The Queen of Attolia

by Megan Whalen Turner

  She said venomously, “I might like the earrings? As much as I would like to marry a half-grown boy? A one-handed goatfoot?” She used the lowlanders’ slang for the mountain people of Eddis. “When I am actually willing to marry you, I will wear your earrings. Don’t wait for it, Thief.”

  She turned her back on Eugenides and started climbing again as fast as before.

  “Your Majesty,” he called.

  “What now?”

  “It’s a long climb,” he said, very subdued. “If you keep going like that, you’re going to die of apoplexy before you reach the top.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first you drove to apoplexy,” snapped Attolia, but resumed her climb at a slower pace. Eugenides followed, still a safe distance behind her.

  They climbed in silence for another half an hour. They could see the end of the stairs above them when Eugenides succumbed to temptation and produced under his breath a credible imitation of a small goat bleating. Attolia heard him. Her head lifted, and she froze for a moment, her hands tightened into fists. She reached for the knives and again found them gone, though she had checked them in their sheaths several times during the climb. Murderously angry, she turned and started deliberately back down the stairs toward the Thief. Eugenides skipped backward step by step as the queen advanced.

  “The more stairs we go down, the more stairs we have to climb up again, Your Majesty,” Eugenides called.

  The queen stopped. After years of intrigue and outright war with her barons, she knew when she was beaten. Without assistance she could not free herself from the Thief. His armed companions waited at the top of the cliff to escort her to her wedding, and there was no help at hand. She schooled herself to patience, always her best resource, and turned back to the climb.

  When she reached the top of the stairs, the coastal hills hid the higher mountains beyond them. They were silhouetted against the lightening sky, but it was still dark, and the men before her were difficult to make out. She looked them over coolly. Most of them were in the uniform tunics of Eddis’s soldiers, but she could see older men dressed in sober civilian clothes. The fat one, she thought to herself, was one of Eddis’s ministers. She supposed the other old men were ministers as well. Eddis honored her with their company.

  There was no sign of a camp. The horses and pack animals were staked in rows, their saddles on, their packs loaded.

  The officers and ministers approached, variously grave or embarrassed. As they got closer, Attolia recognized more of them. Eddis’s minister of trade, her minister of the exchequer. A little ahead of the other men was a man who was neither grave nor discomfited. He was absolutely poker-faced. With narrowed eyes, the queen recognized him as well, Eddis’s own chamberlain, brought along to perform the obligatory introductions, which he did without a whisker’s deviation from his usual palace style. Only once did he falter, looking over his shoulder.

  “He said he wouldn’t be here,” one of the ministers said in a carrying whisper, and the chamberlain went on with the formal greetings of the queen of Eddis in absentia.

  “And now?” the queen asked the open air.

  “We’ll move as quickly as we can across the hills to the Pricas Spring. There we will be able to cut down to the main pass,” said Eugenides behind her. “There will be some hasty negotiations, and we’ll be engaged, with your barons as witnesses.”

  “A dull ceremony,” said the queen.

  “We can have pomp and glitter at the wedding—and the coronation.”

  Attolia turned to give him a cold look. He smiled an equally cold smile and turned to the men who’d come to join them.

  “No unexpected difficulties?” the minister of trade asked.

  “No unexpected ones,” Eugenides reported.

  The chamberlain spoke to the Attolian queen. “Your Majesty, I regret that we cannot offer you any rest after what must have been an extremely tiring journey, but I am afraid we must reach the main pass with all possible speed. We have a horse for you, if you can ride?”

  “I can,” said Attolia, meaning that she would rather cooperate than be tied to a saddle.

  The chamberlain cleared his throat. “If I may offer it, Your Majesty, I have a dry cloak for you.”

  “You may offer it,” the queen said.

  He glanced down at her feet. “We have dry shoes as well. If you will excuse me.” He bowed politely and went away to fetch the cloak and soft leather boots as well. When he returned he knelt to remove her slippers and slipped the warm boots on in their place. They were a good fit, and the queen silently curled her cold toes in relief.

