Sounis threw up his hands. “Tell him that,” he said.
In the ways of accommodation between nations, many viewpoints were exchanged in the process of moving from an agreement in principle to one locked in words. Sounis had no supporting barons with him, and so he and the magus wore themselves hoarse in one meeting after another. They talked long into the night, so that Sounis could make informed decisions and the magus could carry Sounis’s words back to more meetings the next day. Sounis was ferried from appointment to appointment by one or another of the king of Attolia’s companions. They took it in turn to be available at all times, waiting in his anteroom with a brace of honorary guards, ready to lead him up and down the endless corridors of Attolia’s palace.
In his meetings, Sounis was careful to keep to words he had discussed in advance with the magus, well aware that each one was a link in a chain that would bind him and his country to Attolia. He was determined that his agreements would engender no unforeseen consequences and that the ties between Attolia and Sounis would not be all at the expense of Sounis.
In the evenings, after a day of meetings, he sometimes walked in the queen’s garden, with the king and queen of Attolia and a crowd of others or, more rarely, with the queen of Eddis. She had not yet returned to her own home and had announced that she would remain until negotiations were complete.
The queen’s garden lay behind the palace. Large and walled for privacy, it was a miniature world of alleys and outdoor rooms. There were fountains and reflecting pools with benches beside them and expansive lawns around them, and there were smaller benches discreetly tucked into alcoves between high hedges.
Attolia remained as intimidating as ever, cool and beautiful, with never a word that was unkind or one that was kind, either. She was a wellspring of information that had, as far as Sounis ever found, no end. She spoke freely about the organization of her army, and her creation of a separate branch of it specifically for her artillery. She offered ready information on how she moved her cannons, how she supplied her ships, and how she circumvented the destructive traditions of the patronoi by making the best use of her okloi, offering promotions and land grants for twenty-year veterans and receiving in return their uncorrupted loyalty. It was information too important not to have, and Sounis steeled himself to continue asking questions as often as she would answer.
Eugenides remained as distant as his queen. His mask of formality seemed unassailable, and Sounis continued to search without success for some sign of his friend in the king’s remote expression.
For many reasons, Sounis preferred his quieter walks with Eddis. These were more lightly companioned, with her ladies and one of the king’s attendants following some distance behind. At first the discussions were much the same as those with Attolia. Eddis was a welcome anchor in his unsure navigation of the political seas, and he turned to her for advice to supplement the magus’s. On occasion the magus walked with them, though as the days passed, he excused himself more often than not, leaving Sounis and Eddis alone in each other’s company.
It seemed to Sounis that if he was not in a meeting discussing an interest rate or a trade of goods or if he was not walking in the garden, he was reluctantly standing in the light of a window while being fitted for clothes. He wouldn’t have minded the never-ending measurements if he could have eaten during the process, but the tailors insisted that raising his arms would spoil their work. If the measurements were irksome, the clothes themselves, when they began to arrive, appeared disturbingly expensive.
After the third suit of the day, he called for the magus. Leaning down from where he was posed on a felted wooden block, he said quietly into the magus’s ear, “Do I need this much lace? And how are we paying for it?”
The tailors paused in their work as if under a magician’s spell, their pins poised, their lips pursed. The king’s attendant on duty that day was Ion, standing patiently in a corner. He cleared his throat politely and said, “His Majesty’s wardrobe is a gift from My King.”
Sighing, the tailors returned to their work. “Attolis is very generous,” they murmured.
“Indeed,” said Sounis, thinking that the attention to frippery was the only sign of the old Eugenides he had seen. When the tailors were finished and had stripped away the carefully marked patches of fabric, he stretched and stepped down from the wooden stand.
“Your Majesty?” said the tailor apologetically.
Sounis had been heading back to the clothes that had been borrowed for him to wear until the tailoring was done. “You said that suit was the last?”
The tailor bowed. “We still have the uniforms to fit.”
