The Queen of Attolia (22 page)

The peace talks did not progress. Attolia, surrounded by her fractious barons, continued to be formal and remote. Eddis, with the well-being of her country at stake, was cautious. Her minister of war, unwilling to forget that the queen of Attolia had maimed his son, was reserved to the point of outright hostility.

Meanwhile Eddis complimented Attolia on her palace and her gardens. Attolia responded with invitations to musicals and dancing and excursions into the countryside.

“What snakes and weasels fill your court, Your Majesty,” Eugenides said one evening, in a voice only she could hear, as they turned on the dance floor. Eugenides led with his left side, and his right arm held the queen around the waist. She could feel the wood of the false hand he wore pressing against her back. “Where do you find them all? Do you grow them in the dark somewhere in your hinterlands and then bring them to the capital?”

Attolia knew every limitation of her feudal supporters. She stared without answering over his shoulder. She was still taller than he.

“Baron Erondites, for example.” Eugenides continued conversationally. “He slithers up and hisses at me from time to time. And Susa…Do you ever let him off his chain, or is he too dangerous? He told me how pleased he was to see you marrying at last.
Droll
was the
word he used, I think.” He felt Attolia stiffen and chose his next target carefully. “Erondites’s son…” He trailed off as Attolia slowly turned her face toward him.

“You say another word and I will have you
flayed,”
Attolia said.

Eugenides smiled. Erondites the younger supported the queen and had supported her for years against his own father. She wouldn’t stand by and see him insulted, but Eugenides knew he had planted a seed of doubt. She would wonder whether Erondites the younger had also called her likely marriage to the Thief of Eddis
droll.

He was too kind to leave the seed to grow. “I was only going to commend his loyalty,” the Thief said, “or his lack of originality. He stares right through me when we talk, just the way you do.”

For a moment Eugenides hoped Attolia might say something. Then she turned her head to look over his shoulder, and the Thief’s hopes dwindled. They finished the dance, and he returned her to her throne and her attendants. He smiled at their glares and turned to go back to his queen.

“Eugenides.” Attolia spoke, and he turned back to her. She lifted her hand and laid it on the side of his face. It was all she needed to do. Though his expression didn’t change, she could feel the tremor that went through him at her touch. He was afraid of her. Some part of him would always be afraid of her. That fear was her weapon, and she would encourage it if she
wanted to maintain her authority as queen.

“Good night,” Attolia said politely.

“Good night, Your Majesty,” Eugenides answered, and stepped back to bow before turning away.

Safely back in his seat, he wiped the sweat off his forehead. He thought that the gray-haired attendant had smiled. Was she encouraged because she thought that her queen was showing him favor? Or did she know that Attolia was only putting him, very thoroughly, in his place?

That evening Attolia dismissed Chloe from her attendants, ordering the girl sent home to her father for no more than a clumsy accident. She had dropped a perfume spoon onto a tiny amphora, and the amphora had shattered. Attolia had risen to her feet, her rage making her seem as tall as the immortal goddess she had taken as a model. Chloe had stuttered an apology, but the queen had dismissed her and then left the room, stalking to her bedchamber without a backward look.

When she was gone, Chloe had dissolved into tears.

“Why should she marry him?” Chloe cried. “Why should she marry him if he makes her so angry?”

“She would be as angry at any man,” one of the other attendants said.

“If only he were a man,” said another. “If only they didn’t humiliate her by forcing her to marry a boy.”

“Nahuseresh—” said Chloe.

“Nahuseresh was a fool,” someone interrupted her.

“And what is Eugenides?” Chloe asked bitterly.

Only Phresine had no comment to make as she tacked the sleeve into a dress. Chloe returned to her father’s house the next day. The remaining women glared ever more balefully at Eugenides, drawing their ranks around their besieged queen. Only Phresine dared to say to the silent Attolia as she slid flowers into her braided hair before an evening of music, “Least said, soonest mended, Your Majesty, isn’t the advice for every occasion.”

Attolia turned her head, dislodging a flower, to stare at Phresine, and Phresine carefully replaced the blossom.

