The Queen of Attolia (8 page)

“He hasn’t left his room, Your Majesty.”

“Are there servants who bring his food, get him dressed in the morning, take away his dirty clothes, empty his night jar? Are they in your pay? Is there anyone who can tell you that he has seen Eugenides in that room?”

“No, Your Majesty, but—”

“Then you can’t be certain he’s there, can you?”

“No, Your Majesty, but—”

“But what, Relius?”

The secretary took a careful breath. “There’s no evidence, Your Majesty, that the Thief has left his rooms in the last few weeks. We have reliable reports that he
argued with the queen and that she does not speak of him. Also, Your Majesty, this business involved several men, and in the past the Thief worked alone. We are not even certain that this was the work of Eddisians. The magus has disappeared, and his apprentice says that he conspired with us. We know that is incorrect, but that’s all. We don’t know who his masters are.”

“Who else could they be?” the queen asked.

The secretary went on hesitantly, unsure of his ground. His queen had lately showered favors on her Mede ambassador, and he was reluctant to anger her. “There are the Medes to be considered, Your Majesty. A strong alliance between Sounis and Attolia is not to their advantage.”

“True,” said Attolia, sitting back in her throne. “We shall see where the magus turns up.”

Within days of the destruction of Sounis’s navy, pirates raided and burned two of the most important port cities on his islands. Piracy had grown increasingly common since the pass through Eddis had been closed to trade. Merchants carrying their goods by ship had been tempting targets, and any captain could reflag his ship to become a pirate at a moment’s notice, only to change flags again and return home an honest merchant mariner.

These new pirates had worked alone and preyed on isolated sailing ships. No one expected them to join
forces. Many of the islands hadn’t yet learned of the destruction of the king’s navy and hadn’t taken even the most rudimentary precautions against sea raiders. Their harbors were open, and their towns guarded only by night watchmen patrolling the streets for drunks or thieves. The pirates had landed without warning, had looted the warehouses along the docks and burned them while many citizens were still sleeping in their beds. The citizens woke glad not to have been murdered in those beds. They sent outraged calls for assistance to their king only to hear that there was no navy to defend them and that the raiders had probably been not pirates, but Attolian warships under false flags.

With his remaining ships, Sounis attacked one of Attolia’s smaller islands in revenge. More towns burned. Any hope of an alliance collapsed. Attolia regrouped her navy to defend herself from sea attack by Sounis but left the bulk of her army in the pass.

Reversing his earlier threats of war, Sounis turned to Eddis, asking for lumber for his shipyards. The ambassador from Eddis closeted himself with the king and revealed that Eddis had hired a master gunsmith in the fall and had retooled her foundries over the winter to produce cannon instead of the iron ingots she had been shipping to the Peninsula in the past. She was able to provide Sounis with the guns he needed to arm his new warships but expressed a reasonable reluctance to sell cannon that might be used against her. She demanded
a show of good faith that Sounis would not ally again with Attolia.

Within a month of the disaster at the Navy Festival, the first lumbering grain wagons were on their way to Eddis to resupply the war-strained country, and Sounis’s reduced navy had seized two of Attolia’s most vulnerable islands. Chios and Sera were two prizes, small but wealthy in marble and artisans. They were bones of contention and had changed hands between the countries of Sounis and Attolia for hundreds of years. Once again the possessor of them, Sounis would not reform his alliance with Attolia if it meant surrendering them.

Attolia, with her navy intact, carried out her own attacks. She was willing to let Chios and Sera go. There were other islands of more strategic importance, and she turned her attention toward those. She took Capris and failed to take Anti-Capris, its near neighbor, by only a narrow margin. Sounis lost two more of his warships.

At the suggestion of her Mede ambassador, she attacked Cymorene and secured its eastern end against Sounis. Cymorene was one of the largest of the islands, and she couldn’t hope to control its mountainous interior without bringing in her army, but most of her land forces were still climbing the pass to Eddis. Eddis had hoped that the temptation of a weakened Sounis would draw them away, but Attolia continued to advance.
Eddis harassed the army but was unwilling to waste her soldiers, her most precious resource. Even Attolia, with her population still unrecovered from the plague a generation before, had more men than Eddis. Her army moved steadily upward.

Sounis offered to send an army to reinforce Eddis, but she declined. Steadily losing ground in the islands, Sounis pressed Eddis for the cannon she had promised. He wanted to mount them on his island defenses until warships could be built. Two more of his supply shipments had arrived in Eddis, and she had little excuse to refuse.

