The King of Attolia (28 page)

“Dammit,” the king said, looking out over the atrium.

The attendants shuffled their feet. They weren’t gloating. They didn’t even want to remember that they had ever gloated in the past.

“Well, this time I am not walking around,” the king said in disgust. “You can go the long way.” He assumed an expression of long suffering. “Obedient to my god, I am going directly to bed.” He sat down on the railing and swung both legs over at once, dropping down onto the rafter below before the attendants could stop him. To Costis, who’d reached for him too late, he said, “Worried?”

“Your Majesty, you just—” Costis stopped.

“Just what?” the king prompted wickedly.

Nothing would induce Costis to say out loud that the king had almost fallen from the palace wall and that Costis had seen him manifestly saved by the God of Thieves.

The king smiled. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Your Majesty, you are drunk,” Costis pleaded.

“I am. What’s your excuse?” For hearing gods and seeing impossibilities.

The king relented. “Safety is an illusion, Costis. A Thief might fall at any time, and eventually the day must come when the god will let him. Whether I am on a rafter three stories up or on a staircase three steps up, I am in my god’s hands. He will keep me safe, or he will not, here or on the stairs.”

The attendants did fruitlessly throw themselves at the railing, but he was out of their reach. Ignoring them, he continued on along the rafter, leaning gracefully to step around the trusses where they dropped from the roof in diagonals to join the rafter.

“He’s a lunatic,” someone muttered. “A raving lunatic.”

Costis wasn’t sure. He knew what he’d heard on the rooftop, even if he didn’t believe it. Even if he woke the next day believing it had all been a dream. The next day, he thought, when he would no longer be a member of the Guard.

“Your Majesty,” Costis said again, more loudly than the attendants. The king turned, swaying just a little. He put his hand to the truss slanting down beside him.

“Yes?”

“You said you owed me something better than death by falling roof tile.”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask for something?”

The king appeared to think. “You can ask,” he said.
“I’m king, Costis, not a genie. I don’t grant wishes.”

“Come to sword training with the Guard in the morning.”

The king peered at him as if he were having difficulty seeing. “Costis? Do you have any idea what my head is going to feel like in the morning?”

“You said that you would speak to Teleus tomorrow. Will you come?”

“Why?” asked the king, suspicious.

“Your side has healed. You need the exercise.” When the king continued to look dubious, he added, “Because I am asking.”

“All right,” the king said at last. “All right, I will be there. Yech,” he muttered as he moved away.

Costis and the attendants watched, hearts in their mouths, as he crossed the atrium. No one moved or spoke until he reached the far side and pulled himself up onto the balcony there. Costis swung then, to face the attendants.

“That is my price,” he said. “You get him to sword training in the morning.”

“Do you know what he’s going to be like in the morning?” one asked.

“Costis…we can’t just…”

“You can,” he insisted. “I’ve seen you badger him. Every one of you.”

“That was before.”

“Then you’ll just have to pretend nothing has
changed. Get him to sword practice in the morning.”

They wavered.

“When I said, name your price, I was thinking of silver,” Hilarion admitted.

“I wasn’t.”

“All right,” he capitulated, “if that is your price, but you are obviously a lunatic, too.”

They turned back through the doorway and made their way to the staircase. Costis stopped on a landing one flight down and watched the attendants and the squad of guards continue. He went back to his room, getting slightly lost on the way.

In the morning, he was up and dressed early. He went down to the mess hall, which was empty, and fetched himself a piece of a loaf from the day’s baking. He was one of the first men on the training ground. The other guards stretched and chatted with one another. They ignored him. He paced, and tried not to look anxious. If the king didn’t come, he would have to face the awkwardness of training alone. He’d already discovered that no one would spar with him. Having shown up this morning, he knew his pride wouldn’t let him leave without some semblance of practice. He prayed the king would come.

He had slept badly, waking off and on through the night haunted by the voice he’d heard on the parapet. In the morning light, the whole episode seemed
part of one muddled nightmare. Costis preferred it that way.

