“She’s ugly,” Eugenides objected.
The magus hesitated. “Perhaps not the conventional ideal of physical beauty.”
“She’s short, she’s broad-shouldered, and hawk-faced with a broken nose. I would say no, she is not an ideal.”
“She has a lovely smile,” the magus countered.
“Oh, yes,” Eugenides agreed. “I’ve seen men fall on their knees and beg to walk across hot coals for her after one of those smiles.”
The magus shrugged. “I suppose my king would like one for himself,” he said simply.
Eugenides nodded and stared into the fire. “Agape,” he said.
“Hmm?” asked the magus, puzzled at the abrupt change in topic.
“Agape, the queen’s cousin. She and the queen are much alike.”
“Your cousin, too, isn’t she?”
“Oh, you know how it is, we’re all cousins here,” Eugenides said, still staring at the fire. “The connections are different. Agape is the daughter of the queen’s mother’s sister, and I am related to the queen through my father, who is her father’s brother. Agape’s grandfather was mine’s half brother, I think.” He waved his hand, dismissing genealogies. “We have special priests who keep track of these things and spend months figuring out who can marry whom. Agape’s much more closely related to the queen than to me, and she is very much like her.”
“She is,” the magus agreed.
“Maybe you could get Sounis to marry her?” Eugenides suggested.
“Perhaps.”
“Poor Agape,” Eugenides said wistfully.
“He’s not an entirely irredeemable character,” the magus said, defending his king.
“I’m sure not,” Eugenides said agreeably, “but he’s caused a lot of bloodshed wanting a woman he can’t have.”
“Not a new thing in the history of the world,” the magus said.
“No,” Eugenides responded thoughtfully, “and maybe I should be more sympathetic, but I think I will just go back to bed.”
“Shall I stay?” the magus asked.
“No,” said Eugenides. “I am going to give up on wine as a soporific and take some of Galen’s lethium.” He gave a sketchy good-night wave with his left hand and disappeared into his room.
In the morning he asked for a private audience with the queen and scheduled it with her chamberlain, a highly unusual chain of events. In general, if he wanted to talk to her, he just did, and if he wanted to speak privately, he appeared at her elbow when no one else was near, whenever and wherever that might be. After weeks of silence, barricaded in his library after the magus’s first visit, he’d woken her in the middle of the night in her bedchamber, while her attendants slept on undisturbed nearby, and asked to borrow several men and a chariot in order to destroy Sounis’s navy.
Now Eddis met with him in one of the small interview rooms in a newer part of the palace. It was an official receiving room and had a throne in it raised three steps off the floor. She always felt as if she were perching like a bird rather than sitting like a monarch on this particular throne. She looked down at her Thief.
“You’re requesting my permission to run away and hide?” she asked.
Eugenides winced, but he then nodded. He stood before her dressed in his most formal tunic with his hair newly clipped and his chin carefully shaven. “Yes,” he admitted. “I am requesting your permission to run away and hide.”
“Eugenides, we can’t afford to have you disappear in a fit of despair just now.”
“Do I look sunk in despair?” he asked, holding his arms out from his sides.
“I assume you’re hiding it to maintain pretenses.”
“It’s worse than despair I am hiding,” he said, sounding suddenly very bleak.
“Is there something worse?” she asked.
“Oh, yes.” He shifted his weight and looked around the empty room. He turned away from her and appeared to take a great interest in the interlocking gold squares painted around the walls near the ceiling. “I’m terrified,” he admitted.
Eddis thought he was joking and laughed. He glanced at her and away again, and she stopped.
He crossed his arms over his chest and, still facing away from her, spoke to the wall. “Those men in the hall last night…”
“They were joking.”
“I know they were joking. I’m not laughing,” he snapped, and caught himself. His head dropped forward, and he addressed himself again to the wall. “The only thing I want to do right now is bolt the door to my room and hide under the covers. I’d do it, too, but then I might fall asleep, and I can’t risk that. So much,” he said bitterly, “for the hero of Eddis.”
He brushed his hair off his face, then tucked his hand back under his arm. “I remember when they brought me up the mountain. Parts of the trip. I remember thinking that nothing else, nothing worse, would happen, because I was home. Then I heard Galen telling you that if it was glower in my eyes, I’d be blind.” He was shaking his head. Eddis had to make an effort to stop shaking hers. “And I stand around listening to people laugh at the idea that I might end up deaf and dumb as well.”
He started to pace. “Her following stroke is as good as her attack,” he said. “I’m too frightened to leave my room, much less to be of any use to my queen.”
“You’re not in your room now.”
“No, I’m doing my best not to look like a mountain hare frozen in one spot by terror, but I don’t know how long I can keep it up, and that’s why we didn’t have this discussion at your morning session with half the court looking on.”
He stopped pacing abruptly and turned his back on his queen in order to sit on the dais at her feet. He pulled his knees up and hunched over them. “Bleh,” he said, disgusted with himself.
