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.
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.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE SENESCHAL OF EPHRATA, 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.