  They helped her onto a horse that had been brought near as Eugenides stood farther away and watched. Attolia didn’t look in his direction. She mounted the horse and was led away without once glancing back.

  They climbed higher into the coastal hills and then turned to ride along a narrow trail. They spent the day in the saddle under hanging clouds. The coastal hills were less uniform than the sheer rise of the Hephestials inland of the Seperchia River. The path rose and dipped along the lifting shoulders of land. At nightfall they rode out onto the side of a hill overlooking Attolia and found a camp made on a terrace there. The camp was deserted except for a messenger left to report that Xenophon had encountered no difficulty in the retreat from Ephrata.

  Attolia was shaking from exhaustion and accepted the help of one of the soldiers to dismount. He was an older man in uniform but had no tabs on his collar to indicate that he was an officer. He didn’t seem much awed by being so close to a queen. Perhaps he served in his own queen’s household. He looked oddly familiar, and she wondered if she had met him on some state occasion in Eddis or at her own palace in Attolia. His hands gripped her around the waist as she slid off the horse. They tightened, and for a moment she was irrationally frightened, caught by him, her feet dangling above the ground. His eyes were hard. She stared at him, and he dropped his gaze, then lowered her gently the last few inches to the ground.

  She turned away from him and asked the minister who was near what would happen when they reached the queen of Eddis. “There will be negotiations, Your Majesty. I assume.”

  “On the subject of dowry?” the queen asked, lifting her eyebrow.

  “I assume so, Your Majesty. Her Majesty’s chamberlain will escort you to your tent.” The minister excused himself. The older soldier had disappeared.

  The largest tent was hers. The chamberlain led her to the doorway and stopped beside it to bow. He was punctilious in his politeness to the captured queen, and she thought perhaps the politeness was more hateful to her than scorn would have been. She hadn’t seen Eugenides all day.

  Inside the tent, for her comfort, there were rugs and cushions on a low sleeping couch. She was left alone. The guard waited outside. The queen stared at the empty tent for a moment. Had she been expecting company, she wondered, dinner guests, maybe, to eat the cold supper that waited on a tiny table by the bed? She crouched on the sleeping bench and ate. When she was done, she was almost too tired to stand but dragged herself up to go to the opening of the tent and pull aside the flap that covered it. The guard turned to eye her nervously. A young man not used to the presence of royalty, Attolia guessed.

  “I want to see Eugenides,” she said in her best regal manner.

  The sentry offered to send a message to the Thief.

  “Take me to him instead,” Attolia commanded. “It’s faster, and I am tired and want to rest after speaking to him.”

  The soldier hesitated, and glanced at a lighted tent beyond the queen’s. Attolia started toward it. Let the sentry try to stop her by force if he dared. Making the best of an impossible situation, he hurried to get ahead of her. The doorway of the tent was open, and as Attolia approached, she looked past the sentry’s shoulder into the warm light of the lamp hanging on the central tent post.

  Eugenides sat on a low stool. The heavyset man kneeling in front of him was wearing the green trimmed tunic of a physician and was just eas
ing the cuff off his arm. Eugenides’s eyes were closed. As the cuff came free, he shuddered and dropped his head to rest on the other man’s shoulder.

  Attolia stood still, remembering that the night before she had thought that Eugenides was too young to have bones that ached.

  “Eugenides.” The sentry used his name, which was also his title.

  “What?” the young man snapped as his head came up and he opened his eyes. He saw the queen standing beyond the doorway and froze for a moment, looking sick, before he turned stiffly to sweep up a towel from beside him and wrap it around the bare stump of his arm. He stood then and stepped toward the door cradling the arm, all expression wiped away from his face and his voice. “Can I help you, Your Majesty?” he asked politely.

  “What has happened to the army under Piloxides?”

  “I don’t have news yet,” said Eugenides. “The attack on Piloxides was a feint, meant to distract him. There was no complete engagement.”

  Attolia returned to her tent without speaking.

  In her sleep she heard gentle rain falling on the roof of the tent and woke to shouting. Her legs were still wrapped in the blankets and she was just sitting up when Eugenides pushed the cloth away from the door and stepped into the tent. The lantern hanging in the tent had been left burning, and by its light she could see the sword unsheathed in his left hand.

