“So I could rule Eddis as Irene rules Attolia and Sophos rules Sounis. But we knew the Medes would come, Gen,” she said angrily. “And after you had stoked their resentment and their superstitions, the only way to bring the Eddisians around was a trial, and you told no one. You sent your guard away while it happened.”
“It was better than having an Attolian-against-Eddisian riot in that courtyard,” said the king, sounding just as fed up. “The magus had enough trouble stopping Teleus from starting an all-out war once the trial was over.”
“You didn’t warn the magus, either.”
“He did fine.”
“And you did not warn your queen.”
“She would have led the riot.”
Eddis conceded that this was probably true. She looked over his bandages and the lumps of cloth-wrapped ice packed against his bruises. “Galen?” she guessed.
“He has emptied the ice cellar. He says there is nothing that can’t be fixed with enough ice.”
Eddis was reluctantly amused. “What happens now between your father and your queen?”
“Well, he already hates her because she cut off my hand. Now the feeling is mutual.”
“So, so, you intend to separate them for the entirety of your reign?”
The king shifted uncomfortably, looking for a softer spot on his mattress, before he confessed. “I’ve arranged for them to both be in the garden at the same time, entirely alone. We’ll see which one leaves alive.”
“You are joking.”
“Only about one of them leaving alive. They might kill each other.”
“Gen . . .”
“Helen, you know how it will go. They will agree, like people always do, that it’s all my fault.” He shifted painfully again. Not finding a better spot, he gave up with a sigh. “They are adults. They know what is at stake. They will sit next to each other on a bench without speaking until the palace bells ring the hour, and when they get up the whole matter will be finished. They will embark on a long relationship of mutual respect and admiration and lecturing me.”
Eddis considered.
“I am right. I am always right. It’s a curse,” said the king.
Eddis nodded. This time she didn’t lift her hands to cover her fractured composure, and she didn’t wipe away her tears. The king reached for her, rolling painfully up on his side to take her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “If there was another way than this, I couldn’t find it.”
She brushed off the apology. “I’ve always known I was the last Eddis,” she said.
She left soon after, and the king rolled back down to lie staring at the canopy over his head.
Chapter Five
To avoid waking the king if he still slept, Ion opened the door to the bedchamber without knocking. There was no sign of movement from the bed, so he signaled to Lamion and Dionis to very quietly bring in the king’s breakfast. Dionis opened the cross-legged stand. As Lamion bent to set the tray on top of it, the dish holding honeycomb slid forward just enough to knock the wooden bowl next to it.
Deep beneath the covers, the king’s eyes opened. He’d been dreaming and now he was awake. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t place it at first. He heard the attendants, heard the sound of the tray carrying his breakfast settling onto its stand, heard Ion, just as always, shushing Lamion. None of this was unusual, and yet something was out of the ordinary. He didn’t know what it was. He stretched his arms and legs very cautiously. He felt fine.
He felt fine.
The attendants heard the muffled sound of the king’s command. “Out!”
Ion was backing away from the bed. Dionis and Lamion abandoned the breakfast tray as the king’s voice got louder and louder. “Out! Out! OUT!” he shouted.
Ion slammed the door behind him and the king sat bolt upright in bed.
There I stood, on the wrong side of the door, staring. I could feel my scalp prickling and thought my hair might have been on end as well. Every cut, every bruise, every stitch that Petrus and Galen had fought to sew into the king’s face the day before was gone.
“I am going to be sick,” he announced. He threw off the bed linen and stumbled over to the closed stool. When he was done, he put the velvet-covered lid down and sat on it.
“I said ‘Out,’ didn’t I?” he asked me when he’d gotten his breath back.
I shrugged helplessly.
“I know, I know. Ion would have crushed you with the door.” He looked around the room. “Well,” he asked me at last, “what do you think we should do now?”
I had no idea.
Still sitting on the closed stool, he ran his fingers over the stump on his right arm, and then hesitantly touched the scar on his face as if to confirm it was still there. He looked around the room as if there were an explanation hidden in a corner or behind his writing desk.
In the end, he wrote out several messages and sent me to deliver them. I slipped through the door and he locked it behind me.
Eddis and Sounis stood and stared. Attolia gently touched his face and kissed him.
“Ask the Oracle,” said Eddis. “Let her guide you.”
So they sent Philologos up to the temple with a message, and the high priestess came down from the heights in her chair carried by its ceremonial bearers. Arriving in the waiting room, the Oracle rolled past the disconcerted attendants and guards without taking any notice of them and stood in front of the king, not in the least overawed by his transformation. “An inconvenient miracle, Your Majesty?” There was a warning in her words, not to take the gifts of the Great Goddess lightly.
Careful not to offend, the king asked, “Will people think the trial was a sham?”
The high priestess laughed. She was a big woman, and her laugh was a rumbling, infectious sound. “You should know, my king, when the gods work miracles, no one doubts them.”
It was true. Those who saw the king in the next few days stared in amazement, never in disbelief. When the high priestess of Hephestia announced that the king had been healed by the Great Goddess, a day’s holiday was declared to celebrate the miracle. Extra wine was distributed among the armies. Attolia ordered vast casks sent out on carts to be shared by the people in the city. These days, it may be commonly accepted that the trial was a necessary artifice, but no one doubted this sign of the Goddess’s approval at the time.