At last the king came. He came late, with his face still creased from sleep, when the training ground was filling and guards had settled into pairs and begun sparring throughout the courtyard, except in the empty space where Costis waited by himself. The first thing the king did was walk to one of the fountains along the wall and stick his face into it. He shook his hair off his face, flicking drops of water sparking into the air. Then he crossed the open square to Costis, leaving his attendants behind.

“Shall we start with the first exercises?” He was looking down at the button on his cuff. It was undone, and he was awkwardly holding his sword and trying to button the cuff at the same time.

“I don’t think so,” said Costis, and when the king looked up, Costis swung at his head.

Costis wasn’t close, and the king jumped back. The sword passed harmlessly in front of his nose.

“Costis, what do you think you are doing?”

“Sparring, Your Majesty.”

“Most people cross swords before they spar and they say something introductory like ‘Begin!’ before they swing.”

“We can cross swords if you will put yours up, Your Majesty.”

“But I don’t want to spar.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Costis said, and swung again.

The king jumped back again. He still hadn’t gotten his button through its buttonhole.

“Dammit, Costis, have you lost your mind?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“I am not going to spar with you.”

“Then I am a dead man, Your Majesty.”

“Oh?”

“Your attendants will have me arrested if this doesn’t start to look like a sparring match soon. They are headed this way.”

The king glanced briefly around. The guards on either side had stopped sparring and were standing to watch.

“I’ll hang, Your Majesty,” said Costis, cheerfully. “Assuming I’m not tortured.”

“And you are thinking I wouldn’t want that to happen?”

“I know you don’t.”

“Only because I have another job for you to do.”

Costis smiled.

The king scowled. “This is extortion.”

Costis lifted his sword up. The king didn’t want him to die, and not because of an errand that needed doing. The king had dismissed him in order to protect him from the reprisals of the powerful. The king wasn’t going to let him hang. Last night’s
bizarre episode was forgotten. Only the memory that he hadn’t been betrayed by the king mattered. Costis felt wonderful.

A moment later the sword he’d been holding clattered to the ground. Costis looked from the sword to his stinging fingers and back to the sword.

“There,” the king said nastily. “We’re done. I’m going back to bed.” The attendants had paused. More people were staring.

“I don’t think so, Your Majesty.” Costis picked up the sword and raised it again.

There were a few exchanges this time before the king’s sword slid over the top of Costis’s guard and the flat side of it smacked him on the cheek.

“You drop your point in third,” said Eugenides.

Costis flushed, remembering the king’s comment at their first practice together. He had sparred for weeks with the best swordsman he’d ever encountered in his life and was no better for it because he’d dismissed the king’s advice.

“Done now?” the king asked.

“No, Your Majesty.”

The king sighed. He backed a few steps. Watching Costis warily, he popped his sword between his teeth, and giving up on the buttonhole, he rolled up his sleeve before he spat the sword back into his hand.

“Ready,” he said.

They began.

“Has it occurred to you, Costis,” the king said conversationally between thrusts, “that the only reason I am alive now is that those three assassins took me for a prancing lightweight?”

It hadn’t occurred to Costis. “You will have the Guard to defend you now,” he said.

“I was supposed to have the Guard to defend me then. I am not reassured.”

“You will,” Costis insisted.

“Oh?” said the king. “You think they will see I do know how to use a sword and lo, they will come to heel? I don’t think so, Costis.”

It wasn’t as simple as that, Costis knew. There had been suitors before for the queen’s hand, suitors who were capable with a sword, and the Guard wouldn’t have followed them across the street into a wineshop. Nonetheless, Costis was certain that the Guard, if they knew him, would follow the king. He just didn’t have the words to explain why, and was too hard-pressed to stop and think of them.

The king attacked; Costis defended. The king hit him hard on the thigh. Hopping backward, Costis disengaged, but the king kept coming and hit him twice more, once on the same thigh and once on the elbow. Costis retreated faster. The king watched, his eyes narrowed.

“Frankly, Costis, if they all fight like you, I am still not reassured.”

