The Queen of Attolia (21 page)

Eddis leaned over the Thief and poked him in the shoulder. “Wake up,” she said.

Struggling to do just that, Eugenides at first had no idea where he was. He’d slept very little since he and Xenophon’s soldiers had made the last part of their voyage by raft to land near Ephrata. He’d sailed along the coast, climbed up a cliff’s worth of stairs, ridden back down a mountainside, fought a useless skirmish, and walked back to Ephrata. After Attolia’s guards had locked him in the tiny room, he’d paced to keep himself awake, painfully caught between fear and a terrible hope as the night slowly passed. His arm had ached fiercely, but he hadn’t tried to remove the cuff. He’d been afraid he wouldn’t be able to get it back on, and no
matter what happened, he told himself, he didn’t want to face his destiny tucking his stump into his sleeve and clutching the hook in his remaining hand like some sort of bizarre athletic trophy. Twice someone had brought him food, which he hadn’t eaten, and once a guard had marched him down the hall to relieve himself. The guard had not been friendly, and Eugenides hadn’t dared to ask for news.

Finally, in the afternoon, a day after he’d been locked up, he had seen from the narrow window an Eddisian soldier on the megaron’s wall walking with an Attolian. It had seemed like a good sign. Later a young woman came with another meal and told him that the other Eddisian prisoners had been released and the Mede ambassador had been locked in his rooms. She hadn’t known the results of the battle on the far side of the ridge, but for Eugenides these two things were news enough of success, and he had sat down on the floor next to the bed and eaten all the food she’d brought. There was no table and no chair. The serving girl had laughed, telling him he didn’t have to eat in a hurry, she would come back for the tray. Then she’d gone, and he’d been so tired even the pain in his arm couldn’t keep him awake. He’d rested his head for a moment, he thought, on the bed. He hadn’t moved for hours, hadn’t heard the key turn in the lock, hadn’t woken at the sound of voices.

When Eddis prodded him, his first fumbling
thought was that his entire body ached and he must be in the king’s prison in Sounis. His next thought was that he’d left that prison and it must be Pol or Sounis’s magus prodding him. He didn’t want to talk to Pol. Pol would want him to go somewhere on the back of a horse.

“Go away,” he said.

Eddis sighed. “Eugenides,” she said, “wake up.”

“I would have expected a light sleeper,” Attolia commented.

“Usually he is,” Eddis said, growing more concerned.

“He looks—” Attolia hunted for the word. “Defenseless” came to mind, but it wasn’t the one she wanted, nor was “young,” though he looked even younger when he was asleep. “Quite guileless,” she said at last.

“Oh, yes,” said Eddis. “I’m always willing to forgive him anything—until he wakes up.” She leaned down and poked him again.

Eugenides finally opened his eyes and lifted his head. He looked confused and started to lift his right arm, then froze when the hook bumped his leg. He carefully lifted the other hand to rub his face. He looked from Eddis to the window, where the visible sky was already dark. He looked back, his gaze a little sharper, and said, “You forgot me.”

Eddis shoved her hands into the pockets of her trousers.

“Don’t lie,” Eugenides said, pressing her. “You charged off in a haze of glory to chase the vile Mede from our shore, and you never gave me a thought until they were gone.”

He twisted to address Attolia. “You forgot me, too,” he accused.

Attolia answered coolly, “You were fed.”

Eugenides looked up at her, and Attolia felt transparent, as if her mask were gone, as if he could see her heart and know that a moment before it had been stopped by grief.

“That’s true, a girl brought me dinner,” Eugenides said thoughtfully. “She was very pretty.” After a pause he added, “
And
very kind.”

Eddis had heard of the conversation between the Thief and Attolia on the relative merits of beauty and kindness. She winced at the intended rebuke, but Attolia only pressed her lips together in a thin smile and said, “It’s not too late for you to end up chained to a wall.”

“Oh, someone would rescue me,” Eugenides said, rolling his eyes innocently. “And while I was there, that lovely girl could bring my dinner. I think,” he said, with his head propped by his arm, looking into the middle distance, “I think when I’m king”—he repeated himself slowly—“when I am king, she can be my first mistress.”

Attolia snapped, “You have any mistresses and I’ll cut your other hand off.”

Beside her, Eddis stiffened. Attolia raised her chin to meet the look that her seneschal had said would melt lead. Eddis opened her mouth, but before she could put her thoughts into words, Eugenides laughed. Laughing, he dropped his head onto the bed; then he looked up to grin at Attolia.

She looked back at him, and her cheeks flushed. She said, with sincerity, “You are a poisonous little snake.”

“Yes,” said Eugenides. Stiff, he climbed up to sit on the bed, running his fingers through his hair and yawning. “Yes. And I want out of this room.”

