The Queen of Attolia

by Megan Whalen Turner

  Seated on her throne, Attolia listened to reports from her army and from Relius’s spies. The spies reported mainly on her own army—at least on its hereditary officers—but they also confirmed the reports that the Eddisian army had camped just within the pass.

  Attolia believed it was a tactical error and was pleased. Eddis had moved her army beyond the protecting fire of her cannon, and she wouldn’t easily be able to retreat up the narrow pass. Attolia’s army was the larger and the better equipped. She was on the verge of summoning her officers for a council of war when the Medean ambassador was announced. The queen dismissed the men before her and smiled at the Mede.

  “Your Majesty hardly needs interrupt her business for me,” he said as he came forward.

  “The business can wait for my pleasure, Nahuseresh. I had thought you were many miles away in the capital.”

  “It was too dull to bear any longer without you,” he said, bowing over her hand. “And too terribly suspenseful to know that you were here perhaps in direst need of my assistance.” He said it with a smile, as if to assure her that he joked, that he had complete confidence in her ability to direct her army and her barons to Eddis’s defeat.

  “It is good to have a friend nearby,” said the queen, squeezing his hand before releasing it. “But the greatest aid you can give me is your company.” She knew the warships of the Mede emperor cruised the open water just beyond the outer islands, waiting to come to her assistance.

  “For that honor,” the Mede said, “no distance is too far to travel.” Standing up, he looked curiously around the great room and for a moment glanced behind him. The queen reinforced his subtle hint with a nod at one of the attendants, and a chair was brought forward.

  “Your Majesty is most gracious,” said Nahuseresh as he sat. “But not well served by your steward, I think.” He looked with disapproval at the room. Its walls were undecorated except for an interlocking pattern painted near the ceiling. The pattern on its painted floor was darkened with age and indistinct.

  “It’s very old,” the queen said with a smile. “This was an Attolian megaron, a fortified room on a hilltop, when your emperor’s present palace was an empty plot of land in the Sidosians’ territory.”

  The Mede ambassador preferred beauty to age. He didn’t say so, but the queen knew it. Perhaps because she was Attolia and it was her megaron, she preferred it to the splendors of the Mede palaces with the glazed tile walls and the gold-topped pillars.

  The Mede changed the subject. “Eddis overreaches herself at last?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And your barons, you are wary of treachery?”

  “More wary of stupidity.” Attolia dismissed the war and her barons with a wave of her hand. “Tell me, how was your journey here?”

  The Mede had traveled by ship and had landed down the coast only a few miles away at the port of Rhea, but he told Attolia in convincing detail about the poor quality of the roads between Ephrata and the capital and the even poorer quality of the springs in his carriage.

  “Poor Nahuseresh,” said the queen, “to suffer so much for my sake.” She laid a languid hand in his.

  “At least I was fortunate to arrive before the rain.”

  “Is it going to rain? I have been immured in this hall with tiresome people all day and have not seen the sky.”

  “Yes,” said Nahuseresh, “it will certainly rain.”

  The clouds had not yet dropped low enough to occlude the view from the mountains, and Eddis’s watchers had seen the Mede ship land. They reported the landing as well as the weather to their queen where she was camped in her tent above her army.

  “Attolia would not hurry to attack in the rain,” said Eddis. “We can hope for something heavier than the usual summer drizzle, and perhaps she will call her barons to her to receive their instructions.” She worried that the queen might leave her megaron in order to oversee the disposition of her army. “So long as she is in the megaron, I think the Mede, on his own, will not complicate Eugenides’s plans.”

  The queen of Attolia was waiting impatiently for the last of the barons that she had summoned to arrive when the captain of her guard, Teleus, entered the room and stepped to her side. He bent down to speak quietly in the queen’s ear. The message took some time to deliver, and she sat immobile while she listened, her eyes narrowed in concentration. When he was done, she stood without explanation. Everyone else at the council table stood as well, while the queen left the room.