Sounis sighed as he stepped back up, suspecting that the king of Attolia was torturing him.
“Would I be wrong,” Sounis asked one evening as he walked with Eddis, “to think that I talk to you, you talk to Gen, and Gen talks to Attolia, who talks to the magus, who talks to me?”
Eddis laughed. “Not always. Sometimes, as in this case, someone approaches my Eddisian ambassador Ornon, here in Attolia, and he talks to me, I talk to you, you talk to Attolia, Attolia talks to Gen, and he talks to me.”
“I see you appear in that progression twice.”
“Oh, more than that, because after Gen talks to me, the process reverses. He goes back to Attolia, who talks to you, who go to the magus, who repeats the information to me, who gives it to Ornon, who takes it to whoever started this particular political ball rolling in the first place.” She ended breathless, but smiling.
They had been discussing the Neutral Islands, the scattered island states that were spread off the shores of Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia. Most of the islands in the archipelago changed hands intermittently between Sounis and Attolia, but some had established their independence from either power and maintained it by keeping a scrupulous neutrality.
With the exception of a few lying very near Sounis’s shore, all islands but the Neutral ones were in Attolia’s hands. When Sounis’s barons had risen in rebellion against him, the navy of Sounis had disappeared into division and disarray. The nucleus of Sounis’s navy was owned by the crown, but all the other ships were owned and outfitted by individual barons, who called them back to their home ports, isolating them from one another and from any central command, making them easy pickings for Attolia’s fleet and pirates. What was left of Sounis’s navy was trapped in the harbor of the capital city. Unable to break Attolia’s blockades, Sounis’s islands had surrendered one by one.
Sounis had assumed that he would cede them permanently to Attolia, but Eddis was suggesting that he argue for possession of Lerna and Hanippus. Lerna was the largest of the Ring Archipelago; Hanippus was almost as big, though isolated from the direct sea lanes.
Eddis had explained that the Neutral Islands would not be at ease surrounded entirely by islands under Attolian control. “Attolia does not want drawn-out hostilities off her shore. If she gives up Lerna and Hanippus, it is a means to assure the Neutral Islands of her peaceful intentions,” she said.
“So Hannipus and Lerna controlled by Sounis, which is in turn bound to Attolia, will make them more comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” said Sounis, bemused but willing. “I will direct the magus to raise the issue and discuss it myself with Attolia. I am surrendering myself to Attolis, but all my conversations seem to be with his queen.”
Eddis nodded. “Gen leaves the reins in Attolia’s hands. Which is not what either I or Attolia recommended, but wisely he ignored us both.”
“Wisely?”
Smiling, Eddis said, “He hasn’t the temperament. He gets angry. She only ever gets angry at him.”
Sounis, having seen the Thief of Eddis lose his temper, could see her point. “But it is not what you advised?”
“No,” Eddis replied. She said thoughtfully, “She and I both thought his presence must inevitably weaken Attolia and if he didn’t become a strong king, the court would soon be unstable. He proved me wrong. Either b
ecause he can see what we can’t or just because he demands the world conform to his own desires. I am never sure which it is that he does. In this case, he managed to so terrify his barons that they have assumed a semblance of conformity without undermining Attolia’s power after all. No one will cross her.”
“Understandable,” said Sounis.
Seeing his shudder, Eddis said, “Give her time. She is slow to trust.”
“What need is there for her to trust me?” Sounis asked, surprised. “Am I not the one exposing my neck to the wolf?”
“Oh, I hope you haven’t said that to her,” Eddis said, laughing.
“Indeed, I am not that brave,” Sounis admitted.
Eddis did not say what she was thinking: that Sophos held Gen’s heart in his hand, that he was one of very few people who could destroy the king of Attolia, and that Attolia knew it.
“I did say, though, that I wasn’t surrendering to her and I wasn’t swearing any oaths to her, either.”
“And?” Eddis prompted. “Was she angry?”
