The Thief

by Megan Whalen Turner

  Sophos dragged me out of the memory, asking, “Who taught you to fight like that?”

  “My father.”

  “Was he very angry when you turned out to be a thief?”

  I thought of the fight when I’d torn up my enrollment papers for the army. “Yes.” Still, we’d gotten much closer once the matter was settled and done with. “But he’s used to it now.”

  “You should have been a soldier,” Sophos said. “You were better than Ambiades ever was. I think that’s why he said, ‘Good riddance,’ again, and that’s when Pol—” Sophos stopped.

  I opened my eyes to see that he was crying. He scrubbed his sleeve across his face to wipe away some of the snot and tears. I hadn’t wanted to think about what had happened at the bottom of the cliff, and Sophos hadn’t wanted to think about what had happened at the top.

  He wiped away some more tears and, after a few deep breaths, continued quietly. “The magus told Ambiades that there was nothing to be pleased about, and the captain of the guard said yes, there was, and Ambiades just looked kind of sick at first, like the magus, but then he started to look pleased with himself. And then we all realized that he was the one who had told the Attolians about the trail up the mountain.”

  I remembered the fancy tortoiseshell comb of Ambiades’s that had caught the magus’s eye. He must have wondered where Ambiades got the money to afford it. I’d guessed that Ambiades was in somebody’s pay and that from time to time he felt guilty about it, but I’d assumed he was taking money from an enemy of the magus’s in Sounis’s court. It hadn’t occurred to me, or to the magus, obviously, that he could betray his master to the Attolians.

  “Ambiades started to say something, but then you screamed.”

  I screamed?

  “We could hear you from the top of the cliff when they pulled the sword out,” Sophos told me, his voice shaking—and I remembered. That was the muddled and awful part. I’d felt my life dragged out with the sword, but in the end my life wouldn’t go. It had stretched between me and the sword. I think that only the power of the gods could have kept me alive, but my living was at the same time an offense to them. I should have died, but instead the pain went on and on. Dying would have been so much easier.

  I shuddered, and the pain returned, stopping my breath. Sophos held me by the hand until it passed.

  “Everyone looked down at you,” he said. “Then we turned to look at Ambiades, and he didn’t care. I mean, we could see that he didn’t care that you were dead. I don’t think that he cared about anything anymore, not about me or the magus or Pol. And Pol, he just put out one hand and shoved Ambiades over the edge. And then—”

  Sophos stopped for another deep breath before he went on. “Then he went over the cliff, too, with two of the Attolians. The magus tried to get out his sword, but the soldiers knocked him down.”

  Sophos pulled his knees up to his chest and rocked back and forth as he cried.

  Moving slowly, I lifted one hand to his leg to squeeze it. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had liked Pol.

  “I’ve known Pol my entire life,” Sophos said unevenly. “I don’t want him to be dead,” he insisted, as if his wishes should be granted. “He has a wife, and he has two children,” he wailed, “and I am going to have to tell them.”

  I shuddered and closed my eyes again. The man I’d killed could have had no clue that he was facing a skilled opponent. He’d judged me by my novice sword and my size. I had taken him by surprise and killed him. I might just as well have stabbed him in the back in an alley. Did he have a wife and two children? Who would tell them that he was dead? The pain in my chest spread, until even my fingers ached, where the backs of them touched the rough floor.

  After a long time Sophos whispered, “Gen? Are you still awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “The magus said that the bleeding stopped and that you would probably be all right. As long as you didn’t get a fever.”

  “That’s good to know.” That way they could behead me.

  The sun was setting when the guards brought the magus back. Its last light came directly in the small window and lit the opposite wall of the cell. The wall was made of the same yellow limestone as the king’s megaron on the other side of the Eddis mountains. I’d dozed on and off during the afternoon. Someone had brought food, which I’d told Sophos to eat.

  “Gen, how do you feel?” the magus asked.

  “Oh, fine,” I told him. My chest was filled with boiling cement, and I was hot and cold all over at the same time, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t care much about anything, so I guess I felt fine.

  The magus held his hand against my forehead and looked concerned. “Did you eat anything today?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “that was a silly question. Did you get anything to eat, Sophos?”

  Sophos nodded.

  “Did you save anything for me?”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Sophos looked guilty.

  “That’s all right,” lied the magus. “I ate upstairs, while I was talking with the captain of the Queen’s Guard. Evidently Her Majesty is on her way to hear our story for herself.”

  He settled himself on the stone floor and leaned against the wall, just outside my line of sight.

  “We are in a slightly difficult position,” he said, and I rolled my eyes again. “I’m afraid that Ambiades was our only reliable means of convincing the Attolians that Hamiathes’s Gift was lost. You know what happened to Ambiades?”

  “Sophos told me.” It was awkward to have a conversation directed to the side of my head, but turning to look at the magus wasn’t worth the effort.

  “His father’s money must have run out, and he decided he’d rather be a wealthy traitor than an impoverished apprentice. Attolia paid him, and he had arranged for someone to follow us from the time we left the king’s city in Sounis. If we moved too quickly, Ambiades was careful to slow us down.” We both thought of the food missing from the saddlebags.