Attolia leaned over him to catch his chin under her hand. She felt the barest flinch before he lifted his eyes to meet hers. He had looked so young when he was asleep, and hardly older once he was awake. He needed a nursery, not a bride, Attolia thought bitterly, though she herself had been engaged and married even younger. “You need a bath,” she said, “and someone to see to your arm. You can wait here a little longer until I send an attendant.”

But she didn’t let go of his chin. She held him, looking into his face. He reached up to touch very lightly the earring in her ear, a square-cut ruby on a gold backing that matched the design of the ruby-studded band across her forehead. She’d been wearing the earrings when she bent over him in his chains in the megaron.

“Do you like them?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Attolia. She straightened and went to the door.

“Will you send that nice girl who brought my dinner?” Eugenides called.

Attolia lifted her eyebrow. “No,” she said, and was gone.

Eddis turned back to Eugenides, who was rubbing his cheek where Attolia’s hand had rested and looked suddenly bleak.

“I think,” he said slowly. “I think I didn’t think all this out.”

“Marrying her, you mean?” Eddis sat down next to him, concerned.

“Nooo,” he said, and he looked over at her. In his eyes Eddis saw a hint of something she couldn’t remember having seen there before. Panic.

“I didn’t think about being king,” he said, his voice hoarse, either from worry or from the bruises around his neck.

Eddis stared. “Your capacity to land yourself in a mess because you didn’t think first, Eugenides, will never cease to amaze me. What do you mean you didn’t think about being king? Is Attolia going to marry you and move into my library?”

“No,” said Eugenides, looking sullenly at his feet. “I knew that I had to be king. I just didn’t
think
about it.”

“All those clothes,” Eddis remarked thoughtfully.
“Ceremonies. Duties. Obligations.”

“People staring at me,” Eugenides said, “all the time.”

Eddis eyed him quietly for a minute or two while he contemplated, perhaps for the first time, the responsibilities of a king. “Attolia had no treaties with the Mede,” she said abruptly. “Nor did she want one. Eugenides…” She waited until he lifted his head. “We could make a treaty without a marriage.”

“No,” he said.

“You are sure?”

“Yes,” he said.

T
HE SENESCHAL OF
E
PHRATA, THE
captain of the guard, several barons both Eddisian and Attolian, and various members of both households waited where the corridor came to the main atrium. Attolia looked them over. The Eddisians were certainly a barbarous lot—no wonder the Mede underestimated them—but they looked quite comfortable waiting at the edge of the atrium. Her own seneschal and guard captain as well as her barons looked distinctly unsettled, as if the ceiling might fall at any moment.

They were twisting between two worries. Her seneschal and guard had done something they knew she wouldn’t like, while the barons worried that she’d sold out to the Eddisians as they thought she had sold out to the Mede. Attolia looked thoughtfully at Teleus and then sighed.

“You let Nahuseresh escape,” she said.

Teleus, used to her insight, just nodded.

“You weren’t watching that slave of his, the secretary.”

“We weren’t,” Teleus admitted. “The slave released him, and in the confusion they managed to reach the outer stairs to the harbor. They swam to a Mede ship moored in the harbor and escaped. I’m very sorry.”

“Well, you should be,” said the queen, but to Teleus’s great relief she wasn’t angry. “I wanted a ransom for him but will have to be satisfied without one. If they had to swim to their ship, they must have left many interesting papers behind. I’ll want to see those.”

Teleus coughed.

“You said, ‘In the confusion they reached the stairs to the harbor,’” the queen prompted.

“They set fire to their rooms.”

“Of course,” said the queen, and Teleus dropped his eyes in embarrassment.

“Well,” Attolia said, “I hope the damage wasn’t too severe. Baron Ephrata won’t be happy to have had us as guests.” The baron Ephrata lived in another of his several megarons and barely noticed that Ephrata existed.

Attolia turned to the seneschal. “Find someone to escort Her Majesty of Eddis and her Thief to better quarters and see that they are attended. No doubt you will regret the suite of rooms my captain has just allowed to be burned to ash, but I’m sure you will manage for the night. Tomorrow Eddis and her personal attendants will accompany us to the capital.”

“No, Your Majesty.”

The voice was a firm but quiet one and it took a moment for Attolia to locate the speaker: Eugenides’s father, of course. Eddis’s minister of war. She stared at him. Rarely did anyone say no to her and never with such confidence.

“The queen of Eddis does not ride unescorted to your capital.”

“She isn’t bringing her army with her,” retorted Attolia.

The minister of war crossed his arms and waited.

Her own household, including the captain of the guard, looked on in awe, which irritated Attolia but also amused her.

“We are evenly supported here in the megaron,” she said at last. “Let us remain for the night with our armies on the field, and I’m sure tomorrow we can find an arrangement on which we will all agree. Sounis will need to be informed of whatever accords we reach.”

