The King of Attolia (30 page)

“He may not quit, but he will lose.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t place my money on it. I’ve seen him suffer setbacks.” Ornon looked at the queen and away. “I have never seen him, in the end, lose. He just persists until he comes out ahead. No match is finished for him until he has won.” Ornon shrugged expressively. “He won’t quit, and he won’t thank you for interfering.”

There was a shout, and they turned back to the match. As Costis had done, the king was retreating. Laecdomon advanced, striking fast with his sword, driving the king back faster and faster. Finally the king responded. There was a furious interchange, and a sword spun in the air and hit the ground. For a moment there was no way to know whose sword had dropped. Then the two men separated, and everyone could see that Laecdomon was still armed.

Ruefully the king held up his hand.

Holding his breath, Costis hoped that it was just a sparring match after all. Laecdomon shook his head. Eugenides smiled.

“Your Majesty!” Teleus shouted, and indicated the crossbows aimed at Laecdomon. Costis hadn’t seen them come, but they were the obvious solution. The king shook his head.

“You could default, Your Majesty,” Laecdomon suggested with contempt.

“I think not,” said the king, covered in sweat and breathing deep with exhaustion. “Though when you are finished, you may have to deal with my queen. You knew that when you started, didn’t you?”

Laecdomon shrugged carelessly.

Eugenides shrugged as well. “According to the practice in Eddis, I cannot back up, so I will not here. Strike your best, Laecdomon.”

With a sneer and perfect form, Laecdomon drew the sword back and swung for the king’s head. Costis was not the only one to cry out, but the blow never landed. Without risk to his fingers from the edgeless weapon, the king grabbed for the blade of the sword, snatching it from the air and from Laecdomon’s surprised grasp. He spun all the way around on his good leg, at the same time shifting his grip to just below the hilt. A heartbeat later the only sound in the stunned silence was the choking gasp as Laecdomon’s breath was forced out of his lungs by the hilt of his
own sword driven hard upward under his ribs.

Laecdomon collapsed like an empty wineskin. The king dropped the sword beside him. It rattled in front of his face.

“You forgot,” said the king, into the silent air, “that it’s a wooden sword.”

Somewhere in the pack, a guard cheered, and the rest of the Guard joined him. The courtiers lining the walls began cheering as well. It was all quite deafening, thought Costis, looking up at the women waving their scarves, the open mouths of the aristocrats and soldiers alike.

Eugenides didn’t respond. He limped slowly over to his own wooden sword and stooped awkwardly to pick it up. Trailing it on the ground behind him, he limped toward the queen, and the courtyard quieted as he approached and was silent again as he dropped to his knees before her and laid the sword across her lap.

“My Queen,” he said.

“My King,” she said back.

Only those closest saw him nod his rueful acceptance.

He lifted his hand to brush her cheek softly. As the entire court listened breathlessly, he said, “I want my breakfast.”

The queen’s lips thinned, and she shook her head as she said, “You are incorrigible.”

“Yes,” the king agreed, “and I have a headache and I want a bath.”

Teleus stepped forward. “Perhaps His Majesty would like to visit the Guard’s bath. It is closer, and he would be welcome.”

The king had to consider. “Yes,” he said. “That would be nice. Followed by breakfast.”

Gravely, Teleus offered a hand to help the king to his feet. The queen smiled at them both. Costis could feel the grin he couldn’t hide spreading across his face. He looked around at everyone smiling and knew why they did: because Eugenides was King of Attolia.

C
OSTIS
washed himself gently in the tepidarium and limped to the steam room. He climbed to the upper bench and relaxed with a flinch and a sigh against the wooden slats behind him. The king had not arrived. The guards were free to talk as they chose. Costis listened with his eyes closed. His smile faded when he recalled the king’s response when invited to join the guards in their bathhouse. He must have known the offer was an honor since only the guards were admitted here, but Costis had seen the king hesitate.

The door to the steam room opened, and Costis, seeing the king flanked by Teleus and his lieutenants, understood why. It would be ridiculous to come into a steam room dressed in clothes, or for that matter, wearing a metal cuff and hook on the end of your arm. So Eugenides was as naked as anyone else, but no one else used clothes as a
disguise, and none of them was as naked, therefore, as the king.

