especially nice after Bori-Bars had led the army of both princes' backers against the Avornans. Maybe the Banished One didn't bother uniting the Menteshe unless something more important than one courier was at stake. Or maybe Sanjar's shamans really had worked out a way to keep him from doing that. Grus hoped so.
"I had bad dreams all the way down, too," the courier said. "But the gods in the heavens watched over me and kept me safe."
"No doubt," Grus said, doubting. How often did the gods in the heavens pay any attention to what went on down here in the material world? Not often enough. But, even if Grus had trouble staying confident in them, he didn't want to damage the other man's faith, so he let it go at that.
He opened the message tube and drew out the letter inside.
Another sheet came out with it. Grus unrolled that one first. It was a sketch of a town, as seen from outside. Grus blinked. He'd known Lanius could draw, but he hadn't had any idea the other king was this good.
He started to give his attention to the letter, then looked back at the sketch again. From that sketch, his eyes snapped to the walls of Yozgat. "By the gods!" he muttered. Lanius was not only better than he'd thought, but much better than he'd thought. There could be no doubt about it – the other king had produced an outstanding portrait of a city he'd never seen.
Lanius had made mistakes. The texture of the stone didn't quite match that of Yozgat's walls, and the proportions of the towers were subtly off. But it was unmistakably Yozgat.
More than a little reluctantly, Grus rolled up the sketch and broke the seal on the letter. When he finished reading it, he shook his head in reluctant admiration and respect. The letter was as precise as the sketch – and, like it, had a few details that weren't quite the way they were supposed to be.
As with the sketch, those didn't worry Grus. They just reminded him that Lanius was human – for all his cleverness, he didn't see everything there was to see. Noting as much relieved Grus. He decided there might still be some point after all to his having a share of the crown.
And, here, he saw very clearly what needed doing. He went over to Pterocles' tent and stuck his head inside. "Oh, good," he said. "You're here."
"No, not really," the wizard answered. "But I do expect to get back pretty soon."
"Er – right," Grus said. "You were wondering how we would get the Scepter of Mercy out of Yozgat."
"Something like that had occurred to me, yes," Pterocles agreed. "You told me it was none of my business, though." Resentment stuck up all over him, like spines on a hedgehog.
"Well, it may be after all." Grus thrust Lanius' letter at him. "Here – read this and tell me what you think."
Pterocles obeyed. The more he read, the more astonished he looked. When he was finished, he blurted, "That's the craziest thing I ever heard of."
"Just what I said when King Lanius told me about it last winter," Grus replied. "Suppose we forget it's crazy, though. Suppose we look at what chance it has of working. More than a little, wouldn't you say? Here, look at this, too." He showed Pterocles Lanius' sketch of Yozgat.
"Olor's beard!" the wizard exclaimed, recognizing it at once. "That's – amazing, isn't it?"
"Pretty much so," Grus said. "He's never even gone as far as the Stura, let alone anywhere near here."
"He's got it down, though. Every place where it matters, he's got it down," Pterocles said, and Grus nodded. Pterocles asked, "Where do I come into all this?"
"I don't know for certain, but I'll tell you what I had in mind," Grus said, and he did.
Pterocles stared, then burst out laughing. "Yes, I can do that," he said, laughing still. "Come to think of it, you don't need me to do that. The clumsiest, most fumble-fingered drunken excuse for a wizard in the world could do that."
"Well, I don't know the clumsiest, most fumble-fingered drunken excuse for a wizard in the world, and I do know you," Grus said reasonably. "I still think you'd do a better job than he would, too."
"For this? You might be surprised," Pterocles told him.
"Maybe I might be, but I'd better not be, if you know what I mean." When Grus wanted to, he could sound every inch a king.
Pterocles bowed in acquiescence. "Yes, Your Majesty. Let me know when."
"I will. Obviously, not yet," Grus said.
"Yes. Obviously." Pterocles started a chuckle, but this time didn't quite finish it. His voice was altogether serious as he said, "You know, Your Majesty, I'm a little surprised – maybe more than a little surprised – that letter and that sketch made it down here safely. They had to cross an awful lot of ground the Menteshe can raid before they did."
"Funny you should say that." Grus told him the story of the courier's narrow escape from the nomads.
"That's.. interesting," Pterocles said thoughtfully. "And it's even more interesting that the two bands of Menteshe should have squabbled with each other, don't you think?"
"I did, as a matter of fact," Grus answered. "When I heard that, it made me wonder whether Sanjar's wizards really had worked out a spell to keep the Banished One from taking control of them. That envoy said they were going to try it, but I would be lying if I said I'd believed him."
"A possibility. Definitely a possibility."
By the way Pterocles said it, it wasn't a possibility he took seriously. "What were you thinking?" Grus asked him.
"Well, it did occur to me… If the gods in the heavens were going to meddle in the affairs of the material world, that's the way they might go about it. A little bit of confusion at just the right time would go a long way, and who could prove anything afterwards? Not even – him." The wizard looked south, toward the Argolid Mountains.
So did Grus. Was the Banished One gnashing his teeth down there because his henchmen hadn't caught that courier? It did seem possible. Did it seem likely? Grus pointed at Pterocles. "If – he – can't prove anything, you can't, either."
"Oh, I know that, Your Majesty," Pterocles said cheerfully. "But it does give us something to think about, doesn't it?"
Grus' wave encompassed the palisade surrounding Yozgat. "I've already got plenty to think about, thank you very much." He paused. "It would be nice, though, wouldn't it, to believe the gods in the heavens were paying a little bit of attention – just a little bit, mind you – to what's going on down here?"
"We'll see how things turn out," Pterocles said. "That may tell us something, one way or the other."
"Yes, it may," Grus said. "Question is, will it tell us anything we want to hear?"
"We'll find out," Pterocles said.
"Very good." Grus laughed and bowed. "As long as you stick to that, you can prophesy about anything."
"Being patient is a good start to the secret of all wisdom," Pterocles said.
"No doubt you're right. It's also one of the hardest things for most people to manage." Grus shook his head. "No – that's wrong. Most people can't manage it. Take me – I can hardly wait until I get to go on." He looked down at the sketch Lanius had sent. "I know what I can do in the meantime. I can go around Yozgat until I find the place where this matches up best with what I really see."
"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."