Return of the Thief

by Megan Whalen Turner

  Hega gave an irritated sigh, but she left the twist in the weave that Eugenides had made. “But no red,” she grumbled. “That comes later.”

  Periphys moved lightly, the leaves dipping at her passing, the occasional spent blossom falling in her wake. She had a specific objective and wandered a little less than usual on her way.

  “Sister,” she called as she alighted on a terrace overlooking the lower slopes of the Sacred Mountain. “Stop your drizzle, please,” said Periphys, unmantling her hair. “I’m all wet from coming up the valley.”

  Alyta had been soothed by the sound of water dripping from the branches of the conifers that surrounded her home, but she took pleasure in pleasing others; the pattering of droplets eased, and Periphys blew the clouds away. She sat beside Alyta in the weak sunlight.

  “You must have heard us calling. So what keeps you home while we are missing you?”

  “I did not hear,” Alyta said. “I’m sorry. I was lost in my thoughts.”

  “Thinking what?” probed Periphys, a penetrating if not powerful wind.

  “I was wondering if lovers are more trouble than they’re worth,” said Alyta.

  “Cello is,” Periphys answered promptly.

  “Cello is my favorite,” Alyta reminded her. “I love him best.”

  “Then he should be happy with that,” grumbled Periphys, “and not strive so hard to keep you all for himself.”

  “You’re jealous,” said Alyta gently.

  “He’s greedy,” said Periphys pettishly.

  Alyta didn’t argue that. “But a little greediness in one’s lover is not a terrible thing,” she said. “Not when it gives me pleasure to indulge it.”

  “Maybe not,” said Periphys. “But I see something is the matter. So tell your sister what it is, and I will see if I can help.”

  Alyta had had many lovers and many children, but had settled on Cello, one of the mountains and the son of the Earth and Sky, as her husband. He had begged her to belong only to him, and she had agreed.

  Cello had a friend, Ente, son of the goddess of discord. Angry at losing Cello to his new love, he was determined to ruin their marriage. With that in mind, he had stolen Alyta’s earring, one of a set that Cello had given her.

  “Ente will wear it,” Alyta explained. “And Cello will assume I gave it to him and think I am still taking lovers in spite of my promise.”

  “Tell him otherwise. Before he even sees Ente.”

  “I’m sure I could,” said Alyta thoughtfully, “but perhaps he would be hurt that I would think he could be so easily deceived.”

  “Then tell him after he sees Ente.”

  “But if he is deceived, I might be the one hurt.”

  “Then he doesn’t deserve you,” Periphys pointed out.

  “But I like him too much to let him go,” said Alyta, not disagreeing with her sister, just pointing out other factors to consider. “And I do not see why I or Cello should suffer for something that is Ente’s fault.”

  “Well, if Cello finds out that Ente has lied, it’s Ente who will suffer,” said Periphys. “He risks all of Cello’s love because he will not share any of it.” Privately, she thought Ente and Cello rather deserved each other, but she’d never liked Cello. His mountainous form seemed so often to be in her way.

  “Ente is too clever to lie outright,” said Alyta. “If he’s caught, he will only say he found the earring in the woods and meant nothing by wearing it.”

  “Then you will have to get the earring back,” said Periphys. “And you know who will help.”

  In the tavern, Gen sat drumming his heels on the side of the bench seat underneath him. The dirt floor was uneven, eroded under the table by sweeping, and his feet didn’t reach the ground.

  His grandfather frowned at the noise and Gen stopped, his shoulders drooping. The tavern was no more than a shed tacked onto the side of a stable, with a bar that ran its length and, across a narrow aisle, a few booths lined up against the outside wall. The food and drink were no reason to visit. The bread on a plate in front of Gen was filled with grit and the wine was sour, but the tavern keeper chatted with the men at the bar, relaying news from distant places, and that was what they’d come for. Gen had knocked his feet against the wood partly in frustration, partly in defeat. More noise would make no difference. He couldn’t hear.

