Costis lifted his head to drink the last of the wine out of the cup he’d been dangling over the edge of the bed, the rim pinched in his fingers. When the wine was gone, he lowered his arm to set the cup on the floor. “He’s funny,” Costis admitted. “He can make you laugh so hard it hurts.” He yawned suddenly and rubbed his face with the heels of his hands, pushing his fingers into his hair and pulling on the curls until his scalp protested. Gods, he was tired. “But underneath the jokes and the gibes and the playacting, there’s nothing there but…spite. There isn’t anything he won’t laugh at.”
He looked at Aris. “Did you know that already?” he asked.
“I admire him,” said Aris. “I haven’t ever liked him.” Aris shrugged. “That might be sour grapes. I am sure he doesn’t like me.”
“Sour grapes for me, too, then,” said Costis. “You, me, and the king.”
Aris made a face at the company he was in.
Costis smiled. “You do have to admire him. Sejanus, I mean. Not the king, of course. He tells Hilarion, who supports the queen, that any attack on the king, even so much as a mismatched stocking, is a blow for the queen. The next day, he might tell Dionis, whose family has never supported the queen, that to ridicule the king will shame the queen as well, and somehow he is perfectly convincing.”
“They don’t notice that he has no loyalty to either side?”
“They don’t care.” Costis stopped to think. “Or they are afraid of the wrong side of his tongue. He can make anyone who crosses him sorry. Philologos doesn’t like all these pranks. He’s his father’s heir, not some wild younger son, but Sejanus pulls everyone’s strings like a puppet master.”
“Does he pull the king’s strings?”
“The king?” Costis yawned again. “Well, he fights more than the others. He is always trying to balk Sejanus, but I swear half the time he doesn’t realize he’s doing exactly what Sejanus wants. And when he does spike him, it is by accident. Sejanus spent all night setting up some prank in the music room, and the king chose that day to walk in the garden.”
“How angry was Sejanus?”
“Oh, he laughed. He always laughs, even when the joke is on him.”
“What does the king do, when the joke is on him?”
Costis put one hand over his eyes. “First he pretends not to notice, but you can tell how angry he is because his face gives away everything. Then he summons the poor stupid guard Costis Ormentiedes and makes him wish he’d never been born.”
“Poor Costis,” said Aris.
“Poor Costis indeed. Do you know what is most difficult?”
“Tell me,” said Aris.
Costis smiled at his friend’s dry tone. “Remembering that he is the king and that I can’t wring his neck.”
“Maybe he’ll go after Sejanus’s brother and leave you alone.”
“I wish he would,” said Costis fervently.
Sejanus’s brother was Erondites the Younger, called Dite. He was their father’s heir. Where their father was one of the queen’s oldest enemies, Dite was one of her most fervent supporters.
Dite was a poet and musician and widely assumed to be the author of a rude song circulating through the palace and the Guard. Costis had learned it in the mess hall earlier in the evening. The sort of tune that stuck in a man’s head, with a chorus that repeated over and over, it was a humiliating portrayal of the king on his wedding night, set in flawless classic pentameter, and Costis was going to have to be very careful not to hum it by accident in the king’s presence.
“Or anyway, I would wish Dite the worst,” Costis said, “if I didn’t know how happy it would make Sejanus to see his older brother drawn and quartered.”
Sejanus played a careful game, serving the queen but never disavowed by his father. The baron scorned Dite, and spoke of him only in terms of withering contempt, but Dite was still his heir.
Eugenides evidently shared the baron’s contempt for his older son. He made no secret of his dislike for Dite. Nor did Dite bother to conceal his contempt for the king. The king insulted Dite with barbaric directness. Dite’s responses were more subtle, in the Attolian fashion, and no less cutting. The song was only the most recent example.
“I have heard that the king taunts him almost as much as he baits you.”
“He must think it’s safe. The Baron Erondites isn’t going to complain on Dite’s behalf.”
