The King of Attolia

T
he queen waited. Sitting at the window, she watched the lights of the town glow in the last of the long twilight. The sun had been down for hours and it was still not fully dark. True dark wouldn’t come, except in the odd unlit corners. The lanterns would burn all night as the people moved from celebration to celebration until they greeted the sun’s return and the new day and staggered home at last. They celebrated, with wine and music and dancing, a day they had thought would never come. The queen’s wedding day. She sat at the window, watching the lights, listening for the music, waiting for her husband.

In Attolia, a woman came to her husband on the wedding night. In Eddis, a man came to his bride. They had chosen to keep the custom of Eddis. The Eddisians could see this as the queen bowing to the Eddisian customs of her new husband, but the Attolians would see the queen still flouting the traditional duties of an Attolian woman. It was a careful dance of shadows and unsubstance, but under it all, there was a marriage of two people. Today she had yielded the sovereignty of her country to Eugenides,
who had given up everything he had ever hoped for, to be her king.

In the palace’s great open court, filled with tables and the glowing lanterns in colored paper shades, Ornon, the Ambassador from Eddis, smothered a yawn and the smile that followed it as he considered the future of the former Thief of Eddis. He and Eugenides were old adversaries, and the happy vision of the Thief fettered by the responsibilities of sovereignty warmed his heart. It was far more satisfying than any petty revenge Ornon might have planned. The Queen of Eddis knew his thoughts from across the room and gave him a look that made him sit straighter, take another sip of wine, and turn his smile toward his dinner companion.

On the palace wall, a young guard on duty looked out over the town with much the same view as the Attolian queen had from her window. He was missing the celebrations, but he didn’t much care for drinking and brawling, and he didn’t mind. He liked being stationed high above the palace. The solitude, and the time away from the noise of the barracks and his companions, gave him space to think. These stints on the upper reaches of the palace walls were his favorite. There was no danger he needed to watch for: no ships of Sounis’s could reach their harbor, no armies would be dropping from the hills across the valley. Attolia’s most
dangerous enemy was already within the palace and an enemy no more, he supposed. Costis could have been asleep for all his duty mattered, this night. Still, he straightened to attention and tried to look alert as his captain came up beside him.

“Costis,” said the captain, “you are missing the feasting.”

“So are you, sir.”

“I don’t mind.” No emotion colored the captain’s voice.

Deeper into the night, when the official banquets in the palace had ended, far from the still-noisy celebrations in the streets of the city, the Secretary of the Archives idly shifted the papers on his desk. More than anyone, he had cause to fear the new king. He had approached the queen privately and suggested they discuss means of limiting the king’s power. Eugenides was young; he was untrained, impetuous, and naive. He would be easy to control once the power of his Eddisian advisors waned, as it necessarily must. The queen had responded with a look that was all the warning Relius needed to know that he had overstepped his authority. He withdrew with apologies. He would leave the fate of the king to the queen, but would not pretend to himself that he was not afraid.

C
HAPTER
O
NE

C
OSTIS
sat in his room. On the table in front of him was a piece of paper meant to hold a report on the squad of men he directed. He’d scratched out the first few lines of the report and written underneath the beginnings of a letter to his father. It began, “Sir, I must explain my actions,” and then stopped. Costis couldn’t explain his actions. He rubbed his face with his hands and tried again to compose his anguished thoughts into cold words and orderly sentences.

He looked over the mess in his quarters. His small trunk of clothes was tipped out onto the floor. The tray that had sat in the top of it to hold his sleeve links and buttons and pins was thrown down by the bed. The links, the spare buttons, and the small image of his god were scattered everywhere. His books were gone. He’d had three. So, he assumed, was his wallet with what money he kept in his room. That was a pity. He would have given the money to his friend Aristogiton. His
sword was gone from its rack on the wall. He would have given that to Aris as well.

The two soldiers who’d brought him back from the training ground, almost dragging him along by their grip at his elbows, had taken every sharp thing out of the room. They were veterans, who’d served in the Guard for most of their lives. They’d searched his small trunk and dragged the thin mattress, as well as the blanket, off the narrow bed frame. One had pulled down Costis’s sword and swept up his knife from the windowsill while the other had collected his papers, crumpling them together in his fist. Without looking at him again, they’d gone. Costis had turned the stool upright on its three legs. They had left his cloak pins, his plain everyday one and his fancy one with the amber bead. He had been a little surprised. His good pin was fibula-shaped with a shaft four inches long and as thick as a cornstalk. It would be as effective as a sword, if Costis chose to use it. Even the smaller pin would do; two inches in the right place was all it took.

As Costis had considered, without any real motivation, the possibilities of the cloak pins, the curtain across his doorway had swept back and one of the soldiers had returned to kick his feet briskly through the detritus on the floor, quickly locating the cloak pins. After scooping them up, he had checked the floor again to see if there were more. He had seen the sandal straps
and taken those. He’d looked Costis over once and shaken his head in contempt as he left.

