Read The Queen of Attolia Online

Authors: Megan Whalen Turner

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The Queen of Attolia (10 page)

BOOK: The Queen of Attolia
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“I chose,” said Hespira.

“See,” said Meridite.

“She ate nothing in your temple, Mother,” said Horreon. “What did she drink?”

Meridite flushed as only a goddess can.

“Nothing,” said Hespira, tugging at Horreon’s hand until he turned to look at her. “Nothing,” she assured him. “I tipped it into the basket I carried.”

“Oh,” sniped Meridite, “you are clever.” But Horreon only stood blinking like an owl in sunlight.

“I chose,” Hespira said again, and Horreon believed her. So Hespira took leave of her mother and returned with him to the caves of the Sacred Mountain, and the vines of Hespira’s mother grew over Meridite’s temple. When Hespira left the mountain to visit her mother, as she did from time to time, the vines were dormant, but otherwise they grew and grew until the mortar was all picked to dust and the temple fell in on itself and nothing was left but a pile of stones covered in green leaves and red flowers.

As for Hespira and Horreon, they were mortals, but who knows how time passes at the skirt of Hephestia’s Sacred Mountain? Many believe they live still, and miners claim to hear her voice, singing to him behind the sounds of their picks.

 

The magus was quiet when the story was done. He looked at Eddis with new admiration. She sat cross-
legged with the open packages of food around her, quite comfortable but then a little embarrassed by his regard.

“And Hespira’s mother?” the magus asked finally. “Did she miss her daughter?”

“Oh, she grew used to the idea,” said Eddis. “Mothers must.”

“Alternatively, she lost her mind and wandered the caves of the mountain, endlessly calling for her daughter, and
that’s
what the miners hear,” said Eugenides without opening his eyes.

“There are a number of different ways to tell the story,” Eddis admitted.

“I didn’t realize that so much of the teller could be invested in the stories,” the magus said. He was used to the dry records of scholarship without the voice of the storyteller shaping and changing the words to suit an audience and a particular view of the world. He’d heard Eugenides tell his stories, but hadn’t realized the Thief’s interpretations were more than a personal aberration.

“Go on,” said Eugenides with a smile, his eyes still closed. “Tell my queen she’s debasing the old myths created by superior storytellers centuries ago.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” said the magus, shaking his head.

“Surely they tell stories like these everywhere?” the queen asked. “You must have heard them from your nurse when you were a boy.”

The magus shook his head. Eugenides nudged the queen. He knew that the magus had been raised by
strangers when his family had died of the plague. He had been apprenticed very young, at his own request, to a scholar in the city, and when his scholarly training had not at first proven lucrative enough to support him, he had taken to soldiering. There had likely not been time for stories in his youth.

After a pause the queen asked, “How will you occupy yourself, Magus, during your stay?”

“Perhaps I will collect more stories,” the magus answered with a smile.

“What about your history of the Invasion?” Eugenides asked.

“As most of it remains in Sounis, my work on it will necessarily be curtailed,” said the magus, frowning at him.

“I could fetch it for you,” Eugenides offered.

“You will not!” The magus and the queen spoke together.

Eugenides smiled again, pleased to have gotten a rise out of both of them.

“Better I should recopy it from scratch,” said the magus.

“You may have the library to work in,” said the queen graciously.

Eugenides opened his eyes at last and started to sit up. “What? In my library? Have him underfoot every day?”

“My library,” the queen reminded her Thief.

“You’ve only yourself to blame,” the magus pointed out, smiling at the way the tables had turned.

“Agh,” said Eugenides, lying back down and covering his face with his arm.

Eddis smiled, relieved that his bad temper had passed for the time being.

 

“Your Majesty?” The secretary of the archives waited in the doorway for Attolia to recognize him.

She was being disturbed at a late supper she was enjoying by herself, having been too busy to eat during the day. The Mede ambassador had tried to join her, but she’d soothed his feathers and sent him away, pleading an indisposition that would allow her only clear soup and bread. “And poor food makes for poor company, Nahuseresh,” she’d warned, only half joking, and he had politely excused himself. He liked meat with his meals, and Attolia knew it. She had just dipped a little bread into her soup when Relius knocked and entered.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The king’s magus of Sounis. He’s been located.”

