As the others around the table began to nod their heads, Eugenides finally, reluctantly, said, “Pegistus, your equations are beautiful, but your calculations, as I’m sure my brother Sounis is too polite to point out, are wrong.”
I sighed with relief.
“Multiply them out again and you’ll see the Medes would be in Stinos, never mind the Leonyla, by the time we arrived.”
Once the king had pointed it out, the error was obvious. The magus in particular looked very embarrassed. Pegistus hemmed and hawed and apologized. “I must check my notes, Your Majesty.”
“By all means,” said the king. “But this meeting is over. We march on Trokides’s direction.”
As the meeting adjourned, the king asked Orutus to remain.
The queen of Attolia raised an eyebrow.
“I just wanted to ask the secretary of the archives if he thought Pegistus’s mistake was an understandable error or a deliberate attempt to slow our army.”
“I will look into it, Your Majesty,” Orutus promised.
Attolia and the king sat quietly together after he had excused himself.
“I miss Relius,” said Attolia.
“As do I,” said the king with a sigh.
While they were eating dinner that evening Sophos teased the king. “You made that pretty speech at the beginning of the meeting,” he said, “telling the council to look to wiser heads than yours for decisions.”
“What was I supposed to do?” wailed the king. “Let him go on thinking that you can multiply a number by eight and get a number smaller than the one you started with? You were no help.”
“Well, we can’t all have the insight . . . nay, the wisdom, of the high k—”
The king pitched a grape at him, and Sounis batted it away.
It was Xikos, of all people, who gave the king an opportunity to shrug off a little of the weight of his responsibilities. The king and his attendants were trudging toward his apartments. Trokides had set the date of departure for the next day, and the final attempts to organize the march had run late into the night. Everyone was exhausted and also keyed tight as harp strings.
“Your Majesty,” said Xikos as we walked back through the dark where the lamps were few and far between.
“What is it, Xikos?” asked the king.
“Is it true that your cousins used to chase you through the palace of Eddis?”
The king slowed, eyeing Xikos warily.
“That they were never able to catch you?”
“We caught him sometimes,” one of the larger Eddisians protested. Aulus, the one I’d thrown up on. “Unlike the Attolians, who never did.”
None of the Attolians dared to say that the Attolians had indeed caught him.
“Without cheating,” Aulus finished.
“Where are you going with this, Xikos?” the king asked outright.
“Two cities says we could catch you,” said Xikos. He showed the gold coins resting in his palm. The other attendants stared in confusion. Ignoring them, Xikos said to the Eddisians, “If each of you will put up that much, each of us will.”
“What?” cried the rest of the attendants immediately, no part of this plan.
“Deal!” the Eddisians shouted as fast.
None of them were as quick as the king, who had already slammed Xikos against the wall, pinning him in place.
“Xikos.” His soft voice curled around Xikos like the hook around the attendant’s neck. “Since when do you have two cities to rub together?”
Xikos, eyes white all the way around, stared over the king’s shoulder.
“Aulus?” prompted the king, not taking his eyes off Xikos’s face.
Aulus blew out his breath in disappointment. “Boagus and I gave him the money,” he admitted.
Xikos sagged against the wall in relief.
“Why, Aulus?” the king asked.
Aulus looked at his slightly smaller partner and then back at the king.
“Come on, Gen,” Boagus said. “Be a sport.”
“We march tomorrow and you want to fleece my poor naive Attolians?” said the king.
While Aulus and Boagus insisted it was an entirely straightforward bet, the Attolians bridled at being labeled naive, though, in retrospect, it was clear they only partially understood the role of betting in the Eddisian court and the nature of their games.
“They don’t have to bet,” Aulus pointed out.
The king considered his people’s traditions. The temptation was evidently too much.
“They do now,” he said, “and the best is for ten barrels of the best aposta—for the guards whose competence has been mocked.” To his attendants he said, “If you catch me, my fine cousins will pay for the liquor. If you do not, then you will pay for it. Is that clear? Good. Xikos, give Aulus back his money and we’ll set some ground rules.”
Hilarion and Ion were still protesting, Xikos was reluctantly passing over the two cities, and suddenly the king was gone. He went so fast the Attolians were left flat-footed and the Eddisians all laughing. “There are no rules!” they shouted at the Attolians. “Go! Go!”
The attendants and all the guards raced after the king, the attendants shouting for him to stop, the guards in a panic that the man they were supposed to protect was getting farther and farther away with every step. By then the king had reached the nearby light well and leapt onto its stone railing. He jumped into the open space, landing on the chandelier in its center. The wheel of iron tilted under his weight, and candles dropped down from their sockets into the rainwater cache below.
The king checked to be sure he was pursued, then used his hook to slice a rope. As one side of the chandelier dropped, he swung by his hand, building the momentum to carry him to the side of the light well, where he dropped to the balcony on the floor below. The Attolians pounding after him had to go around the edges of the well to the staircase, and by the time they started down it, the king was already going up a different one.
