“You would not have left Nahuseresh otherwise,” said the king.
I wouldn’t have. I was going to be a great man; I was going to direct an empire. Instead, played for a fool, I had run away from all my dreams, from my future, to this dark room lit by flickering candles and smelling of too many people in an airless place. Speechless, I curled around the terrible hollow feeling in my middle until my head knocked the floor.
“Kamet, she did it so that you could be free.”
I didn’t look up.
“As I knew she would.”
How could he have known such a thing? I knew Laela and could not fathom it.
“Because you told me so much about her.”
Never. I finally looked up. I had never spoken to the king.
“I know you don’t see well, but I thought you would remember my voice.”
I shook my head, shook off his kindness, his concern, his familiarity. He waited.
His familiarity. I squinted at him—much like a blind caggi, I’m sure.
Then I leapt to my feet. Eyes wide open and staring, I surged toward the throne—the guards clutching at me just a moment too late, and the king waving them back. I kept going until I could see his face, see every detail—the quirk of his eyebrow, the twist at the corner of his mouth, the mark on his cheek, where he’d said the Attolian guards had once shot him when he was running away, leaving the scar I remembered so well. I was almost on top of him before I stopped, but he did not recoil, only sat leaning forward so that I could get a good look at the queen of Attolia’s errand boy and sandal polisher.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Do they know?” I asked, gesturing toward all the courtiers behind me.
“Some,” he said seriously. He threw his eyes over the crowd and then looked back at me. “More will know now.”
He smiled.
I remembered him as a boy, small for his age. I found him taller, broader in the shoulder, much older than the intervening years would explain, with a hook where his hand had been—wholly changed, in fact, but for the scar on his face and that smile. Or perhaps, I thought, he has not changed. Perhaps it is just the world that has changed. Perhaps he was only by accident at the edge of this court and had slowly and inevitably drawn all of it into orbit around him.
“Why?” I asked. “Why bring me here?”
“Spite,” said Eugenides frankly. He leaned back and crossed his arms. “I have a great deal of ill will for your former master. And because you are my friend,” he added, glancing up from his boots. “That should have been the first reason, but I will be honest now—it was not.”
Was it the act of a friend to steal my future? To engage Laela in my betrayal? “Kings don’t move mountains as a favor to a friend,” I said aloud.
The king equivocated. “While in my experience, they do, I grant you—it’s not what successful kings are known for. Sometimes a little bit of spite motivates what more kindness cannot.”
The disobedient servant I’d found endearing and the king who’d stolen my future—I struggled to put the two people together in my head. Costis’s stories of a weak and silly king and the confident and cunning manipulator before me—like misaligned papers, I could not shape them into a tidy stack. Like a bad ledger, it wouldn’t tally.
“I’m sorry,” said the king. “I know you wanted your chance at the emperor’s side, even if it meant your death would come with his.”
“We all die,” I snapped.
“We do.” He was suddenly so grieved. I remembered his queen and his heir and wanted to bite my tongue. He said, “I’ve taken something from you that I had no right to take. As Laela did. I hope you will forgive us both.”
He waited, but I was still busy tidying my mismatched impressions, adding his grief to the layering of them in my head. I looked around the room, evaluating the likelihood that this was actually a dream—I was asleep still in the cells under Attolia’s palace. It was a wonder the entire room wasn’t laughing, as I was the butt of the joke now. I looked for Costis but couldn’t pick him out at that distance.
The wine merchant—the memory came to me, now that I knew the truth. I turned back to the king. “You sent the wine merchant?”
He seemed confused. “I did not send a wine merchant,” he said—for whatever that was worth.
“He led me to the docks. He was in Sherguz as well.”
“You would not have gone to the docks on your own?” the king asked. I shook my head.
“A coincidence, then,” said Eugenides.
I shook my head again. I’d been quite sure there was something odd about the merchant, and I’d begun to doubt coincidences.
“I’ve upended your life for spite, Kamet. Will you let me make it up to you?”