“And?”

“He’s in Eddis, Your Majesty. He was evidently in a hunting lodge in the coastal province.”

She waited. Only Sounis would be surprised to hear of his move to the capital. She didn’t think Relius would have interrupted her meal for a small bit of unsurprising news.

“The queen of Eddis collected him personally,” Relius
said. “She and her Thief. They evidently picnicked on the way back. They are reported to be…close.” It was the mildest term to describe the gossip that was current in the Eddisian court. Probably the affair was one of long standing and his spies had been unaware of it. If the queen of Eddis and her Thief had been pretending to be at odds with each other, it could only have been to conceal his efforts on her behalf: the destruction of Sounis’s navy and the removal of his magus.

“Get out,” the queen ordered abruptly.

The servants and the secretary waited outside the closed doors of the private dining room, listening to the sounds of china shattering as the dinner dishes were swept off the table and onto the floor, followed by nearby amphoras and one of the heavy carved dining chairs as the usually cold-blooded queen picked it off the ground and threw it. The silverware from the table rang for a few moments after bouncing on the tiles. “When it was quiet, the servants knocked and entered, careful not to creep in. The queen did not appreciate creeping. Attolia was once again in her chair, having righted it herself. Her hands were in her lap, and her face was impassive. She was thinking. As the servants righted the dining table and cleared away the mess, she tried to assess the danger that Eugenides had become.

 

There was a new magus in Sounis to carry the news to the king. He didn’t think his tenure in the position
would be lasting, and he sorely hoped to leave the post with his neck intact.

“He was working for Eddis, then,” the king said.

The new magus hesitated for a moment, weighing his dedication to truth against his desire not to irritate the already testy king. He was a scholar dragged into this new position by the king’s command. He was not a courtier. Against his better judgment, he chose truth.

“I believe not, Your Majesty,” he said reluctantly.

“Not working for Eddis? Then what the hell is he doing there? Vacationing?”

“I believe he is not there entirely of his own volition, Your Majesty.”

“What’s that mean?” the king asked impatiently.

“The apprentice that reported meeting an Attolian outside the magus’s rooms, I think he was mistaken.”

“That’s obvious enough or my magus would be in Attolia, wouldn’t he?” the king snapped.

The new magus pressed on. “He was deliberately misled, Your Majesty. I think it was an Eddisian who intended to be taken as an Attolian and that he gave that apprentice gold to betray my predecessor for the purpose of misdirection.”

“If you can’t say that more clearly, I can find someone else who can,” the king warned.

The new magus struggled on. “The apprentice assumed that the Attolians had used the magus for their purposes and finished with him, that they wanted
the magus betrayed and eliminated. On the contrary, I think my predecessor was quite innocent. The Thief of Eddis himself gave the apprentice the gold and did so because only if my predecessor was afraid for his life could he be induced to flee to Eddis.”

“Eugenides? In the megaron?” Sounis had been angry enough when his magus’s apprentice had come to tell him that the magus allowed Attolian spies to wander through his hallways. That Eugenides had been in the palace was chilling. “What the hell was he doing, then?” the king snarled.

“Well, stealing your magus, sir.”

The king sat blinking in his chair. Then he jumped to his feet, shouting for an officer of his guard.

T
HE MORNING AFTER HE AND
the queen returned from their journey across Eddis to collect the magus, Eugenides rose early, his body aching. He rode poorly with one hand, though no worse than he had ridden with two. The queen had been content to go at a walk. People had come out on the streets of the city and down from their farms to stand by the road and watch them pass. They hadn’t cheered their queen. They weren’t a cheering population, but they’d smiled, and waved, pleased as much by the sight of Eugenides as of Eddis. Eugenides had wished for the ground to open and swallow him. Thinking of the stares, he shuddered. When his bare feet touched the cold floor, he shuddered again. The mornings were brisk in the mountains. He muttered curses under his breath as he rummaged with his hand through the neatly folded shirts in his wardrobe. His father’s valet tidied things whenever Eugenides turned his back, and in the days he’d been
away in Sounis a number of his rattier belongings had disappeared entirely.

