The King of Attolia (8 page)

The man laughed. His laughter was edged with contempt. “It would be a long trip, Your Majesty. I would so much rather hear the answer from you.”

“Oh, the trip would be quicker than you think,” said the king, pleasantly. “Most of my male cousins are dead.”

The silence that had begun at the head table had spread to the edges of the hall. The Attolian’s smile grew uncertain.

The king didn’t smile back. Those who understood shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

The late war between Eddis and Attolia had cost Eddis dearly. She had suffered and lost on a greater scale than the larger, richer nation of Attolia, but at the end of the war, the Thief of Eddis had become the king of Attolia. And whether Eugenides of Eddis could send an Attolian courtier to his death to carry a question to his cousins in hell was a question that courtier was suddenly not interested in exploring. He wished, with intensity that surprised him, that he hadn’t listened when Dite had suggested this little joke. The young man looked again to his queen, this
time for rescue; she was still looking the other way.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, if I offended,” he murmured to the tablecloth.

The king said nothing. He met Ornon’s worried look from across the tables and returned it with a widening smile that Ornon knew well. Eugenides was angry and pleased to be so. Leisurely, he reached for his wineglass and drained the little wine that was in it.

Unable to think where else to look, Ornon looked to the queen. His entreaty must have been plain because she smiled with a hint of amusement, and turned to Eugenides. As he contemplated his empty cup, she lifted hers.

“Take mine,” she said.

People sitting nearby recoiled. Eugenides choked on the wine still in his mouth. There was no one in the room unaware that Attolia had used poison hidden in her own wineglass to rid herself of the first husband she had been forced to marry.

Eugenides continued to cough, his shoulders shaking. He threw his head back, gasping, and finally seized the breath he needed to laugh outright. Helplessly holding his sides, he looked at the queen. She only looked back without expression, and he laughed harder. The Attolians, one and all, watched with increasing dislike.

“No fear of that, my dear one,” he said, his voice slightly strained, “and look, no need.” He gestured
toward his wine cup, which the wine boy had refilled, lunging forward with the amphora so hastily that the wine had splashed onto the cloth below. “I see my cup is full as well.”

Conversations slowly resumed. The court lost its troubled expressions. The strange moment had passed. Once again, the Attolians had seen that the king was nothing more than a clown. Ornon was staring at his plate, relieved and angry at the same time, wishing that the Attolians could know how close they had come to disaster, and grateful that they didn’t. He looked across the tables at the young man whose insult had roused the danger. That one, he thought, looking at the courtier’s white face, had looked Eugenides in the eye. He knew how near disaster he had been. Ornon turned to look at the queen only to find her looking back at him, the hint of a satisfied smile still on her face. She’d proved her strength, and Ornon bowed his head in respect.

Later, the tables were cleared away for dancing. Under cover of the noise of shifting chairs, the queen spoke. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” asked her husband.

“For that young man. I would have seen you send him after your cousins gladly except that he is an undersecretary for provisions to the navy.”

He shook the apology away and smiled, but his smile was distant. She followed his gaze, looking out over the court. She was seeing her dead. He, no doubt, was seeing his. She knew that he had both hated and loved those cousins who were now beyond both love and hate.

“A dance,” the king said, “will mend everyone’s spirits.” He stood and offered her his hand. Together they took the first step down from the dais as the music started, and stopped before they took the second. The drum, which had started with a slow rhythm, playing alone, was joined by the shrill voice of a mountain pipe.

It was a traditional Eddisian tune that might have been a compliment to the new king, except that none of the Eddisian traditional dances could be danced with only one hand. Attolia thought of her music master, directing the music from a low balcony to one side of the room, blithely hounding the king with the notes, reminding him of all that he had lost. “Him, I will have flayed,” she said, meaning it.

The intolerable tension she felt in Eugenides’s grip eased. Her statement had been less calculated than her offer of wine, but it had had the same effect, easing the strain she knew he felt.

