The Queen of Attolia

by Megan Whalen Turner

  He circled the cell. There was no window with bars to be filed through. The only light came through the narrow opening in the door. There were no loose stones or miraculous tunnels, and the door remained unshakably closed.

  Silently he called on the God of Thieves but didn’t even know what to pray for. Should he pray to die quickly? It seemed too much to ask to escape Attolia entirely. In the end he prayed for help, any help, and left it to the god to decide what was best.

  Someone slid a tray of food through the slot in the bottom of the cell door. He staggered to the upper part of the door and looked out at the prison keeper.

  “I heard she was going to hang you but she changed her mind,” said the keeper. “Don’t worry, lad, she never changes it for the better.” He laughed and banged the bars of the window with his truncheon. Eugenides snatched his fingers away. “Enjoy the meal. It might be the last,” the man advised as he moved away.

  Eugenides sat down to drink the watery soup but left the hard chunk of bread beside the bowl. He didn’t enjoy his meal, but sick as he was, he probably appreciated it more than any of the other prisoners in the queen’s cells. Once sitting, he didn’t have the strength to stand. His head hurt abominably. He could neither rest it on the wall behind him nor lean it on his knees, pulled up in front of him. Finally, reluctantly, he lay down and pillowed it on his arms, and darkness closed over him again. His grandfather would heap scorn on him like coals.

  He was still asleep when the keeper returned much later.

  “Look lively!” he yelled into the cell. “She’s made up her mind.”

  While the keeper turned the key in the lock and pulled the door open, Eugenides struggled to his feet and was standing, though unsteady, when the prison guards came in to take his arms.

  He walked between guards down underground passageways to an open doorway. The room stank of blood. He could smell it from outside, and he hesitated, but one of the guards nudged him forward. He took a shaky breath and stepped across the threshold. There was fire burning inside on a circular hearth surrounded by a low stone wall. Long-handled iron tools that looked like blacksmithing tools but weren’t rested on the wall, their tips in the fire to heat. The fire smoked, and the room was unbearably hot.

  There was a huge wooden framework threaded with ropes and pulleys, oddments hanging on hooks on the walls that Eugenides didn’t want to see. And dragged out to the middle of the room, sitting cockeyed to the fire, covered with dust as if it had been stuck in an unused corner for a long, long time, was a chair with overlong arms and leather straps to keep a person in it.

  Near the chair, dressed for dinner in a cool green gown the color of sage leaves, was the queen of Attolia. Embroidered around the neck of the dress was a ring of flowers, white petals on the green ground, with delicate leaves a shade darker than the dress.

  The Thief stopped in the doorway. He looked from her to the chair beside her. He was puzzled only for a moment. He looked back at her but cried out to the patron God of Thieves, “God, no,” and threw himself backward. The guards caught at him. He sank through their arms, then stood again to drive the heel of his hand up under one guard’s nose. The guard dropped as if he’d been hit with an ax, but it was all the strength the Thief had in him. He grabbed for the doorway, but they pulled his fingers free one by one and carried him thrashing to the chair.

  The guards swore, but the Thief made no sound that she could hear, except that one plea to his god. She had thought believers were as rare in Eddis as they were in Attolia. The Thief, though, had seemed to cry out in earnest, not merely from habit. Faith did return in extremis, Attolia observed. She had seen that happen before.

  Finally the guards forced him into the chair and, as they did so, banged his head against the back of it. The little fight remaining in him went out in a breath. His eyes rolled white in his head, and his head dropped to his chest. After a time his eyes opened, and he lifted his head again. The leather straps fixed him to the chair, and he couldn’t move.

  “Your Majesty.” He turned to her and said desperately, “Let me serve you. Let me be your Thief.”

  Attolia shook her head. “I offered you a position in my service once before. You refused me for a mistress you said was more kind.”

  “I could serve you now,” Eugenides whispered.

  “Could you?” Attolia asked.

  “Yes,” the Thief swore. She could see the tendons in his neck as he strained against the straps.