The moon was down, and the hallways of the palace were lit by the glimmer of small lanterns at the intersections of corridors. The stone walls were dark and did little to reflect the light. The stone floors were covered in thin carpets. The queen of Eddis walked slowly to avoid tripping on unseen wrinkles. She walked slowly to avoid making any noise, and she walked slowly, with her head carefully held upright, to avoid the appearance of sneaking through her own palace, which was what she was doing. She wanted to talk privately to Eugenides and his father. Eugenides in his own mysterious way could arrive in her rooms at night in response to a message left with his food in the library. His father either had to be admitted by the queen’s attendants or the queen had to leave the attendants and meet him
elsewhere. They had agreed to meet in the library.

Eugenides was waiting for her. His father had not yet arrived.

Eddis closed the door behind her and turned. “We are discovered,” she said with a rueful smile. “You were right, and I should have let you relay messages instead of trying to have a secret meeting.”

“You don’t look alarmed,” Eugenides said. “Who saw you?”

“It was Therespides,” said Eddis. “He ran into me creeping around a corner. I don’t know which one of us was more surprised. Or embarrassed, for that matter.”

“He guessed where you were going?”

“There’s no one else in this part of the palace to be visiting. I think he was coming in from a visit down in the town.”

“Why aren’t you more worried?”

The queen looked down at him and smiled fondly. He had grown quite ruthless lately, but he still showed signs of naïveté from time to time. “You’ve heard that a liar thinks everyone else lies?”

“Yes.”

“A thief thinks everyone else is stealing from him?”

“Go on—without derogatory comments about people of my profession, please.”

“A philanderer thinks everyone else is philandering.”

Eugenides looked blank for a moment. “Oh,” he said.

“Practically incestuous,” said the queen, and she bent
down to kiss him on the forehead. “Not to mention a little matter of robbing the cradle. It will keep the court babbling for weeks, and I hope Sounis hears about it.”

“I hardly fit into a cradle anymore, and anyone who’d believe we were amorously involved has to be crazy, but Sounis probably will hear it and believe it. Poor besotted fool.”

“He’s not besotted with me, just my throne.”

“Besotted may not be the right word. Obsessed. And not just because he wants the throne. He wants you, though I’m not sure why.”

“I’m glad you’ve remained a thief, Gen. As a courtly flatterer you lack something.”

“It’s the king’s heir we should feel sorry for,” Eugenides said. “Poor Sophos’s heart will be breaking if he hears you love another.”

Eddis laughed. “I doubt his feelings are deeply engaged.”

“Rarely have I seen a more love-struck individual than the king’s nephew,” said Eugenides, with his hand on his heart to emphasize his sincerity.

Eddis settled herself into a chair. “It’s Attolia who needs to keep thinking we don’t speak, and I’m afraid Therespides has a direct line to the secretary of her archives.”

“All these things I’m learning about Therespides tonight. Why don’t you just drag him out in the snow and shoot him?”

Eddis shook her head, looking grave. “He’s a reasonably good man and valuable in his own way. If he makes his gold selling gossip to Attolia, I don’t mind. It’s helpful to use him occasionally to carry erroneous information to Attolia. Still, I can hardly summon him to my throne at the morning session and say, ‘Do please keep it a secret that I am meeting Eugenides in the dark of night.’ Nor do I want to do it privately.”

“You don’t want him to be tempted?”

“Let’s say that I would not like to rely on him and then be disappointed. At this point Therespides doesn’t worry me.”

“There are other spies you are more concerned about?”

“More than ever,” said the queen. “Her army has retreated.”

“She’s retreating?” Eugenides sat forward in his chair.

“Not ‘is retreating,’ ‘has retreated.’ Like a cat jumping out of a bath.” Eddis shook her head in admiration.

“She heard about the cannon?”

“She must have. I think she knew even before we told Sounis. In another two or three days we would have had the entire battery in place and would have been able to fire down on her. She must have known all along and been hoping to take the pass before the cannon were up on the mountain above her. It was a well-planned retreat, and her army is safely out of range now.”

“Any chance that she’ll drop the whole business? We’ve handed her naval superiority. Would taking back her islands as well as Mesos and Ianathicos satisfy her?”