  “What luck you have,” he said, stepping toward her.

  She wouldn’t cower. She lifted her chin as he crossed the tent toward her. When he reached her side, he did not raise the sword as she had expected. He bent down and kissed her briefly on the lips.

  Shocked, she pulled her face away and kicked at the blankets binding her legs. By the time she was standing, livid with fury, Eugenides was gone, and the flap of the tent had dropped behind him. She stalked to the doorway to push the cloth aside.

  The sentry, the same young man as before, stood outside. “Please stay in the tent, Your Majesty,” he said more firmly than he’d spoken before, hopeful that she might obey.

  Soldiers with their blades bare crossed in front of the tent at a run. Attolia stepped out of the doorway and let the door cloth fall behind her, cutting off most of the light from inside. It was raining again, though not hard. The moon was gone, and it was difficult to be sure what was happening. As her eyes adjusted, she could see men coming across a ridge that ran along the edge of the mountain terrace. “Who is it?” Attolia asked, her heart in her throat.

  “Your Majesty, please go inside,” the sentry said again, his voice raised.

  Attolia stood her ground. Short of pushing her, the sentry couldn’t get her back into the tent, and he looked no more willing to use force than previously. She saw the crests on the armored helmets of the soldiers coming over the ridge and her eyes widened. They were not her troops. They were Medes.

  The Eddisian camp was in chaos as the soldiers in it rolled out of their sleeping blankets, dragging their swords from their sheaths and snatching up their hand-shields before running toward the Medes in haphazard order. The Medes strode down the ridge in the orderly formation that had won their empire, the soldiers shoulder to shoulder, with their shields locked. They were perfectly organized into an overwhelming fighting unit, and Attolia looked away as they met the first line of Eddisians.

  She had tried to explain the Eddisians once to Nahuseresh. He’d pressed her to commit her army to taking the pass up to Eddis, thinking that once they were past the danger of the cannon overlooking the gorge, they could easily sweep through to the top of the pass and win the mountain valleys. She’d refused, doubting that her army would succeed in fighting its way past the cannon without being eviscerated. Nahuseresh had attributed her reluctance to an entirely understandable female timidity. He didn’t seem to understand that the people of Eddis had very little to do all winter beyond develop superior artisan skills and train for war.

  As the Mede soldiers reached the first of the Eddisians, the Eddisians threw themselves onto their knees, leaving their backs unprotected as they cut the legs out from under the men at the front edge of the phalanx. More Eddisians, running up, threw themselves at the shields, pushing the Medes backward as their supporters pressed them forward. The first rush died, spitted on the swords of the Medes, but the orderly formation compressed and then collapsed. Swinging their swords, the remaining Eddisians drove into the chaos that had been a fighting unit. The Medes struggled to re-form, but they were overwhelmed. For a moment Attolia thought she saw Eugenides, but in the darkness she couldn’t be sure.

  Then the darkness was driven away by the light of a flare fired into the air on an arrow or crossbow quarrel. It drifted slowly to the ground, its light making it easy to distinguish the bare heads of the Eddisians from the crested helms of the Medes. By the painful light of the burning magnesium ball, Attolia picked out the Thief of Eddis. Beyond Eugenides, she saw the soldier who’d earlier helped her down from her horse. Though they were not close, as Attolia watched, she could see that he and the Thief fought in tandem. Eugenides pressed his opponent. When the man flinched backward, he stepped into the range of the other Eddisian, who spitted him neatly, then turned back to his own attacker. Together Eugenides and his partner had carved a hole deep into the remains of the Medes’ fighting unit.

  Then the Mede crossbows, in position above the fighting, began to fire by the light of their flare.

  “Your Majesty will please go inside the tent.” The sentry beside her was shouting. He’d lifted the flap of the door behind them, silhouetting them both against the light inside. He took her by the arm and pulled. Attolia shrugged him off, but his hand was already slipping away. She turned as he fell to the ground as a tree falls, a crossbow quarrel through his throat. Dark blood welled up to mix with the rain. His body spasmed and then was still.

