The King of Attolia (12 page)

Descending a narrow staircase on his way back to his barracks, he was presented with the answer. As Costis turned on a landing and began to descend the next flight, he was directly across from a window in the outside wall of the palace. The window opened in the same direction as the king’s, and there, summer-bright and framed by the darkness of the stairwell, was the same view. Costis passed it, and then went back up the stairs to look again. There were only the roofs of the lower part of the palace and the town and the city walls. Beyond those were the hills on the far side of the Tustis Valley and the faded blue sky above them. It wasn’t what the king saw that was important, it was what he couldn’t see when he sat at the window with his face turned toward Eddis.

Costis’s heart twisted sympathetically. He sternly reprimanded that weak and traitorous organ, but he couldn’t help remembering that his own homesickness had sucked the life out of every day when he had first left the farm. His initial summer in the barracks had
been the worst. He’d never been more than a few miles from home in his life, and as much as he despised his cousins, he would have given a month’s pay to see one of their familiar faces. The sick feeling had gradually faded as he had made a place for himself in the Guard, but Costis remembered it too well not to recognize it in the king’s face when he had seen him looking so hopelessly out the window. What must it be like to know that you couldn’t ever go home? To leave behind the mountains, where Costis had heard it never got really hot even in the summer, to live on the coast, where the snow rarely came? Small wonder if the king had passed up other, more gracious apartments to have one that had a bedchamber with a window facing toward Eddis.

So what? Costis started down the stairs again. Why should he care, really, if the king was homesick? Eugenides had brought it on himself. He should have stayed in Eddis. No one wanted him in Attolia, not the queen, certainly, not the Guard, not his attendants…

“Dammit!” Costis stopped again. He’d forgotten to tell the king about Sejanus.

There was no point in going back. Cursing more quietly, he continued down the stairs.

W
HEN
Costis got back to his room, he found Aristogiton wearing a smile as wide as his face.

“I’ve been dismissed,” Costis said bluntly, not in the mood for humor, just as Aristogiton announced, “I’ve been promoted.”

Both said, “What?”

“I’ve been dismissed,” Costis said again.

“You told him about Susa, then, not just the queen?”

“Yes.”

“And he threw you out in a rage.”

“No. He apologized to me and said very politely that I could go.”

“Apologized?”

“Nicely.”

“The bastard.”

Costis nodded his head in agreement. “I hate him.”

“You didn’t manage it, then, the grain of self-respect?”

“No,” said Costis. “Not a remnant the size of a grain
of wheat, not the size of a grain of sand. If he had been enraged, if he’d sent me to some hell in Thracia…”

“You’d feel like you deserved it and you’d take it like a man. You do know, don’t you, that if you’d sold out to Susa on purpose, you could be a completely honorless but happy villain gloating over your silver?”

“I left it on the Miras altar on the way here.”

Aris groaned.

“I’m sorry. I am spoiling your good news. You’ve been promoted?”

“I and my entire squad,” said Aristogiton, “have been elevated to the Third. I begin my new duties tomorrow.”

“The Third? You’ll be in the palace?”

“I’m assigned to the king.” Aris smiled at Costis’s disbelief. “I was looking forward to watching him humiliate you.”

“But that’s impossible. You can’t be eligible for that kind of promotion.”

“Thank you so much for your judgment of my reputation.”

Costis smiled. “I apologize unreservedly. I am a swine. Obviously you belong in the Third, should be a centurion of the Third, a lieutenant no less.”

“Well,” Aris admitted, “I am pretty sure we all owe it to Legarus the Awesomely Beautiful.”

“Ah,” said Costis, enlightened. “Promoted for his pretty face?”

“And he’s wellborn, and he’s too stupid to be promoted on his own, but if I’m promoted, and with me goes my squad…”

“Then Legarus serves honorably in the Third, and has a ready access to the palace—and probably someone in the palace.”

Aris said, “Yes, I think that’s it, but I have no sticky notions of honor, and you won’t hear me complaining because I have undeservedly been made squad leader in the Third. On the contrary, I intend to celebrate.” He lifted the amphora he held in his hand. “While I am celebrating, you can drown your sorrows,” he told Costis.

“I would be delighted,” said his friend.

Much later, he asked Aris a question that had been preying on his mind. “Do you think the Thief wanted to be king?”

“Of course,” said Aris.

Costis, taking this as a straight answer, was unprepared when Aris added, “Who wouldn’t want to be married to the woman who cut off his right hand?”

Costis looked up, startled.

“Everyone talks as if it’s a brilliant revenge,” said Aris, “but I’d rather cut my own throat than marry her, and she hasn’t chopped any pieces off me.”

