“—are now deliriously happy,” Eddis agreed.
“Gen still looks inept,” observed the magus.
“And Ornon’s assistant is home with a black eye,” Eddis finished. “A success all around, unless you are the former assistant to our Ambassador to Attolia.”
The room was a small one, the paintings on the walls all around it and the delicately carved screen that formed the low ceiling making it seem even smaller. There was no place to sit but the floor and no place to rest the lamp, so Sejanus had been standing for some time when his father arrived.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said. “We should not meet.”
Erondites grunted. “I want a report.”
“I am a success.” Sejanus shrugged; the lamp in his hand moved, and the shadows flickered wildly around the room. The satyrs on the wall seemed to dance and leer. “There is not one attendant who has not disgraced himself and the king. He is ready to purge them all.”
“Not yet,” said Erondites. “I don’t want them dismissed yet. He must take the mistress first, so that she can tell him whom to choose as new attendants.”
“You are less successful than I,” said Sejanus.
The baron glowered. “She’s beautiful, newly widowed, and the stupid ass persists in dancing with her sister.”
“Why not use the sister, then, if she has caught the king’s eye?”
“She reads plays. She embroiders. She is artless, unwed, and useless. Her sister is twice widowed and quite adequately prepared for the task of leading the king by his nose. It has to be her. I told their father to beat them both, and the younger one especially. She won’t dance with the king again. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“I don’t want you dismissed as well. You’re the one attendant who must stay.”
“Depend on it,” said Sejanus. “He won’t let me go.”
“I have heard otherwise.”
“He relies on me. The other attendants don’t realize it, but the king and I are becoming allies and better friends every day. He won’t dismiss me when he throws out the rest.”
“Be sure of it,” the baron warned.
“Oh, I am,” said Sejanus.
After they left, Eugenides shifted a little on the rafters above the carefully carved and pierced wooden ceiling, more screen than a ceiling, in fact. He sat cross-legged in the dark and considered the room below, conveniently out of the way, but not far from the royal apartments. With no furniture in it, too small to be useful for any legitimate purpose, it was guaranteed to be empty. The architect who designed it, and directed the carving of the wooden screen for the false ceiling, had been Eugenides’s many-times-great-grandfather. He’d called it “the conspiracy room.”
Silent as an owl, Eugenides made his way back to his room and his bed. Lying there in the dark, he whispered to himself, “So Sejanus is my dear friend. How strange that I did not know. And poor Heiro is suffering for dancing with me. Sejanus, dear, dear Sejanus, what are you playing at, I wonder?”
The next night, he danced again with the Lady Themis’s little sister, Heiro. “That was beautifully done,” he told her.
“Excuse me, Your Majesty?”
“I mean the way you tried to avoid dancing with me, in a way calculated to make me insist on doing just that. Just this.” He gestured to the dance as they separated.
When they met again, he said, “Do you know, I heard someone describe you as artless?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Your Majesty.”
“Neither did he,” said the king.
“Your Majesty—”
“Was the beating very bad, my dear?”
She stumbled slightly. He took her arm.
“You’re tired. Let me take you to a seat.” The dancers around them parted, and he led her through.
“I can finish the dance with your sister.”
Her grip on his arm tightened.
“Just a single dance, dear,” said the king. “Then I promise I’ll move on. I can’t allow you to be beaten for casting yourself between me and the rather rapacious clutches of your sister. I do wonder why you think I am worth saving.”
“Maybe because I have eyes in my head, Your Majesty,” said Heiro.
Eugenides was briefly taken aback. “Well, I will have to watch my step then, won’t I? And you will have to point out to your father the advantages of having one of his daughters admired by the king, even if it is the wrong one. If it saves you from a beating, you may always call on me.” He bowed over her hand.
He could feel her shaking, and looked over his shoulder to see her father approaching. “He will wonder what you see to admire,” said Heiro.
“That’s easy,” said the King of Attolia. “Tell him I like your earrings.”
“Your Majesty might like to dance with my friend, Lady Eunice. She’s a pretty girl,” Heiro said quickly.
“I like pretty girls. Who else?”
She mentioned a few more names, but fell silent as her father arrived looking thunderous.
“She claims she’s unwell,” said the king with petulance. “She suggests I finish the dance with her sister.”
Her father’s brow cleared. He led her away. Lady Themis and the king returned to the dance.
Two weeks later, Costis was sitting on the steps outside the mess hall, enjoying the sun that slid between the tall, closely packed buildings. It wouldn’t last. The sun moved with infinite patience across the sky, and the shade crept inch by inch across the stairs. It would reach him soon, and he must move with the sun or be content with the chill of the shade. With luck, Aristogiton would arrive before he had to make a decision. Aris would be coming off duty very soon. He and Costis were scheduled for a three-day leave and intended to spend it hunting in the hills a day’s ride from the city.
Costis had his gear packed and had been waiting most of the day. Aris was very busy with his new duties while Costis’s life was suddenly filled with leisure.
