The King of Attolia (14 page)

“Costis,” the king said in the patient voice of someone dealing with the insane, “I just need a little help on the stairs.”

Of course. The stairs. With a wound in his side, the stairs would be difficult. Costis pulled himself together and looked over to Aris, standing there as pale as the king. “Go for the physician,” he said.

“No!” the king contradicted sharply. Both Costis and Aristogiton turned to him in surprise.

“Oh, gods all damn it,” the king said softly. He lifted his hand to rub his face, saw the blood all over it, and put it back on his hip. He turned carefully to look at the walls of the palace itself. The heads and shoulders of spectators were visible on the guard walks at the top.
The king looked back at the walls that circled the grounds. More people.

“So, so, so,” he said, defeated. “Get the physician. Have him meet me in my rooms.”

Aris went.

Eugenides stood with his head bent and his shoulders bowed. “How many cups, Costis?” he asked without lifting his head.

Costis flushed. “Ten.”

“Silver?”

“Gold.”

“Ten gold cups for my sake?” He looked up, surprised. “I thought you hated me.”

“I do.”

Eugenides started to laugh and gasped instead. Costis put a hand on either shoulder to steady him.

“I have a superstitious fear of falling,” Eugenides admitted. “Let me put an arm over your shoulder while we get down the stairs.”

Costis ducked his head and presented his shoulder.

The king didn’t move. “Wrong arm, dear,” he said, dryly. He had to use his left hand to cover the wound, because he had no right one.

Embarrassed, Costis stepped around behind the king to the other side. The king’s arm dropped heavily across his shoulder. When Costis straightened, the hook hung just in front of his eyes. For the first time, he could see its knife-edge. There was a smear of blood
on it, and one corner of the cuff of the king’s coat was soaked.

Costis flinched and looked away from this compensation to the king’s handicap, only to find himself staring directly into the king’s face instead. Eugenides matched Costis look for look, his expression grave, his eyes like pools of darkness deeper than Costis could penetrate. For a moment Costis could see, not so much what was hidden but that there were things hidden that the king did not choose to reveal. Things that were not for Costis to see. There was no understanding him, but Costis knew he would march into hell for this fathomless king, as he would for his queen. So long, he worried, as they didn’t order him in opposite directions at the same time. What he would do when that happened, Costis couldn’t guess.

The king’s arm tightened across his shoulder, and Costis broke free of his thoughts and started down the steps.

The king’s left foot landed awkwardly on the stair. He hissed.

Costis reached across to support him with his right hand, and his concern must have shown on his face.

“Hoping to get out of paying for those cups?” the king asked.

Costis snapped the hand back to his side, and the king laughed.

“Miniatures?”

“Full size,” said Costis obstinately.

“Was it to keep me from getting hurt? Because this”—he stopped for a breath—“this hurts.”

“I’m not sure. I think I prayed that you would be safe, Your Majesty.”

“That’s more ambiguous.” Eugenides considered. “I’ll have to die for you to be free of that promise.”

“I’ll get the cups, Your Majesty.”

The king shook his head. “You would spend your life paying for them.”

Costis would never pay off the debt. He’d prefer to march into hell, but that option wasn’t available. Odd that you could be so angry at someone and devoted to him at the same time. “I’ll get them,” Costis said simply.

“Costis, I am speechless.”

“Not noticeably, Your Majesty.” His entire life, which he had been hoping for the past two weeks might be restored, was gone again. He wished the king wouldn’t laugh at him.

They walked beside the reflecting pool. There was a great black hole in the water lilies where Teleus had fallen in. The water that had come with him when he’d climbed out of the fountain had splashed onto the edge work and was drying in the sun. One smashed lily trailed across the edge and into the water. Eugenides began again, hesitantly. “As it was undertaken on my behalf, we might ask the royal treasury to address the debt.”

Ten gold cups would hardly be noticed by the royal treasurer. Costis swallowed.

“Have I offended you? I didn’t mean to.”

