“I told her I’d already been hunted in Attolia, thank you very much.”
“Oh, Gen,” sighed Eddis.
Attolia had returned to her rooms after the dancing and dismissed her attendants immediately. As they left, she had said acidly to Phresine that she thought “Least said, soonest mended” might have been exactly the advice for the situation. Once the women had gone, she had pulled the flowers from her braids herself and thrown them to the floor, muttering, “Damn him, damn him, damn him,” as each blossom dropped.
But it wasn’t the Thief she was angry at, or Phresine. What a fool she was to offer hunting to a man with one hand. What a fool to fall in love with someone after she had cut his hand off. Well, she might be fool enough to love him; she wasn’t fool enough to believe he loved her. She’d seen the look in his father’s eyes, and if she didn’t see it in Eugenides’s eyes, then he was better at hiding it, that was all.
Standing on the terrace, looking out at the garden, Eugenides admitted, “I thought this was going to end like a fireside story. The goddess of love waves her scepter, and we live happily ever after.” He shook his head. “The only worthwhile members of this court despise me. The most despicable can’t stop chuckling under their breaths, and if it were up to the queen’s attendants, I would have been hanging upside down for weeks now.”
“Every day I have more sympathy for Hespira’s mother. I’d rather see you go live in a hole in the ground of the Sacred Mountain.”
“It isn’t rational, is it? Do you think the gods have afflicted me?”
Eddis raised her eyebrows.
“No,” said Eugenides, shaking his head. “If it is an affliction, it is as you said: The gods know me so well they can predict my behavior. They don’t control it. They could know I would love her, but they don’t make me. I’ve watched her for years, you know. All those times when you didn’t know where I went, mostly it was to Attolia.”
“Did your grandfather know?”
“He knew I was fascinated by her. She’s like a prisoner inside stone walls, and every day the walls get a little thicker, the doorway narrower.”
“And?” Eddis prompted.
“Well,” said Eugenides, “it’s a challenge.”
“And that’s all?”
Eugenides looked at Eddis. “Why are you prying all of a sudden?”
“I have an interest in your welfare,” Eddis said dryly, “and the welfare of two countries. One way or another this government must be stable if Eddis is to prosper.”
Eugenides stared at nothing. “I can’t leave her there all alone, surrounded by stone walls.” He looked at Eddis, hoping she would understand. “She’s too precious to give up,” he said.
“But she won’t talk to you.”
“No,” Eugenides said painfully. “And she won’t listen to me either. And if she won’t listen to me, how can I tell her I love her?”
“If she won’t listen, how can you lie to her?” Eddis asked.
Eugenides had been looking up at the roofs of the palace. He dropped his eyes suddenly to look at Eddis. “I wasn’t thinking of lying to her,” he said.
“How can she know?” asked Eddis. “She is not in the habit of trusting people. Why should she suddenly believe anything you say? You might unlock the door for her; you can’t make her walk through.”
The faults in Eugenides’s character were too well known for him to need to make any reply. “She’d believe you,” he said after some consideration.
“She would not,” said Eddis.
“She would.”
“Eugenides,” Eddis protested.
“She would,” Eugenides insisted. “You said you could settle on a treaty with a wedding or without one. You have no reason to lie to her. She would believe you.”
“Eugenides, I am the queen of Eddis, not a matchmaker.” If she had been a matchmaker, he would have been home, properly married to Agape.
The Thief only leaned back against the stone railing behind him and crossed his arms. He waited until Eddis threw up her hands. “All right,” she said. “I’ll ask for a private interview. I’ll tell her we can have a treaty without a wedding if she would prefer it, and we’ll see what she says.”
“So the slipper is on the other foot now?” Attolia asked Eddis in the privacy of her apartments when the two queens had met, alone for the first time since the hillside above Rhea. “First I am forced to accept him, and now you try to draw him back?”