Eddis shook her head. “Your father thinks not, and I agree with him. The islands have moved from empire to empire too many times to be considered a dependable possession by anyone. If we remain allied with Sounis, he is going to want those cannon. If we give him the cannon, she’ll march her army back up the pass.” She sighed. “I’d hoped to wipe out a large enough portion of her army that she’d have no chance of taking the pass with what was left—even if we did give this year’s cannon production to Sounis. Sounis is pressing hard. I want to talk to your father about it without having the entire council looking on.”

She leaned forward and dragged her chair closer to the fire. “We may as well fetch the magus out of hiding,” she said. “Will you come with me?”

“On a horse?”

“You can ride in a carriage if you like. I’ll have to go on horseback so people can see me.”

He could hardly be so rude as to ride in a closed coach if his queen was riding outside it. He’d have to go on a horse and let everyone have a good look at him, too.

“If you like.” He sighed inwardly.

T
HE HUNTING RETREAT WAS A
summer home for the rulers of Eddis. It was shaped like a stone megaron, with a broad, high porch across the front, supported on four pillars, but the pillars, like the rest of the building, were wood. There was a separate structure for the cooking, lest a runaway fire burn down the entire residence. The food was carried on a dirt path from the kitchen to the dining room. The second story held small dark bedrooms with unglazed windows that looked out across the overgrown meadow to the surrounding forests. In the winter the windows were covered with shutters and the building was uninhabited.

It was not the palace of the wealthier lowlanders, but it held happy memories for Eddis. She dropped off her horse and strode up the steps and across the porch to the door. Inside was an atrium with stairs to the second floor. Her Thief followed more slowly, stiff from the ride.

Eddis stood in the atrium, talking to a man on the balcony above her. When the Thief came in behind her, Eddis turned.

“Elon says the magus isn’t here. He’s out digging up weeds.”

“Oh? Any particular weeds?” Eugenides asked the valet, cocking his head back to address the man.

“I’m sure I couldn’t say that he has a preference. We’ve had them all, with roots and dirt, so he can draw pictures of them.” The valet’s tone was replete with grievance.

“I didn’t know he was a botanist,” Eddis said quietly to Eugenides.

“Neither did I,” answered her Thief. “He’s probably trying to develop a new poison to use on us both. When will he be back?” he called to Elon.

The valet shrugged eloquently.

“Not what I had foreseen,” Eddis said wryly, “though I shouldn’t have expected him to be here repining. I should have started a day later and sent a messenger ahead. Surely he is not followed around by a cohort of guards?” she asked the guard commander who had appeared at the door.

The commander explained that one guard had been assigned to follow the magus to be sure he didn’t wander so far that he escaped back to Sounis. That guard was changed every day as the task of hiking after the magus was not an enviable one. The rest of the guards
passed their days gambling with dice or hunting to fill the cook’s pot.

“Well, I hope the pot is full,” Eddis said. “Have a cook pack a picnic and provisions for the men, and we will ride out again once the magus has returned.” The trumpeter was sent out to blow recall. The queen looked back to the valet. “You had better pack his things.”

The valet nodded. “And the weeds?” he asked.

“I think we’ll leave the weeds. We’ll show him some nicer ones when we stop to eat.”

When the magus appeared, trailed by a footsore guard, the queen asked if they should delay to give the magus time to rest. “We mustn’t overtax a gentleman of your years,” she said, teasing gently.

“I believe I am stout enough to be at your disposal, Your Majesty,” the magus replied gravely, “though otherwise old and very feeble.”

With a reputation as a soldier only just overweighed by his reputation as a scholar, he was surrounded by armed men who judged him neither old nor feeble and watched him very carefully. He was in the presence of their queen, and the relaxed camaraderie they’d shared with the magus during his stay at the summer residence was gone.

Led by the queen, the party started back through the coastal hills. They left their path to ride up a sloping meadow to the lip of a small valley, no more than a
shallow cup between two rises. “A picnic for us, I think,” said the queen. “The magus and Eugenides and I will eat in the clearing.”

The valley before them was filled from side to side with a heavy carpet of vines. The few trees still standing had been engulfed. Their dead branches poked through the lush greenery of the suffocating creepers. “A narrow dirt path led to a small clearing where a flat green patch of grass grew. There was room for the three to sit, but they would have to leave their horses.

“Your Majesty, please,” the commander of her guard pleaded in an urgent undertone. The queen only smiled.

“I’m sure you will find a comfortable place around the rim of the valley,” she said. The commander sighed and bowed his head to inevitability.

