The Queen of Attolia (20 page)

“My generals are merely dividing their forces and regrouping to allow Eddis to attack your army unhindered. If necessary, they can then flank what’s left of your forces to prevent a retreat.”

Nahuseresh watched the men moving a moment more. The horse under him tensed as his rider drew the reins tight, but before horse or rider could move, Attolia raised her hand and directed his attention with a languid finger to where Teleus lay on his stomach in the long grass on the ridge behind them, the crossbow in his hands cranked and aimed toward the Mede.

“Treachery,” said the Mede.

“Diplomacy,” said Attolia, “in my own name,” as the rest of her guard rose up from the grass behind their captain.

The Attolian army below completed its maneuver as the queen explained to the ambassador that a rout could yet be avoided by a more gracious retreat. Eddis and Attolia would allow the Mede soldiers to return to Rhea, reboard their ships, and leave Attolian waters unharmed. They had no cause to fight the Mede. They only invited him to leave.

Nahuseresh, faced with a battle he couldn’t win, ungraciously conceded.

“Eddis will want some surety for what treaties you make today. What do you give her that secures her trust?”

Attolia didn’t answer, only looked at him, her face expressionless.

Nahuseresh thought back to the message she had sent by way of Eddis’s minister of war, and he paled with anger. “You will make that boy Thief king?” he said. “When you could have had me?”

Attolia allowed a slight smile.

“A fine revenge for the loss of a hand,” said the Mede, close to snarling.

“I will have my sovereignty,” said Attolia thinly.

“Oh, yes, a fine one-handed figurehead he will make,” spat Nahuseresh. Then he remembered Attolia’s flattery earlier that morning. “Or do I insult your
lover?”
he asked.

“Not a lover,” said Attolia. “Merely my choice for king, Nahuseresh.”

W
HEN THE
M
EDE ARMY HAD
regrouped itself for a retreat and the Attolians and Eddisians had moved their forces into a combined opposition, Attolia sent her Mede ambassador back to Ephrata under guard. He had quite recovered control of his temper and kissed her hand before he went. “You are clever,” he condescended to say, “to have made a fool of me. How heartbreaking, to leave just as I begin to know you. My opinion of you climbs with each passing moment.”

“It will have time to climb higher,” Attolia said. “You won’t go far until your emperor sends me a ransom to add to my treasury.”

“You overstep yourself,” Nahuseresh warned.

“You don’t know your own value, Nahuseresh. Your emperor needs you safely home.”

“You don’t understand your weakness, if you think the greater nations will protect you. We will see how much longer you rule your backwater, Your Majesty.
You will soon enough discover the limits of your resources.”

“Will I? I think you underestimate me still, Nahuseresh. While we are being forthright with each other, I admit that I find it tedious.”

Attolia parted company with him and rode down to the riverbank, where a boat waited to ferry her across the Seperchia. The absence of a bridge was another cause, or perhaps a result, of the relative unimportance of Ephrata. The boat carried her across the turbulent water to where she was met by several of her own officers and the officers, ministers, and queen of Eddis.

There was a landing stage but not a true dock. The water of the river being well below the stage, the queen was lifted, as decorously as possible, from the rocking boat onto the shore. There were two bright spots of color on her cheeks as she sorted the folds of her dress and then raised her eyes to Eddis. Eddis waited politely. She was dressed in trousers and low boots, her over-tunic identical to her officers’ but embroidered in gold. She wore no crown. She was short and too broad to be called petite. Her father had been broad shouldered, Attolia remembered, and not over-tall. Eddis had a serious expression, but as she waited for Attolia to speak, her eyes narrowed with what looked to Attolia like puzzlement.

Attolia gave her a haughty look back. “We are in accord, Your Majesty?” she asked.

“Remarkably so,” said Eddis gravely. She was not so much reserving her judgment as trying to unmake it. She thought she knew the queen of Attolia and wondered what Eugenides could have seen in her. Except of course that she was beautiful, but there were beautiful women at the court in Eddis, and Gen had never seemed much moved by their loveliness.

Attolia looked at Eddis’s minister of war. “How is your head, sir?” she asked politely.

“Gray,” he answered cryptically.

“With worry? You don’t like our harum-scarum plans, sir?”

“I am filled with admiration for them, Your Majesty.” Eddis’s minister inclined his head. Attolia returned a royal half curtsy.

Eddis looked at her minister, curious. “Your head?” she asked.

Attolia explained. “He had to be forcibly dissuaded from strangling his son.”

“So have we all from time to time,” Eddis said seriously.

One of Attolia’s eyebrows rose in carefully conveyed surprise. Eddis took note of the expression, amused to have found at last, she was certain, the original of the look Eugenides had copied. She smiled.