“I thought—”

“I was her loyal guard? I am. I would march into the
mouth of hell for her. I will never forget that I would be bending over a tannin vat now and for the rest of my life if not for her. I might have been a soldier under her father and have marched myself into the ground and died choking on my own blood in the dirt and never have been even a squad leader—not me, not the son of a leather merchant. Look at me now, with a squad in the Third. Miras guide us, I worship her. But I am not blind, Costis. I feel about her the same way every member of the Guard feels. She is ruthless.”

He leaned forward, pointing a finger in Costis’s face. “And it is a good thing she is, because she wouldn’t be queen if she weren’t. She is brilliant and beautiful and terrifying. It’s a fine way to feel about your queen, not your wife,” he added.

Costis blinked.

“There isn’t one womanly bone in her body, and you cannot believe any man in his right mind would want to marry her. If the Thief had wanted to be her husband, he would have forced the issue of heirs. He hasn’t, has he? If you ask me,” Aris continued, “it was Eddis’s plan all along. I hear men dismiss her as just a woman, and I think we of all people should know better. If she weren’t every bit as brilliant and as ruthless as Attolia, there would be a king in Eddis. I will bet any price you name that the Thief was as loyal to his queen as we are to ours.” Aris shrugged. “So Eddis sent him to be King of Attolia. Poor bastard. I’ll stick to marching into the
mouth of hell, myself.” He looked at Costis and shrugged again. “Just my opinion. I’ll go back to my wine.”

Costis, looking down into his own wine cup, shook away thoughts of the king.

“Not your business anymore,” said Aris.

“Not my business,” Costis agreed.

The queen was agitated, but no sign of it showed as she stood at the table sorting the papers that lay on it. “There was no need to ask Teleus who was in command in the border forts in the northeast. You already know.”

“I do?”

“You were provoking him.”

“Why would I do that?”

“And you asked me to recall Prokep from his fort ten days ago so that you could meet him.”

“Did I?”

The queen shook her head. It had been an awkward meeting between herself and the king and Teleus, with Teleus as stiff as a poker and Eugenides draped in his chair like a cat. The king had asked Teleus who was in charge of the forts on the border with Magyar and when the general in charge of the region would next be in the capital to deliver a report on his charge. Teleus had answered every question with barely veiled contempt, but had agreed to keep Costis on light duties until the king had made up his mind about a suitable transfer.

The queen began packing papers into a diplomatic pouch. “I wish you and Teleus got along better.”

“I wish Teleus weren’t an idiot.”

If the queen heard him, she gave no sign, only finishing with the pouch and then setting it aside.

In the mountain country of Eddis, the days were shorter than in coastal Attolia. The lamps in the palace had been lit and the late summer evening was almost over when the Queen of Eddis summoned Sounis’s magus, who was officially her prisoner. The magus had just returned the day before from an unsupervised exploration of the hinterland, where he had been collecting differing versions of various folktales from people in isolated communities. Queen and magus shared a fondness and a respect for Eugenides, the former Thief of Eddis. Once the magus was seated and had a cup of wine near to hand, the queen handed him the most private report from her ambassador to Attolia, Ornon, and waited patiently while he read through it.

“I see,” said the magus. “I did wonder why your ambassador’s assistant was returned so precipitously. I assumed it was Gen who gave him that black eye. It must have been beautiful when it was fresh.”

“No, that was Ornon,” Eddis informed him dryly. “As you see, the assistant took it upon himself to try to force Gen’s hand.”

“I can see that he failed,” said the magus, turning the
paper to read the sentences that crossed the page. “But I am not sure I understand the significance of the bridge.”

“Cletus and Anacritus are both allies of the queen’s. They pay ruinous fees to a third baron, Minos, for use of the only bridge across that gorge for miles. Anacritus needs it to get to his pasturage, Cletus’s people must use the bridge if they are going to get any of their produce to market. Neither can afford the labor to build a bridge himself. Attolia has wanted to build one for years, but hasn’t been able to do so without showing blatant favoritism that would enrage Minos, technically also a supporter of hers.”

“Now you are building a bridge for her?”

“Ornon had no choice,” Eddis said with a hint of irony, “but to graciously offer the labor of the Eddisian garrison.”

The magus nodded. “So the Baron Minos has no grounds for complaint and the Barons Anacritus and Cletus, who found the garrison of Eddisians a burden—”

“—are now deliriously happy,” Eddis agreed.

“Gen still looks inept,” observed the magus.

“And Ornon’s assistant is home with a black eye,” Eddis finished. “A success all around, unless you are the former assistant to our Ambassador to Attolia.”

The room was a small one, the paintings on the walls all around it and the delicately carved screen that
formed the low ceiling making it seem even smaller. There was no place to sit but the floor and no place to rest the lamp, so Sejanus had been standing for some time when his father arrived.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said. “We should not meet.”

Erondites grunted. “I want a report.”