He kept always just ahead of his pursuers, leading them on, letting them think that with only a little bit more effort they might catch him. The guards had no choice but to stay as close as they could. The attendants, even Hilarion and Ion, had been drawn in by the thrill of the chase. The Eddisians, mostly just looking on, shouted advice. People who’d been quietly preparing to sleep got back into their clothes and left their apartments to see what the noise was about.
Not everyone was running after the king; the rest of us moved more slowly in his wake. At one point, the tail of his pursuers grew so long that he came up on it from behind, tapped the last person in the line on the shoulder, and then sped away. After that, it was less a line of pursuers and more of a mob as the Attolians moved in every direction, hoping to intercept the king.
A group of attendants saw their prey coming down a passage toward them and rushed forward. The Eddisians behind them shouted a warning as the king aimed toward a side table. Remembering how the king had pursued the Pent ambassador, the Attolians blocked the space above the table—only to grab at empty air while he slid by underneath it.
The king came up on the far side and was away again, so confident of his lead he turned and danced a few steps backward. Not content with fooling them once, he did it again. The second time, as they reached under the table, he slid on his belly across the top of it. The third time down that particular hallway, he avoided the pack of attendants blocking his path by dodging into the open door of Baron Laimonides’s apartment and running through the baron’s bedchamber and out the other side.
The guards watched in distress as he jumped onto a marble banister and, standing upright, slid down it. Ejected at the bottom of the slide, he tucked and rolled and came up again. Arms out, he bowed at the waist and ran away while his followers staggered to a halt, puffing and blowing.
“He’ll kill himself,” said Lamion.
“And the queen will kill us,” said a guard.
“Don’t worry,” said Boagus, who wasn’t chasing the king
, just staying close enough behind him to enjoy the show. “He was knee-high the first time he did that on the ceremonial stairs in Eddis, in front of the whole court gathered for dinner.”
“The minister beat him with a belt,” chortled Cleon. “Told him to practice sword skills instead of circus tricks.”
Boagus said, “The next night he slid down holding a three-foot sword he got from the armory.”
“And his father beat him for that, too.”
“My god,” said Philologos.
“No,” said Boagus. “His god.”
“Boagus!” We heard the king from far ahead.
“What?”
“Catch me or you pay half!”
The Eddisians shouted with approval and joined in the chase. One of them declared that he would show the Attolians how it was done and reached for his knife, shouting, “First you wing him!”
Aulus knocked his hand away. “You don’t wing the king, you idiot.” The man cackled with embarrassment, as if only then remembering it was not the Thief he was chasing.
The halls were filling with people, helping or hindering or just watching. The king invited Sounis into the chase, but he declined on the grounds that he was much too slow. He did say he’d reward any Sounisian who caught the king with his own barrel of aposta and shouted encouragement at Perminder, running past with the king’s other attendants.
Eddis and Attolia had both left their apartments and were watching from a balcony of one of the interior courts, where they could get the best sense of the state of the chase.
“They will not actually kill him,” Eddis told her as several of her cousins rushed past.
“Not on purpose,” said Attolia dryly.
“It will be over soon,” said Eddis. “Now that he has woken the entire palace.”
On the floor above them, the shouts of the pursuers were growing louder. The king erupted into the air over their heads, arms and legs windmilling as he reached for the outermost ring of the chandelier. It was a longer jump than the previous one, across an open court much larger than a light well, and he didn’t make it. Instead of landing on the chandelier, he barely caught the edge, swinging below it, his legs kicking, lighted candles raining down on all sides.
The king held on a moment more. Then, like the candles, he fell.
Eddis seized Attolia by the hand.
There was the sound of a tremendous splash. The Eddisians, the Attolians, the Sounisians crowded to the railings to look down at the king in the cistern below. It held all the water drained from the roofs of that wing of the palace and was so deep the king had to paddle to keep his head above water.
He flicked the hair from his eyes, the drops of water glinting like gold in the light of the remaining candles. He made his way to the side of the tank, where there were stairs leading out of the cistern. He rose from the water like Atimonia leaving her bath, and after a formal salute to the queens, he slipped into a dark passageway and was gone.
As quiet slowly returned to the palace, Attolia found the king in her bedroom peeling off his wet clothes.
“Unkingly,” she said.
“My god, I hope so,” said the king.
Chapter Six
Only a few hours later, the soldiers began mustering on the Fields of War. The kings and queens of Eddis, Sounis, and Attolia would ride out of the palace, past the cheering crowds, to lead the largest army seen in their lifetimes. In his royal bedchamber, the king of Attolia, annux of Attolia, Sounis, and Eddis, stood staring at his clothes. With no time to devote to fashion, he’d left the creation of his parade suit to his attendants. They were long past the days of spoiling his coats with ink stains and bringing him mismatched stockings.
“Thank you, Ion,” said the king. “It’s a credit to your work and the tailor’s.”
Ion was fussing over the jacket, straightening the wedges of ribbons that were to drape from each shoulder.
The king was only just dressed when the queen arrived. She saw the full glory of the parade suit and waved the attendants still working on his buttons out of the room. After she’d gently closed the door behind them, she drew herself to her full height and swept down in a rare full courtesy to her king.
