The King of Attolia

by Megan Whalen Turner

  The king nodded in understanding. “I didn’t get along with my cousins either. They held me face down in a rain cache once and wouldn’t let me up until I repeated several filthy insults about my family. Not that I would admit that to anyone but you.” He sipped his wine. “We’ve gotten along better recently, my cousins and I. Perhaps something similar will happen as you get older.”

  Costis finished the wine in his cup and wondered what sort of creature you would have to be to forgive your cousins a history like that. He shrugged. The king sounded like an old man giving advice to a child. The official father of the people was younger, Costis thought, than he was himself, and Costis was very young to be a squad leader. Anyway, Costis’s relationships with his cousins would have little opportunity to mature if he was going to be dead by morning. No doubt that was why the king felt safe in his embarrassing revelation.

  The king refilled Costis’s cup.

  When he sat again, he said, “Don’t give up so soon, Costis. Tell me why you hit me.”

  Costis swallowed the wine in his mouth.

  “Or should we review? You and your friend came through the entryway while you were repeating all the insults you no doubt heard from my dear attendant Sejanus. I understand he was off drinking with his old friends from the Guard last night. Aristogiton must have missed the fun. Was he on duty?”

  “He’s okloi. His family has no land. Sejanus wouldn’t drink with him.”

  “But your family are patronoi? And you and Aris are friends?”

  “Yes.”

  “How unfortunate that the arched entryway amplified your words so well. I thought I was being magnanimous when I pretended not to have heard.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “I was talking to Teleus then, wasn’t I? He called you over to join us. I think we were trying to gloss over the unpleasantness. Do you remember? We were discussing whether or not I would train with the Guard.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “And you…,” he prompted.

  “Hit you, Your Majesty.” Costis sighed.

  He’d pulled the king around and swung his fist into the king’s startled face, knocking him to the dusty ground of the training yard, where he rolled, howling and cursing and dirtying the fine white cloth of his blouse.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know why you hit someone?”

  Costis shook his head.

  “It must have been something I said. Was that it?”

  “I don’t know.” He knew. The king had commiserated with Teleus on having men so inept that they allowed their own queen to be abducted.

  “You must admit, Costis, that I did whisk her right out from under your noses.”

  “It was nothing you said. Y-Your Majesty was, of course, entirely correct,” Costis said, hating him.

  “Then why?” the king badgered plaintively. “Tell me, Costis, why?”

  Costis didn’t know why he said what he said next, except perhaps that he was going to die and he didn’t want to do it with a lie on his lips.

  “Because you didn’t look like a king,” he said.

  The king stared in mild astonishment.

  Costis went on, growing angrier with every word. “Sejanus says you’re an idiot, and he’s right. You have no idea even how to look like a king, much less be one. You don’t walk like a king, you don’t stand like a king, you sit on the throne like…like a printer’s apprentice in a wineshop.”

  “So?”

  “So—”

  “You mistook me for one of your cousins?”

  Costis surged on. “So, everything Teleus said was right. You have no business wanting to practice with the Guard. You can practice with the rest of the useless aristocrats in the court, you can call up a garrison of Eddisians to train with if you want.”

  “There aren’t any Eddisian soldiers in the palace,” the king interrupted to point out.

  “They are half an hour away in Thegmis port. They are scattered all over the country like boils. You can send for them. We are the Queen’s Guard, and you can leave us alone. Teleus was right. You had no business—”

  Shocked at his own words, Costis lifted his hand for another swallow from his cup and paused, looking into it. It was empty. He rolled it in his fingertips and tried to think. How many times had the king filled it? Have you eaten? the king had asked before he sent for food that still hadn’t come, that he had known wouldn’t come soon. How many cups of unwatered wine had there been? Enough that his joints felt watery and his head was light. Enough that his tongue was loose in his head. He looked up to meet a mild, inquiring look from the king.

  He wasn’t an idiot, whatever Sejanus said. He was a conniving bastard.

  “Who put you up to it?” the king asked quietly.

  “No one,” snapped Costis.

  “Teleus?” the king prompted softly. “Tell me it was Teleus and I’ll see you pardoned.”

  “No!” Costis shouted. He jumped to his feet, and his hands balled into fists. The cup in his hand fell unheeded to the floor and smashed. He could feel the heat of the rage and the wine in his face. The curtain in the doorway was swept aside.

  The queen had arrived.

  Costis gaped, as breathless as if the air had been driven out of him by a blow. He hadn’t heard the sounds of her arrival. He looked at Eugenides, still sitting on the stool. The king hadn’t been distracted by the noise Costis was making. He must have heard the footsteps in the hall. He’d spoken softly so that those approaching wouldn’t hear him. But they had certainly heard Costis. They had heard him shouting at the king. Smashing wine cups. Now they could see him standing over the king like a threat.

  Costis took a ragged breath. He wanted to kill the king. He wanted to cry. He dropped to his knees before his queen and lowered his head almost to the floor, covering his face with his hands, still balled into fists, tightening knots of rage and bitter, bitter shame.

  CHAPTER TWO

  COSTIS heard the queen’s voice over his head. “Do tell me why I should come to the barracks to speak to my guard?”

  And Eugenides answered, as calmly, “You could have summoned him.”

  “You would have come, too? Following like the tail behind the dog?”

  “Am I insufficiently kinglike? Costis has been telling me so.”

  “Unkingly, in so many ways, My King. Not the least of which is listening to your guard tell you so.”

  Eugenides accepted the rebuke without a word.

  “You haven’t ordered a hanging,” said the queen.

  Costis fought with the desire to throw himself onto his stomach and crawl toward the queen. He’d never been so helpless. Like a fly in a web, the more he struggled, the sooner he would be lost.