“As you wish,” he said.

The magus carried the saddlebag with their meal in it down to the clearing, which turned out to be a fine carpet of moss, not grass. In places where the moss was thin, paving stones showed through. The tiny open space, entirely surrounded by vines, had once been a terrace or forecourt to a building. After he’d lowered the saddlebag to the ground, the magus went to look more closely at the vines. They had smooth stems and dark matte leaves. Their bright red blossoms were tissue-thin, the five petals crumpled around the stamen and pistils.

“Don’t pick them,” the queen warned. “Here they are sacred to the memory of Hespira, though they are dragged out as weeds anywhere else.”

The magus straightened. “Hespira?” he said, puzzled. “I don’t know Hespira. Is she the goddess of the temple?” He had seen under the vines the shattered ruins of a temple.

Eddis shook her head. Eugenides had stretched out on his back and closed his eyes. “Hespira’s mother planted the vines that destroyed the temple,” said Eddis.

“A rival goddess?” the magus asked.

“A mortal woman,” Eddis answered as she settled herself on the moss and opened the saddlebag. “The goddess Meridite abducted her daughter.”

“Is there a story that goes with this?”

“Oh, yes,” said Eddis.

The magus glanced over at Eugenides, who opened his eyes long enough to say flatly, “Don’t look at me. I’ve retired from storytelling.”

“Eugenides, sit up and eat, and don’t be cross,” said Eddis.

“Am I cross?” Eugenides asked.

“Yes,” said Eddis. “Magus, don’t sit there. Sit on this side.” She pointed to a place on the moss, and the magus sat, seeing no difference between it and the place he had chosen himself.

“She wants the commander to have a good shot at
you,” Eugenides pointed out with a touch of malice. He was still lying down, and his eyes were closed. The magus looked up to the rim of the valley to see the commander and several of his soldiers standing with their feet squarely planted and their crossbows trained on him. Two others were circling the rim of the valley in order to have the magus in their sights from the far side. The magus glanced at Eugenides. He hadn’t needed to look to know they were there.

“I only want the commander not to worry himself,” said Eddis calmly. “He will fret if I am between him and the magus.” The queen hadn’t looked up to the hillside either.

“What about the magus fretting?” Eugenides asked, and Eddis lifted her head from the package she was unwrapping to look at her guest.

“Don’t be alarmed,” she reassured him. “They are only being cautious, not bloodthirsty.”

“It would be one way to prove your loyalty to your king,” Eugenides said.

“A fatal way,” observed the magus.

“True, but they can’t be too careful,” said Eugenides. “It might be worth it to you to clear your name. Did you miss the subtle negotiations at the edge of the valley? The commander didn’t want to be left behind. He didn’t want the queen alone in the valley with you.”

The magus had heard the exchange without understanding its significance. He pointed out what was
obvious to him: “But we aren’t alone.” Eugenides lay on the moss less than a man’s-length away.

“You may as well be. I never would have been considered a match for a soldier of your reputation,” said Eugenides. Unspoken was the assumption that he was no longer a match for anyone. There was a dryness to his words that was almost, but not quite, bitterness.

The queen explained. She spoke quietly, but her words had sharp edges nonetheless. “In his life Eugenides has gone to great lengths to portray himself as a noncombatant, so people assume he is. He has to live with the fruits of his labors and sometimes finds them unsweet. Sit up and eat,” she said to her Thief, and this time he levered himself into a sitting position.

He ate with his left hand. The hook on the end of his arm lay at rest in his lap.

“When do you wear the hook and when do you wear the false hand?” the magus asked with a straightforwardness that surprised the queen.

“The hand is less noticeable,” Eugenides answered, unoffended. “But the hook has a number of uses, and the false hand isn’t good for anything. So I teeter between vanity and function.”

“And when you stop teetering, where will you be?” the magus asked.

Eugenides shrugged. “In the madhouse…or maybe in a nice home in the suburbs, keeping books.”

The magus suspected that the very blandness of his
voice covered over some ugliness the way a covering of leaves can hide a pit trap. The magus didn’t risk falling. He changed the subject.

“Would you tell me the story of Hespira?” he asked Eddis.

Before she answered, Eddis looked up to check the position of the sun. “I’ll tell it to you if you like. We have the time. Eugenides, if you are going to lie down again, put your head on my knee.”