  She reached the steps down to the courtyard as a group of exhausted horses was led away. There were six mud-splattered soldiers surrounded by a larger group of curious onlookers. Seeing the queen, the onlookers melted away. The muddy soldiers pulled themselves to attention, and one of them stepped forward.

  “The royal messenger?” the queen asked.

  Her guard captain, standing just behind her, answered, “He was struck by a crossbow quarrel just at the edge of the forest.”

  “And the message he carried?” the queen asked the lieutenant of the small group.

  “We went back for the message bag, Your Majesty,” he said, speaking carefully. He handed the leather messenger bag, stamped with the royal crest, to Teleus, who reached forward to take it.

  “Well done,” the queen praised him. She took the bag and opened it, withdrew the folded paper inside, and handed the bag back to Teleus. Attolia glanced at the signet on the seal only a moment before she cracked the wax and began to read the message. She looked up when she was finished.

  “Send them to the barracks and come inside,” she said to her guard captain, and started back up the steps to the porch of the megaron.

  The lieutenant bowed to Teleus and nodded to his men, directing them toward the doorway that led from the courtyard to the guard barracks. Teleus saw that the lieutenant was familiar with Ephrata and left him to settle his soldiers himself. He followed the queen.

  Nahuseresh saw them pass and took note of the message bag swinging from Teleus’s hand. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. He thought he had closed off every road to Ephrata and accounted for every royal messenger.

  In an anteroom to the counsel chamber, Attolia turned to Teleus. “Send for Hopsis from the capital,” she said. “And call back Relius, too. Baron Efkis has betrayed us. One of his officers reports that he has allowed an army of Eddisians coming down the Seperchia to land on this side of the river. They are probably in the woods already.”

  “There are no messenger ships in the harbor,” Teleus said. “The one due today hasn’t arrived. The next isn’t due until tomorrow.”

  The queen swore with a ferocity that would have stunned her Medean ambassador. “Get one of the fishing boats from the village,” she said. “There should be a fast ship at Rhea down the coast.”

  “How could the Eddisians have come down to the Seperchia without being sighted?” Teleus asked.

  “More treachery,” said the queen, flicking a shoulder in a brief shrug. “I would not have thought it of the officers in the blockade at the bridge by the Old Aracthus Gate, but if they were overwhelmed and there were no survivors, the Eddisians might have got through without warning.” She cursed again. “The messenger reported cannon,” she said.

  “We can’t hold against cannon,” Teleus protested. “We’ll have to send to the army for rescue.”

  “You must try, Teleus,” said the queen. “But I believe it is already too late.”

  She went to the wall above the gate of the castle to look out over the field to the forested ridge that lay between her and the Seperchia River. The woods that covered the ridge had grown down to the far edge of the fields. The fields themselves were no more than the garden patches for the megaron and the nearby village. The Eddisians would be able to fire from the cover of the trees and would direct all the force of their cannon into the poorly maintained walls of the megaron. Her captain pointed out the body of her messenger still lying on the road in the fading light of the day.

  “You can’t
get the body?” she asked.

  The captain shook his head. “The Eddisian crossbowmen have the gates covered. We tried sending messengers out to the village, but they were unable to get through the crossbow fire and came back.”

  The queen nodded. She had feared as much. “If we could get a boat out, we could send someone down the coast to Rhea, but I think we have to assume that the baron holds Rhea as well,” she said.

  She and Teleus were silent, watching the men moving in the woods.

  “They can’t bombard the castle without Piloxides’s hearing the guns,” the queen said abruptly. “He’ll come then.”

  “True,” said the guard. This hadn’t occurred to him.

  “So we need only to hold out until Piloxides reaches us.”

  They watched the edge of the woods as the darkness fell and the Eddisians camping there laboriously moved their cannon into position. They could hear the cursing and make out the men straining. One cannon broke away from its handlers and rolled down into an irrigation ditch at the side of the fields. Eddisians risking crossbow fire from Ephrata’s walls hurried down to reattach ropes, and they painfully winched the cannon back uphill.