“Stop,” the king moaned quietly.
Attolia rose, saying, “So elegant, so colorful, so—”
“Don’t—”
“Kingly.”
I knew, because I’d been there when Hilarion and Ion had worked with the tailor, that they had been determined to make a suit that would be admired by all who saw it as the king rode out of the city. I thought it was splendid.
“I look like a pitneen,” said the king.
He did. The colors of the suit were exactly those of the little birds that flocked in the winterberry bushes in the early spring, gorging on the fruit as it fermented. At the Villa Suterpe, I’d found them blinking and incapacitated on the paths. I should have seen the similarity earlier.
“A very regal pitneen,” said Attolia. Her smile fading, she asked, “Was this deliberate?” I caught my breath. I liked Hilarion and Ion both.
“Worse,” said the king. “It is an unsolicited gesture of the deepest, sincerest support, and it’s far too late to make any changes.”
The queen’s expression didn’t alter, but her shoulders quivered.
“For gods’ sakes, throw a cup of wine on me,” begged the king.
Attolia shook her head. “They are right,” she assured him. “It is just the thing that will impress the city as you ride out.”
“They want a pitneen for a king?”
“They want a spectacle. And you are . . .” Her voice trailed off. She was pointing to the cloth in the king’s hand, hanging like an empty sack. “What is that?”
“It’s the hat,” said the king in despair.
“Ohhh,” she breathed as she pulled it from his hand. It was a long, shapeless velvet sack, lightly padded around the opening to stiffen it above his brow. She put it on his head, then carefully draped it down his back, giving him exactly the profile of a bird. She had to sit down.
The king swept the headgear off. “Once we are on the road, I expect you to do your duty with the wine cup,” he said before he yanked the door open and stalked out. The queen composed herself and followed.
Eddis stared openmouthed.
“Not a word,” warned the king.
Her eyes sparkled. She might have been a banker seeing every loan repaid at once, and she too lowered herself in a courtesy to the king. Perhaps glimpsing the sudden uncertainty in Hilarion’s face, as she rose she assured the king that not even her attendants could have done better. Hilarion relaxed.
Eddis wore a perfectly ordinary Eddisian uniform, the only concession to her status a plain silver circlet on her head. Sounis, also in uniform, was standing by with his lips so tightly pressed together they were invisible.
Everyone was very subdued as they listened to the directions, repeated three times by the anxious palace official in charge, how the royal party would exit from the palace and parade through the city. Attolia and the king were to lead the way from the room. Sounis and Eddis would follow. The attendants of all four of them lined up in order of precedence, and in the rigor and the silence of the ceremonial moment was the song of the little bird that announces itself even as it hides, calling “look-at-me, look-at-me, look-at-me” from the bushes.
The high king didn’t turn a hair. The queen of Eddis poked her husband. Sounis looked back with wounded innocence. It was the last lighthearted moment for a long time.
When we reached the courtyard where the horses were waiting, my pony was among them. She was named Pepper, after the sprinkling of black dots on her white flanks, but I called her Snap because the stable master had taught me to snap my fingers, and taught her to come to me when I did. He’d also commissioned a special saddle for me, and every free moment I’d had I’d gone to him for riding lessons.
While careful not to draw attention to myself, I had obsessively checked to
be sure my name was included on every list of the king’s attendants. I was determined not to be left behind, and if anyone considered the matter even for a moment, I knew I would be.
As I’d hoped, everyone around me was much too preoccupied to notice the stable master boosting me into the saddle. I rode behind the king through the city, surrounded by the shouting crowds, and my heart lifted. We moved at a snail’s pace while mothers held up their children to see the kings and queens as they passed. Even those who were older and wiser and knew what lay in our future waved and shouted, buoying our spirits against privations to come. If only wars could be won on the strength of the cheering when they begin, instead of the blood and the pain and the horror that feed the gods of discord.
By noon, we had not made it more than a mile from the city and I was already paying for the heady feelings of participation with an ever-increasing discomfort in my hip and my back. I had never ridden for more than an hour or two at a time. I’d had no way of knowing what it might be like to ride all day.
Snap carried me as carefully as an egg in a cup, and we fell farther and farther behind the king. Marchers and carts passed us by. Panic fluttered just under my breastbone when I saw the magus waiting at the side of the road. I was sure he was going to send me back to the city. Instead, he turned his horse as I approached and rode beside me.
He claimed to have seen a crested sinerine fly past. “They are quite rare on this side of the Middle Sea. Shall we take a look for the nest?”
Warily, I went along as he led the way off the road. He helped me to dismount and we tied our horses. The magus followed a narrow path into the trees, going slowly so that I could limp after him, the stiffness slowly easing as I moved. Much to the surprise of us both, we did find the colony of birds. Their nests were remarkable, like a hundred knitted socks all hanging in the branches of a tree. Though the magus was very obviously delighted, the sinerines were an excuse for me to stretch my leg, and we both knew it.
Return of the Thief Page 20