“I wouldn’t,” he said. “I have no doubt it is the careful hand of Sejanus making the music here and not the music master at fault. Dance with me,” Eugenides said, turning toward her suddenly, bubbling with energy and
mischief. Her heart sank. He had been pushed beyond his limits once already, and she had pulled him back, but she did not manage him like a dog on a chain. His wildness sometimes frightened her.

“No,” she said repressively, and was unprepared when he pulled her down the steps in spite of her refusal. She staggered, and struggled for her balance, but he didn’t let go of her hand. The court hissed in barely concealed rage to see their queen treated so. Even those who opposed the queen liked the Eddisian less.

“The court is watching,” she pointed out.

“I thought you wanted me more exposed to the public eye?” he teased.

“I reverse myself,” she said coldly, “and argue for a little circumspection.” She tugged at his hand, but he didn’t release her. She gave up, unwilling to be seen trying to pull away.

“You don’t think I can do it.”

She didn’t think he could.

“I don’t care what they think.”

She knew that. It worried her.

“No,” said the queen, but she wavered.

He sensed it and smiled. “Am I king?” he asked, irrepressibly.

It was the one argument she was in no position to deny. She wanted him to be king, and he was resisting it with all his will.

“Of course.” She acquiesced, but she was angry now. The pink in her cheeks showed it. The music had stopped, and the court was silent. No one could have overheard their quiet words, but anyone who could see the king’s face knew what he had said and what the queen had answered.

Radiating delight in the face of people who hated him, Eugenides led the queen to the middle of the empty space in front of the musicians. He looked at the floor, as if choosing his spot carefully, and brushed the stone with his shoe before looking up.

“You know the steps?”

“Of course,” the queen answered again, tightlipped.

“Of course,” the king echoed. “Well, your part will be the same, just reach as if you were expecting me to take you with my right and I will use only my left.”

“Simple,” said the queen, putting out her hand.

“Very,” said the king, taking it.

He shook away the stiffness of her arm. “Don’t be afraid. Before I stole Hamiathes’s Gift out from under your nose, these were the only dances I knew.”

“I am not afraid,” she said coldly.

“Good,” said the king. “Neither am I.”

He nodded to the musicians, and first the drum and then the pipes began. The king and queen faced each other and began the steps, their feet mirroring each other, their left hands clasped. Attolia’s right hand,
which should have been holding the king’s left, hung down at her side.

“Why were these the only dances you knew?”

“Because no one would dance with me. Thieves are never popular.”

I know why, thought Attolia, but aloud she asked, “Why are you familiar with the square dances?”

The music quickened.

“My mother taught me. We danced them on the rooftops of the Megaron. According to legend, the Thief and any partner the Thief chooses will be safe.”

“You are king now,” she pointed out.

“Ah, but they say that if the king dances, the entire court can safely dance with him.”

“Spare me,” said Attolia, “and my court, from dancing on the roof.”

“It probably only works in Eddis.”

They were called square dances because the entire dance took place in one small square, the dancers’ feet never moving outside it. The line dances, in the same way, were danced up and down an imagined line. Both dances began slowly, but as the music continued, the dancers had to move faster and faster, their feet repeating the same pattern over and over. At the end of each cycle, Attolia spun away from the king and then back to face him. They clasped hands and spun together and then began again. The music soon
increased to a pace that left no breath for talking.

As Attolia spun, she felt a tug at her hair and, turning back, felt another. Then she felt her carefully arranged hair slipping down on her neck. Eugenides, minding the pattern with his feet and spinning the queen with one hand, had been pulling out her hairpins one by one when her back was turned. The rest of the pins loosened, and her hair dropped free. It swung out as she spun and the last of the pins bounced and slid across the marble floor.

The queen was several inches taller than Eugenides, and he leaned back to counter her spin. To those watching, it didn’t seem possible that he could succeed, but with one hand, and no visible effort, he defied the laws of the natural world. Phresine, the queen’s senior attendant, watched them from behind the throne as her queen danced like a flame in the wind, and the mercurial king like the weight at the center of the earth. Faster and faster they moved, never faltering, until the music shrilled at an impossible tempo and the pattern gave way to a long spin, each dancer reaching in with one hand and out with the other, holding tight lest they fall away from each other, until the music stopped abruptly and the dance ended.