  With plausible seriousness, the queen asked, “What could you steal for me, Thief?”

  “Anything,” he assured her. “I can steal anything.”

  “And why would I trust you?”

  “I would give you my word.”

  “Your word?” The queen was amused. “What good is that?”

  No good at all.

  Attolia smiled. “And what about your queen? She would rather see you serve me than see you suffer? Did she tell you so before you left Eddis?”

  She had.

  “Of course,” said Attolia. “And Eddis has nothing I want, so you are no threat to her. What a wonderful tool you are, one that cannot be turned against your mistress.”

  She bent over him, reaching for him with both hands. He shuddered at her touch, but she only cupped his face in her hands and looked into his eyes. “Your queen thinks she is safe sending you to me because I cannot use you against her. I think I can. And what I want is not what Eddis chooses to give me.

  “Your ambassador says your queen has accepted my right to have you hanged,” said Attolia. “But not to have you flogged to death, nor to have you hung upside down from my palace walls, nor to have you starve to death in a cage in the courtyard. He says I mustn’t exceed the restraints of law and tradition. He says I might offend the gods, though he didn’t say which ones. I care very little for the opinion of any god, but I still think tradition might hold the best solution to my problems with you.”

  She released him and stepped back. A burly jailer unracked a curving sword from its place on the wall. Eugenides had been frightened before, so frightened that he’d felt as if his heart had turned to stone in his chest. Seeing the sword in the jailer’s hand, he looked again at the queen and felt the whole world turned to stone. The air around him was solid, and he was suffocating. He threw himself against the leather straps of the chair, against the solid air all around him, against the obduracy of the queen of Attolia.

  He begged, “Please, please,” as if his heart were breaking.

  The man beside him lifted the sword. It caught the firelight on its edge a moment before it swept down, biting deep into the wooden arm of the chair. His right hand disappeared behind the blade.

  Attolia saw his body jerk against the straps. She had expected him to cry out, but he made no sound. He turned away from the sight of his right arm, and she saw his face grow white as the blood under his skin drained away. His eyes were squeezed closed, his mouth twisted in pain.

  He struggled for breath as his thoughts circled like birds that couldn’t find a perch, searching for a way to change the truth, to change the queen of Attolia, but her decision was final, the action irrevocable.

  “Eugenides”—he heard her cool voice through the agony—“have I exceeded the restraints of tradition? Have I offended the gods?” and he heard someone whisper with his voice, “No, Your Majesty.”

  “Cauterize the wound,” the queen said briskly. “And have a doctor check it. I don’t want it infected.” The cauterizing iron was ready, and she stayed to see if he would scream when it was applied. He jerked again against the straps but still made no sound, only breathed in sharply and didn’t let the breath go. Attolia watched as his lips flushed blue, and then he fainted, his head dropping forward to his chest, his dark hair covering his face. She leaned close to be sure he breathed again, then repeated her instructions to have a doctor check the wound for infection and left.

  As she climbed the narrow staircases to the upper part of her palace, she thrust asi
de her feelings of unease and concentrated instead on where to temporarily relocate the court. She thought she might move inland. It was time to look into the affairs of the barons there. She would give the necessary orders to begin packing.

  Three days later she stood in the doorway of the Thief’s cell. She could hear him before she could see him, and she listened to his labored breathing as her eyes adjusted to the dark.

  He lay on his side in a corner of the cell with his injured arm cradled against his chest and a knee pulled up to protect it. He sweated in the damp cold of the cell and didn’t move until Attolia prodded him with one slippered foot. He opened his eyes and looked up at her without expression. The lamp that someone held behind her shone down on his face, and she could see the scar on his cheek. His skin was so pale that the scar showed dark against it.

  His eyes were bright, and she bent down to look into them, expecting the hatred she often saw in the faces in her prison, but in Eugenides’s eyes there was only fever and pain and an emotion she couldn’t put a name to.