Costis looked back at the letter in front of him. It was almost the only paper they’d left him. He shouldn’t waste it, but he didn’t know how he could explain his actions to his father when he couldn’t explain them to himself. He’d broken a sacred oath, had destroyed his career, his life, and perhaps his family in one moment. It was unnatural to look back at events and be unable to believe that what you remembered could actually have happened.

It was afternoon. He’d made no progress on his letter since morning, when the sun had been slanting into the narrow window and filling the small room with light. The sun had climbed over the roof of the barracks and the room was grown dim, lit only indirectly by the sunlight falling into the narrow courtyard between barracks. Costis was waiting for the queen. She had left the palace for the first time since her marriage and had gone hunting. She was to eat at midday at one of the lodges and return sometime in the afternoon.

Costis got up from his stool and paced for the hundredth, the thousandth time across the room. He would be sentenced when she returned, almost certainly to death. Even worse than death would come if she thought that he had acted as part of a conspiracy or that
even one member of his family had known of his actions in advance. If that happened, his family would have to leave the farm outside Pomea in the Gede Valley. Every single one of them, not just his father and his sister, but uncles, aunts, and cousins. Their property would be forfeit to the crown and they would be no longer members of the landowning class, but would be okloi—merchants if they were lucky, beggars if they were not.

Of course, even he had had no foreknowledge of what was going to happen. He would never have guessed that he could so compound calamity with disaster, but the truth hardly mattered now. Costis thought of the papers they had taken away and tried to remember exactly what was in them that could be mistaken for plans of treason. The Secretary of the Archives could see treason in a single word. One hint of a plan and Costis would be put to torture instead of hanging in the morning. He knew that when torture began, Truth, which had mattered very little to begin with, soon mattered not at all.

He stepped to the window and looked out at the shadows falling on the barracks across from him. The midafternoon trumpets would be sounding soon and the watches would be changing. He was supposed to be on the palace walls. Behind him he heard the curtain rings sliding on the rod across his doorway. He turned
to face the men who would take him to the palace.

There were no guards. Standing alone in the doorway was the king. The ruler, anointed by priests and priestesses, of all the lands of Attolia, the official father of the people, the lord of the barons who’d one by one sworn him their oaths of obedience, the undisputed, uncontested, and absolute sovereign of the land. The swollen discoloration by his mouth closely matched the elaborate purple embroidery on his collar.

“Most people in your circumstances would kneel,” said the king, and Costis, who had been staring transfixed, belatedly dropped to his knees. He should have bowed his head, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the king’s face. Only the king’s returning stare broke his rigor, and he finally lowered his head.

The king stepped to the table, and out of the corner of his eye Costis could see the jug held in his hand, a finger looped through the handle and two cups pinched in his fingers. The king lifted them onto the table, putting the jug down first. With a flick of his hand he sent one of the cups spinning into the air, and carefully set the other on the wood. Catching the one in the air as it began to fall, he set it delicately beside its partner. He moved casually, as if this little bit of juggling was second nature. Yet it was necessity made into grace because the king had only one hand.

Costis closed his eyes in shame. All the events of the day, which had been so nightmarish and unreal, were
terribly, terribly true, the mark beside the king’s mouth unmistakable and incontrovertible, every knuckle of Costis’s fist indelibly represented there.

Eugenides said, “You did swear less than two months ago to defend my self and my throne with your life—didn’t you?”

He’d gone down like a rag doll.

“Yes.”

“Is this some Attolian ritual that I am unaware of? Was I supposed to defend myself?” He had one hand; he couldn’t have defended himself against a man both taller and heavier, a whole man.

“I beg your pardon.”

The words were those of a gentleman. They sounded odd, even to Costis, under the circumstances, and the king laughed briefly, without humor. “My pardon is not a matter of civil pleasantry, Costis. My pardon is a very real thing these days. A royal pardon would spare your life.”

A royal pardon was impossible. “I just meant that I am sorry,” Costis said, helpless to explain the inexplicable. “I have never, I would never. I—I…”

“Don’t usually attack cripples?”

Costis’s shame closed his throat. He heard the wine being poured into a cup.

“Put the mattress back on your cot, sit down, and drink this.”

Moving stiffly, Costis did as he was told. By the
time he took the cup and sat gingerly in the presence of the king, the king himself was seated on the stool, leaning back against the wall behind him with his legs out and crossed at the ankle. Costis couldn’t help thinking he looked like a printer’s apprentice after a bar fight and not at all like a king. He took a drink from his cup and stared into it in surprise. The wine was chilled. Sweet and clear, it was like liquid sunlight and better than anything Costis had ever had in his life.

The king’s smile spread slowly. “A royal prerogative, that wine. Be careful of it, it isn’t watered. Have you eaten today?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

The king turned his head and shouted at the curtain, and after a moment there were footsteps in the corridor and the curtain was drawn aside. Laecdomon, one of the men of Aristogiton’s squad, stood in the doorway. Aris was a friend of Costis’s. It couldn’t be pleasant for him to be standing guard outside with his squad.