“And you will keep him to spite me?” Eddis asked. Attolia realized that the mountain queen was well aware of her jealousy.
“Isn’t he your most prized possession?” Attolia asked.
“He’s not a possession,” Eddis said, her voice hard.
“But you want to keep him for yourself?” Attolia suggested. “Don’t you?”
“Make him king of Eddis? I think you mistake our friendship,” Eddis answered.
“No, not king of Eddis,” said Attolia. “But you would keep him safe, marry him to some member of your court, have him to dance attendance on you indefinitely, tied safely to leading strings?”
Eddis scowled. “No,” she said.
“Why not?” Attolia asked.
“It would kill him,” said Eddis. “He cannot draw back now.”
“Then why are you here?” Attolia asked, her smile insincere.
“I don’t know,” said Eddis, stung, and she stood to leave.
“Wait,” said Attolia. Eddis paused. “Please,” said Attolia. Eddis sat again, but Attolia rose and went to the window and was quiet for a long time.
“I like you,” said Attolia at last, speaking to the window. “I didn’t think I would. Still, to have you here in my palace galls me every day. I see you surrounded, even here, by people you can trust with your life. You are safer than I am, and it is my home, not yours. Do you understand?” she asked.
“Yes.” Eddis nodded and waited.
“And what part of your resources can I have for myself? Your Thief. I have so little of faith or trust or friendship, and I should let him steal it from me?”
“Eugenides doesn’t want to steal anything from you.” Eddis fumbled for words.
“How can you understand?” Attolia asked as she turned to face Eugenides’s queen. “He hasn’t lied to you.”
Eddis looked at her, surprise showing in her face. “Of course he has,” she said.
“He lies to you?” Attolia asked.
“Constantly,” said Eddis. “He lies to himself. If Eugenides talked in his sleep, he’d lie then, too.”
Attolia looked stunned. “And you can’t tell?”
Eddis thought for a moment. “I sometimes believe his lies are the truth, but I have never mistaken his truth for a lie. If he needs me to believe him, he has his own way of showing his veracity.”
“Which is?”
“When he is being honest with you, you’ll know,” said Eddis, and nodded reassuringly to Attolia.
Attolia shook her head. “Let us face the truth. He is too young, and I am too old, and there is the not inconsequential fact that I cut off his hand. Try to tell me that this is not his revenge.”
Eddis stood up to face her and to look in her eyes. “He is not too young. You are not old. You only feel old because you have been unhappy for so long, and this is not his revenge,” she said.
“What kind of fool would I have to be to believe it was anything else?”
“I wouldn’t have allowed it,” Eddis told her.
“You wouldn’t have allowed it? Isn’t it your revenge, too?”
“Irene—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You were the princess Irene the first time we met.”
“It means ‘peace,’” Attolia said. “What name could be more inappropriate?”
“That I be named Helen?” Eddis suggested.
The hard lines in Attolia’s face eased, and she smiled. Eddis was a far cry from the woman whose beauty had started a war.
“I
rene, I wouldn’t let Eugenides throw his life away on revenge no matter how he had been maimed.” Attolia looked away, but Eddis went on. “And if he says you are not a fiend from hell, I will accept his judgment.” Attolia slowly paced across the room. Eddis spoke again. “Irene? What choice do you have but to believe in him?”
“I might have to marry him,” Attolia said in a low voice. “I don’t have to believe anything.”
“Yes, you do,” said Eddis. “If you are going to marry him, you have to believe him. He isn’t a possession. He isn’t mine to keep or to give away. He has free choice, and he has chosen you. You must choose now. Between the two of us we can reach a treaty without a wedding. You don’t have to marry him, but if you choose to marry him, you have to believe him.”
Attolia turned, and Eddis thought that behind her mask the queen might be afraid, and so she finished lightly. “You have to believe him, because he’s going to have your entire palace up in arms and your court in chaos and every member of it from the barons to the boot cleaners coming to you for his blood, and you are going to have to deal with it.”