Looking down at him, Eddis could see that his tunic had grown too small and pulled across his shoulders. She remembered his many comments on her ill-fitting clothing, and she made a note to tell him at a more appropriate moment to get a new overshirt made. He had the money. All the proceeds from the ten hijacked Attolian caravans she had given over to him.
“Eugenides,” she said, picking her words carefully, “you’re letting yourself be upset by talk. Empty threats. She wouldn’t do any of those things.”
“You wouldn’t think so, but she cut out the tongue of that traitor Maleveras and left him in a cage in the courtyard for a week before she had him executed.”
“She’d been queen for less than a year. He’d talked half of her barons into deserting her, while pretending to be an ally, and his sedition nearly dethroned her. By the time she discovered his treachery, she had very little real power and not many options. If she hadn’t done something to deter other warmongers, she would have lost the throne.”
“And that baron who was robbing the treasury. She cut off his hand, too, didn’t she?”
“She had him executed. I would have done the same if I’d found one of my tax collectors funding a revolt out of my own treasury. She had his hand cut off posthumously to display for effect. I don’t think I would have done that, but I’ve never been in that situation.”
Eugenides turned to stare at her over his shoulder. “You are defending her,” he pointed out.
The queen of Eddis hissed in displeasure. “I don’t want to. She’s vicious, she’s barbaric, and I think by this time edging toward insane, but I’m forcing myself to be honest. She has not indulged in atrocities for personal pleasure,” she said firmly. “Or for personal revenge. She has used them as deterrents to defend her throne.”
She picked her words carefully before she went on. “It’s not the way I would like to think I would defend my throne, but in prosecuting this war against her I find myself…not commendable. I wouldn’t have started a war to avenge you, Gen, or even to rescue you. Still, I wonder, what opportunity for diplomacy did I miss, and did I overlook it because I was angry on your behalf?”
Eugenides had lain on his back on the lowest step to the throne, with his l
egs crossed at the ankle and his arms still folded across his chest. The cuff and hook he wore were inlaid with gold to match the gold piping on his collar and the embroidery on the sleeves of his overshirt. It was like him, if he had to have a thing, to have the fanciest of its kind. Eddis thought he looked like a well-dressed funerary ornament. Eugenides turned his head to look at her and lay without speaking for the space of three or four breaths.
“If she doesn’t indulge in torture for personal pleasure, why didn’t she do the sensible thing and hang me?” he asked quietly. It was an unanswerable question. He followed it with another. “If she catches me again, what better deterrent than me could she wish to have at her disposal?”
Eddis hesitated. In the past Attolia had shown that she would stop at nothing to defend her throne. How much of a threat had Eugenides been to Attolia? Not much, Eddis thought, but who measures? She considered carefully before she spoke. “If she ever had you again, she’d kill you immediately. She was a fool to do otherwise, but, Eugenides”—she leaned over to meet his gaze directly—“she won’t have you.”
Eugenides covered his face with his arm. “I tell myself that, and I think I believe it, until I go to sleep. I tell myself that she isn’t—that she wouldn’t do those things. But I am afraid that she would,” he whispered. “And then I wish she’d hanged me. I wish in my god’s name that she’d hanged me, and I hate that Mede.” He laughed, and Eddis winced.
“So,” he said, his voice under control again, “may I have your permission to disappear until I look less like a frightened rabbit? Because I don’t think I can keep up appearances here.”
“How long?” Eddis asked.
“A few days, maybe ten.”
“Ten?”
“Maybe.”
“Take as much time as you need,” Eddis said heavily. “I’ll say I’ve sent you out to the coastal provinces.”
That was better than he’d hoped, but Eugenides didn’t say so. He pulled himself upright and stood to bow to his queen. Then he went away.
He was gone ten days and returned early in the morning of the eleventh. Eddis saw him at the back of the throne room during her morning sessions. He looked tired but relaxed. He watched while she dealt with the business at hand: who should get relief money, the care of the orphans and widows of soldiers, what was to be done with burned-out farms. Attolia and Sounis seemed content for the moment to war against each other, but Eddis had to have her tiny amounts of arable land planted carefully or her people wouldn’t have the food to withstand another winter without trade. Sounis’s troops were still blockaded on Thegmis. He was offering a peace negotiation. Attolia was still rejecting it.
The following week brought the news that Sounis had negotiated the purchase of ships from an anonymous continental power willing to support his war with Attolia. The ships were scheduled to be delivered in time to break the blockade of Thegmis and to support a land invasion before the arrival of the summer windstorms. With one stroke Sounis had doubled the size of his navy and Attolia had lost her opportunity to make peace.
“He knew he had the ships coming when he attacked Thegmis,” said Eddis.
“Almost certainly.”
The minister of war spoke to Eddis’s council. “Attolia is fighting not only Sounis but her barons as well. She can’t command in person the land battle and direct the navy at the same time, and her new-model generals can’t run a war if her barons are going to work against Attolia’s interests. The defeat at Thegmis was entirely due to the interference of the baron Stadicos with Attolia’s orders. Sounis is already organizing to take back the islands that he’s lost. He’ll begin as soon as the new ships for his navy are delivered. If he controls the islands, Attolia will be hard pressed to stop a land invasion.”