  “Eleven cannon,” the captain counted. “They’ll be in position to fire by morning.”

  Thunder rumbled distantly, and they both looked up at the clouds. “A summer storm,” said the queen.

  “That’s unusual,” remarked Teleus.

  Thunder rumbled again, and they were silent, listening.

  “Those are Piloxides’s guns,” said the queen at last. “The Eddisians must be attacking from the pass. He’s not going to hear anything over that.” She looked again toward the dark trees.

  “Surrender,” she said.

  “Your Majesty?” Teleus was taken by surprise.

  “They can have the megaron,” Attolia said bitterly, “and all my barons as well. Piloxides will retake it in the end. Tell them we will surrender in the morning.” She turned to her guard captain with a grim smile. “I am sorry to leave you, Teleus. You understand, I won’t be here when the Eddisians take over?”

  “I understand, Your Majesty.” Teleus bowed.

  “Make the arrangements,” the queen said, and went down from the wall.

  While Teleus signaled the Eddisians, she returned to her room and dismissed her attendants. Hastily she collected a few necessities and a heavy cloak, then sat down to write out several letters. When it was finished, she called in the guard stationed outside the door and sent him to find his captain.

  Once he was gone, and the corridor outside empty, she left her rooms and hurried to a small locked door, for which she had a key. Behind the door a twisting staircase spiraled down. Carefully waiting until the halls were empty, the queen moved through the small stronghold to another door and another staircase that led to deeper hallways cut into the rock of the outcropping on which the megaron stood.

  She’d brought a lamp but didn’t need it. Lamps already burned in the hallway sconces, lit by the guardsman Teleus had sent ahead of her. She saw no one until she reached the door she sought. Beside it, Teleus’s guard was waiting. He’d heard her footsteps and had pulled himself to attention by the time she approached. If he thought the situation was irregular, nothing in his manner showed it. Staring at the wall opposite him, he presented the queen with a view of his ear and awaited her orders.

  “The boat is ready?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” The boat was always ready.

  She unlocked the door herself, and the guard followed her through. On the far side the air was chilly and damp and dark. They were in a cave under the megaron that opened onto the harbor. They could hear the water washing against the dock in front of them, and through the mouth of the cave the queen could make out the white tops of the waves in the darkness. The light from the doorway behind them lit the dock, and Attolia didn’t bother with her lamp. A boat waited, its sails wrapped against its mast. It was not a large boat, just large enough to hold two, but Attolia was confident it would serve her purpose. She didn’t expect to sail far. She would go to the Medes and worry later how to extricate herself from their assistance and how to explain to Nahuseresh that there hadn’t been room for him to accompany her. She walked down the dock, careful in the dim light, and stopped when she reached the boat. The tie lines were long and allowed it to float several feet out in the water. She gestured for the guard to pull the boat in. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him drop obediently to one knee and reach over the water. The hook in place of his missing right hand thunked quietly into the wooden hull.

  Teleus stood above the gate and looked down at the Eddisian standing below him. He’d expected someone on a horse and was surprised when the soldier had stepped out of the cover of the trees and walked across the fields to the megaron.

  “You wish to surrender?” the man shouted.

  “In the morning,” Teleus answered.

  “Fair enough. Will you leave your dead until then?”

  The royal messenger was lying in the road as the darkness gathered.

  “We’ll bring him in tonight with your permission,” Teleus said.

  “I’ll tell my general,” the soldier said, and waved one hand up at Teleus before turning back to the forest.

  “Let me go, sir,” said a voice at Teleus’s elbow. He turned and recognized the lieutenant who had come in with the messenger’s bag. “He was a friend,” the soldier said. “I’ll go get him.”

  “Very well,” said Teleus.