Costis shook his head. “No, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Which goddess should we dedicate them to?”

“Philia.”

She was an Attolian goddess. Not one of Eugenides’s gods. “I see. I suppose it’s good to curry favor where you can. You never know who might rescue you when you overreach.”

Costis believed in his gods, prayed to his gods, and sacrificed to his gods, but Eugenides was rumored not only to believe in his gods but also to speak to them and to hear them answer. The idea made Costis uncomfortable. The gods may have walked the earth in the time of the legends, but he preferred to think of them safely on their altars.

“Of course, that’s assuming I live,” said the king. “I might not.” He sighed. “I probably won’t live to see my bedchamber.” If these were death agonies, they were fake ones, Costis thought, and was sure of it when they reached the shallow stair at the far end of the reflecting pool. No one on the verge of death has the strength to pile one foul word on top of another like a man compiling a layered pastry of obscene language, from the bottom step all the way to the top.

He was more concerned when the king’s steps slowed
as they approached the hunting court, and the halt was accompanied by no curses or complaints. Then he heard voices coming toward them and realized it wasn’t the pain, it was the anticipation of company that had stopped the king in his tracks.

The crowd came trampling across the flower beds, guards, nobles, and servants.

Eugenides made a noise. Costis bent his head to hear.

“Arf, arrf, bark, bark, bark, yap yap,” muttered the king.

They were quickly surrounded. Voices hammered at them from all directions, and there were faces pressing close on every side. Hands, whose owners Costis couldn’t see, tried to pull the king away. Costis pulled back, and the king yelled in outrage. Costis wondered if somewhere in the crowd was a man who would finish the work the assassins had begun.

“Hey,” he said loudly to a well-dressed middle-aged man who stood in front of him, but was turned toward the king. “Hey!” Costis said again, and the man turned. Costis put his hand out flat on the man’s chest and shoved. All of the muscles in his arm and in his back pushing like a ram, he drove the man backward until he bumped into the man behind him and both fell with arms windmilling. To avoid being dragged down, those who could stepped back, crowding the people behind them and leaving an open space in front of Costis.

On the edges of the crowd he could see guards. They were on the outskirts, like the palace servants, only spectators on the scene. It was not their place to approach the king without being directed to do so. Costis recognized most of them by sight, if not by name. He trusted them more than the yammering nobles around him.

“To the king!” he shouted, and the guards, after a startled look, to be sure it was they who were being addressed, came. They shoved their way through the crowd.

Costis said, “Don’t let anyone get close.”

Costis was half-carrying the king, whose steps had faltered. Costis could feel him tremble. There didn’t seem to be any point in following the curving path if the flowers were already trampled, so Costis made directly for the gateway into the hunting court.

Frantically, he bent his head to the king who appeared to be choking. Costis made a grumpy noise. The king was laughing.

“That was the Baron Anacritus you just dumped on his backside. Did you know?”

“No. I don’t care either. Where are your attendants?” Costis asked bitterly.

“I dismissed them while I went for my quiet walk. No doubt someone is telling them right now what fun they are missing. They will be here soon.”

“Not soon enough,” said Costis.

“Anxious to get rid of me?”

“Why can’t you act like a proper king?” Costis hissed in his ear.

They reached the hunting court at last.

“Oh gods, stairs,” Eugenides muttered in despair.

Costis sighed. The king had a long way and many stairs ahead of him. The royal apartments were on the far side of the palace. It would be best, probably, to find the nearest staircase and climb to the walks at the roofline. That would take him across to the inner palace, and from there he could go down and then up again to his rooms.

Thinking that surely someone else would escort the king that far, Costis was eyeing the first set of steps ahead of him. They led up from the hunting court to the portico entrance to the palace. Eugenides was looking at his feet. He didn’t see the queen arrive.