“She’s an astute strategist. Are you sure that Sounis will retake the islands, even with superior firepower?” someone asked.
The minister of war shrugged. “Who’s to say? Sounis is not a subtle thinker, but he’s not a fool either. Lately we had hoped that Attolia would take Sounis and be content once he was no longer a threat to her throne, whereas Sounis’s goal has been to expand his hegemony. If he controls Attolia, he may still pursue war with Eddis, attacking us on two fronts. The only relief we could hope for would be the time it would take him to solidify his control over his new territory.
“However, the Mede presence off the coast is the real danger, and it has intensified. It’s doubtful that Sounis could in the near term execute so crushing a victory that he could capture the queen. If the queen flees to the Mede, they will make every effort to restore her to her throne as their puppet. They will have the excuse they need to land in force on this coast, and they will likely overrun Sounis and then Eddis as well. Even if they refrain from a direct attack, our situation will only worsen without an outlet for regular trade. So for us, the very worst possible outcome would be Attolia’s going to the Mede for help.”
The queen asked for comment, and talk went on all morning as every detail of the war was reexamined.
“Your Majesty,” said her Thief at last. He’d never spoken before at a council meeting, and those at the table turned to look at him in surprise.
“Our goal has been to dethrone Attolia without inviting in the Mede. If the instability of her rule were eliminated and Attolia had a government more stable but inimical to the Mede, it could mean an alliance between Eddis and Attolia that would drive back Sounis.”
“Yes,” Eddis agreed.
“I think,” Eugenides said quietly, “that I could eliminate the instability of the Attolian queen.”
“Go on,” said Eddis, and her council listened as Eugenides talked.
“Attolia isn’t in the capital. She is at Ephrata on the coast. There’s no real castle there. It’s a fortified megaron in the old style, which means it’s not as easy for me to move through as her palace is, for example, or the megaron in Sounis’s capital. However, Ephrata is not well defended. Sounis doesn’t yet have a navy to attack her by sea, and she has the lower ridges of the coastal hills as well as the Seperchia between her and the base of the pass from Eddis. Our army would have to break the blockade at the bottom of the pass and cross the river and those hills to reach her. She’s not much worried about an assault, and she keeps only a minimal garrison of her private guard at Ephrata.”
The council looked at him expectantly, holding their collective breath.
“If I could get into Ephrata, I could remove the queen.”
In the past he wouldn’t have needed help, and it would have been a matter for him and the queen to discuss alone. Now he spoke to her entire council and its individual members looked not at him but at their hands, or cast quick glances at one another, all of them remembering a younger Eugenides who’d sworn he’d never be a soldier and wanted nothing to do with the business of killing people.
“We would need a force large enough to seize Ephrata,” Eugenides said.
“How could we seize Ephrata?” one of the men at the table asked. “You just said she has her entire army camped between us and the Seperchia.”
Eugenides explained. As the intricacy of his plan unfolded, it became indisputably clear where he had been for the ten days he’d been away. The queen watched him with her eyes narrowed as he talked about taking a small force down to Attolia and bypassing her army camped at the Seperchia.
“She has border patrols along the base of the mountains.” One of the generals welcome at Eddis’s council meetings spoke up. “How would you get any significant group of soldiers past those without alerting her?”
“She doesn’t patrol the dystopia.”
“For obvious reasons.” The dystopia was the black, rocky ground left behind by the eruptions of the Sacred Mountain. The ground was fertile but too rough to cultivate and too dry. Its only regular water source was the unnavigable Aracthus River, which flowed down from the shoulder of the Sacred Mountain and directly across the dystopia to the fields between it and the banks of the muc
h larger Seperchia River.
“How do you propose to get to the dystopia without being seen and then get across it?” the general asked.
Eugenides looked at his father.
“The Aracthus?” his father asked.
Eugenides nodded without speaking.
“What’s the garrison at Ephrata?” the minister of war asked.
“Fifty men,” Eugenides answered, and waited.
After a pause for thought his father nodded. “It could be done,” he said at last.
Eugenides turned back to the general. “You see,” he argued, “by taking a smaller force, we can avoid the Attolian army. We can seize the megaron without meaning to hold it because once the queen is gone, the megaron is irrelevant.”
“And you’re sure she’s there?”
“I am.”
“And that she would be there when we attacked?”
“That could be determined.”
Before anyone else could speak, the queen cleared her throat. All eyes except Eugenides’s turned to her. He looked at the floor.
“If you would please excuse us,” the queen said very quietly, “I will speak to my Thief.”
Unsure at the cause of her anger, her council hastily collected its papers and disappeared. Eddis looked across the empty table.
“Fifty men,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You counted?”
“As best I could.”
Eddis waved her hand at the empty seats around the table. “They think I sent you. They think you went to Attolia on my orders. I gave you permission to run away and hide, not to go creeping around Attolia’s megaron so that she can catch you again. Are you out of your mind?” she shouted, standing up, scattering the papers piled in front of her, knocking a pen so that it dripped ink in fuzzy black dots onto the tabletop.