He chose Mede coats with the long bell sleeves because no fighting man who’d seen the muscles in the king’s wrist would have underestimated him the way the Attolians had. His other wrist with no hand at the end of it appeared oddly narrow and delicate. Costis tried not to stare and found himself looking instead at the king’s scars. The long line across his belly was an angry red, but there were other marks: ragged tears around his knees and elbows, and lighter shining bands around his ankles that could only be the mark of fetters, as well as the various lines left by edged blows on his chest and arms, and one long one on his thigh. There were also a number of bruises, some newly purple and black and some fading almost to nothing. Costis wondered where they could have come from.

Costis and the guards beside him shuffled aside to leave space for the king and Teleus on the upper bench, where the steam was hottest. When the king crossed to stand before the empty space, the guards could see that the muscles in his legs jumped with fatigue and his expression, when he looked at the steps up, was daunted. Teleus, already climbing, turned back to offer him a hand. Eugenides accepted the offer, and Teleus hauled him upward and dropped him onto the hot bench.

The king cursed and sighed as he leaned back. He turned his head toward Costis and explained the bruises easily. “Ornon never hesitates to hit me with a wooden stick,” he said.

He hadn’t kept in training by doing simple exercises. Moving through the palace as he chose, he must have practiced secretly with the Ambassador from Eddis.

“Don’t be misled, Costis,” said the king. “The beginning exercises are always important.”

Flushing, Costis looked away. Across the room, someone bolder than Costis asked, “Did we give you all of those scars?”

The king opened his eyes and looked down at himself as if considering the scars for the first time. “I thought it was only the dogs that bit me, Phokis. Was it you, too?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Phokis said hastily, and his mates laughed at him.

“Thank gods I don’t have to hold that against you,” said the king. “Nor the permanent decorations around my ankles and my wrist. Those came courtesy of Sounis.” He held up his hand to look at the white patches that ringed it. “They were a nicely matched set, too, but that’s ruined now.” His evident lack of any distress about the result of his encounter with the queen left the guards gaping.

“This could have been one of you, though,” said
Eugenides, running his finger along a short white ridge near the hollow of his shoulder. He looked at Teleus. “Was it?”

The captain shook his head.

“You transferred him? Are you worried about my taste in revenge?”

“Should I be?” Teleus asked bluntly.

“Not for that,” said the king. “On the other hand, if you give me another morning like this one, I’ll have you all packed up in chains and sold on the Peninsula as gladiators.”

There was more laughter. “No more mornings like this one, Your Majesty,” Teleus promised. “I admit that I find them painful myself.”

“I’m glad to hear it. If I’d known that all I needed to do was hit you very hard with a stick, I would have done it months ago.”

Teleus responded thoughtfully. “I would like to think there was more to this morning than getting hit in the neck with a practice sword.” He looked gravely at the king. “It isn’t an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don’t know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself.”

He met Eugenides’s eye, and this time it was the king who looked away.

He looked back to say, “For what was done, and not well done, I apologize, Teleus.”

“No matter, Your Majesty. You are revealed at last.”

The king looked down at his nakedness and back at the captain. “Was that a joke?” he asked.

“It does happen, on occasion. Do you know what you will do with Laecdomon?”

“Let him go,” said the king.

“Some might think you are too merciful,” Teleus said.

“But you don’t.”

Teleus shook his head. “He will go to Erondites and the baron will kill him.”

The king agreed. “Erondites can’t risk a connection between himself and a known traitor, and he will be afraid of whatever tales Laecdomon could tell. When Laecdomon is found dead in a ditch, everyone will see how Erondites rewards those who serve him.”

“And if he doesn’t suffer the ultimate penalty at Erondites’s hand?” Teleus asked.

“Then I am still satisfied to let him go. If he disgraced himself, it was because I offered him the opportunity; if you tease a dog, it bites.”

“Men are not dogs.” Teleus leaned to give Costis a severe look. “A man should control himself.”

“Easy for you to say, Captain.”

“Not so easy, Your Majesty,” Teleus assured him, “but I never hit you in the face.”

“That’s true enough,” Eugenides agreed, without a glimmer of a smile. “But, then, I never meant you to.”

He waited. When Teleus’s eyes widened, Eugenides confirmed what the captain had guessed.

“I wasn’t baiting you,” said the king. “I was baiting Costis.”

Costis sat back, dumbfounded. The loss of temper that had changed his life, the appointment to lieutenant. They hadn’t been accident or caprice. “You made the notes on the Mede language,” Costis accused the king, realizing that the small letters, though neatly formed, had shown the telltale shake of a man writing with his left hand.

“You sent them to me.”

“I did,” the king admitted.

“Why?”