“She seemed to be pleased,” said Sounis, “for what that is worth. I find it impossible to know what she is thinking.”
“She probably was pleased, then. She has her reasons, I am sure.”
“You trust her?”
“I’m not swearing any oaths to her,” said Eddis.
Sounis laughed. “I should hope not.”
Eddis changed the subject then, asking, “Do you sleep? You look tired.”
“Not well,” Sounis answered. “I mostly lie in bed tracing the patterns in plasterwork.” Every night he picked apart his decision to surrender his sovereignty to Attolis and then remade it before morning.
Eddis said, “You should think of something else or you will end up like poor Polystrictes, asleep in the middle of the day.”
Sounis smiled. He had never heard of Polystrictes.
“How can you not know Polystrictes?” Eddis asked.
“Poor tutoring,” said Sounis, glancing over his shoulder at the magus far behind them, walking with one of Eddis’s attendants on one arm and one of Attolia’s on the other. “Tell me?”
They had reached a long, narrow alley between two hedges that reached over their heads. Leaving the magus and the attendants to be lost from sight, they turned up it, the shells on the path crunching underfoot. “He did a favor for the god Ocrassus, and Ocrassus repaid him with a goat.”
“Not very considerate of the god.”
“It was a particularly fine goat, a nanny with a silky coat, and best of all, she answered to her name, Eleutheria. As long as you called her by name, she would come when she was called and stay when she was told and give fine milk. And Polystrictes was very pleased.”
“And?”
“The next day Ocrassus brought him another goat. Named Eleuthemia. She was also very fine and answered to her name.”
“And another goat after that?” Sounis asked.
“Yes, Nigella, and Noxe, and Omerga, and Omerxa, which you understand was easy to confuse with Omerga, and—”
“And so on,” said Sounis.
“And so on,” said Eddis. “Hundreds of goats, a new one every day, and poor Polystrictes was forever running around, calling, ‘Nigella! Nogasta! Come down from the roof!’ ‘Poppy! Promiseteus! Pausanius! Stop eating the lettuce at once!’ ‘Zenia, Zeta, and Zara, come to be milked!’ While the goats ran wild and ate through all the flowers in the courtyard and the vegetables in the garden and a great deal of the family’s laundry besides. The god brought a new goat every day, and poor Polystrictes couldn’t say no. One does not refuse the gifts of the god without a certain amount of peril. So Polystrictes stayed up all night, every night, reciting their names over so he wouldn’t forget them. Finally Ocrassus came and found him, surrounded by goats, all of them chewing through the shrubbery and some even chewing the sleeves on Polystrictes’s tunic as he sat at the edge of his fountain fast asleep.”
“And then what happened?” Sounis asked. Eddis had stopped when she realized they had reached the outer limits of the garden. Above them, Attolia’s guard passed on the palace’s outer walls. She looked over a shoulder at the tracks they had made in the long shell-covered path behind them, but Sounis, not yet ready to go back, turned to follow the wall around the garden instead.
“Ocrassus gave him a dog,” Eddis replied. “It was the first dog, and Polystrictes thought it was a wolf and ran to hide. The god had to search for him to ask, ‘Polystrictes, why are you in the well?’ Polystrictes said, ‘It’s a wolf.’ And Ocrassus said, ‘It’s a dog.’
“‘Wolf.’
“‘Dog.’
“‘Wolf.’
“‘Polystrictes,’ said Ocrassus, looking down the well, ‘which one of us is a god?’ And Polystrictes had to bite his tongue and climb out. The god showed him how the dog would follow his commands and keep his goats out of the laundry. So Polystrictes didn’t have to remember all those names anymore. He had to remember only one, the dog’s.”
“Alas,” said Sounis. “My problem is barons, not goats, and I have no dog.”
“True, but staying up all night, reciting over your difficulties, won’t help you any more than it did Polystrictes.” Eddis turned him around, and they started back toward the palace. “We will be missed,” she said. “And you will not want people who think we are deep in a discussion of the rights of the Neutral Islands to learn that we were instead talking about goats.”