Attolia smiled. “You make him sound like more trouble than he is worth.”
“No,” said Eddis thoughtfully. “Never more than he is worth.”
Attolia ceded Ephrata. When she learned that the proceeds of the ten seized Attolian trade caravans had gone to Eugenides, she tabled her demands to have the monies restored to her treasury. Despite the basilisk stares of Eddis’s minister of war, a military accord was reached in a matter of days. The arrangements for a wedding finally began. And then halted when the queen of Attolia balked at the matter of consecrating an altar to Hephestia for the ceremony.
When pressed on the point, she uncharacteristically fled. Dropping the pen she held, she said, “There will be no altar to Hephestia in Attolia,” and stalked from the room. Eddis and Eugenides, the ministers and aides, both Eddisian and Attolian, were left looking at one another in surprise and consternation.
Eddis excused herself, and summoning Eugenides with a wave of her hand, she followed the Attolian queen. Once in the corridor Eddis stopped.
“The throne room,” Eugenides suggested.
They found her there. The empty room echoed their footsteps as they crossed the smooth marble floors. Eddis couldn’t help craning her head to look around as she did each time she saw the room. Attolia’s throne room was blue and white and gold instead of the more somber red and black and gold of Eddis’s. The mosaics on the floor, the high ceilings with windows at the tops of the walls to flood the room with light, made it a more beautiful room even than the newer throne room and banquet hall in Eddis. Attolia didn’t need to eat in her throne room; she had other, even larger rooms for dining and dancing. Glancing at Eugenides, Eddis thought he walked through the room as if it were so familiar as to be unworthy of his attention. Perhaps it was. Attolia ignored them until they were standing in front of her.
“There will be no altar consecrated to Hephestia,” she said.
Eugenides continued up the steps to the dais and took her hand. “It is a token to the gods I believe in, no more.”
“No,” said Attolia.
“Because you do not believe?”
“Oh, no,” said Attolia bitterly. “Because I believe and I do not choose to worship. I will have no altar dedicated to her and no sacrifice made.”
“I made a vow,” Eugenides said, “promising this if I became king—”
“No,” said Attolia.
“Why?” shouted Eugenides.
Pale with fury, Attolia pulled her hand away from Eugenides and clenched her fists. “How did I catch you when you hid in my palace? How did I know you moved through the tunnels for the hypocaust? How did I know how you entered the town and how you would escape? How did I know?” she shouted.
Eugenides had grown pale as well. “I made a mistake,” he said.
“You made a mistake,” Attolia agreed. “You trusted your gods. That was your mistake. Moira,” Attolia said, spitting out the name. “Moira, the messenger of your Great Goddess, came and told me where you would be and that if I would have my men nail boards between the trees above the curve in the river after dark that day, then I would catch you there. She came back later to warn me not to offend the gods. Moira,” she said again, “in the guise of one of my attendants, told the Mede where to find you in the mountains. How else could he have found you there at the Pricas? I do not worship your gods, and I will not be married before that altar.”
Eugenides stared at nothing, numb. If he felt anything, it was that he was falling through space, as all thieves fall when their god forsakes them. Without a word, and without meeting Attolia’s eyes, he left. Walking quickly, he crossed the empty room without turning his head. Attolia stood and would have followed him, but Eddis stopped her with a hand on her arm.
Attolia looked at her. “You knew,” she said.
“That he had been betrayed by the gods? I guessed,” said Eddis.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EUGENIDES MOVED LIKE A SLEEPWALKER down a hallway he didn’t see, remembering the sound of hammers as he had hidden in bushes near the city walls. Remembering, he began to move faster, down the long hallway to the kitchens, through them without speaking to a soul, and out to the animal pens in one of the lower courtyards of the palace. There were pigs kept there, and goats. He demanded a kid from the puzzled stable hand and carried it, wriggling, back into the palace.
