A Conspiracy of Kings (19 page)

“I am nothing but a bone of contention,” said the
patient bitterly.

Sounis was unsympathetic. “That seems unlike Galen,”
he said.

“Well, you try insinuating that he’s a mountain
bumpkin with the medical knowledge of the village butcher and see
how he takes it,” said Eugenides. “My oh-so-timid
palace physician turns out to be quite ferocious when he thinks
someone is trespassing on his medical ground.”

“That also seems unlike Galen,” said Sounis.

“My fault entirely,” Eugenides admitted. “I
asked to see Galen while he was here with Eddis and touched off a
bout of professional jealousy.”

Sounis snickered.

“Your time will come, puppy. You just wait,” said
Eugenides. He turned again into a narrow side street. “There
it is,” he said, “under the lantern.”

The tavern had a sign of painted grapes just barely illuminated
by the dim lamp. Sounis went down stone steps and ducked through a
low door underneath the sign. The taproom was no better lit, and he
stepped carefully around scattered tables to a booth against a wall
where he and Eugenides could sit opposite each other and still each
have a view of the door.

By unspoken agreement they paused in their conversation until
they were sitting with the high walls of the booth on either
side.

“And your attendants?” Sounis asked.

“Every one another Ambiades,” said Gen, referring to
the traitor who had betrayed them both when they followed the magus
in pursuit of Hamiathes’s Gift. “I’d had some
hope for Philologos,” Gen admitted, “but Sejanus won
that hand neatly.”

Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. “He would have been
a better man under different circumstances.”

Gen looked at him. “True enough,” he said.
“But does a good man let his circumstances determine his
character?”

Sounis couldn’t argue with that. “Perhaps you can
bring out better in them?”

Eugenides shook his head. “I pulled the carpet out from
under them very thoroughly. They will not cross me, but they
won’t love me, either. I am not Eddis. People do not hand
me
their hearts.”

Sounis wondered. He would have given Eugenides his heart on a
toothpick, if asked. He remembered Ion’s obvious wince at
being rated somewhat less significant to Gen than his boots.

The barmaid came to the table, and Gen ordered wine.

When she was gone, Sounis asked if Attolis paid his way out of
his own palace often, but he needled to no effect.

“Oh, that’s not a bribe to get out the gate.
It’s compensation for the rating he’ll get from the
captain of my guard. Teleus hates it when I go out, and he’s
going to be sullen in the morning, but I’ve given him enough
ground. The circus this morning was largely at his insistence. My
father and Procivitus would have served my purposes well enough,
but Teleus insisted his guard be involved. He does not like them to
be ashamed of me.” Eugenides shrugged. “So. Melheret
will already know I was making a fool of him, and I won’t be
able to trick him again, but Teleus must be appeased.”

“Oh, poor king,” said Sounis.

The barmaid brought the wine and cups. When she was gone,
Eugenides dunked a finger in his wine and flicked it at Sounis.

T
HE long summer twilight was in the sky outside, but
the lamps were lit in the small dining room, casting a warm glow
over the diners reclined on their couches. The king’s
attendants moved quietly through the room with platters of food and
amphorae to refill wine cups.

“Why not refuse the ambassador, send him home?”
Sounis asked.

He watched Attolia out of the corner of his eye. She was still
cool, like a breath of winter in the warm evening air, but in the
last few days he had begun to sense a subtle humor in her chilly
words.

When Gen had complained earlier that evening that Petrus, the
palace physician, should stop fussing over him like a worried old
woman, Attolia had asked, archly, “And me as well?”

“When you stop fussing,” Gen had said, slipping to
his knees beside her couch, “I will sleep with
two
knives under my pillow.”

Attolia had looked down at him and said sharply,
“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Only when Eugenides laughed had Sounis realized her implication:
If she ever turned against Eugenides, a second knife wouldn’t
save him. He almost swallowed the olive in his mouth unchewed.

As he stared, Attolia had brushed Eugenides’s cheek almost
shyly before sending him with a wave back to his own couch.

“One cannot toss ambassadors back like bad fish,”
said Eugenides. “You treat them with care, or you’ll
find you’ve committed an act of war.”

“If we have one of their ambassadors, the Medes, in turn,
have one of ours,” said Attolia.