“I cannot crush a rebellion with so few men,” Sounis protested.
They had met at last to discuss the army that he would lead back to Sounis. In addition to the kings of Attolia and Sounis and the queens of Attolia and Eddis, there were advisors and ministers and officers of the army. Sounis wanted to say more but was afraid to embarrass himself in front of the men he would be ordering into a war. It seemed a pitifully small number of troops that the king of Attolia was offering, much smaller than Sounis had expected. He looked at the magus to see if he, too, was surprised, but the magus was looking at his hands. Sounis looked at Attolia, and she only stared back. No doubt she had overcome her own rebels with ten men and a penknife.
Eugenides said, “These are the Eddisians who have been exerting a peaceful influence throughout Attolia since I became Attolis. They are Eddis’s best mercenaries, and we will pay Eddis the gold for them. These are the best of our Attolian forces as well. We cannot send any artillery, and you couldn’t use it anyway. It would only slow you down. We are taking it on faith that the Medes will not arrive on our doorstep while you have them with you, and that Baron Erondites won’t rise up inside our dooryard before you return them. We will need them back,” he added.
Eddis watched without speaking. She could see that Sounis was alarmed, but there was little she could say that would help. The numbers were small, and the challenge he faced was enormous.
“It is just as likely that the Medes will arrive on my doorstep,” said Sounis. “What then?”
Attolia explained. “In either case, we have an invasion that the Great Powers of the Continent cannot fail to notice, and we all have to do the best we can. It is most likely that the Medes would land on our shores, rather than sailing around us to land on yours. Moreover, any attack on their part would reveal their plans to conquer Sounis, not ally with it, and strengthen your position as king—if you have convinced your barons that you are king. You cannot risk being seen as the head of an Attolian invasion. We do not have the troops to send in any case, but as a matter of strategy, overwhelming force will make you less king, not more.”
Later Eugenides did not invite Sounis to his rooms so much as summon him there. They were to have a private discussion, or at least a conversation as private as anything could be in the overpopulated palace. Feeling as sullen as a schoolboy, Sounis followed an attendant to the appointment only to find, when he reached the guardroom of the king’s apartments, that the door to the bedchamber was closed. With rising irritation, Sounis waited. The fancy guards looked e
lsewhere, but the attendants watched him with what he thought was concealed amusement. He set his teeth and stared back at each of them in turn. They all found something else to look at, except Ion, who smiled and bowed and asked if the king of Sounis would like some refreshment. Sounis was hungry, but he declined when he saw that the door to Eugenides’s bedchamber was opening.
Two men strode through the open door and across the guardroom. One was Galen, the personal physician of the queen of Eddis. The other, Sounis didn’t recognize but assumed from his green sash that he served the same function for Eugenides. Both walked with the stiff-legged gait of the bitterly offended, and Sounis warily refrained from greeting Galen, though he had met him several times in Eddis.
“Your Majesty?” Hilarion spoke from the doorway, ushering Sounis into the room, where Eugenides waited. The king of Attolia was again seated on the upholstered bench. He nodded to Sounis to take a seat that had been pulled up nearby. His unapproachable expression was just the same, and Sounis decided not to ask what had upset Galen. So long as Gen maintained his impersonal role, Sounis meant to do the same.
Eugenides’s attendants moved in and out of his bedchamber while he and Sounis talked, but Gen ignored them as if they didn’t exist. Taking his cue, Sounis did the same. Hoping for some reassurance that he would be able to subdue his rebel barons, Sounis was disappointed. He and Eugenides talked about the Mede and their history, and the balance of power on the Peninsula. The conversation was stilted and awkward.
Only as the interview was ending did Eugenides say directly, “You must be king. You cannot be anyone’s puppet if we are to have a chance against the Mede.”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Sounis stiffly.