Attolia hesitated, then smiled herself, very briefly. In her expression Eddis saw some hope for her Thief, and her heart lightened.

“You are fortunate in your vassals,” Attolia said.

“The dividing maneuver of your army was perfectly done,” Eddis countered. “You are as fortunate in your officers.”

“They are contract soldiers,” Attolia said dismissively.

“So much the better that you command their loyalty when they are free to hire their services elsewhere. Where else could my barons go and still be barons?” Eddis asked.

Attolia was silent while she considered this. “I have to thank you. I had not looked at it that way before,” she said.

“Your Majesty, Your Majesties,” said Eddis’s minister of war, correcting himself. “The Medes’ retreat will need to be supervised. We thought it best if Your Majesties rode together as there may be details you wish to discuss.”

Once mounted, the queen of Eddis turned to the queen of Attolia. “You will forgive me if I speak frankly?”

“Of course.”

“What treaties have you made with the Mede?”

“None.”

“None? But I had thought—”

“That the emperor was financing my war? He was, but it was on his own speculation.”

“And your ambassador?”

Attolia uncharacteristically said the first thing that
came to mind. “He sharpens his beard into points like a fork,” she said of her ambassador, “and uses cheap hair oil.”

“Well, that certainly is frank on your part,” said Eddis, laughing. “I had thought you were fond of him.”

“So did he,” said Attolia dryly.

By evening the army of the Mede had marched back to Rhea. Rhea was a large port surrounded by sufficient arable land to support a thriving town. Like Ephrata, it was hemmed in by the coastal hills, but unlike Ephrata, it had a wide pass that made it accessible to the hinterlands and justified the construction of the bridge across the Seperchia. Attolia and Eddis sat side by side on a hill overlooking the town and watched the Medes embark.

“I am not comfortable sending back the emperor his soldiers,” Eddis admitted.

“It is a small army by his measure. The loss of it wouldn’t have hurt him, only put him further out of temper with us.”

“You think he will not mount another attack. Perhaps he will think we are too secure?” Eddis said hopefully.

“Nahuseresh has said a woman cannot rule alone,” Attolia said blandly.

Eddis chuckled.

“The greater nations of the Continent don’t want
the Mede emperor’s power extending to this coast,” said Attolia. “No doubt he will harass our ships at sea, but we can expect the Continent to give us aid if he sends an army against us.” Eddis took note of the comfortable presence of “us” in the queen’s analysis.

“And that will stop him?”

“In the short term that will prevent him from an overt attack. In the long term I rely on his disease to curtail his empire building.”

“His disease?”

“The emperor of the Medes has Tethys lesions,” Attolia explained.

For a moment the only sound was the creak of saddle leather as one of the horses shifted its weight.

“You are certain of this?” Eddis asked.

“He was diagnosed two and a half years ago. He executed his palace physician and his assistants, but one of the assistants had sold the information to one of my spies in exchange for an annuity for his family.”

“He knew he would be executed?”

“Oh, yes.”

Eddis tried to imagine executing Galen.

“I don’t know if you are aware that the Mede emperor passed over his own son in choosing a nephew as his heir?” Attolia asked.

“Yes, I knew,” said Eddis. “It’s remarkable that the signs of the disease have been concealed so far. Of course the nephew will have to consolidate his power
more quickly than he anticipated. He’ll keep his loyal generals near to hand…” Eddis mused aloud. “And your late ambassador is…”

“The heir’s younger brother.”

“Yes. Well, then, they will all be busy for several years, won’t they?”

“I think so,” said Attolia.

“You know—” Eddis hesitated, not sure how far to push the Attolian queen.

“Go on.” Attolia inclined her head.

“I was going to say you look like a polecat when you smile like that.”

“Do I?” Attolia still smiled. “You look a little vulpine yourself.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

The two queens sat for a moment in happy agreement.

Eddis looked around as if recalling a question that had nagged at her for several hours. “Where’s Eugenides?” she asked.

For a moment the Attolian queen was immobile, her smile gone as if it had never been. The horse under her threw up its head as if the bit had twitched against its delicate mouth.

“Locked in a room,” Attolia said flatly. “In Ephrata.”

The smile faded from Eddis’s face.

“I ordered the other prisoners released,” Attolia
explained. “I forgot that I had him locked up separately. I doubt my seneschal will have released him without my specific instruction to do so.”

“You forgot?” Eddis asked.

“I forgot,” Attolia said firmly, daring Eddis to contradict her.

“You will marry him?” Eddis asked, hesitant again.

“I said I would,” snapped Attolia, and turned her horse away. Eddis followed. When they joined their officers, Attolia gave brisk orders and then rode on, heading back toward Ephrata without waiting for Eddis.