It had been three weeks, and the two countries were no closer to a treaty. Eddis was beginning to worry that having come so far, Attolia might restart hostilities. Her face was so expressionless, her conversation so polite and difficult to read it was impossible to guess what she was thinking.

“She won’t give up Ephrata,” she told Eugenides as they walked in the afternoon on one of the palace terraces overlooking the garden. Within the palace she had dismissed her honor guard, and they were alone.

It was one of Eddis’s demands that the small coastal village of Ephrata become part of her country to provide an access to the sea for her trade, which she had
never had before. Ephrata was a poor port but better than none, and she was adamant about having it.

Attolia was as adamant about refusing to give it up. There were other points of contention, and little progress was being made except between the ministers of trade. Those two were in complete accord and happy to spend their days discussing the exchange of pig iron and wool for olives and wine.

“Your father isn’t helping. I gather he sits at the table eyeing the Attolians—you know the way he does.” Eddis pulled her face into a stony glare.

“You must have relayed Attolia’s threat to cut my other hand off. I’m not sure he saw the humor in the situation.”

“I am not sure I did,” admitted Eddis. “I don’t mean to sound like Hespira’s mother, but I wish you would come home, Gen.”

“No.”

Eddis went on hesitantly. “Her barons are part of the problem. They are not pleased at the idea of an Eddisian king. If they had a king, and were getting an Eddisian queen, it would be the cement of a treaty and unobjectionable. As it is, they don’t like being ruled to begin with, and they like less the idea of a foreigner.”

“Are you saying it would be easier to reach an accord with Attolia if we didn’t hold her to marriage?”

“It might be,” said Eddis.

“And how would you secure the treaty?”

“I don’t know,” said Eddis. “I’m beginning to see that I don’t know anything about Attolia, really. I hoped you would.”

“She won’t speak to me,” said Eugenides. “Just formalities.”

“You talk when you’re dancing,” said Eddis.

“More platitudes,” Eugenides said.

“Last night?” Eddis asked. When the queen and Eugenides had returned from the dancing, the queen had been rigid with anger.

Eugenides stopped walking and leaned against the low wall dividing the terrace from the garden. He crossed his arms and looked at his feet. “She was telling me about the history of the palace. Quite a lecture, in fact. I told her my distant grandfather had been one of the architects.”

“Really?” murmured Eddis.

“Oh, yes, that’s why we know so much about the building. There were drawings in your library until the magus came and I moved them out. I told Attolia he’d designed parts of Sounis’s megaron as well. The good parts, I said. She looked at me as if I’d turned into a snake.”

“I thought I asked you to thank her for her kind efforts to entertain us.”

“I did that next. She said there would be a hunting party leaving this morning; perhaps I’d like to join it.”

“And?” Eddis asked, looking at his arm. He hadn’t
ridden well enough to hunt on horseback even before losing his hand.

“I told her I’d already been hunted in Attolia, thank you very much.”

“Oh, Gen,” sighed Eddis.

Attolia had returned to her rooms after the dancing and dismissed her attendants immediately. As they left, she had said acidly to Phresine that she thought “Least said, soonest mended” might have been exactly the advice for the situation. Once the women had gone, she had pulled the flowers from her braids herself and thrown them to the floor, muttering, “Damn him, damn him, damn him,” as each blossom dropped.

But it wasn’t the Thief she was angry at, or Phresine. What a fool she was to offer hunting to a man with one hand. What a fool to fall in love with someone after she had cut his hand off. Well, she might be fool enough to love him; she wasn’t fool enough to believe he loved her. She’d seen the look in his father’s eyes, and if she didn’t see it in Eugenides’s eyes, then he was better at hiding it, that was all.

Standing on the terrace, looking out at the garden, Eugenides admitted, “I thought this was going to end like a fireside story. The goddess of love waves her scepter, and we live happily ever after.” He shook his head. “The only worthwhile members of this court
despise me. The most despicable can’t stop chuckling under their breaths, and if it were up to the queen’s attendants, I would have been hanging upside down for weeks now.”

“Every day I have more sympathy for Hespira’s mother. I’d rather see you go live in a hole in the ground of the Sacred Mountain.”

“It isn’t rational, is it? Do you think the gods have afflicted me?”