Relius had again left me the key to his study, and the king had warned Orutus not to add another lock to the door. Although my grandfather who was Erondites had failed in his latest grab at power, I preferred to be in the privacy of Relius’s study when I wrote in my journals. I went there whenever I could. Describing the king’s trial and its aftereffects, I concentrated on making each letter as perfectly as possible.
After the trial, the high king’s authority was supreme. Suddenly the Eddisians could not be more respectful, and the Sounisians and even the Attolians followed suit. That the king looked no more martial than he had before, that he still did not sit up straight, that he still had no experience as a military leader made no difference. Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia watched more or less impassively as the court hung on his every word. Increasingly burdened by the adoration, he reminded me of a caryatid, holding up expectations that were piling higher and higher every day.
Carefully I wrote The king told Casartus as he is not allowed into battle, his role is decorative only, imagining my tutor reading over my shoulder. When Teleus laid his hand there, I nearly jumped out of my skin. With a long streak of ink across my page, I stared at him, half frightened and half angry.
“He said to remind you not to lose yourself in your thoughts,” the captain told me.
Having successfully scared me out of my wits, Teleus might have left. Embarrassed at having forgotten Relius’s lesson and having been caught out, I wished he would. Instead, Teleus put a jug of wine on the little side table and settled in his usual chair. He filled a cup and took a sip and watched me thoughtfully over the rim of it.
“You love the king,” he said.
Warily, I agreed. I knew he did not.
“You love your brother.”
Startled, I wondered why he asked, and considered the question carefully before I answered. I realized I would not have been so grieved by Juridius’s betrayal if I had not still loved him in spite of the pain he’d already caused. Again, I nodded.
“I’m sure your mother loves her brothers as well,” the captain said. “Someday you may not only love, but be in love. The object of your affections may be worthy of your love or not. May return your love . . . or not. Remember it does not make you a traitor if you love one. Nor does loving a fool mean you must be one. We do not all have to be Legarus.”
I missed Relius even more than I had thought I would; without him, I could share my mind with no one. I wondered to whom Teleus could speak freely, reminded of the many hours he and Relius spent together. Glimpsing something in the adult world that I would not fully understand for many years, I slipped down off the stool and limped over to the bookshelf. Teleus watched me as I pointed at the empty space between two books, the only clean spot on the shelf, where the dust had not yet had time to settle.
“He took the poems with him?” Teleus asked. I nodded.
He snorted. “Idiot.”
I nodded and the captain laughed. He finished the wine in his cup, then he thumped me relatively gently on the back and left without another word.
Phresine stepped around the room lighting the lamps. Selene, who was the seniormost of the attendants who’d come down from the mountains with Eddis, was directing the setting out of the dishes. There were no more formal dinners. In the evening, the kings and queens met in Attolia’s apartments for a small meal and private discussion. During the day, food came in when it was ready and was eaten wherever it was most convenient. Those in the kitchens were run off their feet, feeding the palace in shifts at bare tables on wooden dishes. The guards’ mess hall had been taken over by the officers in the three armies. The guards ate outside or, if they had money, went into the town to spend it at taverns.
Earlier in the evening, Fordad had asked the king’s permission to accompany the army on its march north and join in the fight against the Medes. When the king accepted, the Braeling had dropped to one knee in respect and made a flowery speech about the replacement of the three crowned heads with the one, the divinely appointed high king. The king had been visibly embarrassed. Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis had been stone-faced. None of them wished to dispute the high king’s sovereignty, but the Braeling’s speech made all of them uncomfortable, and if not for their very high regard for each other, it might have stirred ill will.
In the small dining room, the four of them picked at their food, almost too tired to eat. The king tried to look at the bright side. “I could use my newfound authority to insist on going into battle,” he suggested.
Three heads turned, three sets of eyes locked on him, three frowns with varying indications of warning, exasperation, and irritation.
“Marvelous,” said Attolia waspishly. “You run the campaign and I’ll stay home.”
Sounis reproved him more gently. “Gen, you know it serves no purpose for you to risk yourself on the battlefield.” Trying to ease the tensions in the room, he teased, “Are you worried you’ll be taken for a wineglass warrior. Is that it?”
“That is it, Sophos; you have hit on my greatest fear,” said the king. “Someone who named himself Bunny is going to outshine me on the battlefield.”
“If I get too popular,” Sounis assured him, “you can always poison me later.” No sooner had the words come out of his mouth than he winced at his thoughtlessness. He turned to Attolia, an apology on his lips.
Already regretting her own harsh words, Attolia leaned toward the king and said in a carrying whisper, “I can show you how.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the others burst out laughing. Attolia bit back a smile.
It was Cleon the Eddisian who brought up the issue of the king’s tattoos. Having achieved his dream, he tried to persuade the king that he should have the appropriate tattoos to commemorate the trial.
“It will please the Eddisians, Your Majesty,” Cleon insisted.