There were many empty rooms in the palace. Eugenides knew of one that had been a solarium until recent building had obstructed its sunlight and left it too cold and too dark to be useful. With no anterooms between it and the hallway outside, and with a row of load-bearing pillars dividing the room in two, it was awkwardly sized and located. It was rarely used and had made a good hiding place on his previous visits. There was a stone table that would do for an altar. Anyone could make an altar, anyone could consecrate it with a sacrifice. Not everyone received a response from the gods, but Eugenides never doubted his invocation would be answered.
Shifting the kid under his right arm, Eugenides took a candle from a sconce as he walked. He passed people as he climbed back up the staircase. No one spoke to him. People stepped away and watched quietly as he passed. He climbed faster and hurried down a hallway to the empty room and kicked its door closed behind him.
The table was to the right of the door, pushed against the wall. The window was opposite him, its length divided into unequal thirds and each third into many separate panes. Once it had looked out on the acropolis that rose behind the city. Now all that could be seen through it was the blank wall on the opposite side of an interior courtyard. The sun was still high, and a beam cleared the rooftops to light the sill of the window and the dust motes floating in the air.
The kid bleated as he squeezed it under one arm while he fumbled for matches to light the candle. He had a silver match case that he could open with one hand. When the candle was lit, he tilted it to let wax fall onto the table, and chanted an invocation to the Great Goddess, deliberately choosing the one he had sung over and over in the queen’s prison cell. Once sufficient wax had pooled on the tabletop, he jammed the candle down into it until it was well stuck. Then he swung the kid out from under his arm and onto the table. It kicked, but he pinned it with his arm while he freed his knife. Deftly he slit its throat, and as the blood spilled across the table with no ceremonial bowl to catch it, he turned the knife and slid it into the body just below the cartilage at the top of the rib cage. Then he dropped to his knees. He rested his forehead against the bloody edge of the table and his forearms on the tabletop and waited.
The blood cooled and dried. He went on waiting, unmoving, growing stiff and cold.
“The door won’t open, Your Majesty,” said one of the servants.
The door had no lock, but Attolia wasn’t surprised that it was fastened closed. She hadn’t expected otherwise.
“Leave him,” she said. “He is talking to his gods.�
�� The servants bowed and dispersed, murmuring a little among themselves, and Attolia knew that the news of the mad Eugenides would percolate through the palace, like water through soil. Attolians did not invest much belief in their religion. They dutifully attended temple festivals and used their gods for cursing and little else.
Eugenides knelt against the altar, his body beginning to ache and his mind numb until the daylight faded and the room was dark except for the light of the candle. A hand rested for a moment on his shoulder. He looked up to see Moira beside him. “How did I fail the gods, that they betrayed me to Attolia?” he asked.
Moira shook her head. “Hephestia sends no message.”
“And the God of Thieves? Have I failed him, that he did not defend me? Are my gifts at his altar insufficient, that I lost his favor?”
“I cannot say, Eugenides.”
“Then I will wait here.” He laid his head back against the edge of the table.
“Eugenides,” said Moira, “you cannot demand the presence of the Great Goddess. The gods are not accountable to men.”
“I can,” said Eugenides without lifting his head. “I can demand. Whether my demands are met or not, I can demand. I can act as I choose and not as some god directs.”
“Eugenides,” Moira warned.
“You betrayed me,” said Eugenides. “Betrayed me to Attolia. You are the gods of Eddis, and you betrayed me to Attolia and to the Mede.” His hand fanned out for a moment in the sticky blood on the table before clenching again into a fist. “You betrayed me, and I can demand to know why if I choose.”
“Eugenides, no,” Moira warned for the third time.
“Yes!” screamed Eugenides, and the windows of the solarium shattered and the air was filled with broken glass.
“Rare the man whose gods answer him,” the queen of Attolia said dryly when an agitated household reported shattered windows throughout the palace.
The Queen of Attolia Page 25