Teleus had explained that his position was indeterminate while his future was under consideration. Probably he would be transferred to a border fort in the north, perhaps even at his old rank of squad leader. That bright hope made Costis’s days drag, filled with anxious anticipation. In the meantime, he continued as lieutenant-at-large with light duties filling in watches and supervising the parade marches of boys in the training barracks.
The shade was creeping closer. Costis looked up at the sound of running footsteps, a barracks boy with an urgent message, he supposed, but it was no barracks boy who hurried around a corner and into the narrow court. It was someone from the dog runs, a kennel apprentice by his uniform. He stopped, gasping, in front of Costis.
“My master sent me to ask for help. The hunting dogs have been released into the court. There are bitches in heat, and the dogs are fighting. We can’t get them back to their runs without help. Can you bring guards to help, sir? My master is afraid the king will have the dogs slaughtered and him, too.”
Costis sent him on to the officer of the day in his office, then he fetched the layabouts out of the nearest dining hall and led them off toward the kennels.
“Why hurry?” grumbled the men. “Why spoil a good joke?”
“Because it’s no joke for the Master of Hounds,” Costis said.
“No joke for us, either,” said someone else when they reached the court. They had come through the palace and were on the porch outside the palace doors that led out to the hunting court. From there, steps led down to a barking, snarling chaos of dog. The noise assaulted the ears and overwhelmed the shouts of the men working below. The kennel keepers with sticks and ropes were trying to drive one dog at a time out of the pack and lead it back through the open gate to the dog runs. Already there were palace guards assisting where they could. Some stood on the steps below the portico, catching at the stray dog pushed up the stairs by the melee. A hunting dog stood lower than a man’s waist but higher than his knee, and weighed half what a
grown man did. It was no laughing matter to seize one and keep hold of it without being bitten.
A dog raced up the stairs toward Costis, heading for the open palace doors behind him. Costis and his men shouted and waved the dog back. It shied down the steps again.
“SHUT THAT DOOR!” Costis roared above the din, but had to point to make his meaning clear. Two guards went to work swinging the twelve-foot-high doors to seal off the palace from the hunting court.
Next Costis checked the other exits. There were only four: two large gateways and two small arched doorways. One of the large gates was open, and led back into the kennels and the stables. In normal circumstances, the animals would have been brought through that gate to gather in the court before leaving with the royal hunt. The other gate led through the outer wall of the palace to the hunting road into the royal preserves. It was safely shut, but stairs on either side of it led up to the palace walls. Costis was glad to see guards already blocking the top as well as the bottom of the stairs. With more waving and pointing, Costis sent men to block the entrances into the palace gardens. Shouting at the top of his lungs, he sent men to the stables to fetch pitchforks, rakes, and brooms. There was little hope of dragging the dogs one by one back to their runs before the king arrived. They would have to drive the entire wild, barking mess through to the stable yards and deal with the problem there.
There was no way to know how much time they had, but Costis assumed the king must be scheduled to pass through soon, or the dogs wouldn’t have been released.
Two dogs snapping and snarling at each other threw themselves against his knees, and he almost went down. The Master of Hounds caught him by the elbow and steadied him. Costis explained his plan, and the two men separated to gather the kennel keepers and soldiers into a circle around the dogs. With brooms and rakes they stood shoulder to shoulder and began to force the dogs through the gates and into the yard beyond. More guards had come from the palace to join them. Looking to his left, Costis was surprised to see Aristogiton, sword in hand, prodding the dogs.
“What are you doing here?” he shouted.
“What?”
Slowly the tenor of the barking changed as the dogs moved together. Costis tried again. “I thought you were on duty?”
“I am,” answered Aris.
“Where’s the king?”
“In the garden. He was supposed to meet the Secretary of the Navy, but he canceled. We left him in the garden to come help here,” Aris shouted, and nodded over his shoulder toward the small arched doorways behind them.
The noise had lessened, and they could hear each other without shouting, though they still had to raise their voices.
“The king canceled?”
“No, the secretary.”
If the king hadn’t been scheduled to pass through the hunting court, then why had the dogs been released? Someone had to have known in advance that the secretary was going to cancel his appointment. Costis’s knees understood before his head did. They felt suddenly weak, and his stomach roiled. Costis looked up at the palace wall, where the guards still stood blocking the route to any stray hound, looking down into the courtyard and not into the garden. His hands were shaking.
“Oh my god,” he prayed to Miras. “Oh my god, oh my god.”
“What?” Aris still didn’t understand.
Costis dropped his rake and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where did you leave the king?”
“In an alley, just beyond the naiad fountain and the reflecting pool. What is the matter? I left Legarus at the entrance.”
“And at the other end?”
“There’s a gate. It’s locked. Costis, for god’s sake, it’s locked and it’s not fifteen feet from the guards on the palace wall.”
Costis reached for hope. “Do they know the king is in the garden? Did you send a message up to the wall?”
No, Aris hadn’t.
“Get your men. Give me your sword.” Costis grabbed at the buckle and stripped belt, sheath, and sword from Aris and began to look wildly through the crowded court for Teleus. He had to have come with the guards.