She came through the palace doorway ahead of her attendants, who joined her one by one, all showing signs of haste. The people on the stairs moved silently out of the queen’s way, and she looked down at the king, who still hadn’t looked up. Walking stiffly, she came silently down the stairs. The guards broke their cordon to admit her.

She reached for Eugenides, touched him on the face. He leapt backward like a startled deer, so explosively that Costis almost fell over trying to hold him. The
queen snatched her hand back as if she had been burned.

There was a collective gasp from all around and then silence. Nothing stirred in the courtyard, not even the air, while the queen looked down at the king and the king looked down at his feet. Costis’s heart sank—for king and for queen, and for himself, who was uncomfortably loyal to two people at the same time.

The queen had begun another slow step backward up the stair behind her when the king caught her by the wrist and pulled her forward. He pulled Costis as well. Costis was sufficiently taller than the king that bringing his shoulder down to provide support put him off-balance. He had to shift his footing with care, and shift it again as the king let go of Attolia’s wrist in order to catch the robe at the elbow and pull her closer.

The king lifted a hand to her cheek and kissed her. It was not a kiss between strangers, not even a kiss between a bride and a groom. It was a kiss between a man and his wife, and when it was over, the king closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the hollow of the queen’s shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day. “I didn’t have the gardens searched,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Costis realized his mouth was open, and shut it. He couldn’t step away without pulling the king’s arm off his shoulder, but he could look in some other
direction, so he did that. He looked at the court, filled with people who were slower than he to realize that their mouths were hanging open. So many stunned faces all in rows. Costis could have laughed, but was still too shaken himself.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” said Attolia softly.

“You didn’t startle me,” said Eugenides. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Attolia’s lips pressed together. “You needn’t admit it out loud,” she reproved him.

“Hard to deny it,” Eugenides answered. Costis could hear him smile.

“Are you badly hurt?”

“Hideously,” said the king, without sounding injured at all. “I am disemboweled. My insides may in an instant become my outsides as I stand here before you, and no one will even notice.” He reached up again to touch her face, trying to wipe away the bloody fingerprints he had left, but only making them worse. “My beautiful queen. Your entire court is staring at you, and I can’t blame them.”

They were, too. The queen turned to look. Her glance swept through the crowd like a reaping sickle through grain. Mouths slammed shut on every side. There was a scuffling sound as the people in the back shifted, trying to screen themselves from view. The queen looked back at the king, who was broadly grinning.

“Where are your attendants?” she said. She looked at
Costis for the first time, and at the other soldiers with sudden scrutiny. “Where are your guards?”

“With Teleus,” Eugenides answered quickly. “Costis and these others were conveniently near to hand. I left the others to clean up.”

“I see. Still, you should not be standing here.” She signaled to a guard. “Lift him.”

“I think I will walk,” said the king.

“Maybe a stretcher?” the queen suggested innocently. “You can lie down.”

“Like Oneis carried off the field? I think not,” said Eugenides. His arm pressed against the back of Costis’s neck, and they started up the stairs.

T
HEY
laid the king down on his bed. The crowd had thinned as they crossed the inner palace, and as they reached the final set of stairs, he’d let his guards carry him. He’d accused them of laziness for not offering sooner. When Costis looked at him in reproach, he’d said, “Stop giving me the evil eye, Costis, I am mortally wounded. I deserve some consideration.”

The room was filled with people talking. Those who knew the details of the assassination attempt were sharing their information. The guards were sorting themselves out under the direction of the lieutenant who had been in the guardroom. The queen was near the door speaking to her attendant, who was wiping the king’s bloody fingerprints from the queen’s cheek. The last few hangers-on, those who had talked their way past guards at various doorways along the route, were in the guardroom, hoping to be admitted by the guards posted there. One by
one, the silence by the bed drew their attention.

Even the king was quiet. Exhausted, relieved, he lay boneless and silent. The skin was dragged thin across his cheekbones. His sweaty hair stuck to his face, and his eyes were closed. His hand, clutching the fabric of his tunic, had relaxed and slipped down to his side, revealing what the careful bunching of the cloth had concealed.

