The Queen of Attolia

“The best spot is just the other side of the ridge, Your Majesty. Shall I show it to you?”

  “Do, please,” said Attolia, and Teleus mounted a horse to show them the way.

  “You trust him near you?” Nahuseresh murmured to the queen when he’d pulled his horse next to hers.

  “So long as you are near me as well, I want him close,” said the queen.

  Nahuseresh nodded. He could see the wisdom in that.

  Teleus led them across the narrow stretch of fields to the woods, past the wooden cannon barrels the Eddisians had abandoned. As she saw them lying among the trees, Attolia’s hands tightened. The narrow trail Teleus found led up the hills to a ridge above the Seperchia River. The ridge was steep, and the horses had to scramble at the last. From the ridge they could see across the Seperchia to the plain on the far side where the armies ordered for battle. Attolia could see the movement between the trees.

  “Your Majesty.”

  It was Teleus. He’d dismounted and was standing by her boot. “There’s a better place to observe if you will ride down the hill and take the trail on the right. There’s a flat spot to picket the horses.”

  “Thank you, Teleus. Why don’t you continue to lead?”

  “My pleasure, Your Majesty.” He took the queen’s horse by the bridle and walked it down the narrow trail to a clearing. The clearing was long and narrow. At the back of it a granite cliff eight or ten feet high rose directly out of the turf, the highest point of the ridge of solid stone that turned the Seperchia River just before it reached the sea and forced it through the softer limestone in the Hephestial Mountains. On the opposite side of the clearing the land sloped steeply down to the river, so steeply that Attolia, sitting on her horse, was able to look over the tops of the trees growing on the slope below and have an uninterrupted view across the river to her army.

  The night before, Nahuseresh had talked about “supporting” her soldiers. Attolia had surmised that he meant to keep his own men behind hers so that the Attolians might take the heaviest losses, exhausting the Eddisians’ resources and leaving Attolia ever more dependent on the Mede for her defense. Before her, she could see the armies drawn up as she had expected, the Attolians spread thinly in an indefensible battle line, the Medes forming their phalanxes behind them.

  Looking down at the field, Attolia thought again that she disliked excessively being out of touch with her generals.

  “I’ll go see about the pavilion for Your Majesty,” said Teleus, backing up as the Mede’s personal guard distributed themselves around the clearing.

  “I wonder he isn’t down on the plain,” said Nahuseresh after he was gone.

  “He’s the captain of my personal guard. He’s supposed to guard my person,” Attolia said.

  “Then I wonder he’s gone off to fetch a pavilion like a steward.”

  “He knows how much I trust you,” said the queen. “I wonder you yourself are not down on the plain.”

  “I am not needed there yet. I can send messages with one of my men, but otherwise I will wait out the morning with you, Your Majesty.”

  And later, when most of her army had been cut down, he would join his own army to direct the attack on the Eddisians.

  Armies move more slowly than men. As Nahuseresh and Attolia sat patiently and watched, the army of Eddis maneuvered out from the defending walls of the pass. Horses dragged cannon, and men marched into place. Finally there was a shuddering along the ranks of Attolian and Mede, and Attolia thought it time to distract Nahuseresh’s attention.

  “The messenger I sent to Eddis, you didn’t recognize him,” Attolia said.

  “Should I have?” the Mede asked, his eyes on the field below.

  “He was Eddis’s minister of war,” Attolia said. “Eugenides’s father.”

  The words took a moment to penetrate Nahuseresh’s concentration. He turned slowly, like a defective clockwork, to look at the queen.

  “You suborned my barons,” she said calmly.

  “What?” he said, shaking his head.

  “You suborned my barons. They were to let the Eddisians through their battle lines to flank my army and destroy it. You, having landed your army at Rhea without my permission, would have been ready to rescue me gloriously. Eddis’s Thief spoiled those plans, but you came about well, and here you are, once again ready to see my army decimated and your Medes heroes.”

  “You have heard some malcontent perpetrating slander…. Have I not been—”

  “Undermining my throne for months? You have, Nahuseresh. You corrupted Stadicos before the First Battle of Thegmis. He changed my orders, and I lost the island to Sounis. I did not like that, Nahuseresh. It was not easy to get it back. You have bribed my barons and blackmailed them and riddled my country with your spies. Eddis distracted me for a day, and you hanged the three barons you couldn’t suborn. One wanted more gold from you; two were actually loyal to me. I don’t have so many loyal barons, Nahuseresh, that I can sit by while you execute them.”

  “Your Majesty—” The Mede began again, but the queen overrode him.

  “To be honest, Nahuseresh, you are almost more trouble than Sounis. Your saving grace is that you have brought me a great deal of gold when I needed it badly.”

  “Gold that must be repaid, Your Majesty,” said Nahuseresh, glad to have a straw to grasp at last.

  “The gold was a gift; you said so yourself.”

  “You are a woman,” Nahuseresh said very gently. “You do not understand the world of kings and emperors, you do not understand the nature of their gifts.”

  “Nahuseresh, if there is one thing a woman understands, it is the nature of gifts. They are bribes when threats will not avail. Your emperor cannot attack this coast unprovoked; the treaties with the greater nations of this Continent prevent him. All he can do is stir up an ugly three-way war and hope to be invited in as an ally, and I did not invite him.” The queen shook her head. “The problem with bribes, Nahuseresh, is that after your money is gone, threats still do not avail.”

  Nahuseresh stared, seeing a queen he hadn’t guessed existed.

  Attolia looked back at him. “I inherited this country when I was almost a child, Nahuseresh. I have held it. I have fought down rebellious barons. I’ve fought Sounis to keep the land on this side of the mountains. I have killed men and watched them hang. I’ve seen them tortured to keep this country safe and mine. How did you think I did this if I was a fool with cow eyes for any handsome man with gold in his purse?”

  Nahuseresh’s eyes narrowed. “You cannot escape the bargain now, Your Majesty.”

  “I made no bargain with you, Mede,” said Attolia flatly.

  “One way or another the gold must be repaid.”

  “So I am to overlook your treachery?”

  “Diplomacy—in my emperor’s name. And yes, you will overlook it if you hope to remain queen when I am king.”

  “I have said before that the next king of Attolia will be my choice, no one else’s.”

  “Then you have only to choose me, and we will both be made happy, will we not? And your barons as well. While you were ‘distracted,’ they seemed very agreeable to my rule.”

  “They are mice, Nahuseresh, hiding in their mouse-holes, hoping that their own familiar cat will come home to drive you away. At least when I hang people from castle walls, it is because they are traitors, not because they drive hard bargains. You seem willing to hang anyone that displeases you. How kind of you to show my barons that if I am a hard ruler to cross, you are a worse one to serve. I must thank you for that as well as for your emperor’s gold. They will be most mousy and well behaved for months.”

  “And Eddis? Does Eddis do you any favors?” Nahuseresh smiled like a shark as he reminded the queen of the armies below them.

  “Look and see, Nahuseresh,” answered Attolia.

  The Mede turned back to the battlefield, where the Attolians were moving, the battle lines slowly splitting and separating.

  Nahuseresh swore. “What
are they doing?” he shouted. He lifted a hand to call a messenger to his side, but Attolia forestalled him.

  “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.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  WHEN THE MEDE 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 Contin
ent 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.