  Or rather, all he could hear was the men sitting in the booth behind him. They were telling coarse jokes and laughing about something they’d done that they thought very amusing, and they were loud enough to cover all the more important conversation at the bar.

  He gathered they’d been sent by their master to steal something from a woman who had rebuffed his advances. Their master meant to wear the earring they’d stolen and pretend the woman, Alyta, had given it to him. The man would have it in his ear, and when Alyta’s husband saw it, he would think the man was his wife’s lover and be enraged. Drunk and cruel, the men were laughing at the harm their master intended.

  Gen felt sorry for the woman. He caught his grandfather’s eye and nodded at the men, but the old man shook his head. It was not their business. Their business was the news from Kathodicia. He’d taken the seat opposite Gen so that he could see the faces of the men talking to the tavern keeper and understand their words better. Gen knew he should have picked that side of the table as well and that his grandfather would tell him off for his mistake later.

  Still, it was easy, as they rose to leave, to take the earring, lying temptingly close inside the coat pocket of one of the men. None of them noticed, but of course his grandfather did. Once they were outside, he seized Gen by the arm and shook him hard.

  “When he sticks his hand in that pocket and finds that earring gone, who will they blame?” he asked. “The tavern keeper on the other side of the bar? The men who stood with their backs to the booths? No. They will blame the strangers sitting behind them, the ones who walked right past the coat hanging on a hook.”

  He was angry because the men were very likely to chase them and because they’d be remembered as thieves if they came back to that tavern anytime soon.

  “And for nothing,” Gen’s grandfather told him. “Alyta, whoever she is, will not have her earring back, and when her husband notices, he will still think she’s given it to her lover.”

  Gen hadn’t thought of that.

  “Get yourself into the woods. I will steal one of the horses and pick you up. We cannot afford to linger here.”

  They rode hard, and Gen’s teeth rattled in his head as he held on tight to his grandfather’s coat. When they finally slowed to rest the horse, Gen pulled out the earring to look at it. It was surpassingly beautiful. A tiny lapis urn hung on three golden chains from a solid gold ring. It held sprays of miniature flowers, with blossoms made of seed pearls and leaves enameled in yellow and green. The patterning on the urn was so delicate that even Gen’s young eyes had difficulty making it out.

  “Let me see it,” said his grandfather.

  Reluctantly, Gen held out his palm.

  His grandfather shook his head.

  “You can’t keep it.”

  Gen was truculent.

  “We steal in the service of our god and in the service of our king. To do otherwise is common theft and as wrong in you as it is in any man.”

  “We’re keeping the horse,” Gen pointed out.

  “You use the Thief’s skills for yourself, and you will lose the favor of our god.”

  “But I didn’t use the skills for myself,” Gen protested. He’d used them for Alyta, who’d done nothing to deserve her husband’s anger.

  “Are you sure?” asked his grandfather. “When you look at that very fine earring, don’t you want to keep it?”

  “Yes,” Gen admitted. He’d never seen anything like it.

  His grandfather had set aside his anger by then, and his words were more compelling for it. “Without the god’s favor, you will fall,” he warned. “And never know what you have lost until you hit the ground.�
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  Gen didn’t say anything; he had no interest in a smack that would make his ears ring all day. Shaking his head, the old Thief stopped the horse and shifted in the saddle so he could look his grandson in the eye. “That earring goes on an altar as soon as we reach the city. You can take it to the temple of Alyta. She will be happy to receive it on behalf of her namesake, I am sure.”

  Embroidered in swirls of silver thread, the fine silk of her pearl-gray shawl lay like a cloud lightly wrapping her shoulders. The deep purple of her gown was the color of the mountains at sunset, its pattern shot through with streaks of silvery blue that widened as they descended until they met together in the skirt that fell to the floor in ripples around her feet.

  “Do you know who I am?” the queen asked as she spun gracefully around to show off the costume.

  “A goddess,” said the king, with a certainty that brought color to her cheeks. “But I don’t know which one,” he admitted.