  A little later the guard was standing beside one of the pillars that supported the wide porch of the megaron and saw the lieutenant on horseback waiting while the gate from the courtyard was opened. He was accompanied by four others, the rest of the messenger’s guard but one. Annoyed, he remarked to no one in particular that it didn’t take five men to collect a body. He started down the steps from the porch, but the gate opened, and the riders disappeared through it. He waited in the courtyard, meaning to speak to the lieutenant when he returned. When he heard the shouting on the wall, he rushed up the stairs to the lookout above the gate. Staring into the twilight, he saw no one on the road. The horsemen and the body of the messenger were gone.

  “The messenger?” he asked.

  “Jumped up the moment they got near,” the guard said. “No more dead than I am. One of the riders took him up behind, and they rode into the woods.”

  Teleus stared. Five men. The messenger’s guard minus one. “Follow me,” he commanded the nearby guard, and ran back down the rampart stairs even faster than he had climbed them.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ATTOLIA TURNED TO LOOK AT him, where he kneeled watching her face. He’d grown, she realized. Boys did often grow in one last leap just as they became men, but her spies either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t thought to tell her. He was not quite her height, but with his hair cropped short under his helmet, she hadn’t looked twice at him when she had seen him with the other muddy soldiers in the courtyard earlier. He’d had a false hand then, instead of a hook. She supposed he’d covered it with riding gloves. The greatest change in him was not his height, nor the length of his hair, but the expression on his face. He looked at her as impassively as she knew she looked at him. She could feel the immobile mask of her own face. She thought that if she searched for the guardsman Teleus had sent to escort her, she would find him nearby, not unconscious, not bound and gagged, but dead.

  “You’ve changed,” said Attolia.

  “So I have been told. Into the boat, Your Majesty,” said Eugenides with a nod of his head. He still squatted there next to the boat, within easy striking distance. The black water was near to hand to receive her body.

  Attolia remembered his face as it had looked the first time she examined it closely, when he’d been in her castle on the Seperchia, bleeding from a sword wound. He’d smiled at her—the satisfied smile of an archer whose shot had gone home—when he’d told her that she was more beautiful than Eddis but less kind. Attolia didn’t thin
k he would smile at her again, not even to gloat. She hesitated another moment and then stepped into the boat. It rocked under her, and she sat down quickly, facing backward, on a wooden bench that stretched from side to side close to the mast. She pulled her cloak tighter to ward off the chill.

  “Where there’s life, there’s hope, Your Majesty?” Eugenides asked, his voice expressionless. Attolia didn’t answer. She fixed her gaze on the centerboard case in front of her, while the Thief used the knife-edge along the inside of the hook to slice through the line that bound the sail of the boat. The boom dropped beside her, the sail flapped free. Eugenides untied the boat and, holding its bowline, walked it toward the end of the dock. Distantly they heard shouting. Eugenides picked up speed, beginning to trot. The boat moved quickly through the water, and as it passed the end of the dock, Eugenides stepped in at the stern. The boat rocked again. Attolia clutched the front edge of her seat. Men spilled through the doorway behind them, but the boat was already out from under the overhang of the megaron’s foundation and into the wind. It heeled abruptly as the sail filled, and Attolia shifted her weight. Eugenides dropped into the seat at the stern and laid his hook over the boat’s tiller to steer. He adjusted the sail with his hand and the boat picked up more speed, leaving the cavern behind. By the time Attolia’s soldiers reached the end of the dock, the boat was out of reach, its occupants invisible in the darkness.

  The water in the harbor was choppy, and the little boat seemed to jump from wave to wave. Attolia felt the spray hitting her back and was thankful that the closely woven wool of the cloak repelled most of the water. She huddled inside it.

  They left the harbor and sailed out into the dark sea. When Eugenides turned the boat to follow the coast toward Eddis, the wind was behind them and he was a dark mass in the stern. Over his shoulder Attolia watched the lights of the megaron fade until they disappeared entirely behind the rocks of a headland. They sailed on, the water slowly soaking through the back of Attolia’s cloak as it splashed over the bow behind her.