Sounis knew from the magus that Attolia’s spy network had
been devastatingly compromised. He understood why they were willing
to accept the risk of having a Mede ambassador sowing dissent in
their palace if it meant they had some representative of their own
in the Mede Empire.

“We would like to know where the Mede emperor is gathering
his army, his navy,” Attolia said. “The Great Powers of
the Continent, and those on the Peninsula, don’t believe he
is raising one. They insist that it is saber rattling.
Which,” she conceded, “it might be. The emperor is
dying, and dying men rarely start wars with their last breaths. But
I believe that his heir has already seized power, and a conquest is
a reliable means to cement his authority.”

“Only if he can trust his generals not to turn on him once
they come home as heroes,” said Sounis.

“In this case, his general is his brother
Nahuseresh,” said Eugenides. “Civil unrest from that
quarter is more than we could hope for.”

Eddis said, “The Continent wants proof of an attack before
they take any risks to counter it. They don’t want to offend
the Mede Empire and so precipitate the war we all are trying to
avoid. Though they would of course be willing to stage troops
here,” she added drily.

Sounis winced. Small countries like Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia
were as vulnerable to the “aid” of the Continent as to
the conquest of the Medes. In his lifetime Sounis had seen small
city-states on the Peninsula absorbed by their larger neighbors in
the guise of “safekeeping.”

Sounis sensed that it would be impolite to ask outright if Eddis
had any spies across the Middle Sea. Her spies more probably were
deployed closer to home, in Attolia. Or in Sounis, he supposed. He
resolved to ask the magus for more information about his own
sources of information.

“The ambassadors of several states have conveyed their
sovereigns’ offers to improve megarons on our coast and to
move their soldiers, under their own command, into the fortified
positions,” said Eugenides. “As opposed to loaning us
the money to fortify our own borders.”

“What we have received most,” said Attolia,
“is lectures warning us not to be provoking, that we risk
losing the support of the sovereigns on the Peninsula and the
Continent.”

“If the Medes are going to attack, what point is there in
not being provoking?” asked Sounis.

Attolia replied. “So long as the emperor publicly denies
any animosity and continues to send an ambassador to my court and
yours, the Continent can continue to do nothing.”

“But why?” asked Sounis. “Why the wishful
thinking?”

Eugenides shrugged his lack of an answer. “They may be too
busy with instability closer to home.”

“So we walk on eggshells?” said Sounis.
“Hoping that if the Mede does attack, the Continent and the
greater Peninsula will come to our aid in time rather than allow
the emperor a foothold on this side of the Middle Sea?”

“Indeed,” said Attolia. “And we pray that no
one on this little peninsula of ours will offer them the foothold
for free, which your rebels may be doing as we speak. You and your
magus in your overcautious treaty writing are wasting time you
don’t have. You need to find your most significant adversary,
and you need to destroy him, annihilate him root and branch. If you
can capture him alive and have him publicly ganched, so much the
better.”

Sounis looked away.

Eugenides looked into his wine cup. Eddis met Attolia’s
gaze, but offered her no support.

Her chin up, Attolia said, “You think I am overly harsh.
You inherited your throne free and clear. And you”—she
turned on her husband—“took one readymade. Sounis has
little in common with either of you.”

“He
is
an appointed heir,” said
Gen, speaking into his folded arms, as he reclined back on his
couch with the toes of his boots tapping.

Attolia shook her head. “They will deny that in a
heartbeat, making sparks from his father’s illegitimacy if
they choose.”

Gen said blandly, “It isn’t Sophos who is
illegitimate.”

“He has the magus,” said Eddis, turning the
conversation back to the point.

“The magus is not much beloved in Sounis these
days,” Attolia responded.

“There is my father,” said Sounis.

Attolia looked at him. “And are you certain he will
support you when he learns that you have sworn loyalty to
Attolis?”

Sounis said nothing, staring down at his wine.

Later they rose together and made their way toward one of the
larger throne rooms where there would be music and dancing. The
kings of Attolia and Sounis fell a little way back.

“Is she right?” Sounis asked bluntly.

Attolis shrugged. “She is right that I took the throne she
secured. Eddis has her barons in the palm of her hand, and they
would follow her cheerfully through the gates of the underworld,
but Attolia is not wrong that my cousin inherited her throne on the
strength of my father’s right arm. He swore that she, and no
one else, would be crowned. Only Attolia has faced a revolt in her
own house.”