The minister of war inclined his head in agreement.

Attolia turned to the seneschal. “See that the Eddisians are settled comfortably,” she said, and went away to her own chambers, leaving the seneschal to figure out how that might be done in the limited space of Ephrata.

In the darkness off the coast the Mede fleet navigated carefully. At the rail Nahuseresh watched the dark
outline of the Attolian coast disappear. Kamet longed to leave him but dared not.

“Kamet,” Nahuseresh said, and the secretary reluctantly, but obediently, stepped closer.

“Master?”

“I would like very much to strangle someone. Why don’t you go away until I decide it isn’t you?”

Kamet ducked his head. “Yes, master,” he whispered in a neutral voice, and thankfully withdrew.

In the morning the Attolian army moved upriver and camped on the opposite side of the Seperchia from the Eddisians. The bulk of the mountain country’s army settled on the plain below the pass. In the afternoon, after preliminary negotiations between Eddis’s minister of war and two of Attolia’s three senior generals, the rest of the Eddisian army was divided, one part to return to Eddis to defend against any attacks by Sounis, the other to accompany their queen as she rode to Attolia’s capital.

Attolia offered to convey the queen of Eddis to the capital by boat, but Eddis, on the insistence of her minister of war, declined. Attolia sailed with her attendants and guard and a few selected barons. The rest of her retinue traveled overland. It was not a comfortable journey, being very hot and very dusty, but no one who had heard the news of Attolia’s proposed engagement was unhappy to be on the road while their queen traveled by sea.

Attolia spent the days at the ship’s rail watching the coastline of her country slide past. She spoke very little to her attendants and not at all to her barons. When Teleus stepped forward to address her, one of the attendants warned him away with a look. Teleus ducked his head in understanding and withdrew. Attolia saw but didn’t call him back. Warmed by the sun and cooled by the sea breeze, she was busy with her thoughts.

The queen’s city of Attolia sat in the sunshine like a gem in a setting of olive trees, on a hillside above the shallow Tustis River. The palace was situated on a gentle rise. There was a steeper hill behind the city, topped by the temple to the new gods. The city and megaron had originally been crowded onto the tiny plateau, but in the peaceful reign of the invaders both had moved down the hill to the slope above the harbor. The harbor was protected by a headland and a breakwater and by the shadowy bulk of Thegmis offshore, stretching up and down the coast.

The megaron in Sounis’s capital was built of unfaced yellow stones, and Eddis’s palace was small and dark, but Attolia’s palace was built of brick and faced with marble. It glowed in the sunshine, a beautiful building with graceful proportions and ranks of windows that reflected the afternoon light like jewels.

In the palace, with her retainers surrounding her, the events of Ephrata seemed to Attolia very distant and
unreal. The familiar tensions returned as she immersed herself once again in the struggle to exert her will in a world conventionally run by men, where she had to be not stronger but more powerful than her opponents. Making war was easy by comparison. Rumors had already reached the capital when she informed her barons of Eugenides’s marriage proposal, and she watched the reactions carefully. There remained among her barons some who had still considered themselves probable candidates for Attolia’s hand and throne. They veered between outrage and amusement, and under all the shouting she could hear the snickering, sniping glee.

In the privacy of her rooms, she paced. Her attendants were meticulous as always in their care, but for the first time she was visibly impatient. Where she had always been brisk, she became short-tempered; where she had been even-tempered, she was waspish.

To her surprise, her attendants drew closer to support her. She looked for fear in their servility, or hate in their attention, but saw none. Their affection and their care seemed genuine even as she surged to her feet while her hair was being braided, suddenly sick of the pulling and tugging, and retreated to her bedchamber, slamming the door behind her as she hadn’t slammed a door since she was a minor princess of the king’s second wife. They surrounded her throughout the day, urging her to eat something when she didn’t want to eat, watching to see that she wasn’t disturbed when she was busy, making the
arrangements for the arrival of the queen of Eddis so that there was little for her to do but affirm their decisions.

Eddis delayed in Ephrata, having summoned her aunt and her sister as well as her attendants to soften the military edge to her visit. Eddis’s aunt, a grand duchess, had insisted that she was too old to travel in anything but comfort, and had ordered out the royal carriage. She had then ridden quite cheerfully over rough ground on horseback to Ephrata while the heavy coach was hauled down the mountain road, carried by hand most of the way. Once in Ephrata, the duchess and the queen’s sister, who was also a duchess, and the attendants combined their efforts to be sure that Eddis represented their country and their court as she should. Eddis had had just this support in mind when she summoned them, and she submitted to their ministrations with equanimity.

She had invited the magus as well, but he had politely declined. He still hoped to be reconciled with his king and so preferred to maintain the formality of his captivity.