The magus lifted his eyebrows. The queen noticed that he raised both at the same time. Eugenides had lately taken to raising just one when he was being amused, and she wondered whom he was copying. Eugenides rested his head on her lap. Pensively she tried to brush away the crease between his brows. She knew the magus wondered at his bad temper.

“We are sending a message to the queen of Attolia,” she explained, speaking to the magus though she continued to look down at Eugenides. “My guards will see how fond I have grown of my Thief, and gossip. The gossip will carry to Attolian spies, who will report to Relius, Attolia’s master of spies, and he will carry the news to her.”

“Her secretary of the archives,” murmured the magus.

“Hmm?” asked the queen.

“Secretary of the archives, Relius. Master of spies is so—”

“Accurate?”

“Overly direct,” said the magus.

Eddis laughed.

“Attolia has been unaware of Eugenides’s activity?” asked the magus.

“As has Sounis,” said the queen, “until now.”

“And what has happened to change that, if I may ask? I had a most relaxing stay in your lodge, but not an informative one.”

“Yes, I didn’t know you had an interest in botany,” said Eddis.

“I don’t really. I have a friend who does. He isn’t well enough to travel and relies on acquaintances to send him samples and drawings. And how is your war progressing?” he asked, declining to be sidetracked by scholarly inquiry.

Eddis smiled. “Seeing himself betrayed by Attolia, Sounis has been most kind in relieving the strain of Attolia’s embargo on Eddis. We have received several shipments of grain and other necessities in exchange for a promised delivery of cannon, which I regret to say we are going to be unable to deliver.”

“So you turn a two-way war into a three-way one?”

“A war we would lose to a war we might survive.”

“Why not take Sounis as an ally against Attolia and fight a war you might win?” the magus asked.

“Because as an ally Sounis would expect to bring his army across Eddis, and that will never happen while I
reign,” said Eddis with absolute conviction.

“I see,” said the magus. “And for the duration of this war…?” he asked.

“You will be a prisoner in Eddis,” said the queen. “I am sorry. We will try to make you comfortable.”

The magus bowed his head politely.

“The goddess Meridite had a son by a blacksmith. You know Meridite?”

“Yes,” said the magus.

“Good,” said the queen, and began her story.

The goddess Meridite had a son by a blacksmith. It was an unusual union, and some say that she was tricked into it by the other gods, but whatever she thought of the father, she seemed fond of the son. His name was Horreon, and she watched over him as he grew up. The blacksmith had no wife, and so father and son lived alone, and Meridite visited from time to time to see how the boy was growing. He worked by his father’s side, learning his trade from a very early age. He had a gift, no doubt from his mother. Everything he made was the finest of its kind. When he was young, he made horseshoes lighter and stronger than anyone else’s. His blades were sharper; his swords never broke.

His father was a surly man to begin with and grew more so, jealous of his son. Finally Horreon left the blacksmithing trade and became an armorer. His forge he set up deep in the caves of Hephestia’s Sacred
Mountain. He used the heat from its fires to work the metal and chained a monster to his forge to drive the bellows to blow up the flames. The shades traveling to the underworld and those summoned back by sacrifice to provide prophecies were said to stop on their way to speak with him.

Though he was served by the lesser spirits of the mountain, he had no human company, or anyway very little. His armor was said to preserve the wearer from any attack, but it took a brave man to venture into the caves to request his work, and there were not many. Those that chose to venture into the caves had to find a guide, a spirit or a shade, to lead them to Horreon’s forge.

One day, his mother came down to visit him and found him alone and melancholy. He had sent away the lesser spirits and was sitting by his forge, idly tapping his hammer and watching the sparks fly up. She asked him what grieved him, ready to put it right, and he told her he wanted a wife. Surely, she said, he could have any he chose.

But what wife would choose him? he asked. The goddess looked at him, and it was true. He was not attractive, no more than his father had been. He was short, and his arms and shoulders were massive with the strength of his work. His brow was low; no doubt his eyebrows nearly joined as he scowled into his fires. As a child, standing at his father’s side, he’d been
scarred by the sparks that flew from the anvil. Where the wounds had been sooty, the scars were black. His face was pockmarked, as were his hands and his arms. He lived his life in the dark so that his eyes would be able to distinguish to a degree the colors of heated metal. What wife would choose to live with him?

What matter if she chose or not? said the goddess. The wife he chose would have him. She was the goddess Meridite, and she would see his wishes granted.