“Your accent was terrible,” said the king, in Mede, his accent perfect. “It’s much better now.”

“Why?” Costis asked again, demanding more. Teleus crossed his arms, silently seconding the request.

“Sometimes, if you want to change a man’s mind, you change the mind of the man next to him first.” Eugenides waved toward Costis, but he was talking to Teleus. “Archimedes said that if you gave him a lever long enough, he could move the world. I needed to move the Guard. I needed to move you.”

“You changed Costis’s opinion in order to change mine? And why does my opinion matter so much?” Teleus asked. “You could have replaced me.”

The king shrugged. “I want the Queen to reduce the
Guard, and she said she will when I have asked
you
and you have agreed. So. May I reduce the Guard?”

“It is your decision. You are king.”

“That is the question, Teleus. Am I king? Don’t tell me that I have been anointed by priest and priestess or that this baron or that one has whispered meaningless sacred oaths at my ankles. Tell me, am I king?”

Teleus didn’t pretend not to understand. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Then I may reduce the Guard?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you.” The king started to stand.

“Although you didn’t win that match.”

The king settled back down onto the bench. He eyed Teleus balefully.

“You never give up, do you? What is that supposed to mean?”

“It was your wager, Your Majesty,” Teleus pointed out. “If Laecdomon won the match, you wouldn’t reduce the Guard.”

“In Eddis, a match runs until the first blow is struck.”

“In Attolia, also.”

“Well, I struck the first blow.”

Teleus crossed his arms. “The object of the match is to practice swordplay, Your Majesty, not party tricks. A move that cannot be done with a sword is inadmissible.”

“You are splitting hairs. You must have been talking to Relius, or was it Ornon?”

Teleus was obdurate. “You could not take a real sword out of a man’s grip, not with your bare hand.”

“Oh, Teleus,” the king said, shaking his head sorrowfully. “So bullheaded and so wrong.” Reaching across to Teleus, he held out his hand in a fist and opened it slowly like a flower. “I practice it with a wooden sword. I can do it with a real one, too.”

Teleus lifted a blunt finger to gently trace the thin line of newly healed skin on the king’s palm. “The assassin’s sword. I don’t know what to say, My King.”

Eugenides shrugged. “Say I don’t need to watch my own back anymore.”

Teleus nodded. “I will be at your back, My King, until the last breath leaves my body.”

“Very well, then,” said Eugenides, and stood up as Teleus said thoughtfully, “I see, now, why Ornon was so confident of your success.”

Eugenides climbed cautiously down from the upper bench. “Ornon was probably hoping I’d have my head bashed in, but I don’t want your support under false pretenses, Teleus. Ornon wasn’t thinking of circus tricks. He knew that if Laecdomon had ever become a real threat, I would have disemboweled him. Did you forget?” He raised his lamed arm, and looking at the truncated limb, they remembered the
deadly nature of the replacement for his missing hand.

“You make people forget, with your long sleeves, pretending to be ashamed of it,” said Teleus.

“Yes. But the truth is always right in front of you to see.”

“So the Guard will be halved,” Teleus said heavily.

The king sighed in resignation. Standing before Teleus, he said, “Teleus, the Guard made the queen. The Guard can unmake her. You can guarantee their loyalty now, but can you guarantee it twenty years from now? Forty years from now? You know you can’t, yet you would entrust that Guard ten years, fifteen years, thirty years from now, with the power of kingmakers. Sooner or later the Guard’s loyalty will be bought and sold like other men’s, and the crown will go to the highest bidder. That is the course of history, Teleus. It is unchangeable. Keeping a private guard this large is like using a wolf to guard the farm. It may keep off the other wolves, but sooner or later it will eat you. I won’t leave that legacy for my heirs.”

“We keep Her Majesty safe,” Teleus said, pain in his voice. “We have always kept her safe.”

“Guard my back, Teleus, and I will keep her safe.”

Moving more easily, but favoring his left leg, he went through the door, leaving the Guard and returning to his attendants, no doubt waiting outside.

“Will he keep her safe? Phokis could break him in half with one hand.”

“If Phokis could lay a hand on him.”

“Do you doubt him?”

The guards shook their heads.

“Basileus,” someone hidden in the steam whispered. Others echoed the praise. “Basileus.”

Only Teleus shook his head. Costis watched him, not surprised. “The Basileus was a prince of his people, what we call a king now,” Teleus explained. “That one”—he nodded toward the closed door—“will rule more than just Attolia before he is done. He is an Annux, a king of kings.”