  “I owe you many apologies,” the magus admitted.

  “They are all accepted,” I said. It wasn’t important anymore.

  “The queen probably hoped to kill the rest of us quietly and send Ambiades back as a sole survivor. She is not going to be happy to have lost such a valuable spy, and with Ambiades dead, I’m afraid there’s no way to convince her that Hamiathes’s Gift fell in a stream.”

  There was a pause while each of us considered the Attolians’ means of extracting reliable information.

  The magus changed the subject, and I swiveled my head to look at him when he said, “Attolia’s soldiers have been to the temple in the dystopia.” He nodded. I’m not sure if he meant to affirm the truth of what he’d said or if he was pleased to have elicited a sign of life from me at last. “The temple was completely destroyed. The Aracthus had broken through the roof and washed away most of the walls. There were still signs that there had been some sort of man-made construction at the site, but that was all.”

  “When?”

  “I can’t be sure, but no more than a day or two after we left.”

  I remembered how close the water of the Aracthus had sounded as it washed over the roof of the gods’ hall. I thought of it pouring down into the room and the maze below, washing out the doors and walls. I thought of the gods in their beautiful robes and Hephestia on her throne, gone. I turned my head back toward the ceiling of the cell and blinked water out of my eyes. The magus sensed my distress and lifted himself across the floor to console me.

  “Gen, it was an old temple. The collapse of the main door was probably the first sign of the damage caused when the Aracthus forced its way through a new entrance somewhere. In the next few days the power of the water destroyed the temple entirely. It would have happened sooner or later. All the things man has made are eventually destroyed.” He stopped a tear as it rolled down toward my ear. “I wish, though, that I had gone in with you,” he said. “I’ll always wonder what you saw.�
�� He waited a moment, hoping that I might say something.

  “Won’t tell me or can’t?” he asked.

  “Can’t,” I admitted. “Not that I would anyway.” I goaded him.

  He laughed, then checked my forehead again for fever.

  A guard brought more food. The magus and Sophos ate. The square of yellow sunlight on the wall opposite the window had dimmed when we heard more footsteps in the corridor and knew that the queen must have arrived at the castle and sent for the magus.

  “I’ll do what I can for you, Gen,” the magus promised as he stood up. They took Sophos as well, and I was left alone in the cell, wondering what the magus thought he could possibly do for me.

  The cell was pitch-dark when he returned. The guards carried lanterns, and I closed my eyes against their glare, assuming that they would be gone soon. When someone nudged me with his boot, I groaned a little, partly because it hurt, partly because I was offended that they were bothering me. Another fiercer nudge dug into my ribs, and I opened my eyes. Standing over me, between the magus and the captain of the guard, was the queen of Attolia.

  She smiled at my surprise. Standing in the light, surrounded by the dark beyond the reach of the lanterns, she seemed lit by the aura of the gods. Her hair was black and held away from her face by an imitation of the woven gold band of Hephestia. Her robe was draped like a peplos, made from embroidered red velvet. She was as tall as the magus, and she was more beautiful than any woman I have ever seen. Everything about her brought to mind the old religion, and I knew that the resemblance was deliberate, intended to remind her subjects that as Hephestia ruled uncontested among the gods, this woman ruled Attolia. Too bad that I had seen the Great Goddess and knew how far the Attolian queen fell short of her mark.

  She spoke, and her voice was quiet and lovely. “The magus of Sounis informs me that you are a thief of unsurpassed skills.” She smiled gently.

  “I am,” I answered, truthfully.

  “He suggests, however, that your loyalty to your own country is not strong.”

  I winced. “I have no particular loyalty to the king of Sounis, Your Majesty.”

  “How fortunate for you. I don’t believe he holds you in high regard.”

  “No, Your Majesty. He probably doesn’t.”

  She smiled again. Her perfect teeth showed. “Then there’s nothing to prevent you from remaining in Attolia to be my thief.” I looked over at the magus. This was the favor he had done me: convinced the queen that I was too valuable to throw away.

  “Uh,” I said, “there is one thing, Your Majesty.”

  The queen’s eyebrows rose in delicate arches of astonishment. “What would that be?”

  I had to think of something quickly. Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn’t force me to enter her service. As I searched for something safer to say, I remembered the magus’s comment on the banks of the Aracthus. “I have a sweetheart,” I said with complete conviction. “Your Majesty, I’ve promised to return to her.”

  The queen was amused. The magus was consternated. He couldn’t guess why I would throw away a chance to save myself. There were certainly no love affairs written up in my record at the king’s prison. I was sure because I had written the record myself. It had been an easy way to turn a lot of boasting into a solid reputation, and it hadn’t been difficult to slip it in among the real records. Anyone who can steal the king’s seal ring can manage the locks on his record room.

  “You are promised to someone?” said the queen, in disbelief.

  “I am, Your Majesty,” I said firmly.

  “And you will not break your promise?” She shook her head sadly.

  “I couldn’t, Your Majesty.”

  “Surely I am a better mistress to serve?”