“Oh, how inconspicuous I will be when next I am in Attolia,” he said out loud, “dressed in Eddisian formalwear with gold frogs on the front.” He cursed again when he couldn’t find his sword without moving every last thing off the shelf across the bottom of the wardrobe. He left what he’d moved in a pile on the floor. It made the room seem more like his own.

“I should just go back to sleep,” he grumbled, but he dragged out the sword and the sheath as well as the belt and tossed them onto his unmade bed, leaving oil stains on the covers. Someone had made sure the sword wouldn’t rust while he wasn’t using it. He opened the curtains to his room and complained—to himself; there wasn’t anyone else to listen—that it was still dark outside, but he couldn’t ignore the sunshine glowing on the peaks of the mountains across the valley. Only when he sat at his desk and reached for the hook and the metal and leather cup that fitted over the stump of his right wrist was he quiet. He sat for a moment, holding it in his hand before he put it back, and looked for the cotton sleeve he put over his arm before the prosthetic.

He found the sleeve, but couldn’t find the small clasp that clipped the fabric to itself and kept the sleeve fitting snugly. He remembered that he’d dropped it undressing the night before and hadn’t heard it hit the floor. It was lost therefore in the pattern of the wool
carpet in front of the fire and would probably take half an hour to find. Sighing, he pulled open a drawer in the desk and ran his fingers through the clutter inside until he found a substitute. He pinned on the sleeve and carefully smoothed the wrinkles from it before he gritted his teeth and pushed his arm into the leather interior of the base of the hook. It was a tight fit, in order to give him some ability to catch and pull things. If he wore it too long, the skin of his arm was white and bloodless when the hook came off, and though he’d grown calluses where it pinched, he often had blisters.

More bothersome were the phantom pains he still had in a hand that was no longer there. He woke sometimes in the night to an ache in his right palm where he’d injured it trying to escape Attolia. The injury had never had a chance to heal. Eugenides expected the pain of it would plague him until he was dead. He didn’t like to think about the missing hand, but he sometimes caught himself reaching with his left hand to rub his right when it felt sore.

Grumbling again, he pushed his stocking feet into boots that he’d had made when he found his old boots had gotten too small over the previous winter, hung his sword belt and sword over his shoulder, and took himself down to the armorer’s courtyard, where trainees and soldiers alike were stretching their muscles and checking their weapons before beginning their exercises. The armorer’s forge was open on two sides to the courtyard,
and Eugenides went there to drop his sword on a bench.

The armorer nodded. “You’ll need a new one,” he said. “Balance won’t be right in that.” The courtyard had fallen silent.

“Do you have a practice sword I could use?” Eugenides asked, his back to the silence.

The armorer nodded and pulled one down from the racks on the wall.

As Eugenides took the sword, someone stepped into the shed behind him, and he turned to see his father.

Eugenides nodded a greeting. His father waved him out onto the training ground. As they walked together, Eugenides noticed his father’s stare.

“Do you think she’ll not notice?” his father finally asked.

“Notice what?” said Eugenides innocently.

“Her missing fibula pin with the rubies and gold beads pinning up your sleeve.”

“Garnets and gold beads.”

“The man said they were rubies.”

“They say there’s no hope for liars and fools in this world.”

“And where does that leave you?” his father asked pointedly.

Eugenides laughed. “In possession of the queen’s garnet fibula pin, and serve her right. I told her not to wear it with that orange scarf from Ebla. Is it always so quiet down here?” he asked.

Busy noises filled the open court, and the grim smile of the minister of war passed almost too quickly to be seen.

“You’ll start with the basic exercises.”

“If you say so,” Eugenides said, radiating reluctance.

“I do,” said his father.

Much later, covered in sweat, Eugenides was cursing comfortably. The stiffness of the horseback ride had been replaced by more current aches and pains. “I’d forgotten how much I hated this,” he said.

His father replied, “If you wouldn’t overwork yourself the first day, you might be less sore.”

Eugenides looked up at the sky, where the sun was clearing the top of the palace’s high wall. “It’s late,” he said, surprised. The courtyard around them was empty. Even the armorer had banked his fire and disappeared. “No wonder I want my breakfast.”