“I am a success.” Sejanus shrugged; the lamp in his hand moved, and the shadows flickered wildly around the room. The satyrs on the wall seemed to dance and leer. “There is not one attendant who has not disgraced himself and the king. He is ready to purge them all.”

“Not yet,” said Erondites. “I don’t want them dismissed yet. He must take the mistress first, so that she can tell him whom to choose as new attendants.”

“You are less successful than I,” said Sejanus.

The baron glowered. “She’s beautiful, newly widowed, and the stupid ass persists in dancing with her sister.”

“Why not use the sister, then, if she has caught the king’s eye?”

“She reads plays. She embroiders. She is artless, unwed, and useless. Her sister is twice widowed and quite adequately prepared for the task of leading the king by his nose. It has to be her. I told their father to beat them both, and the younger one especially. She won’t dance with the king again. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“I don’t want you dismissed as well. You’re the one attendant who must stay.”

“Depend on it,” said Sejanus. “He won’t let me go.”

“I have heard otherwise.”

“He relies on me. The other attendants don’t realize it, but the king and I are becoming allies and better friends every day. He won’t dismiss me when he throws out the rest.”

“Be sure of it,” the baron warned.

“Oh, I am,” said Sejanus.

After they left, Eugenides shifted a little on the rafters above the carefully carved and pierced wooden ceiling, more screen than a ceiling, in fact. He sat cross-legged in the dark and considered the room below, conveniently out of the way, but not far from the royal apartments. With no furniture in it, too small to be useful for any legitimate purpose, it was guaranteed to be empty. The architect who designed it, and directed the carving of the wooden screen for the false ceiling, had been Eugenides’s many-times-great-grandfather. He’d called it “the conspiracy room.”

Silent as an owl, Eugenides made his way back to his room and his bed. Lying there in the dark, he whispered to himself, “So Sejanus is my dear friend. How strange that I did not know. And poor Heiro is suffering for dancing with me. Sejanus, dear, dear Sejanus, what are you playing at, I wonder?”

The next night, he danced again with the Lady Themis’s little sister, Heiro. “That was beautifully done,” he told her.

“Excuse me, Your Majesty?”

“I mean the way you tried to avoid dancing with me, in a way calculated to make me insist on doing just that. Just this.” He gestured to the dance as they separated.

When they met again, he said, “Do you know, I heard someone describe you as artless?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Your Majesty.”

“Neither did he,” said the king.

“Your Majesty—”

“Was the beating very bad, my dear?”

She stumbled slightly. He took her arm.

“You’re tired. Let me take you to a seat.” The dancers around them parted, and he led her through.

“I can finish the dance with your sister.”

Her grip on his arm tightened.

“Just a single dance, dear,” said the king. “Then I promise I’ll move on. I can’t allow you to be beaten for casting yourself between me and the rather rapacious clutches of your sister. I do wonder why you think I am worth saving.”

“Maybe because I have eyes in my head, Your Majesty,” said Heiro.

Eugenides was briefly taken aback. “Well, I will have
to watch my step then, won’t I? And you will have to point out to your father the advantages of having one of his daughters admired by the king, even if it is the wrong one. If it saves you from a beating, you may always call on me.” He bowed over her hand.

He could feel her shaking, and looked over his shoulder to see her father approaching. “He will wonder what you see to admire,” said Heiro.

“That’s easy,” said the King of Attolia. “Tell him I like your earrings.”

“Your Majesty might like to dance with my friend, Lady Eunice. She’s a pretty girl,” Heiro said quickly.

“I like pretty girls. Who else?”

She mentioned a few more names, but fell silent as her father arrived looking thunderous.

“She claims she’s unwell,” said the king with petulance. “She suggests I finish the dance with her sister.”

Her father’s brow cleared. He led her away. Lady Themis and the king returned to the dance.

Two weeks later, Costis was sitting on the steps outside the mess hall, enjoying the sun that slid between the tall, closely packed buildings. It wouldn’t last. The sun moved with infinite patience across the sky, and the shade crept inch by inch across the stairs. It would reach him soon, and he must move with the sun or be content with the chill of the shade. With luck, Aristogiton would arrive before he had to make a decision. Aris
would be coming off duty very soon. He and Costis were scheduled for a three-day leave and intended to spend it hunting in the hills a day’s ride from the city.

Costis had his gear packed and had been waiting most of the day. Aris was very busy with his new duties while Costis’s life was suddenly filled with leisure.

Teleus had explained that his position was indeterminate while his future was under consideration. Probably he would be transferred to a border fort in the north, perhaps even at his old rank of squad leader. That bright hope made Costis’s days drag, filled with anxious anticipation. In the meantime, he continued as lieutenant-at-large with light duties filling in watches and supervising the parade marches of boys in the training barracks.