The king asked for food to be brought from the mess hall. Looking contemptuous, Laecdomon bowed and went away.

“That’s a loyal servant I could do without,” the king said quietly as he turned back to Costis. “No doubt he thinks the food is for me, and he will bring a hard loaf and olives sealed in a jar.”

Costis couldn’t blame him for his opinion of
Laecdomon. He’d never liked the guard. Laecdomon was a little surly, a little aloof, and Costis had been glad not to have him in his own squad. Aris didn’t much like him either, but complained more often of another one of his squad, Legarus, whom he called Legarus the Awesomely Beautiful. In addition to a pretty face, Legarus was born to a landowning family, as Aristogiton was not. Legarus would never rise to squad leader no matter how elevated his family, and this occasionally caused tension in Aristogiton’s squad.

The king interrupted Costis’s distracted thoughts.

“Tell me, Costis, why do people persist in offering me food I can’t eat and then looking like wounded innocents when I point out that I can’t cut it myself? Or open a jar? Or apply soft cheese with a trowel, much less a butter knife?”

Because you’re a jumped-up barbarian goatfoot who abducted the Queen of Attolia and forced her to accept you as a husband and you have no right to be king, was Costis’s thought. Aloud, he said, “I don’t know, Your Majesty.”

Guessing at the thoughts, Eugenides must have found them amusing. He laughed. Costis hid his flush in another swallow of the wine. It was cool in his mouth, and it eased the sick tight ball of despair in his belly.

“Where are you from, Costis?”

“Ortia, Your Majesty. The Gede Valley above Pomea.”

“How big is the farm?”

“Not big, but we’ve held it for a long time.”

“The house of Ormentiedes, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a younger son?”

“My father is.”

“You would have been hoping for land for service?”

Costis couldn’t speak. He nodded.

“Costis.”

Costis looked up.

“If it wasn’t premeditated treason, she won’t take the farm.”

Costis waved his hand, unable to put into words his knowledge that the truth of his crime was less important than the seeming.

“I am king,” Eugenides pointed out mildly.

Costis nodded and drank again. If Eugenides was the sovereign ruler of Attolia, why were they both sitting, waiting for the queen to return? If the king guessed again at Costis’s thought, he made no sign this time. He swung his legs back and stood up to refill Costis’s glass. Costis shivered, wondering if he should allow the king to serve him. Should he stand when he had been told to sit, should he help himself to the king’s wine? Before he could decide what was best, Eugenides had replaced the jug on the table and dropped gracefully back to the stool.

“Tell me about the farm,” said the king.

Haltingly, unsure of himself in this interview that was as unreal as the rest of the day, Costis took refuge in the training of hierarchy and did as he was told. He talked about the olive groves and the corn crops, the house he shared with his father and his younger sister. In between his words, he sipped his wine and the king refilled his cup. The gesture was less startling the second time. As he thought of the farm, Costis’s words came more easily. His father had quarreled with his cousin who was the head of the family, and they had moved out of the main house when Costis was young.

“Your father lost the argument?”

Costis shrugged. “He said the only thing worse than being wrong in a family argument was being right. He said a particular dam wouldn’t hold through the spring. When it didn’t, we moved out of the house.”

“Not very fair.”

Costis shrugged again. It had suited him. The house was small, meant for one of the farm’s managers, but it was private. Costis had been happy to be away from his cousins.

The king nodded in understanding. “I didn’t get along with my cousins either. They held me face down in a rain cache once and wouldn’t let me up until I repeated several filthy insults about my family. Not that I would admit that to anyone but you.” He sipped his wine. “We’ve gotten along better recently, my cousins and I. Perhaps something similar will happen as you get older.”

Costis finished the wine in his cup and wondered
what sort of creature you would have to be to forgive your cousins a history like that. He shrugged. The king sounded like an old man giving advice to a child. The official father of the people was younger, Costis thought, than he was himself, and Costis was very young to be a squad leader. Anyway, Costis’s relationships with his cousins would have little opportunity to mature if he was going to be dead by morning. No doubt that was why the king felt safe in his embarrassing revelation.

The king refilled Costis’s cup.

When he sat again, he said, “Don’t give up so soon, Costis. Tell me why you hit me.”

Costis swallowed the wine in his mouth.

“Or should we review? You and your friend came through the entryway while you were repeating all the insults you no doubt heard from my dear attendant Sejanus. I understand he was off drinking with his old friends from the Guard last night. Aristogiton must have missed the fun. Was he on duty?”

“He’s okloi. His family has no land. Sejanus wouldn’t drink with him.”

“But your family are patronoi? And you and Aris are friends?”

“Yes.”

“How unfortunate that the arched entryway amplified your words so well. I thought I was being magnanimous when I pretended not to have heard.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I was talking to Teleus then, wasn’t I? He called you over to join us. I think we were trying to gloss over the unpleasantness. Do you remember? We were discussing whether or not I would train with the Guard.”

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