The queen’s hair and her skirts swung and then settled. Coolly she pulled the hair away from her face and used one strand of it to wrap the rest into place behind her.

The king’s brow furrowed. Spinning slowly, he looked down at the floor around him.

“Aha,” he said, and walked away, bending to pick something up. As he walked back, he tucked his hand into his sash and pulled it out again full of hairpins.

He offered them to her.

“If you will excuse me, my lord, I will retire to replace them.”

“Of course,” said the king, echoing sweetly her earlier short-tempered answers. He bowed.

The queen inclined her head and turned. She walked back up the steps, past the thrones, and through the doorway there, collecting her attendants as she went.

Gen had returned to the throne and settled onto it looking smug. Phresine, leaving with the queen, heard Elia murmur under her breath, “Well, that was revealing.”

“Only to those with eyes to see,” murmured Phresine back.

Ornon, standing nearby, silently agreed.

Costis spent the evening happily unaware of the events in the throne room, writing long-overdue letters to his father and sister. He’d written only briefly since his disgrace and received more letters than he had sent. His sister’s letters were filled with the inconsequential details of the farm. The birth of a new cousin and a new calf were announced in the same sentence. Thalia was
more interested in the cow and knew Costis would be, too. He took comfort in her pretense that she was untouched by the disaster he had made of his life.

He knew she wasn’t. Thalia and his father would have Costis’s disgrace flung in their faces every day by the rest of the family, but his father also didn’t mention it. He only assured his son of his support. Costis was glad of the letters and read them over and over, but they were hard to answer.

He prepared for bed early and in a glum mood.

The glum mood didn’t leave him in the night.

“Is the eye bothering you, Costis?” asked the king the next morning.

“No, Your Majesty.”

“Perk up, then, won’t you? You’re making me feel guilty.”

After breakfast, the king declined to meet his tutors. “We have an appointment in the garden,” he said to the queen as he excused himself. It was news to Costis, but apparently not to the attendants. After kissing the queen, the king went down the steps from the terrace. The attendants started across the terrace to join him, but he paused on the steps long enough to wave them back. Only the guard accompanied him.

Below the terrace was the queen’s garden. Costis had assumed that the “queen” in its description was his own
queen, but had learned from one of the other lieutenants that the garden had been for many years the private retreat of Queens of Attolia. It stretched from the edge of the terrace out to a wall that encircled it on three sides, separating it from the rest of the palace grounds. On the remaining side, a low stone railing edged the garden. No more was needed to protect the queen’s privacy. On the far side of the railing, the ground dropped in a sheer face to an open court below.

The garden was laid out with hedges that divided the garden beds. In many places, the hedges grew high enough to form leafy tunnels and the green walls of outdoor rooms. In the center of the garden, a series of these rooms, interconnected by green corridors, gave the appearance of a maze when viewed from the terrace. It wasn’t a true maze, and no one could be lost in it, but it provided privacy and at the same time security. The hedges were too thick for even a persistent assailant to break through quickly. The queen could walk there alone, leaving her guards at the arched entrances.

The king followed the path that ran along the balustrade. A summer wind twisted dust into spirals that blew against the stone wall below the garden and disintegrated as the wind was deflected upward. Some of the dust rose as high as the garden and made Costis’s eyes burn. The king turned away from the wind toward the maze. Waiting there, in the space before an arched
entryway, were a squad of guardsmen, the Guard Captain, and, surrounded by the guards, Erondites the Younger.

Costis knew him on sight. Dite’s path had crossed the king’s before, and Costis had seen him often. He was much like his brother, Sejanus, though he wore his dark hair long and curled in the fashion of the elite young men of the queen’s court. He was elegantly dressed in an ornamented open coat, but he had his hands in his pockets, and looked simultaneously contemptuous and afraid.