  It would be the first time in years, since before the war with the Medes, since before she was married, that a traditional midsummer banquet would be held in Attolia’s palace, and all over the city, people were planning their costumes. When she had ruled alone, Attolia had dressed as Hephestia, sole head of the pantheon of the Eddisian gods, but with a king by her side, that costume had been put away. She had spent the morning closeted with her attendants, selecting a new one.

  “Alyta,” said the queen.

  “Goddess of the mountain rain?” the king said, a little wary.

  “Phresine suggested it—”

  “And I get to play her jealous husband?” said the king, remembering days when he had been secretly afraid his world might dissolve like a sugar cone in the rain. “Remind me to have Phresine cast into outer darkness.”

  “—because I am a descendent of the goddess,” said Attolia, ignoring him. “Or am supposed to be, on my mother’s side, and you are Eugenides.”

  He didn’t understand. “I am Eugenides,” he said, puzzled. “Do I not need a costume? I might like this idea better now.”

  “No, you go as your god,” said Attolia, as if this connection between Alyta and the Thief were clear. The king’s face remained blank.

  “You do not know the story of Alyta’s earring? Phresine told it to me,” said the queen.

  “Oh, indeed,” said the king, loudly enough that the queen’s attendants could hear it from where they sat in the waiting room. “Phresine, source of all the edifying stories I have somehow never heard before!”

  So Attolia retold it for him. How Alyta’s earring was stolen by a troublemaker and how the god of Thieves stole it back for her. How, in return, Alyta had promised him his heart’s desire.

  “And what was that?” asked the king.

  “No one knows,” the queen answered. “When anyone asks, the man playing the Thief always refuses to tell.”

  The king nodded. Attolia reached out and took his hand. “It’s a fine idea,” he said, without meeting her eye. When he looked up at last, he stood to share the tenderest of kisses. “You are any man’s heart’s desire,” he said.

  So a tailor began to work through the night on a suit of soft, silvery-brown moleskin, and while he worked, the king lay awake.

  The celebration of the equinox was a celebration of peace and stability, of the stars and planets in their courses, of all things right in the world. It was a time to set aside worries and hard work and revel in the confidence of good things to come, that confidence often expanding into extravagance and socially sanctioned silliness. When the queen descended the grand staircase, dressed as the goddess Alyta, with her king by her side, in a suit not brown, not gray, but somewhere in between, with no crown but thrush feathers woven into a ring on his head, the cheering could be heard by the guards in their places up on the roof walks.

  Still, the court knew their mercurial king well, heard the brittleness behind his laugh, saw the distraction behind his smile, and behind their own smiles began checking ledgers for any missteps they might have made. Eugenides mostly observed while his wife ruled, but his observation was as keen as a razor’s edge and sometimes as dangerous.

  They were not surprised, only unsettled, when he disappeared, as he still could, from a hall filled with people. They looked to their queen, and because she hid her worries far better than her husband did, they were reassured that whatever occupied the king, it was no concern of theirs. The wine flowed, the music played, and the court danced while the king took his invisible paths out of the palace and across the city, revelers passing him in the street too busy with their own entertainment to see anything but another Eugenides, one of a thousand out that night celebrating.

  In the temple of Alyta, the king did not approach the altar. He sat instead at the back of the nave, head tipped down, examining his boots as he tapped their toes together, remembering a visit to the temple made many years earlier.

  His grandfather had sent him in alone. Gen had stood some time debating with himself as he shifted from foot to foot. He could have hidden the earring in his boot or under his belt; his grandfather would have been none the wiser. Cynical, even at such a young age, he suspected that the earring would make it no closer to the goddess’s treasure room than the high priestess’s pocket. She would sell it for its gold in the market. Even more than giving up the earring, he hated the idea of its delicate beauty being melted away to nothing but an indistinguishable lump of metal, no matter how precious.

  His grandfather’s warning had been very clear, and logical as well. “You jump best when you believe in yourself. You believe in yourself because you know you are the Thief. Fail to deliver up to the gods what you know they demand, and you will never be the Thief. Not here.” He’d poked him in the chest. “Not here, where it matters most.”

