A Conspiracy of Kings (14 page)

Attolia watched me with close consideration as I spoke. When I
finished, there was a moment of polite silence. As she opened her
mouth to speak, Gen, who had been silent throughout, sat up and
laid his hand across hers. I could hear the Attolians sucking in
their breaths. Attolia slipped her hand away, but she sat back in
her chair and nodded a deferral to her king.

Then, as you well know, Eugenides looked me in the eye as if I
were a complete stranger and said, “The simplest way to end a
war is to admit you have lost it.”

The silence after that was not polite.

Little could convince me more that I was fit to be king than
that moment when I acted like one and didn’t tell Attolis
something very rude that he could do with his own throne and
mumbled instead a few more ritualized phrases about momentous
decisions, and the time they take, and then walked myself and the
magus out of the room before I had a real fit of apoplexy in front
of the assembled courts and ambassadors of Eddis, Attolia, and the
Continent with a few condescending Mede visitors looking on.

I came upstairs to these rooms, where I told the magus and the
guards to wait in the anteroom, as I did not want his company or
anyone else’s. That seems to have meant very little, though,
because no sooner did I close the door than it opened again. You
came in. You took one look at me. And you laughed.

T
HE Queen of Eddis protested. “I did not
laugh,” she said.

“You did,” Sounis said. “You are laughing
still. And why didn’t those guards turn you away?”

Eddis studied him. His face was much changed by Basrus’s
fists. He was also taller and heavier than when they had last met.
His shoulders had grown broad from his working in Hanaktos’s
fields, and she could easily imagine him dropping a man with a
single blow. She did not think he realized how fierce his
appearance had become; though his smile had changed, his easy
blushes remained. She did not know how to put into words the relief
it was to see him safe, and so the feelings escaped as another
laugh. Still smiling, she defended the Attolians. “They are
guards,” she said. “They could not deny a
queen.”

Sounis returned her smile and conceded. “No, and neither
can I. You asked to hear the story of events that brought me here,
and I have given it to you, as I am sure anyone would give you
anything you asked. I am only sorry that all my face can offer you
is amusement,” he added.

Eddis reached to touch her own crooked nose. “If I
laughed,” she said, “it is only at the idea that we
make a matched pair now, you and I.” She asked him, more
seriously, “Your uncle who was Sounis learned of our letters.
That was the cause of your exile to Letnos?”

“An unfinished letter was stolen from my desk and
delivered to him,” explained Sounis. “He had my rooms
searched and intercepted your next letter. He and my father and the
magus spent the evening in a shouting match, and I was sent away
the next morning.”

“So you did not receive the letter? You have not read
it?”

“No.”

“You made a proposal in your previous letter. Perhaps it
was only hypothetical?”

“It was not.”

Eddis gently chided, “All that time in the fields of
Hanaktos, you thought of many things and many people, but never, it
seems, of the queen of Eddis.”

The color rose in Sounis’s cheeks, but he did not look
away. He had thought of her every day. “When I was working in
the fields, I knew how unfounded my hopes were,” he said.
“I was a poor excuse for an heir of Sounis when I made the
proposal and then became even less than that.”

“How less?” asked Eddis.

Sounis looked down at her hand, lying in his, and covered it for
a moment. Still holding it lightly, he stood and stepped back until
her hand slipped away from his grasp. Then he crossed to the far
side of the room. Without looking back, he said, “That look
on Gen’s face. Does he think I am a fool? That I came to
Attolia instead of Melenze because I was naive? Did he think I was
asking him to give me soldiers and gold to fight a war as a
personal favor? I came here on my knees to offer him Sounis, and he
looks at me as if I were my uncle and grabs it out of my
hands.”

Eddis asked, “The magus did not talk about this on the
road?”

Sounis shook his head. “He tried to warn me, and I refused
to listen.” He shook his head again, this time in
bewilderment. “Eugenides offered his life once to save me.
Why should I doubt that he is my friend?”

“He is the king of Attolia,” said Eddis.

“And no particle of your Thief remains?”

Eddis searched for words. “He swore an oath to be Thief on
his grandfather’s death. But the oath is a mystery of the
Thieves, and no one alive but Eugenides knows what it
requires.”