“Cleon, if I have to survive anything else to please the Eddisians, I am going to throw the entire population into the sacred fire.”
Cleon, never one to give up on a bad idea, approached the queen of Eddis privately.
“He has passed his trial,” he insisted. “Those who fear that he has become too Attolian will see how he respects our traditions. Is it wrong to reassure them that they have an Eddisian king?”
“Cleon, he is not king of Eddis. I am Eddis.” She said it even as she doubted it was still true. “Do you imagine that there is another man born in Eddis whom I would accept as high king?”
She named a few cousins and the king’s brothers, both of whom were older than he was. “Should I accept Temenus or Stenides as king?” Even Cleon could see her point. She spoke slowly, trying to make him understand. “No tattooed member of my court over whom I have ruled could ever be high king over me. No Attolian could be high king over Irene, no Sounisian over Sophos.”
“Still, now that he has actually earned his tattoos—”
“Earned his tattoos, Cleon?” Eddis had lost all patience. “He killed his man before he left the boys’ house!”
Cleon opened his mouth and then stopped to think, possibly for the first time in his life. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know who Gen had killed. “Lader?” he asked, suddenly hesitant.
“Lader,” Eddis confirmed.
“He went hunting and never came back. We thought a lion got him, or a jealous husband,” said Cleon.
Eddis had always known what precipitated the horrendous shouting match between Gen and his father when the minister of war had tried to force his enrollment as a soldier. She knew why he hated the business of killing so much.
“But Lader was twice his age,” Cleon pointed out. “Gen wasn’t even the Thief then.”
“He was sacred to his god and we all knew it, Cleon. Bumps and bruises were one thing. Lader deliberately breaking bones was another.”
Cleon remembered his own part in that ugly episode and had the grace to be ashamed. “Why am I not dead, too?”
“Because I got down on my knees to the old Thief and begged for your life. You should stop making me regret it.”
Cleon sat, taking it in. “It was an accident,” he said hoarsely. “He wouldn’t let go of the earrings. I didn’t mean to hurt him so badly.”
“I know,” said Eddis, more gently. “I have always known that.”
“You didn’t beg for Lader.”
“No,” said Eddis sadly. “If I’d known the old man would make Gen do the killing himself, I would have begged to spare him that. But no, Cleon, I did not beg for Lader.”
“So, so, so,” said Cleon at last. “No tattoos.”
Eddis snorted. “No, no tattoos.”
Trokides, general of Sounis’s armies, was posturing at the council meeting when he said, “We cannot wait any longer for the guns from Eddis. Even if they arrived today, we cannot afford to move at the slower speed of artillery.”
Trenches were already being dug and the defensive walls reinforced in the narrowest part of the Leonyla Pass, but the longer the Peninsular army had to settle in, the better its chances of holding the Medes until the allied ships arrived at Stinos with the Gant and the Brael reinforcements. The longer they waited, the higher the risk that the Medes would beat them to the pass.
Trokides’s arguments were sound, but he had just criticized what he called inefficiency in the Attolian army’s “rolling bureaucracy,” and the Attolians were loath to agree with him.
Piloxides, general of Attolia’s armies, asserted, “We can certainly march the guns at any speed the Sounisians set.”
One of the junior officers pointed out that the Eddisians marching from their mountains would reach the Leonyla first.
“Can they not hold until we arrive?”
“The Eddisians are not fodder to be fed to the Medes so the lowlanders may show up at their leisure,” one of the Eddisians said bitterly.
“Your Majesties,” said Pegistus, speaking up before another argument could start. “We can march at speed, we’ve shown it to be true, even with the artillery.” He began to lay out the pages with his calculations on the table and walked us through them.
Pegistus knew there was a measurable decrease in speed with each additional man on the march and each additional gun. He knew the ground it covered affected the army’s speed as well. He had a measure for the elevation and quality of the roads. An abundance, a wealth of numbers. He calculated the speed of men and wagons and multiplied it out in his equations, all of his solutions reinforcing his argument.
My head spun. I felt ill.
Attolia said, “You’re using the speed of a grain wagon for the guns, Pegistus. The guns will not move as easily through the fords as a wagon would.”
“I do not think the variance will be significant, Your Majesty.”
Someone must have turned the question, as they turned every question now, back to the king. I saw him shrug and heard him say, “I’ve only worked with wooden ones.” He was waiting for someone else to speak up, but no one did. Sick of Trokides’s arrogance, they wanted to believe whatever Pegistus promised.
Under the table, the king poked Sounis in the thigh with his hook. Sounis moved his leg away, and the king dug the point of the hook in harder.
Sounis passed the problem on. “What do you think?” he asked the magus.
The magus did not reward his faith. “I would agree that artillery would be more difficult to transport. . . .” He was guessing like a student caught out by his tutor.
The king turned to his father. “Could you move an army of this size that quickly?” he asked bluntly.
The minister of war would not be baited into nationalistic boasting. He said he was quite certain how long it would take to move a smaller group of soldiers but admitted he was out of his depth when it came to moving this many men with artillery. “I must defer to Pegistus to know his own army’s best speed,” he said.
Return of the Thief Page 19