Teleus looked up at his shout. His eyes met Costis’s for a moment, then turned to look at the guards on the wall above him, taking in the situation at a glance. Costis was already running, naked blade in hand and sheath in the other, for the nearest entrance to the garden.
This was not the relatively small queen’s garden. This was the much more expansive palace ground. It had never seemed so large and so full of pointless obstacles—shrubs, fountains, paths that curved in serpentine courses between waist-high banks of flowers that made it impossible to move as fast as he desperately needed to go.
If he choked on a bone and died, I wouldn’t care. It wasn’t true.
Costis prayed as he ran. To Miras, his own god, and to Philia, goddess of mercy, that she would preserve the king from harm. “Oh, Goddess, please let the little bastard be all right,” he prayed. “Oh, please let there be nothing wrong. Let this be a mistake. Let me look like a fool, but keep him safe, ten gold cups on your altar if he is safe.”
The gods above knew that the king could be laid out by a toddler with a toasting fork. What hope had he against an assassin, trained as a sword is sharpened, honed to one purpose, to murder? Costis could only pray that he would not be too late.
Blood on the flowers, blood on the green grass, blood blossoming like a rose in the still waters of a fountain. In his mind Costis saw it all. What would the king think when the assassins came? He would call his Guard to protect him, and there was no one there but Legarus.
Costis’s feet pounded on the path. When it dropped down a set of stairs to run beside a long rectangular reflecting pool, Costis leapt from the top of the steps to the bottom and at the far end of the pool went up more steps in a stride. Behind him he heard someone stumble. There was a grunt, and a splash.
At last he rounded a hedge and came face-to-face with Legarus, who had heard running feet and had been drawn away from the entranceway in the hedge. He had his sword out, and Costis was lucky not to run right onto it.
“GET OUT OF THE WAY!” he roared, and Legarus fell back in confusion.
“Attolia! Attolia!” Costis shouted in warning as he ran beside the hedge. Out of breath, he reached the opening and hurtled through it.
The king sat on a stone bench in an open space at the far end of the alley between tall hedges and flower beds. There was a fountain, with a shallow pool underneath. His legs were stretched out, crossed at the ankle and resting on the tiled lip of the pool. No doubt he had been contemplating reflections of the clouds in the water or watching the fish. Costis could see the amused smile he had prayed for, the lift of one eyebrow. It was for nothing, all the panic, and the running. There was no one there but the king, quietly sitting by a fountain, and Costis, standing in the gap between the hedges with a naked weapon in hand, looking like an idiot frightened by shadows.
The king was safe and, as usual, laughing at Costis. Costis didn’t care. He hunched forward in relief, gasping for breath. His sword still in his hand and his hands on his knees, he smiled back at the king as the assassins stepped into view.
They must have been concealed by the bushes, but to Costis they appeared as if by magic. One minute they were not there, the next they towered over the slight figure on the bench. Costis screamed an inarticulate warning and stumbled forward, but he might just as well have stayed in the hunting court. It was hopeless before he had taken his first step and over before he’d crossed half the length of the long, narrow alley between the high hedges. There was nothing for him to do.
His steps slowed of their own volition as he got close to the fountain. Numb, he stared at the body there and the spreading cloud of blood. It was what he had imagined and yet nothing he could ever have imagined. He looked at the blood on the graveled path and at the body there. There was more blood on the grass. It wasn’t the king’s blood. It wasn’t the king’s body. Costis heard footsteps behind him and turne
d to see Teleus, wet from falling into the reflecting pool. Teleus looked as stunned as he felt. Side by side they stared at the blood pooling at their feet, and side by side they turned to the king, who stood with his hand on his hip and his back toward them.
“Your Majesty?” Costis’s voice came out in a whisper.
The king turned his head. His usually dark skin was so pale the scar on his cheek showed against the lighter skin around it. He was almost green with pallor, as Sejanus had once described him. It wasn’t fear. It was rage.
Softly he said, “I thought that being king meant I didn’t have to kill people myself. I see now that was another misconception.”
Teleus and Costis stood like garden statuary.
“Where are my guards, Teleus?” He was still speaking softly. Three men dead and he wasn’t even breathing hard, Costis noted.
“WHERE ARE MY GUARDS?” the king shouted.
The birds twittered nervously from the bushes around them in the silence that followed.
“Here, Your Majesty.” It was Aristogiton, his men crowded behind him, at the entrance to the alley.
“And where have they been?” In almost a whisper, the king addressed only Teleus.
“They were drawn off by the noise of hounds released in the hunting court, Your Majesty. They went to help get the dogs contained before you returned to the palace.” Teleus was very calm.
“I see,” said Eugenides. He looked at the corpse at his feet. “Have them clean up this mess. That one”—he nodded toward the man farthest away—“may still be alive. You and Costis can take him where someone can ask him who sent them. I am going back to the palace…now that the dogs are safely out of the way…to make my groveling apologies to the queen.”
He stepped toward the path.
“Your Majesty shouldn’t be alone,” said Teleus.
Eugenides turned back. “Your solicitous attention to my health is appreciated, Teleus, but it’s too late for that,” he said.
“Please,” said the captain humbly. “Take Costis and the squad leader.”