“So now I must deliver my country into the hands of
enemies? The magus no doubt thinks I am a fool.”

“I cannot believe that,” said Eddis. “Nor will
I believe you could have a better friend than Eugenides.”

“I should throw something, perhaps,” said Sounis,
“but I do not think it would relieve my feelings.”

“I have not found it to do so,” said Eddis.

“Gen evidently does.”

“Gen is Gen,” said Eddis.

“Gen is a
bastard
,” said the
king of Sounis.

Eddis looked sad, and Sounis was sorry he had spoken so harshly.
He returned to sit by her side.

He said, “Sounis is lost. I know what comes of the Mede
occupation. In a generation, or perhaps two, Sounis and Attolia and
Eddis will be gone. Only Medes will serve in the government, only
Medes will hold public office, only Medes will own land or hold
wealth. They will knock down the old temples and control the guilds
and the trades, and the Sounisians will be left okloi, or worse,
beggars in their own cities.

“I could sell half my country to Melenze to get its
protection, but that would only delay the Medes, not turn them
back. Also, there’s little hope that Melenze would be
satisfied with half of Sounis. They would eat up the rest of it in
the next few years, and I would be in no position to stop them. I
am in a war with Attolia I cannot win, with a civil war at home
that I have fled.

“But Sounis is not the only country at risk. This war
drains Attolia’s resources and endangers her as well. I
thought…I
thought
that Gen would be
satisfied with an oath of loyalty to him and a negotiated surrender
on my part. Sounis would give up the islands we had lost, and in
exchange, I would still be king. Sounis would be free, only allied
as a tributary of Attolia, much as Melenze is allied with Ferria.
And instead I find that Attolis demands a complete surrender, to
depose me from my throne and disenfranchise my patronoi.”

“He did not say that,” said Eddis.

“You were there? You heard him?” Sounis asked.
“He said I should admit my defeat. You heard his voice and
saw his face. What else could he mean?”

“Would you give up being Sounis?” Eddis asked, too
casually. “Would you allow your country to become just
another part of Attolia?”

Sounis’s eyes narrowed. “No,” he said. He
stood, and his restless energy carried him across the room again.
“I will go to Melenze. And hope to delay the Medes long
enough to find some other solution to their imperial expansion. Of
course, that assumes the king and queen of Attolia intend to honor
the laws of hospitality and allow me to travel safely to the
border.”

Eddis nodded. Sounis dropped into a chair on the far side of the
room and stared at Eddis. “He sent you.”

Eddis’s slow, broad smile appeared. Sounis crossed his
arms and bolstered himself against it.

“Why?”

“Because he wants no more than you thought to give him:
your allegiance and the islands he already controls.”

“That is not what he indicated in the throne
room.”

“He needed you to know that he meant to take Sounis
whether you offered it or not. He would have taken it from your
uncle.”

“I can see that,” said Sounis. “Did he think I
didn’t know it? The king of Attolia is a bastard, but an
honest
one? I
came
here to
offer him my allegiance. I came because I trusted him. So why does
he make me think I should not?”

Eddis sighed. “Maybe, Sophos, because he is an
idiot.” She shook her head. “He sent me to ask if you
will negotiate a surrender. I cannot speak for him otherwise, but
Sophos, I know he is your friend.”

“So he sends you to ask me to forgive him?”

Eddis was silent. Eugenides did not expect to be forgiven.

Sounis sat down and lay back in his chair. He put his arm across
his forehead and snapped, “Oh, of course, I will forgive him.
What choice do I have?” His own words seemed to give him
pause, and after a moment’s thought, he sighed heavily.
“I will forgive him,” he said more calmly,
“because I have heard him scream when someone pulled a sword
out of him that could have just as easily gone into me. And because
I believe I know him, all evidence to the contrary, and that if he
is Attolis, he is also my friend Gen. But he could have trusted me
to begin with, instead of acting like an idiot and treating me like
one.”

“No one would argue,” said Eddis, revealing some of
her own exasperation with the king of Attolia.

“I’m not a fool,” said Sounis.

“No.”