This time, Costis’s sword rose into the air in an arc before hitting the ground with a rattle. He went to pick it up.

“Too late to stop now, Costis,” the king said, and attacked again.

Costis snatched up his sword and retreated. The men sparring around him moved to make room and then circled around, all pretense of minding their own business gone.

“So, Costis,” said the king, as Costis watched him warily, “you asked for this. Why?”

“You compromised my honor.”

“I compromised
your
honor? Which one of us hit the other in the face?”

“They think I lied on your instructions. That Teleus and I killed the assassins in the garden and let you take the credit.”

“Oh, that,” said the king with a shrug. “That isn’t your honor, Costis. That’s the public perception of your honor. It has nothing to do with anything important, except perhaps for manipulating fools who mistake honor for its bright, shiny trappings. You can always change the perceptions of fools.”

The wooden swords thwacked against each other, and Costis was driven back again. The circle of onlookers broke and re-formed again around them. Even after the weeks of practice, it was disconcerting to fight against someone left-handed. The king’s sword came
from the wrong direction, and it came too fast for Costis to be sure he could parry it, so he retreated. The circle of men widened to give him room, but the men were starting to jeer.

“Come on, Costis,” someone shouted. “You’re going the wrong direction.”

That was easy for him to say, Costis thought. His arm and his thigh didn’t ache, and his face didn’t burn as if a hot iron had been laid on it.

Other watchers remembered that Costis, even in disgrace, was their man. There were a few cheers on his side, and his heart rose. Costis took a breath and tried to steady himself. When the king moved toward him, Costis held his ground. The king attacked in first, exactly as they had practiced for so many tedious hours. Costis parried, his arm moving automatically. The king attacked again, still in first. Costis parried. Costis remembered their first lesson when he had thought he would have to take his beating and make the king look good in the process. Instead, the king was making him look good. Eugenides continued to attack in first, harder and faster, and each time Costis parried. His arm knew its business better than his head did. He didn’t need to think, only to react—in mounting terror as the king’s blows came faster and faster. Should he change to another attack, Costis was not going to be able to defend himself. The king’s wooden sword was going to break his arm, or his ribs, or his
head, but just as Costis thought he would surely break down, the king slowed and backed off. The guard watched in silent appreciation.

“Ready?” asked the king. Costis nodded. This was the part where he wouldn’t look good. It was a farce. Costis didn’t stand a chance of defending himself, though he tried. The king moved too fast; he attacked in ways that were entirely a surprise to Costis, who had a soldier’s command of a sword, not a duelist’s.

The guards around him shouted advice, but it was hopeless.

The king slipped through Costis’s guard; he slipped under it, catching him on the thigh or the knee, or over it, knocking him on the head, hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to finish him. And with every hit, the king shouted directions in a harsh voice Costis had never heard. “Don’t lower your guard!” Whack. “Don’t swing so wide!” Whack. “Don’t leave yourself open!” Whack. “Don’t…lower…the…point…in…third!” With each stroke, Costis was more rattled. His defense fell apart. The king disarmed him, and then disarmed him again. Costis stood amazed.

“H-How did you do that?”

“No!” shouted the king. “You don’t stand there like a buffoon. Get your sword!” he roared, and raced at Costis. In a panic, Costis dove for his sword and missed. The king’s sword fell on his exposed and undefended posterior. Yelping, Costis scrambled for the
sword and managed to twist and block the next blow as it fell and the next as he crawled away from the king. The guards roared with laughter. Costis got to his feet and raised his sword, but he was laughing as well, and the sword shook in his hands. He backed as the king advanced. Giving up even a show of self-defense, he waggled the sword in front of him, until he bumped into a wall and realized he’d been backed into a corner of the courtyard.

The king stood in front of him, arms crossed, sword hanging from his hand. “Are we done?”

Costis looked at the men standing behind the king, smiling and relaxed.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Costis.

“Good,” said the king. “I want my breakfast. I want a bath.” In a weak voice he added, “I drank too much last night, and I have a headache.”