  The door cloth of the tent had fallen, and the light was gone, but the queen sidled out of the doorway and beyond the edge of the tent, so that she would not be visible against its lighter surface. From there she continued to watch the fighting. One Eddisian after another dropped in a rain of quarrels. Attolia scanned the melee for Eugenides but couldn’t find him again.

  “Peace,” yelled a Mede from the hillside. “Peace now, Eddis.” The remaining Eddisians fell back, lowering their swords. The Mede soldiers lowered theirs as well and waited.

  Eugenides was there, shoulders heaving, sword in his hand, as he used his forearm to push the wet hair off his forehead. The older man was beside him. He spoke, and Eugenides turned to face him. They stayed like that for a moment before Eugenides shook his head and turned away. He looked up the hillside to where the invisible crossbowmen of the Mede lurked.

  “Peace!” he shouted into the air, and threw his sword down into the mud. The other Eddisians did the same. Peace and surrender to the Mede.

  The gray-haired man spoke again, and Eugenides replied. Whatever he said made the older man give a sour laugh. Then they turned together to look at Attolia as if they could see her through the tent. She could see their pale faces, a little blurred by the rain. Eugenides said something else to the other man, who then nodded and stepped away, distancing himself from the Thief.

  Beyond them a figure was silhouetted for a moment on the ridge. Attolia knew who it must be, stepping carefully down to the terrace now that the fighting was done, and she walked out into the open to meet him. When she reached the Mede ambassador, she laid both her hands in his and smiled.

  “I have much to thank you for, Nahuseresh, more now than just the pleasure of your company.”

  “It is my honor, Your Majesty. I only wish I could have saved you the strain of your terrible journey.” He bowed over her hands to kiss them both. Even in the rain, his hair lay neatly on his scalp. His cloak swept the tips of his polished boots where the raindrops seemed to sparkle in the torchlight.

  She lifted her gaze from his boots back to his face as he straightened.

  “A fine rescue,” the queen said.

  “I have landed
my army at Rhea and ordered it to the base of the pass to Eddis to support your soldiers there. I can only hope that Her Majesty will forgive me,” the Mede said, “for bringing my men uninvited through her territory.”

  Attolia squeezed his hands. “What alternative do I have?” she said lightly.

  “An opportunity to serve you is a gift from the gods,” said the Mede, bowing again.

  She stiffened. “What gods?” Attolia asked.

  “Yours, mine, what matter?” he said. He’d been joking, confident that the gods were a matter of superstition to her. “Maybe they’ve made a treaty, an example to us all.”

  The queen smiled again. “Perhaps they have,” she said. She looked to where the Eddisians had been grouped, seeking out Eugenides. The Medes were moving through the group, separating out the officers and those men not in uniform. When they reached Eugenides, one made a comment that made the others laugh.

  “Did you bring any manacles?” Attolia asked Nahuseresh.

  “A few pairs,” answered the Mede. “I think they won’t be much use on your one-handed thief,” he reminded her.

  Annoyed at her thoughtlessness, Attolia pretended to be amused.

  “I brought neck chains,” Nahuseresh said.

  “How clever you are. Chain him to two of the soldiers, will you? Two officers.”

  “As you wish,” said Nahuseresh, and summoned one of his men with a wave of his hand. Attolia left him and stepped across the slick mud to Eugenides. The Mede soldiers had looped a rope around his upper arms and bound his arms to his sides. He stood slack-shouldered, staring at the ground, as they finished their knots and moved away.

  As she approached, Eugenides lifted his head to look over the queen’s shoulder at the Mede. He had guided Attolia in a number of the naval battles, Eugenides knew. He was liked by some of her barons, courteously hated by others, but respected by all of them. He flattered the queen of Attolia and directed the Mede ships that patrolled her coast as well as the soldiers on land. He didn’t take part in the fighting itself, but who could doubt that he would be as competent at killing men as he was at everything else he undertook? So well suited to be a king, all he wanted was a kingdom, and he would condescend to take Attolia. Eugenides hated him.