The next morning, the king was almost crisp in his practice moves, but clearly many miles away in his thoughts. Costis wondered if he was thinking of Dite. Someone had been whistling the tune to “The King’s Wedding Night” in the training yard that morning. The delicate unmistakable notes had trickled into silence as the king arrived. He must have heard them, but he’d made no sign. Costis sighed in contempt, and the king’s wooden sword skipped over the top of Costis’s guard and knocked him hard in the temple.
Costis backpedaled automatically in a defensive crouch in case of further attack, but the king had lowered his sword and was standing still, looking exasperated.
“Ice!” he shouted in the direction of the boys watching from along the wall, and one of them scampered away.
Costis’s head was ringing and one half of the world looked oddly bright and dark at the same time. He had a hand cupping the pain, but still held the practice sword in the other. The king gently tugged it away. Costis put both hands over his face. It hurt.
“I’m sorry,” said the king.
“My fault,” Costis gasped politely.
There was a crowd forming around them. “Let me see it.”
Costis lowered his hand and the king reached up to turn his head. “Can you see out of that eye?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“You’re sure? Cover the other eye.”
Costis did as he was told. The world still looked odd. The figures around him were limned with darkness, but clear.
“It was the flat.” Teleus spoke from somewhere out of Costis’s line of sight.
The king sighed. “It was the edge,” he said. “Gods’ love, Costis, served by a swing in prime. How embarrassing for both of us.”
It was embarrassing. Hitting your opponent in the face while sparring wasn’t supposed to happen. Hitting him with the edge of the wooden sword instead of the flat was even worse. But being hit by a swinging stroke in prime by an inept one-handed opponent was the depths of humiliation. Costis sighed.
“My fault, Your Majesty.”
“Yes, it was,” the king agreed affably. Costis looked up sharply and found the king smiling pleasantly for a change. “My fault, too,” he said apologetically. “I lost my temper.”
When the boy came back with ice from the kitchens wrapped in a cloth, Costis put it against his face.
“Go lie down,” said the king. “Teleus can take you off the duty schedule today.”
“I’ll be fine, Your Majesty.”
“Of course you will. Enjoy your day off.”
Costis would have protested again, but his face hurt, and the idea of a day off was a temptation.
“That’s better,” said the king. “Keep up that obedient attitude, Lieutenant, and you could be Captain of the Guard someday. It’s true, the queen would never have you, but we could both be assassinated, and you could be captain to my heir. Don’t give up hope just because chances are slim.”
“For the assassination or the heir, Your Majesty?” asked Costis.
There was silence.
Costis looked up, hearing too late what he’d said and realizing to whom he had said it.
The king was openmouthed with surprise. So were a number of people nearby.
Costis lifted his other hand to his eyes, and didn’t realize that the laughter he heard was coming from the king.
“Costis, you’re picking up bad habits from my attendants. You aren’t even half cocked on unwatered wine as an excuse. Shall we blame it on the pain in your head?”
“Please, Your Majesty. I am sorry if—”
 
; “Not at all,” said the king, “not at all.” He lifted the ice away from Costis’s face to check the bruising one more time. “But why would I worry at all about assassination when I have such a stout Guard to defend me?”
He patted Costis gently on the shoulder and left.
In spite of its poor beginning, Costis did enjoy his day off. Teleus made him lie down in his room for most of the morning, until they were both sure the blow hadn’t affected his eyesight. By that time, Costis was starving and looking forward to a leisurely midday meal. He hadn’t put his bottom on a bench to eat at midday since he had begun serving with the king.
He thought he would eat alone, but there was a crowd still in the mess, and they waved him to join them. He swung a leg over the bench and sat down to find himself surrounded by amused faces.
“A swing in prime?” someone said.
He tried to brazen it out. “I had to let him hit me sometime.”
In silence they weighed this. Then they laughed in his face.