Attolia’s liaison explained that the main part of her forces would return to the bridge across the Seperchia and to their camp. Attolia and a small guard would ride to Ephrata along the coast. The track was narrow, but the ride much shorter.

“Then we will do the same,” Eddis said, and gave her orders to her own officers. Eugenides’s father and her own private guard stayed by her side for the ride back to Ephrata.

“What do you think?” the minister of war asked his queen.

“I don’t know what to think,” she answered. “I suppose I must go on doing as I have done all along.”

“Hmm?” her minister prompted.

“Trust in Eugenides,” she said, shrugging.

In the courtyard at Ephrata, Attolia dropped from her horse and left it for someone else to lead away. She strode up the steps to the entrance to the atrium at the fore of the megaron. Her seneschal and her guard captain waited for her there.

“Your Majesty, the Mede ambassador—”

“Don’t tell me about the Mede ambassador,” said Attolia. “Is the Thief of Eddis still locked up?”

“Your Majesty gave no orders,” the seneschal began hesitantly, “and I’m afraid that Ambassador Nahuseresh—”

“I said that I don’t want to hear about Nahuseresh,” interrupted Attolia. “Give me the keys to the Thief’s cell,” and the seneschal obediently hunted through the rings of keys attached to his belt and pulled one ring free. He picked one key out of the rest and handed it to the queen.

“This key, Your Majesty.”

Careful not to let the key slip down among its similar fellows, Attolia took key and ring and strode away.

The guard looked at the seneschal, who looked back at him, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head.

Eddis, arriving in the courtyard, had seen the queen. She, too, had dropped from her horse and left the rest of her party milling behind her as she hurried up the steps to follow Attolia. She passed the seneschal, and the guard captain reached out a hand to hook her elbow.

“Now then, young man,” he said, stopping her in her
tracks. “Where were you going?”

Eddis turned. The captain needed only one more look to see that he’d made an error. He withdrew his hand, and Eddis, without speaking, followed Attolia.

When she was gone, the captain looked again at the seneschal and grimaced, shaking his hand as if he’d touched something hot and burned it.

“That look would have boiled lead,” agreed the seneschal. “You’re not going to follow them?”

“Not I,” said the captain. “I will be very glad to be somewhere else if those two are crossing swords.”

He stepped out into the courtyard to engage his services in sorting out the growing chaos there as Eddisian and Attolian officers and soldiers arrived.

The key turned in a well-oiled lock, and the door opened easily. Inside the room Eugenides looked to be sitting on the floor, his legs curled beside him. His head and shoulders rested on the bed, one arm for a pillow. The hook on the other arm lay across his knees. His eyes were closed. He didn’t move. As Attolia waited in the doorway watching him, he didn’t stir or wake. On the floor beside the bed a tray held the remains of a meal. There was a wine cup. It had tipped over and broken, spilling the lees onto the floor.

Attolia stood, caught at the threshold like one who has trespassed on the mysteries and been turned to stone. She thought of Nahuseresh. How many poisons
did he have at his command? How many allies did he have among her barons? How easy would it have been to arrange the death of a successful rival? She should have listened to what her seneschal wanted to tell her. He would have warned her of what she would find. Unadvised, the queen found it difficult to bear.

How cruel of the gods, she thought, to send her a boy she would love without realizing it. How appropriate that the bridegroom she would have chosen to marry be poisoned. Who could contest the justice meted out by the gods?

There were footsteps behind her. Eddis, Attolia thought, was not going to believe that anyone but Attolia was responsible for the boy’s death. She remained in the doorway while her rival queen stepped past her. Eddis slid by without touching her, without so much as brushing the flowing sleeves of her robe.

In the time it took for the other queen to move through the doorway, Attolia looked into the future. Eddis would return to war. Sounis would continue his attacks, the Mede would aid anyone but Attolia. None of it mattered. Attolia was alone as she had always been, but she had never felt so desolate. She cursed herself for her stupidity. Who was the Thief that she would love him? A youth, just a boy with hardly a beard and no sense at all, she told herself. A liar, she thought, an enemy, a threat. He was brave, a voice inside her said, he was loyal. Not loyal to me, she answered. Not brave
on my behalf. Brave and loyal, the voice repeated. A fool, she answered back. A fool and a dead one. She ached with emptiness.

Eddis, having passed Attolia, halted between her and the bed. She looked at Eugenides’s body and turned back to the queen in the doorway. “He’s asleep,” she said.

Attolia took her eyes off the future to focus on Eddis.

“Just asleep,” Eddis reassured her.

At the sound of her voice Eugenides’s head turned slightly, but he didn’t wake. Attolia, seeing the movement, breathed again and pressed a hand to her chest where it hurt.