  “Please,” he whispered. His voice was low but clear. “Don’t hurt me anymore.”

  Attolia recoiled. Once, as a child, she’d thrown her slipper in a rage and had knocked an amphora of oil from its pedestal. The amphora had been a favorite of hers. It had smashed, and the scent of the hair oil inside had lingered for days. She remembered the scent still, though she didn’t know what in the stinking cell had brought it to mind.

  She bent over Eugenides again, needing to be sure her punishment had been effective.

  “Eugenides,” she said, “what can you steal with only one hand?”

  “Nothing,” he answered hopelessly.

  Attolia nodded. Eddis would think twice before risking a favorite in Attolia’s power. He was very young, she realized. She hadn’t considered his age before and reminded herself that his age didn’t matter. All that mattered was the threat he posed. Still, seeing him huddled on the floor, she felt a little surprised that Eddis would endanger someone so young. But Eddis was not much older, Attolia thought. Not many years ahead of Eddis herself, Attolia was a far more experienced queen. She turned to the jailer.

  “I said I wanted a doctor to check him.”

  “He did, Your Majesty.”

  “The bites on his leg are infected.” She pointed with one finger at the swollen red skin that showed through the torn cloth.

  The prison keeper looked suddenly wary. “He checked the burns, as you ordered, Your Majesty.”

  “Only the burns?”

  “I suppose, Your Majesty. Those were your orders, Your Majesty.”

  Attolia sighed in irritation. A familiar, not uncomfortable emotion. “If I didn’t want him dead of one infection, why would I want him dead from another?”

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty.”

  “You’ll be sorrier.” She turned to the captain of her guard, who had accompanied her. “Get him back to Eddis before he dies.” She left the cell and made her way up the many stairs of the palace to her private anteroom. She passed through it and into her bedchamber, where she sent away her various attendants and sat for a long time in a chair looking out over the sea as the last sunlight faded from the sky. She dismissed thoughts of the Thief lying on the floor of his cell, but found herself thinking instead of her favorite amphora, broken, and the oil spilled.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE QUEEN OF EDDIS STOOD in the courtyard to meet her Thief when they brought him up the mountain. With her stood those of the court she couldn’t order to be elsewhere. She remembered Eugenides asking once why so many of the events around her looked like a circus and why he always had the part of the dancing bear. When she saw the litter they carried him in, it looked like nothing so much as a cage, though it was closed off by curtains and not bars.

  Eddisian soldiers carried the litter. They’d taken it from the Attolians at the base of the mountain and carefully lifted it up the winding road that followed the old watercourse of the Aracthus River. The Attolians walked beside it, and her ambassador and his party walked behind. Meeting her gaze as they entered the courtyard, the ambassador shook his head slightly, warning her to expect the worst. He’d sent her word already of events in Attolia.

  When his messenger had delivered the ambassador’s news, Eddis had ordered the room emptied and had stayed to sit by herself on the throne. When the daylight falling in the skylights had faded, a servant had come with a taper for the lamps, but Eddis had sent him away. There was no formal dinner that night. The court dined in its private rooms, and finally the most senior of her attendants had come to coax the queen to bed.

  “There’s nothing you can do, my darling, sitting here in the dark. Come to bed,” Xanthe had said.

  “I can think, Xanthe. And I need to think a little more. I’ll be up soon, I promise.” And Xanthe had gone upstairs to the queen’s chambers to wait patiently as the night passed.

  In the morning Eddis had spoken privately with her ministers and then waited, knowing Attolia would send Eugenides home when she was done with him and not before.

  The litter was a fine one, used no doubt to carry an Attolian noble through the narrow streets of Attolia’s older cities. It had doors that slid closed and locked to keep the ornamentations and fabric of the interior safe when the litter was not in use. They had also served to keep the Thief locked in until he reached Eddis. This had hardly been necessary, but the Attolian guards sent with the litter had been ordered to take no chances and to hurry.