  At last, with a sigh, Gen had reached up to slip the earring over the edge of the wide, shallow bowl on the altar. He was too short to see, but he heard it slide down the metal surface until it plinked ever so lightly against the other offerings inside.

  When he turned to leave, he found he was not alone after all—a figure stood near the entry door, dressed in the flowing robes of Alyta’s priestesses. As he approached, she stepped to meet him, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. She was very tall—he remembered that, but everyone is tall to a child.

  “Thank you,” she had said. “It was a generous gift.” And he had suspected, even then, that the generosity was not in the reluctant release of the earring, but in its theft.

  “And in return, you will have your heart’s desire, little Thief,” she had promised, and bent to kiss his cheek before she’d sent him blinking into the sunlight where, when his eyes cleared, he found his grandfather waiting.

  “Took you long enough,” the old man said, and they went to sell the horse.

  He’d thought he knew his own heart’s desire. He wanted to be the Thief of Eddis. When his cousins mocked him, when his father shouted at him, when his grandfather shouted at him, for different reasons, all he wanted was to be the Thief someday. But he’d had other desires since, and he could only wonder which of them had been granted by the goddess.

  She’d called him “little Thief” then. He’d been so overwhelmed by the sight of her, he hadn’t even noticed. He’d staggered out of the dark temple into the bright day, thinking the spots in front of his eyes had been caused by the sun.

  He did not see Moira when she arrived, did not sense her presence until she settled next to him on the bench. “Asking more humble questions, Eugenides?” she teased. Then she relented. “No, I see. You haven’t asked because you are so afraid of the answer. Does she really love you? Did she have any choice?” Gentler than she had ever been before, Moira leaned close and spoke quietly in his ear. “Alyta, goddess of the mountain rain, goddess who fills the streams in summer, loves all her children and all who descend from them, and she is ever gentle in their care.”

  When Eugenides did not respond, she went on. “Ask yourself, Eugenides: why
that orange tree? Why that tamarisk bush? She had promised you your heart’s desire while a child of hers was alone in the world and unhappy. See, Eugenides,” Moira said, holding out a finger from each of her hands and interlinking them. “Only two threads brought together, two threads that touched,” she reassured him. “Nothing more than that. And everything else left up to you.”

  Some Persons of Significance:

  A List of Characters in The Queen’s Thief Novels

  Agape: Youngest daughter of the Eddisian baron Phoros. She is a cousin to the queen of Eddis and to Eugenides the thief. She is nicer than her sister Hegite.

  Aglaia: One of Attolia’s attendants.

  Akretenesh: The Mede Ambassador to Sounis.

  Alenia: A duchess in Eddis who was incensed when Eugenides stole her emerald earrings.

  Alyta: A gentle goddess of welcome rain, rain in the distance, and rain in the mountains. She is known for having many lovers and many children, mortal and immortal.

  Ambiades: The Magus’s apprentice. His grandfather was executed for conspiring against the king of Sounis. Gen calls him Useless the Elder.

  Anacritus: An Attolian baron with a wife and a lover. He is a strong supporter of the queen.

  Anet: The sky god in the Mede pantheon.

  Ansel: Free servant of Melheret, the Mede ambassador to Attolia.

  Aracthus: An Eddisian god. Associated with the River Aracthus.

  Aristogiton: A friend of Costis and a soldier in the Attolian guard. Costis borrows his name when he needs an alias.

  Artadorus: Another baron with a wife and a lover. He’s been roped into Baron Erondites schemes before. At the Baron’s suggestion, he misreported the kind of grain he grows in order to pay less in taxes.

  Attolia: Irene, queen of Attolia.

  Aulus: An Eddisian soldier and minor prince of Eddis enlisted as an ad hoc nanny for the king of Attolia.

  Benno: A guard hired by Roamanj to accompany his caravan.

  Boagus: An Eddisian soldier and babysitter of Eugenides.