Eddis raised her eyebrows.

“No,” said Eugenides, shaking his head. “If it is an affliction, it is as you said: The gods know me so well they can predict my behavior. They don’t control it. They could know I would love her, but they don’t make me. I’ve watched her for years, you know. All those times when you didn’t know where I went, mostly it was to Attolia.”

“Did your grandfather know?”

“He knew I was fascinated by her. She’s like a prisoner inside stone walls, and every day the walls get a little thicker, the doorway narrower.”

“And?” Eddis prompted.

“Well,” said Eugenides, “it’s a challenge.”

“And that’s all?”

Eugenides looked at Eddis. “Why are you prying all of a sudden?”

“I have an interest in your welfare,” Eddis said dryly, “and the welfare of two countries. One way or another
this government must be stable if Eddis is to prosper.”

Eugenides stared at nothing. “I can’t leave her there all alone, surrounded by stone walls.” He looked at Eddis, hoping she would understand. “She’s too precious to give up,” he said.

“But she won’t talk to you.”

“No,” Eugenides said painfully. “And she won’t listen to me either. And if she won’t listen to me, how can I tell her I love her?”

“If she won’t listen, how can you lie to her?” Eddis asked.

Eugenides had been looking up at the roofs of the palace. He dropped his eyes suddenly to look at Eddis. “I wasn’t thinking of lying to her,” he said.

“How can she know?” asked Eddis. “She is not in the habit of trusting people. Why should she suddenly believe anything you say? You might unlock the door for her; you can’t make her walk through.”

The faults in Eugenides’s character were too well known for him to need to make any reply. “She’d believe you,” he said after some consideration.

“She would not,” said Eddis.

“She would.”

“Eugenides,” Eddis protested.

“She would,” Eugenides insisted. “You said you could settle on a treaty with a wedding or without one. You have no reason to lie to her. She would believe you.”

“Eugenides, I am the queen of Eddis, not a
matchmaker.” If she had been a matchmaker, he would have been home, properly married to Agape.

The Thief only leaned back against the stone railing behind him and crossed his arms. He waited until Eddis threw up her hands. “All right,” she said. “I’ll ask for a private interview. I’ll tell her we can have a treaty without a wedding if she would prefer it, and we’ll see what she says.”

“So the slipper is on the other foot now?” Attolia asked Eddis in the privacy of her apartments when the two queens had met, alone for the first time since the hillside above Rhea. “First I am forced to accept him, and now you try to draw him back?”

“And you will keep him to spite me?” Eddis asked. Attolia realized that the mountain queen was well aware of her jealousy.

“Isn’t he your most prized possession?” Attolia asked.

“He’s not a possession,” Eddis said, her voice hard.

“But you want to keep him for yourself?” Attolia suggested. “Don’t you?”

“Make him king of Eddis? I think you mistake our friendship,” Eddis answered.

“No, not king of Eddis,” said Attolia. “But you would keep him safe, marry him to some member of your court, have him to dance attendance on you indefinitely, tied safely to leading strings?”

Eddis scowled. “No,” she said.

“Why not?” Attolia asked.

“It would kill him,” said Eddis. “He cannot draw back now.”

“Then why are you here?” Attolia asked, her smile insincere.

“I don’t know,” said Eddis, stung, and she stood to leave.

“Wait,” said Attolia. Eddis paused. “Please,” said Attolia. Eddis sat again, but Attolia rose and went to the window and was quiet for a long time.

“I like you,” said Attolia at last, speaking to the window. “I didn’t think I would. Still, to have you here in my palace galls me every day. I see you surrounded, even here, by people you can trust with your life. You are safer than I am, and it is my home, not yours. Do you understand?” she asked.

“Yes.” Eddis nodded and waited.

“And what part of your resources can I have for myself? Your Thief. I have so little of faith or trust or friendship, and I should let him steal it from me?”

“Eugenides doesn’t want to steal anything from you.” Eddis fumbled for words.

“How can you understand?” Attolia asked as she turned to face Eugenides’s queen. “He hasn’t lied to you.”

Eddis looked at her, surprise showing in her face. “Of course he has,” she said.

“He lies to you?” Attolia asked.