That evening, as usual since the wedding, the king and queen dined with their court. Ornon, the Ambassador from Eddis, was there as a matter of diplomatic etiquette. He was not a happy man. After dinner, the tables would be cleared away and there would be dancing. The queen and king would dance first, then the queen would retire to her throne, and the king would politely circulate through the room, returning to sit with her from time to time. Without fail, Ornon could predict that the king would dance with the wrong people, the wallflowers, the younger daughters of weak barons, nieces and unmarried older women of no importance. He would pass over the older daughters presented to him and the women of the powerful families with whom he was supposed to be forming alliances. It wasn’t through ignorance that he erred. Ornon had told him often which women to dance with, but the king claimed he couldn’t remember. Ornon thought it more likely that the king had reached his limit and refused to force himself through one more politically motivated performance.
Not looking forward to the rest of his evening, Ornon picked at his dinner and wondered why he had ever thought it would be amusing to watch the Thief of Eddis suffer. That he was suffering was indisputable. In the beginning the young king had answered the subtle and not-so-subtle Attolian insults and condescensions with private jokes of his own. Because the Attolians considered only themselves capable of subtlety, they missed his ripostes entirely or took his more cutting comments as accidents. Ornon had bitten his tongue on more than one occasion. He was willing to admit, if only to himself, that glaring at the king on these occasions had been a mistake. Not only did it further incite Eugenides, but it had convinced the Attolians that the Ambassador for Eddis at the court of Attolia had little respect for the king, which only contributed to their contempt.
The Attolians were mistaken. Ornon had the greatest respect for the Thief of Eddis, much the way he respected the business edge of a sword. He wondered how the Attolians thought Eugenides had managed to become king if he was the idiot they assumed him to be. Perhaps because they had never seen him as the Thief, with his head thrown back and a glint in his eye that made the hair on the back of a man’s neck rise up. The Attolians had only seen this new and uncomfortable king. Ornon himself wondered what had become of the Thief. Ornon had seen no sign of that character in Eugenides since the wedding.
That, too, might have been his fault. He had warned Eugenides that he would have to keep his temper under control and his tongue between his teeth. He knew how much Eugenides would hate playing this role, and he’d looked forward to seeing Eugenides’s cockiness stifled and his sharp tongue checked.
Ornon hadn’t meant for the king to be seen swallowing one insult after another as if he had no spine at all. As a ten-year-old boy, the Thief of Eddis could stop a grown man in his tracks with a single look. Where had that look gone? It worried Ornon that Eugenides’s role as Thief might have been an essential aspect of his confidence and strength of character. Perhaps both were gone, now that he had left Eddis for good. If so, it boded poorly for the country of Attolia.
The Attolians only thought that they wanted a weak king. A weak king meant uncertainty. If the king didn’t wield the power in the country, all kinds of other people would fight to wield it for him. They would fight to gain power and fight to keep it. Some of the fighting would be public, with rebellions and civil wars; more of the fighting would be secret, with poisonings and political murders. Unless the queen continued to hold power, it would be an ugly future for her nation.
Ornon looked at the queen. Perhaps she would continue to rule as sovereign. No one would have anticipated her power when she had first taken the throne. She might still hold the throne alone, but Ornon thought she had reached the end of her resources. She had held her fractious barons and forced them to bow to her authority, but the Mede Empire wanted this little country and the countries of Eddis and Sounis as well. Attolia couldn’t keep her barons in check and fight off the Mede Empire at the same time. She had driven the Mede off once, embarrassing their ambassador. That embarrassment would weaken the ambassador, Nahuseresh, but it was only a matter of time before he and his brother, the next emperor, returned to attack this coast of the Middle Sea. No one who had any foresight doubted that the Mede would eventually return.
When they did, the state of Attolia would have to be united in opposing them. The queen could command her barons, but not unite them. There was too much bloody history between her and too many of her barons. For the same reason, no one of the barons could have become king. They needed a neutral person to take the throne. Eugenides.