The tunic had been split by a knife stroke from one side to the other. As the edges of the fabric separated, those by the bed realized how much blood had been soaking, unseen, into the waist of the king’s trousers. The wound wasn’t a simple nick in the king’s side. It began near the navel and slid all the way across his belly. If the wall of the gut had been opened, the king would be dead of infection within days.

He should have said something, why hadn’t he? Costis wondered. In fact, the king had. He had complained at every step all the way across the palace, and they’d ignored it. If he’d been stoic and denied the pain, the entire palace would have been in a panic already, and Eddisian soldiers on the move. He’d meant to deceive them, and he’d succeeded. It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain.

The king must have noticed the silence. He opened his eyes. Everyone else was looking at his abdomen;
Costis watched his face. Seeing him look anxiously around the room until his eyes fixed on someone by the door, Costis knew that he hadn’t been trying to deceive the palace, or calm the Eddisians. He hardly cared if the palace was in a panic. There was only one person he’d been hiding the extent of the injury from, the queen.

Costis saw him pull himself together as she approached the bed. Of all impossible things, he tried to look smug. “See,” he said, still playing his role, “I told you I was at death’s door,” but he wasn’t fooling them anymore, not Costis and not the queen. The queen’s eyes were slits, and her hands were clenched in fists. She wasn’t frightened; she was angry. He could hardly, at this point, reassure her by telling her the wound wasn’t serious. Costis almost saw him wince. The king opened his mouth to speak.

“It isn’t very deep,” the Eddisian Ambassador said from the other side of the bed. He was leaning over the wound, looking critical and mildly disappointed. Eugenides didn’t miss a beat.

His head whipped around. “It is…too…deep!” he insisted, outraged.

The attendants looked shocked and then amused.

“Your Majesty,” Ornon said in supercilious tones, “I’ve seen you get deeper scratches with a cloak pin.”

“Damned clumsy with a cloak pin,” one of the attendants muttered.

“I wasn’t using it on myself,” the king snapped. He turned back to the ambassador. “I was enjoying that little moment of horrified attention, Ornon.”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Ornon replied. “But I think you’ve been closer to death than this.”

The king looked up at the queen, who, relieved by Ornon’s opinion as she would not have been by the king’s, still looked down at him in displeasure. “I doubt it,” she said. “I could disembowel you myself.”

“I did say I was so—” The king broke off to shriek in rage and pain, and everyone but the queen jumped. “What in the name of all gods is that?” the king shouted.

The physician, nervously clutching a bloody swab, said, “It’s a mixture of aqua vitae and v-vital herbs.”

“It hurts, you bloodsucking leech. I didn’t leave that torturing bastard Galen in the mountains so that you could take his place.”

“I’m so sorry, but it w-will prevent infection, Your Majesty.”

“It had better if it hurts that much, and you had better warn me before you put any more on.”

“I will, Your Majesty,” the doctor said, carefully wiping the wound with another clean cloth.

“When you’ve finished admiring it, you can put a bandage on it,” the king said impatiently.

The palace doctor, who was a thin, nervous man, stared, concentrating. “I’d like to put stitches in where
the cut is deepest. And stitch the muscle first.” He looked up at the queen for approval.

“It doesn’t need stitches,” the king said warily.

“Because it’s not very deep,” someone in the crowd muttered. The king looked around with a black look, but didn’t see the speaker.

“Petrus has been my personal physician for a number of years,” said the queen. “With the crown’s money, he operates a charitable hospital in the city where he has studied a number of new medical techniques. If he believes stitches are suitable, I suggest you let him put them in.”

“Just here,” said the doctor, “at the side where the wound is deeper. Had it been this deep for the entire length, your assassin would certainly have ruptured the peritoneum.”

“The what?”

“The gut.”

“Ahh,” said the king, and then “Aagh!” a moment later. “What is that, an awl?”