He was the king of the Attolians. What was there to say but yes?
“As a token of my good faith,” he said, offering me a coin. I knew, before I took it from his hand, that it would be the very one I’d given him when I thought I was helping him make his way home to a fishing village on the coast. No doubt the whole court would hear the story—and how it ended with this small coin returned to me. All the Attolians would think that he had repaid me for my kindness—because the Attolians were fools. I wondered if he had a brother, if his brother was a scholar, if anything he’d ever said had been true.
“I’ll get you a new copy of Enoclitus’s scroll,” said the king. “Someone with better handwriting can copy it for you this time. We will rebuild your library here in Attolia.”
Then he waved forward an attendant with instructions to take me to my rooms as an honored guest. I was not headed for that street corner yet. I suppose that made Costis right and me wrong, but there was no chance for me to tell him so. Poor Costis. Now that he’d found himself played by his king as well as by me, he probably wanted to see neither of us ever again. Still in a daze, I was led away, leaving the king to continue his audience with others who waited for his attention.
I was walking up one of the wide marble staircases, still in the ceremonial part of the palace, trying to adjust to the idea of being an honored guest with attendants—who were attending me—when I saw the Mede ambassador. Melheret arrived at the top of the stairs and began to descend while I paused, one foot up and one down, and when Melheret bowed, I bowed back, a lopsided, wobbling attempt at courtesy.
“Kamet, what a surprise,” he said. He’d stopped on a higher stair and looked down at me benevolently. “We thought you dead in a rockslide.”
“No, sir,” I said. I knew Melheret. He had been my master’s commanding officer once. He was a mid-level army man who’d grown too old for battle and had been given the position as ambassador to the Attolians because no one else wanted it. After his appointment, he’d come to Nahuseresh’s country estate to ask for advice. For Melheret, it had been a heaven-sent opportunity to advance his career—he need only avoid complete catastrophe and he could return to a much better position at court than he had previously held. He’d had every reason to expect some guidance from Nahuseresh, but my master had looked down his nose at him and been snotty. I think I had probably been snotty as well.
“We almost had you at Sherguz,” Melheret said, conversationally. “You must have been on one of the boats that burned before they could be searched. The Namreen checked the inns afterward, of course, but they were looking for a Setran traveling alone. We didn’t know about the Attolian then.”
I swallowed, remembering the inn. I’d only gotten the Attolian out of the courtyard because the wine merchant from the capital had come into it. We could have been sitting right there in plain sight when the Namreen had come hunting. I hoped the wine merchant, wherever he was, would be blessed by the gods with a booming business, with health and wealth and an old age surrounded by his grandchildren.
Melheret smiled. “You’ve come from an audience with the king, but before that from the prisons. Not how an honored guest is usually received.”
I waited.
“Perhaps because you are l
ess an honored guest and more . . . stolen property. I can restore you safely to your place, Kamet. You have been lost and are now found.” He indicated his burly servants, and he held out his hand to me, offering me back the very future I’d just been grieving over. All I had to do was take his hand and I would belong to the Medes again, protected by all the diplomatic agreements made with the ambassadors of foreign heads of state. Here was the control of my destiny that I had been denied.
The attendants beside me stiffened, and the two palace guards who had been following at a polite distance surged forward, but they were powerless to stop me. I’ll never know if Eugenides would have honored the diplomatic agreements because I didn’t take the ambassador’s hand. I just stood there, still halfway between stairs.
“No?” the ambassador asked.
“No,” I said, and he withdrew his hand.
“Freedom tastes sweeter than you thought.”
I nodded.
“May it always taste so sweet.” The ambassador bowed. “Nahuseresh will miss you, I am sure.”
My heart skipped a beat. I’d been so stunned by the king’s revelation, and by the ambassador’s offer, that this most salient detail had been neglected. Nahuseresh was still alive. Laela was alive. As betrayed as I had felt only moments before, a rush of relief flooded my body—she and the houseboys, the cook and the valet, they were all alive—and almost immediately after the relief, familiar fear. Did my master know that Laela had betrayed him? How long until he learned I was in Attolia?