The minister of war shook his head. He’d known from the first that his youngest son, for all his complaints, had the concentration and the patience to be a great swordsman. They were the same virtues Eugenides’s grandfather had admired in him. The minister of war still regretted, privately, that his son hadn’t been willing to be a soldier and had to remind himself that Eugenides might still have lost his hand. Neither profession was a safe one.

When the queen met with her council in the map room, Eugenides attended. There were surprised looks from the members of the council, most of whom were unaware that the Thief’s reclusion had been a sham. As
it was no longer possible to pretend that he was not at her service, his queen had asked him to hear the advice of her counselors for himself, rather than repeated secondhand. His official duties, however, were nebulous. He was not a minister and did not sit at the table. He settled into a seat against the wall.

By leaning forward slightly and looking between two of the men seated at the table, Eddis could watch him. Halfway through the meeting, he leaned his chair back against the map painted on the wall behind him and closed his eyes.

The maps depicted Sounis and the islands off the coast. Eddis and Attolia were represented, as well as more distant countries. The farther the countries from Eddis, the less accurate the maps. They had been painted more than a hundred years earlier and were more decorative than useful. The more useful maps were painstakingly inked on large sheets of vellum and laid out on various tables around the room.

The queen rubbed her temples and summarized the reports before her. “The cannon will not be delivered to Sounis. He has heard about the magus and knows that it was not Attolia that sabotaged his navy. His soldiers tried to seize the last delivery of grain and supplies just inside the pass. They couldn’t recover the wagons, so they ran them into the river there. I am sorry we couldn’t get those supplies up the mountain, but we have the other shipments, and we will keep the cannon.”

She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair and went on. “Sounis is going to empty his treasury to buy ships. Without our cannon, I don’t know how he will arm them except to look for an ally who will provide both ships and firepower. We can hope he won’t find one.

“Attolia has taken every advantange of her naval superiority over Sounis. I am sure you have all heard the rumors that she has retaken Chios and Sera. She’s taken Thicos as well. We could hope that this would keep her happy, but there’s no sign that she’s moving her army away from the base of the pass. The peace emissary we sent was rebuffed. There will be no trade with Attolia or with Sounis, and we can expect a hard winter.

“The late-summer windstorms will be here soon. After that, with the navies in harbors, I think we’ll need to be prepared to defend ourselves on all fronts until the winter snows close the pass.”

“The neutral islands?” someone in the council asked. “Will Attolia seize those as well?”

“It depends on how well her naval battles go and how strong she’s feeling. A neutral territory is an asset to both sides if they are evenly divided; it’s a safe harbor they don’t actually have to defend. If Attolia continues to have the upper hand, she may seize the neutrals. They’ve been warned not to resist, and we’ll hope for the best.”

“And the pirates?” another counselor asked.

“Neither side has the resources right now to patrol the sea lanes. Piracy is continuing to grow at a rate that
I am sure surprises no one here.” There were a few chuckles from around the table. They weren’t surprised.

One by one, the ministers presented their reports on the distribution of the grain, the consumption of resources, the disposition of the armed forces, and the other vital statistics of her nation. When the meeting was over, they stood, bowed courteously, and left their queen to consider the information.

Eugenides remained, his chair still tipped back and his eyes still closed. Eddis sat watching him. His eyebrows were drawn together, and there was a sharp crease between them, which meant that his arm probably hurt him. He never mentioned any discomfort and snapped if anyone asked him about it. Otherwise he had grown very polite and very withdrawn. He rarely began conversation on his own, and people hesitated to speak to him when the crease in his brow deepened to a scowl, betraying the pain his arm caused him on bad days.

Eddis wasn’t sure that Eugenides still dedicated offerings to his god. Certainly no one complained to her anymore of missing earrings or other baubles. Eddis had noticed her fibula pin reappearing on Eugenides’s sleeve, but that had disappeared before he left for Attolia the final time. Eddis had heard several people, out of the Thief’s hearing, lamenting the loss of his acerbic comments on the court but found that she missed his grin more. He still smiled from time to time, his smiles sweeter for their infrequency, but he no longer grinned.