  “You are more beautiful, Your Majesty.” The queen smiled again before I finished. “But she is more kind.”

  So much for discretion. The smile disappeared. You could have heard a pin drop onto the stone floor as her alabaster cheeks flushed red. No one could ever accuse the queen of Attolia of being kind.

  She smiled again at me, a different, thinner smile, and inclined her head in acceptance of a point scored. I smiled back, pleased with myself in a bitter way, until she turned to the captain of her guard.

  “Take him upstairs and fetch a doctor,” she ordered. “We will give him an opportunity to change his mind.” Her red peplos swept across the back of my hand as she turned to leave, and I winced. The velvet was soft, but the embroidery scratched.

  In a room several floors above the dungeon, I lay in bed while my fever climbed. I raved, and in a distant way I knew that I was raving. Moira came to sit by my bed. She assured me that I wasn’t dying. I told her that I wished I were. Then Eugenides came out of the dark, and Moira was gone. Eugenides was patient at first. He reminded me that lives are things to be stolen sometimes, just like any possession. He asked me if I would prefer to be dead myself. I said I would, and he asked what then would have become of my plans for fame and my name carved in stone. And would I then leave my companions to die as well?

  I didn’t like to think of the magus as a companion. But if he wasn’t, why had I risked my life once for him already? I sighed. And then there was Sophos to worry over as well. I said that if only I could have died when the soldier pulled the sword out, I wouldn’t be bothered by my conscience. The god beside me was silent, and the silence stretched out from my bedside through the castle and, it seemed, throughout the world as I remembered that Lyopidus had burned and died while Eugenides had not.

  After countless empty heartbeats, Eugenides spoke again from a distance. “His wife died in the winter. His three children live with their aunt in Eia.”

  When I dared to lower my arm, he was gone. I slept again, and when I woke, I was more clearheaded. Leaving Sophos and the magus to certain death wouldn’t do anything for my conscience, even if I died myself soon after. And there was fame and fortune to consider. I dragged myself out of bed and started to look around the room.

  The bolts in the door of the cell turned over and the door swung open. The lamps in the hallway weren’t burning, and neither the magus nor Sophos could see who stood in the doorway.

  “It’s me,” I hissed, before they could make a noise that might carry to the guardroom. I heard them moving toward my voice and backed away so that they wouldn’t bump into me. Once they were in the passage, I asked Sophos if he still had his overshirt on.

  “Why?”

  “I want you to give it to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because all I’m wearing is bandages. They took my clothes.” Sophos pulled the shirt off and held it out in my direction, nearly poking me in the eye.

  “Do you want my shoes, too?” he offered.

  “No, I’m better off barefoot.”

  “Gen,” said the magus, “you shouldn’t do this.”

  “Get dressed?”

  “You know what I mean.” At least he had the sense to whisper. “I thank you for opening the door, but the best thing you can do now is forget all about us. Climb back up where you came from and pretend you never left your bed.”

  “And how will you get yourselves the rest of the way out of here? Through the front door?”

  “We’ll manage.”

  I snorted very quietly. “You will not.”

  “If we’re caught, we can claim that we bribed a guard.”

  I dismissed him with a wave of my hand, which he couldn’t see. “We should get moving,” I said, making herding motions with my good hand, which he also couldn’t see.

  “Gen, it’s only been two days. Three since we were arrested. You can’t manage.”

  “I think,” I said stiffly, “that I am more of an asset than a liability.”

  “Gen, that’s not what I meant.” He put out one hand in the dark to touch my shoulder, but I shifted away. “Gen, we can’t ask you to risk yourself again.”

&nb
sp; “This is a change from your earlier position,” I pointed out.

  “I was wrong before.”

  “You’re wrong now, too.”

  “Gen, the queen of Attolia doesn’t bear you any ill will.”

  I thought about her parting smile. “I think she does,” I said.

  “All she wants from you is a promise of your service.”

  “Well, she isn’t going to get it.” I’d heard too many stories about the things that happened to people who worked for her. “Can we stop discussing this just now?” I started to move away as I spoke, and they followed me in the darkness. With my feet bare, I stepped gingerly, and it was easy to remember to favor my bad shoulder.

  “How did you get the keys? Where are the guards?” Sophos wouldn’t stop talking as we moved through the pitch-dark. “And why are all the lanterns out?”

  I sighed. “I didn’t get the keys. They took my clothes and probably burnt them. They left my lock openers and the other things from my pockets on a table in my room.” I’d left the magus’s cloak pin and Ambiades’s comb behind. I’d brought the penknife in case I needed it again. We came to a corner, and I felt my way around it, then reached back to take Sophos by the hand.

  “Be quiet,” I whispered, “and try not to pull on me.” I was a little unsteady on my feet and afraid that he would pull me right over if he stumbled.

  “What about the guards,” he persisted, “and the lanterns?”

  The guards, I told him, were at the end of the corridor guarding a deck of cards, and the lanterns were out because I blew them out. “This way,” I hissed, “when they hear us chatting like happy sparrows in our nest, they won’t immediately be able to find us.”