“His Majesty’s interest is unaccountable,” the ambassador was saying.
It was. A weaker, more foolish king might have stolen me away from my master for spite, but not the man I’d just seen on the throne. A less ruthless man might have done it out of kindness, but Eugenides had dismissed that justification.
“The king does enjoy his little jokes,” I said. There was a subtext to this conversation that I was missing. Whatever it was, I felt very strongly that I didn’t want to talk to the Mede ambassador anymore. I nodded and twitched another moment or so, trying to think of a good reason to excuse myself before I remembered that I didn’t need one. I was a free man. So I bowed again, said, “Good day,” and continued past him up the stairs.
I wondered what it was that Melheret knew, that the king knew, that perhaps all the attendants and guards around me knew, that I did not. I wondered if I would ever find out. I was nobody’s secretary with my ear to the ground. I had no connection to these people. No expectation that they might pass along rumors or information. Melheret was correct about one thing. I certainly wasn’t an honored guest. I didn’t know what I was.
The king’s attendants led me to a set of rooms I recognized immediately. I had lived in them with my master when he was ambassador in Attolia. Indeed, the king did like his little jokes. One of the attendants, Lamion, I think, explained that there would be guards at my door, but only to be sure I was undisturbed. I was free to come and go as I liked. He pointed out the amenities of the rooms, with which I was already familiar, and directed me to the guests’ bathing room with heated water for the bath. I nodded. I knew where the bathroom was, though I’d never used it, just carried my master’s cosmetics to and fro. The dreamlike feeling of the day was only growing more intense. I realized, with just enough time to politely send the attendants out the door, that I was going to burst into tears. As soon as I was alone, I did. I sat there on a velvet-cushioned stool and sobbed like a child. I was a free man—with the favor of the king of Attolia as well as the undying enmity of my former master, and I had lost my only friend.
When I was done, I wanted a bath but was too exhausted to manage it. I crawled onto my master’s bed, wrapped myself in the linen, and fell asleep.
I woke groggy. Recognizing the bed I lay in, I panicked, wondering what could have possessed me to commit such a transgression, before I came fully awake and found the king of Attolia sitting on the footboard. Another figure nearby held a lamp. It was deep twilight, and I had slept through the day.
The man with the lamp used the taper on the nightstand to light the larger lamp on the desk and then went from sconce to sconce until the room was filled with light. He set his lamp down on a side table and came to stand near the bed. He wasn’t an Attolian. He had the clothing as well as the fair hair and skin of men from the north.
“It wasn’t spite or friendship,” I said, glancing sideways at the king.
“It wasn’t just spite or friendship,” he said. “Though I hope you will believe that both played their part. This is Yorn Fordad, ambassador of the Braels, come to have a chat with the two of us.” The Braeling bowed silently to me.
The king said, “The emperor is preparing an army to attack our Little Peninsula.”
I nodded. Everyone knew that.
“Everyone knows that?” prompted the king, as if, like Costis, he could read my thoughts.
I nodded again. “Yes.”
The king looked significantly at the ambassador and then back to me. “Everyone knows except the Braelings and the rest of the Greater Powers of the Continent. Their official position is that the emperor is only rattling his sword and when he’s rattled himself to death, his heir will have so much to occupy him that he will have no interest at all in our three little states.”
This sounded unlikely to me. It was possible that the emperor would squander his resources on an army he didn’t mean to use, but he would have to have some exceptionally good reason to do so, and I couldn’t imagine what it might be.
“Our allies fear to provoke the emperor by arming Attolia. They make excuses, hoping the threat will melt away. They are busy with their own problems and won’t deal with ours until the Mede is on their doorstep. By then, it will be too late for little Attolia, little Eddis, and little Sounis.” The king pinched his finger and thumb together, under no illusions as to their significance in the conflict between the Continent and the Medes. Little countries get eaten up by bigger countries. Or crushed between them.
