The Scepter's Return by Harry Turtledove Page A

couldn’t want anything else. If Lanius had had to send out generals to do his fighting for him, he would always have been as afraid of great victories as of great defeats. A great victory was liable to make a general think he deserved a higher station. Since only one higher station was available, that wouldn’t have been good for Lanius. He didn’t think many usurpers would have worked out the arrangement Grus had.
    While he mused on bad usurpers and worse ones, his feet, almost by themselves, took him to the archives. He went inside eagerly enough. The smile on his face had only so much to do with the hope of finding that missing traveler’s tale. As he had with other women before her, he’d brought Oissa here once or twice. It was quiet; it was peaceful; they were unlikely to be disturbed—and they hadn’t been, at least not by anyone banging on the door. It was also dusty, here, though, and sneezing at the wrong time had put him off his stride and made Oissa laugh, which put her off hers.
    â€œBusiness,” Lanius reminded himself. The smile didn’t want to go away, though. He let it stay. Why not?
    Even smiling, he did want to look for that missing tale. What annoyed him most was that he usually had a good memory for where he’d put things. Not this time, though. Most of his pride revolved around his wits. When they let him down, he felt he’d failed in some fundamental fashion. It rarely happened, and was all the more troubling because of that.
    â€œIt has to be here,” he said. Although true, that didn’t help much. No one knew better than he how vast—and how disorganized—the archives were.
    He pawed through crates and barrels and plucked documents off shelves. He had to look at each parchment or sheet of paper separately, because things got stored all higgledy-piggledy. A paper from his reign could lie next to or on top of a parchment centuries old. Before long, his smile faded. If he wasn’t lucky, he’d be here forever, or half an hour longer.
    That less than delightful thought had hardly crossed his mind before he let out a shout of triumph that came echoing back from the ceiling. There it was! He swore under his breath. That crate looked familiar—now. Not so long before, he’d moved it to get at some other documents, and forgotten he’d done it.
    Lanius started to take the traveler’s tale to a secretary who could make a fair copy. He hadn’t gotten to the doorway before he stopped and shook his head. The fewer people who knew anything about what he had in mind, the better. I’ll make the fair copy myself, he decided. Now he found himself nodding. Yes, that would be better, no doubt about it.
    Before long, he would put carpenters and masons to work. But they wouldn’t know why they were doing what they were doing. And what they didn’t know, nobody could find out from them … not even the Banished One.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Grus never got tired of watching Avornan wizards free thralls from the dark mists that had held them all their lives. Part of that was pride at the magic Pterocles had created that he and and other wizards were using. And part of it was simply that the spell of liberation was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen. The rainbows arising from the swinging crystal and then spinning around and into a thrall’s head were wonderful enough by themselves. The expression on each thrall’s face when the mists dissolved, though—that was even better.
    â€œHow does it feel to be a mother?” the king asked Pterocles after another successful sorcery.
    The wizard frowned. “A mother, Your Majesty?”
    â€œYou’re giving birth to people, aren’t you?” Grus said. “I didn’t think a man could. I should be jealous.”
    â€œGiving birth to people …” Pterocles savored the words. A slow smile spread over his face. “I like