When Eddis arrived in the capital, Attolia greeted her with grace and ceremony. Never once looking at Eugenides, she welcomed them to her palace and expressed hopes that their visit would be a comfortable one. If Attolia acted as if he didn’t exist, her attending women watched the Thief of Eddis carefully and not as if they were pleased with what they saw. Eddis noted the hostility of the attendants as well as the remoteness
of the Attolian queen. She worried that her Thief’s great capacity for mockery might resurface to disastrous consequences, but Eugenides only bowed politely when introduced, and his bland expression was as fixed as Attolia’s, even as she looked right through him, returning a royal half curtsy to his bow.

That evening Eugenides joined Eddis in her rooms just before supper. Eddis’s attendants wandered in and out, stopping to put earrings in her ears and then discuss among themselves whether another pair might be better. The two duchesses looked on, offering their own sharp-eyed criticisms from time to time.

Eddis bore it all patiently. Eugenides looked on, amused.

Xanthe, Eddis’s senior attendant, nudged the queen’s hand, and Eddis obediently lifted her arms so that Xanthe could fasten a belt around her waist.

“I don’t think Attolia’s attendants treat her like a prize calf, Xanthe,” she observed as the older woman patted the gold-embroidered cloth into place.

“I am sure they don’t need to,” Xanthe replied. “She is probably quite capable of choosing her own clothes and doesn’t walk like a soldier in them.”

Eddis bowed to the rebuke with a smile.

“I’ve seen golden calves guarded less fiercely,” Eugenides remarked.

“I did notice the number of armed guards in the
palace. Is it because we are here?” Eddis asked, her arms still held out to either side.

“No,” said Eugenides. “They are always around her.” It was an informed opinion, Eddis supposed.

“There will be music from the Continent and dancing tonight,” she warned her Thief. “Protocol says that as a suitor you are supposed to ask Attolia to lead the first set with you.”

“I’ve been practicing,” he responded, and after supper, when the tables had been removed and the music was beginning, he obediently stepped to the dais at the head of the room and offered his hand for the first dance. Attolia accepted without looking at him and moved through the dance without speaking. He returned her to the dais at the end of the dance feeling as if he were replacing a manikin on its pedestal. He bowed and returned to Eddis’s side.

“Attolia’s court does not seem to favor the match,” said Eddis as he settled himself in the space between the queen and her master of protocol.

“I haven’t seen so many foul looks directed at me since I stole those cabochon emeralds,” Eugenides said.

“I can’t think they dislike you that much,” responded Eddis.

“You have seen her guards?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And the minister of ceremonies, and the help right down to the last wine bearer? The queen’s attendants, as
you can plainly see, are all ten heavily opposed.”

“And the queen?” asked the minister of protocol, seated on Eugenides’s other side.

“The queen abstains,” said Eugenides shortly.

“Nine against, one undecided,” said Eddis. When Eugenides gave her a puzzled look, she explained. “Attolia’s attendants. I think you have one undecided, still.”

“Really, which one?” Eugenides asked with his eyebrow raised.

“Figure it out for yourself and in the process go be civil to them.”

“And risk being torn limb from limb?”

“I think you are safe from physical attack,” said Eddis wryly.

“That’s what you think,” Eugenides answered. “There was sand in my dinner.”

Eddis looked at him. “I thought you just weren’t hungry.”

“Sand,” said Eugenides. “In the soup, on the bread, sprinkled on the meat.”

“She wouldn’t—” Eddis began before Eugenides interrupted, waving his hand in the air as if brushing away spiderwebs.

“No, of course she wouldn’t. I’d say the kitchen feels the same as the queen’s attendants.”

Sighing, Eddis looked around at the beautiful hall, the exquisite tiles on the floor, the mosaics on the walls,
the hundreds of candles, and the golden candelabra. The uncomfortable thought came to mind that she would rather sell Eugenides into slavery than marry him into the court of Attolia.

The negotiations began the next day, as Attolia had supposed, with a military treaty. The queens were not present. Their ministers and counselors met on their behalf. When the queens met face to face, they discussed the weather or the evening’s entertainment. Eugenides, for his part, gravely asked the queen to dance and was as gravely granted the privilege, but Attolia spoke to him only in the most formulaic phrases, and Eddis knew that he responded with the acerbic comments sotto voce for which he was famous. If Attolia returned from the dancing flushed from more than the exercise, no one took it as a positive sign. Her attendants watched the Thief with narrowed eyes, and, as Eugenides said, if they’d had tails, they would have lashed them. Attolia’s guards watched him like hawks waiting for a signal to attack a lure, and even the servants seemed to look down their noses as they addressed him. Attolia’s lords didn’t present a unified front. They were all rigidly courteous, but their courtesy concealed various motivations. Some bitterly opposed any king from outside Attolia; some were amused to see their own queen brought so low. None, so far as Eddis could see, cared if he would be a competent ruler.