Ornon shook his head. Not all plans work out. This one may have been a failure. Eugenides had stopped trying to respond to the Attolian insults. He allowed himself to be heckled and badgered from place to place. He hated being in the public eye, and Ornon knew it. He’d expected a great deal of pleasure in watching Eugenides, with whom he shared a long and complicated history. What Ornon hadn’t expected was this feeling of floating downstream with no one at the tiller in a boat headed for a waterfall.
He looked at the king. Eugenides was wearing the same coat to dinner as he had the night before. More worrisome, he’d smacked a guard in the head during sparring that morning. The Attolians assumed it was an accident, but Ornon knew better. Something had made Eugenides lose his temper, and that was the greatest danger of a weak king. Weak kings who lost their tempers were notoriously destructive. Eugenides had matured lately, but he’d been a hothead for many more years before that.
There was a lull in conversation, and in the quiet, someone from a side table addressed the king. “Your Majesty,” he asked innocently, “is it true that your cousins once held you down in a water cache?”
Ornon, in the act of putting down his wine cup, paused.
“Is it also true that they wouldn’t let you out until you agreed to repeat insults about your own family?”
The man speaking was across the hall from Ornon, but his voice carried. He was one of the younger men, with his hair long and curled, his clothes fashionable. He was one of Dite’s set, Ornon thought. Dite and his younger brother Sejanus both seemed to be particular banes of the king’s existence. Eugenides bridled any time Dite was near. Given that the two Erondites brothers hated each other, one would think that the king would get along with at least one of them, but he didn’t.
Eugenides, who had been pushing his food around on his plate, finally raised his eyes and Ornon’s wine cup hit the table with a crack and a splash.
Hastily righting the cup, Ornon cursed himself for even thinking about Eugenides’s past, as if his thoughts had stirred Eugenides’s more malevolent aspect to the surface. In this mood Eugenides was unlikely to yield to any hints or warnings delivered the length of the table by Ornon. He wouldn’t even look at Ornon. Short of throwing a dinner roll at him, there was no way to get his attention.
The dandified Attolian who had spoken, a patron, but not a baron by any means, glanced at the queen to see if she approved, but she was loo
king the other way. The king shrugged his shoulders slightly and said, “I could send you to ask them.”
The man laughed. His laughter was edged with contempt. “It would be a long trip, Your Majesty. I would so much rather hear the answer from you.”
“Oh, the trip would be quicker than you think,” said the king, pleasantly. “Most of my male cousins are dead.”
The silence that had begun at the head table had spread to the edges of the hall. The Attolian’s smile grew uncertain.
The king didn’t smile back. Those who understood shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
The late war between Eddis and Attolia had cost Eddis dearly. She had suffered and lost on a greater scale than the larger, richer nation of Attolia, but at the end of the war, the Thief of Eddis had become the king of Attolia. And whether Eugenides of Eddis could send an Attolian courtier to his death to carry a question to his cousins in hell was a question that courtier was suddenly not interested in exploring. He wished, with intensity that surprised him, that he hadn’t listened when Dite had suggested this little joke. The young man looked again to his queen, this time for rescue; she was still looking the other way.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, if I offended,” he murmured to the tablecloth.
The king said nothing. He met Ornon’s worried look from across the tables and returned it with a widening smile that Ornon knew well. Eugenides was angry and pleased to be so. Leisurely, he reached for his wineglass and drained the little wine that was in it.
Unable to think where else to look, Ornon looked to the queen. His entreaty must have been plain because she smiled with a hint of amusement, and turned to Eugenides. As he contemplated his empty cup, she lifted hers.
“Take mine,” she said.
People sitting nearby recoiled. Eugenides choked on the wine still in his mouth. There was no one in the room unaware that Attolia had used poison hidden in her own wineglass to rid herself of the first husband she had been forced to marry.