  They’d turned the litter over to the Eddisians and followed it up the mountain to see its contents delivered. Once the litter had been lowered to the ground, the ranking officer among the Attolians stepped forward to slide back the curtain that screened the interior. “He’ll need a hand getting out,” he said, and another of the Attolians choked on a laugh. The officer reached in and, grasping Eugenides by the back of the neck, slid his unconscious body off the cushions and onto the sun-warmed stones of the forecourt.

  “Our queen said to tell you this is how we treat thieves in Attolia, and she awaits the water of the Aracthus,” said the Attolian, but the sly expression on his face faded as the queen stared at him impassively. From where she stood she couldn’t know if the Thief was alive or dead, and she didn’t look as if she cared. The Attolian lifted one hand to rub the back of his neck where his hair was prickling, realizing he may have been sent on this errand because his guard captain didn’t care if all that returned was his head.

  “Galen,” said the queen, but the palace physician was already stepping forward with his assistants.

  “He’s alive still,” said Galen, after checking for a heartbeat. He started to pick the boy up, but the minister of war tapped his shoulder and stooped himself to gather Eugenides in his arms and carry him inside. The crowd parted to allow him to pass, onlookers catching a single glimpse of Eugenides’s face and then swiveling to eye the Attolians.

  The Attolians shifted from foot to foot and drew themselves together. Eddis summoned her steward. “These men will want to eat before they start down to Attolia,” she said quietly. “See that they are fed and paid for the service they have rendered us in returning our Thief.”

  The Attolians exchanged nervous glances, concerned that their payment might be fatal, but beheading them was something Attolia might do, not Eddis. They would each receive a silver griffin and a good meal before being escorted to the border.

  To the senior Attolian, the queen said, “Tell Attolia I have freed the waters of the Aracthus. They will flow by sundown.” The message was for formality’s sake. News of the water flow would reach Attolia long before the messengers did. Eddis turned, and the crowd, which hadn’t regrouped entirely after the passage of the minister of war, parted again for her and then trailed silently after her into the palace.

  Eddis seated herself on her throne. “Where’s the messenger?” she said, and one of the soldiers charged for that day with the duty of carrying the queen’s messages stepped forward.


  She noted that he was one of her first cousins, which suited her.

  “Crodes,” she said, “carry me a message to the engineer at the reservoir telling him to release the waters of the Aracthus this evening as we agreed. Then go on to the officer in charge of the bridge at the pass.”

  The country of Eddis lay in the mountains between the two countries of Sounis and Attolia. Through the Hephestial Mountains there was one pass to carry trade between the two lowland countries. It had been carved by the Seperchia River as it cut through the softer limestone of the coastal mountains on its way from Attolia to Sounis and the middle sea. All traffic between Attolia and Sounis climbed the mountain pass, crossing several bridges in the process, the most important being the Main Bridge, which spanned the chasm of the Seperchia near the top of the pass. On one bank there was no traversable path to Attolia, and on the far bank there was none to Sounis. All traffic bottlenecked at the bridge, and Eddis controlled it.

  “To the officer at the bridge,” said Eddis. “My compliments to him for his well-performed duties, and he will detain the next ten Attolian traders and their trade caravans. He is to confiscate everything but the clothes on their backs and turn them loose. If they protest, tell them they may apply to their queen for compensation.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Your Majesty.” People in the room turned to look at the Attolian ambassador. “It is my obligation to assure you that news of this will not be well received by my queen.”

  “I expect not,” said Eddis, and turned back to her messenger. “Crodes,” she said, “tell him the next ten large caravans.”

  Politically the loss of Eugenides’s service was severe. Sounis was still eager to expand his borders, and only his fear of assassination kept him in check. But Attolia hadn’t had merely a political loss in mind. If she’d wanted Eddis to be without the Thief’s services, she could have executed him. She meant to hurt Eddis at every level, and she had succeeded. A hundred caravans of merchandise couldn’t repair the damage. Sighing inwardly, Eddis excused herself and went upstairs to see her Thief.