“Then you think I should take her advice?”

“I know that if you don’t look for an alternative,
Sophos, you certainly won’t find one.”

The next day, as Sounis crossed a spacious flower-filled
courtyard, Ion asked him if he would like to take a seat on a bench
in the cool colonnade that overlooked the garden.

“Perhaps Your Majesty would like to rest a moment?”
Ion suggested. Sounis was on his way to another appointment with
his tailors, and not looking forward to it. He’d thought they
were finished with their work, but Eugenides had ordered an armored
breastplate—out of sheer perversity, Sounis was certain. The
tailors wanted to be sure the fabric of the embroidered coat he
would wear under the armor wouldn’t bunch or chafe. Sounis
had little patience left for the tailors, and he said yes, he would
like to delay just a moment to look at the flowers.

He was grateful for all that had taken place in Attolia. He
could have been in a dungeon, or still at work in Hanaktos’s
fields, or dead, for that matter. He wasn’t. He was sitting
with an appearance of ease in the shade, but he was growing
desperate to return to Sounis. He had been weeks in Attolia without
news of his mother or sisters. His father had reached the border
with Melenze; he knew that much but could only guess at the
activity of his rebel barons. The queen’s warning about the
passage of time had been unnecessary. Sounis’s every worry
pricked him like the tailors’ pins. He sat for a moment to
pick through them and to consider the queen of Attolia’s
troubling advice.

Ion had wandered down the colonnade to give the king of Sounis
his privacy. Or so Sounis had assumed. When he caught a glimpse of
bright fabric moving between the garden beds opposite, he leaned
forward and tracked its progress. The woman was moving toward the
corner where Ion was waiting. When Ion stepped from the colonnade
down into the garden, he disappeared from sight, but Sounis’s
ears were good, and he heard the murmur of greeting.

Sounis sat back with a smile. He was jealous. Were it not for
the inconvenient meeting he was presently avoiding, he would have
been walking with Eddis in the far more spacious and private
gardens behind the palace. His smile faded the instant he saw the
ambassador for the Mede Empire approaching from the opposite
direction.

“Please, Your Majesty,” said the Mede politely,
“do not rise. I have no desire to interrupt your
contemplations.”

“Won’t you join me?” said Sounis
diplomatically, his heart sinking.

“If you can spare a moment of your time?” Wrapping
his robes around his knees, Melheret settled beside him on the
stone bench.

“Certainly,” said Sounis. Impossible to say no when
he was already sparing the time on his own self-indulgence.

“The king of Attolia keeps you close,” said the
Mede, by way of an explanation for his unusual approach.

“He is a good friend,” said Sounis.

“Or perhaps just a jealous one,” said Melheret
gently. “His invitations take precedence and leave little
room for you to confer with others…others who may have
information of great use to you.”

Sounis wondered if he was supposed to be surprised. Of course
the constant meetings with the Attolians prevented even more
awkward meetings with the ambassadors of the Peninsula and the
Continent. Sounis had sent the magus to deal with those
ambassadors, with careful instructions to make no commitments. The
Mede he had meticulously avoided since their first exchange over
the remchik.

It was as Attolia had said, one didn’t want to make a
misstep and start a war. Sounis wanted nothing to do with the
Medes, but no sensible ruler offended another’s ambassador on
purpose. He just hoped his uncharitable opinion of Melheret
didn’t show.

“You don’t like me, Your Majesty. I see my cause is
lost.”

Oh, gods, save me from having to protest my undying affection
for the Mede, thought Sounis. “No, Ambassador, not at
all,” he said aloud. He might as well put his worries to good
use. “I am unsure of my course, I will tell you.
I—” He stopped short of saying he was still tracing
designs in the plasterwork at night instead of sleeping.
“Truly, I do not know what is for the best. Attolia counsels
violence and I—I want to believe that I can bring my barons
together peacefully, that I can convince them to honor me as their
king without defeating them first. The cost to my countrymen in
gold, in lives, will mean that even as I win, I will count it. It
will be years before Sounis can recover what it has lost.” To
say it aloud was to be overwhelmed by it; waging a war to make
peace seemed a sick sort of joke played by the gods.