“I cannot win a war with Attolia and at the same time put
down a rebellion.”

“I do not see how.”

“Sounis could not yield to Attolia, but I believe I can
yield to Eugenides as the king of Attolia and still be Sounis and
still hold my country. We can unite against a far greater
danger.”

“Yes.”

“I do not actually need you to tell me that.”

Biting back her smile, Eddis shook her head.
“No.”

Sounis smiled, too, though it was a sorrowful smile. He stood.
“I suppose I should tell the magus.”

Eddis stood as well. As he passed on his way to the door, she
stopped him with one hand on his sleeve.

“How less?” she asked him, serious again.

It was obvious to Sounis. “A slave in the fields of
Hanaktos, and now, not much better. I am a king with no country.
Would you have that?”

Eddis seemed to consider. “Yes.”

Regret and pleasure were in equal measure when Sounis said
reluctantly, “I am not sure that is wise. I would have to
question my own feelings, because I do not think I love you so
wildly that I would drag you into such a poor match.”

“It might have been preferable,” Eddis admitted
drily, “if you had thrown off your chains of bondage solely
for love of me. It would certainly have been more
flattering.” Standing so near to him, she was looking up into
his face and watching it closely. “I am willing to accept,
however, that we are real people, not characters in a play. We do
not, all of us, need to be throwing inkwells. If we are comfortable
with one another, is that not sufficient?”

“Were I a king in more than just name, it would be all,
all I dreamed of,” said Sounis, and it was Eddis who
blushed.

“You wish to wait, then, until you are confirmed as
Sounis?”

“If…”

“When,” said Eddis firmly.

“Yes,” said Sounis, “then.”

A
S Eddis left, she gathered in her wake most of the
crowd that Sounis found squeezed into the anteroom outside his door
when he opened it. People flowed out of the room like a tide,
leaving only two of the Attolian guard, and the magus, standing
alone, as unaware of the empty room as he had been of the full
one.

He looked old, Sounis thought, and it seemed a shame that such a
man couldn’t have a better king to serve. “I’m
sorry,” Sounis said. “You tried to warn me that he is
the king of Attolia now, and I should have listened.”

To his surprise, the magus walked forward and dropped to his
knees.

“Don’t,” said Sounis, but the magus took each
of the king’s hands and kissed them before holding them to
his eyes. Embarrassed, Sounis pulled the magus to his feet, but the
magus was unperturbed. He smiled as he stood, and looking Sounis in
the face, he said simply, “My King, I am at your
disposal.”

The conversation between Sounis and his future overlord was
carefully arranged and far from private. Sounis was conveyed
through the palace by an amorphous crowd that expanded and shrank
as he progressed; guards, escorts, majordomos, and hangers-on
surrounded him as he went up stairs and along corridors until he
arrived at the private apartment of the king of Attolia and was
announced. His first thought, upon entering, was that his own guest
apartment in the palace was the more luxurious. His walls were
covered in patterned cloth and trimmed with molded plasterwork. The
king’s walls were plain plaster above and plain paneling
below, with benches on three sides to provide seating. Though the
cushions were worked with embroidered figures, the chamber’s
appearance was reminiscent of nothing so much as a patronoi’s
waiting room for okloi petitioners.

The door to the next room was open, and Sounis was surprised to
see that it was the bedchamber. He had thought that any room of
measurable importance necessarily had an antechamber, and often
more than one. In the megaron of Sounis, his uncle had lived in a
room behind a room behind a room, each one lined with silk wall
coverings or fine murals and far removed from the people he
governed. Sounis thought Gen, cheek by jowl with his guardroom,
must be rather more closely entwined in the lives of those around
him. On reflection, he suspected Gen was more closely entwined than
any of the polished young men standing around the guardroom
suspected.

The men in uniform were obviously the king’s guards. The
others were like Hilarion, Sounis assumed, more of the king’s
companions. They were attractive in the way only the very well
heeled can be. Trained in all the arts of riding, shooting,
fighting, dancing, and clever court dialogue, their kind had
intimidated him for years, and Sophos, now Sounis, quailed at the
idea of surrounding himself with such companions. He wondered how
Gen got along with them.