“However”—the king went on, clapping his hand against his leg—“my queen believes the emperor cannot bring his army against us without ships—many ships. She thinks he preserves the illusion of sword-rattling while he masses his navy—moving in secret to avoid open confrontation and hoping to take the Continent by surprise. If the allied navy came face-to-face with those ships, no one could ignore the threat they represent. We need the allies to see that fleet, Kamet.” The king leaned toward me, searching my face. He asked, “Where are the emperor’s ships?”
This was why I had been brought from the empire, and this was why the Namreen had hunted us so relentlessly. Not because Nahuseresh had been murdered, but because the emperor feared I could tell the king of Attolia where he was hiding his navy. Melheret had made one last effort to retrieve me, to ensure my silence, but he needn’t have bothered. I didn’t know.
The emperor’s fleet was in no correspondence that Nahuseresh had dictated or received. He’d been in disgrace, I wanted to remind the king. We had spent months at his family estate with his razor-tongued wife before he had been allowed back to the capital, and then all of his efforts had been directed at living down his humiliation. That was why I had been taken in by Laela’s story—because Nahuseresh was obsessed with the emperor’s good opinion, and I assumed he had lost it permanently—fatally. If there was one thing I was certain of, it was that Nahuseresh had had no part in the emperor’s plans.
Eugenides let out a long sigh. “Well enough, Kamet. It was worth a cast of the dice.”
But my sleep-sodden brain was finally tallying its account. “Hemsha,” I said aloud, and the king straightened up again.
Hemsha. It had been such a humble request for my proud master to make of the emperor, to be governor of an undeveloped coastal province. I remembered my relief that he hadn’t been overreaching as he often did and my mistaken certainty that he would be successful—overconfidence that had certainly cost me dearly. If Nahuseresh was not dead, if he hadn?
??t sunk so low in the emperor’s graces as to be poisoned by his own brother, why then hadn’t he been made governor of Hemsha?
More certain by the moment, I said to the king, “Hemsha has only a tiny port at Hemet, but there is a protected strait along the coast to the northeast where you could put a hundred ships, two hundred ships. There’s no water there to make it a usable port, but there are good roads to bring supplies and soldiers to Hemet, and they could then be ferried from there to the fleet. Hemet is far south, but they could sail for Cymorene. The emperor has agents there ready to betray the fort.”
“Really?” asked the king, surprised.
“I burned the correspondence from them before we left that fortress at Ephrata. I’m sure they are still there.” After resupplying on Cymorene, the fleet could sail north to anywhere on the Little Peninsula.
The king nodded. “Province of Hemsha,” he said gravely. “Thank you, Kamet.”
He continued to sit cross-legged at the foot of the bed a little longer, assuring me that I would be safe in the palace, even from the Mede ambassador. I remember that he rubbed his ear as he spoke. As he had no right hand, he rubbed it with his left while his hook stayed in his lap. It made him look very young, like a boy imitating a monkey, absolutely unlike the man I had seen on the throne early that morning.
“Melheret is more bark than bite, but we will keep guards at your door just in case,” the king said. “You can trust them. It’s gold that makes treason, and the emperor hasn’t given Melheret any. He can’t afford an assassin to knife you in your sleep, and you needn’t worry about something being slipped into your dinner. I had a little talk with the kitchen staff last night, so happily, neither will I.” He rubbed his ear again. “The ambassador will have to assume that you have brought me the information I needed, but any message he sends back to the emperor will be slowed by the labyrinth of imperial correspondence—it’s very likely Melheret’s warning will be dismissed even if it reaches the inner court. This morning a hundred people heard me say that I stole you away for spite, and the Mede will want to believe it. All that Melheret or I can do is wait to see how this plays out, while you, Kamet, can begin a new life. Contemplate a new name, if you like, to start with.”