“Oh, no, Your Majesty, no, as you can see, it is a very fine needle.”

“It doesn’t feel like a needle—it feels like you’ve spent too much time working on people who don’t pay you and you should—ow! Ow! Ow!”

Costis closed his eyes, appalled. The king couldn’t lie on a deathbed with a sense of dignity. The attendants were all on the verge of breaking into laughter, and the
king, far from minding, was enjoying every minute of it.

The queen’s lips thinned.

“I am very sorry,” the physician said helplessly.

“Stop apologizing and hurry.”

“Your Majesty, I…” Petrus looked as if he was about to cry.

Ornon spoke firmly from behind the doctor. “Your Majesty is upsetting his physician.” The ambassador stepped closer to the bed. He and the king locked gazes.

Eugenides looked away. “Oh, very well,” he said, sulkily. “Tell him to get on with it.” He took a breath and let it go in a brief huff of audible petulance.

Ornon encouraged the doctor with a pat on his shoulder and stepped back. The doctor bent over the wound again. The king made a face, but was silent. The doctor looked up momentarily in astonishment but returned to his work, eager to finish before this reprieve passed.

The king lay still and made no sound. As Petrus pulled his first stitches tight, the king took a deeper breath and didn’t let it go. After a long count of ten, he softly released the breath and took another.

There were three people between Costis and the queen. Costis knocked all three of them aside like pegs in a counting game and dropped to his knees in time to catch the queen as she collapsed into his outspread arms.

He’d seen her, white as wax, from the corner of his eye and, seeing her waver, had known she was fainting, but too late to do anything but catch her.

“The queen!” someone shouted in alarm, and the king erupted like a wild animal caught in a snare.

He tried to sit up, and the men around him held him down. He struggled. Someone sensible used both hands to pin the hook, with its knife-edge, to the bed. Someone less sensible tried to consolidate his grip on the king’s other arm and staggered back, holding his face.

“My stitches, my stitches!” the physician yelled.

“Your Majesty, Your Majesty!”

“Damn your stitches!” he snarled. “Let me up.”

With one hand free the king was forcing himself to a sitting position, but more people were pushing him back down, all of them shouting. Someone fell back from the end of the bed, kicked solidly. The doctor cried out again, all his work going to waste.

Costis saw no good to be had by involving himself in the melee. He watched as Ornon stepped forward, seized a man efficiently by the hair, and pulled him sharply backward. The man sat down hard, and Ornon stepped into the space he had left by the king’s bed. He splayed his hand across the king’s face and slammed his head back hard against the pillow. Keeping his hand planted on the king’s face, he leaned over and roared into his ear, “The queen is fine!”

Eugenides was still. The men around the bed froze as well.

“Irene?” the king called.

“She fainted. That’s all,” Ornon said more quietly. “There is a great deal of blood. She is a woman and she was upset. It is not a surprising reaction.”

Costis looked down at the woman in his arms. She had a name. She was Irene. He’d never thought of her having any name except Attolia, but of course she was a person as well as a queen. Lying in his arms, she felt surprisingly human, and female. Costis, suddenly uncomfortable with his burden, was relieved when Hilarion lifted her out of his arms and carried her away to the guardroom. Her attendants followed after, clucking like hens.

Costis got to his feet.

On the bed, Eugenides stirred restlessly. “Upset at the sight of blood?” he said. “Not my wife, Ornon.”

“Your blood,” the ambassador pointed out.

Eugenides glanced at the hook on his arm and conceded the point. “Yes,” he said. He seemed lost in a memory. The room was quiet. As Costis struggled toward a new understanding of the king and the queen, he knew everyone else in the room was doing the same. Except perhaps the physician, who was holding needle and thread in his raised hand, waiting anxiously for instruction.

“Get on with it,” said the king. He hardly seemed to
notice when the stitching began. He looked toward the doorway, toward the queen, but spoke to the Eddisian Ambassador. “I think, in future, Ornon, I will stick to upsetting my physician.”