She sighed. “Attolia has an excellent advisor,” she said.

Eugenides opened one eye and then closed it again.

“Who?” he asked.

“The Medean ambassador. I’m sure he told her to take Thicos and to attack Cymorene. It’s not of much strategic importance to her, but it will be to the Medes if they control a territory on this side of the Middle Sea. Evidently, Attolia and the Mede are as close as you and I are rumored to be.”

“Ornon said she would have hanged me but for him,” Eugenides said. Ornon was the ambassador Eddis had sent to Attolia on her Thief’s behalf.

“You don’t remember yourself?”

Eugenides shook his head. “That part’s very hazy,” he said.

Eddis didn’t ask what memories were clearer. She could guess.

“I suppose I am indebted to him, then,” she said.

The front two legs of his chair dropped to the floor abruptly, and he opened his eyes to glare at her. She’d offended him.

“Am I supposed to wish that you were dead, Gen?” she asked.

They stared at each other. Finally he raised his chin and said, “No, you are not supposed to wish that I were dead, and no, you are not supposed to feel indebted to that Mede bastard, and no, I don’t need a lecture on self-pity, and I don’t want to hear about all the people
in this country who lose their hands or their feet to frostbite every winter.”

He propped his chair back against the wall behind him and crossed his arms, looking sullen.

“Touchy today, Gen?”

He sighed. “Oh, shut up.”

“How many people in a given winter lose a hand or foot to frostbite?” she asked gently.

“Not that many. Usually it’s just the fingers and toes that go. Quite a few of those, though.”

“Galen told you?”

“Mmm-hm.”

“How tactful of him.”

Eugenides smiled painfully. “I asked him.”

Eddis smiled painfully back.

“What are you thinking when you look like that?” Eugenides asked.

“I’m thinking of murdering the queen of Attolia,” Eddis admitted.

Eugenides stood up and turned his back on her to look out one of the deeply set, narrow windows. “I hate that Mede,” he said.

“Gen, it was
Attolia
that cut off your hand, wasn’t it?” Eddis asked.

Eugenides shrugged. “Would we be at war if I had been hanged?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Eddis. Truthfulness made her add, “Maybe.”

“Can you deny this started the war, then?” Eugenides held up his mutilated arm.

“No.” Eddis had to concede the point. “But as I said, Attolia cut off your hand.”

“Because of the Mede,” Eugenides answered. “If he hadn’t spoken, she would have hanged me. Ornon had her angry enough to have me drawn and quartered and be done. Not,” he added, truthful in turn, “that I would have enjoyed being drawn and quartered.”

“And could the Mede have known he was inciting a war?” Eddis asked.

“Oh, yes,” said the Thief.

Eddis was quiet, looking down at the table in front of her, covered with reports on casualties and the cost of the war with Attolia. “Then I will not consider myself in his debt.” She looked over the stacks of paper that detailed her remaining resources, the size of her army, the supply of food, the ammunition. “He’s got troopships sailing in the straits,” she said. “They are like crows waiting to fall on the bodies. I wonder if Attolia knows.”

 

Attolia knew. She’d known before they left their own harbor that they were being provisioned to patrol her coast. She knew how many of them there were and how heavily they were manned and how many cannon they carried. She knew that her barons were as well informed. They were quiet these days, like little birds hiding in the shrubbery when the fox passes by. She was fortunate, she
also knew, that the Mede emperor had sent her an ambassador who was physically as well as politically attractive. Her court knew she had short patience for flattery, and she rarely heard it, but Nahuseresh’s she accepted with smiles, delighting in the compliments he showered on her. Better than his compliments was the consternation on the faces of her barons as they watched her dipping her eyes at him and looking up from under her lashes, just the way she had seen her youngest attendants flirting with their lovers. Attolia was enjoying the Mede’s company very much. She was happy to have him think her a womanly instead of a warrior queen. When he escorted her, she was receptive to his verbal sallies, a complacent object of his suggestive caresses as he linked arms with her and held her a little closer than was appropriate. She hoped no one told Nahuseresh how she’d treated the last person who’d tried to flatter her, though perhaps if someone did, the Mede would only be more confident of his appeal.

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