  “No,” said the king. Costis hoped silently. “I don’t want to hang him.” Costis’s hopes fell and shattered. He cursed himself for believing even in the smallest corner of his heart that the king might try to prevent the loss of his family’s farm.

  “You will not meddle with the machinery of justice,” the queen warned.

  “Very well, then,” said the king casually. “Hang them both.”

  “Him and which other of my most loyal servants, My King?” Her voice never rose, every word was cool and precise, and her anger made Costis, still on his knees, shake.

  “Teleus,” said the king with a shrug, and the queen was silenced.

  “It was premeditated, then,” she said at last.

  Gods defend them both, it wasn’t premeditated. Costis pushed himself up from the floor.

  “My Queen.” He spoke as calmly as he could and looked up at her face as she turned to look down at him. He would rather have done anything than draw her attention.

  “You have something to say?” She spoke as if her dog had suddenly sat up and begged to be heard.

  He shouldn’t have addressed her as His Queen. He should have said Your Majesty. She was always “Your Majesty” no matte
r who addressed her, but if he was a traitor, she was no longer His Queen. The thought brought a twisting pain in his chest. He’d served her with the unrelenting loyalty of every member of her Guard, from the day he was recruited. Teleus himself had selected him, younger than most trainees, for service, and after a year of training had selected him again for the Queen’s Guard. He didn’t look away from her gaze as he spoke.

  “Your Majesty, please, it was stupidity, not treason. Let me prove it, if I can. Please don’t hang my Captain for something that was only my fault.” He was too afraid even to speak of the farm.

  “Do you know what you offer?” asked the queen.

  “No, Your Majesty,” Costis admitted in a whisper. He didn’t know the details and didn’t think he should try to guess at them now. He was scared white already. “But I will do anything.”

  “Oh, very well,” said the king petulantly, as if he were losing a game of chess. “Don’t hang Teleus. But I don’t see how you can hang Costis if you won’t hang his superior officer.”

  The queen turned back to face him. “I could hang you,” she said.

  Eugenides looked up at her. “You missed your chance for that,” he said.

  The queen lifted a hand to briefly cover her eyes. “It is remarkable how you cloud my otherwise clear vision,” she said. “What is it you propose?”

  “I propose that you let me trade him to Teleus. His life in return for Teleus’s good behavior.”

  “Go on,” prompted the queen.

  “Teleus thinks well of him. He performed well at the Battle of Thegmis, and his name was mentioned to you when he was promoted to squad leader.”

  Costis winced, having dreamed that he might someday hear that his name had been mentioned to the queen. Not like this.

  “I am willing to offer Teleus Costis’s life if Teleus is willing to guarantee my continued well-being.”

  “He is the Captain of your Guard. Your well-being is the object of his employment,” said the queen.

  “Your Guard,” said the king.

  “Your Guard,” insisted the queen.

  “Then how do you explain the sand in my food? The snakes in my bed? The persistent little shoves between my shoulder blades whenever I am at the top of a long flight of stairs?”

  “A snake,” repeated the queen.

  “A black one. A friendly one.”

  Costis had never heard anything like the silence that followed. It went on and on, as if he had suddenly been struck deaf, like the ritual silence of a temple, only much, much worse.

  “Teleus.” When the queen finally spoke, it was only in a whisper, hissing the final sibilant.

  Costis heard the curtain rings slide on the rod. Teleus would have been standing just outside in the passage. Costis could have looked up to see the captain’s face, but Costis’s head had moments before sunk slowly back toward the floor into his hands.

  Sejanus had related stories of the pranks played on the king by his attendants. They had seemed riotously funny when retold around the table in the mess hall. They seemed less funny now. If someone could put sand in the king’s food, who could not put poison there as well? If someone put a black snake in his bed, why not a viper? If they succeeded in pushing him downstairs…There were Eddisian soldiers, just a few, here and there, all over Attolia. No one doubted the damage they could do if the war with Eddis recommenced. And begin again it would if the king died suspiciously in the first few months of his reign.

  “My favorite,” said the king, “was the hunting dogs released in the courtyard as I passed through it.”

  The whole palace knew about the hunting dogs. The guards had laughed and laughed when Sejanus offered his firsthand account. Sejanus had said the king had been so scared he’d turned green, standing on the stairs outside the palace doors until the dogs were collared and dragged away. He’d warned their keeper he would have all the dogs slaughtered like goats if it happened again.

  “Teleus?” prompted the queen.

  “I didn’t know, Your Majesty.” It wasn’t an excuse. It was an admission of failure.

  “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Attolia demanded of the king.

  The king answered, speaking slowly. “Because I had not yet been knocked down by a member of my own Guard.”

  Sejanus had said the king wouldn’t tell the queen about the pranks because he didn’t want to admit that he was too weak to deal with his own attendants. He just pretended not to notice, to his attendants’ ever-increasing amusement. Being attacked by his own Guard was not something the queen could fail to overlook.

  “So, a bargain,” suggested the king. “Teleus, I give you Costis’s life and you start doing your job.”

  Costis knew the answer before Teleus spoke. It was no secret that the captain despised the new king. He wouldn’t have accepted a drink of water in a fiery hell from Eugenides, much less the life of Costis. Costis, according to the strict rules that ordered Teleus’s life, deserved his fate, and Costis, even in the privacy of his own skull, couldn’t disagree. He had time to think again of the gibbet that would be built on the parade ground, of what it would be like to hang, of his father’s shame.

  “Take the bargain, Teleus,” commanded the queen abruptly.

  “My Queen?” Teleus didn’t believe his ears either.

  “Take it.”

  “As you wish, My Queen,” said the captain, sounding as stunned as Costis felt.

  “You wanted a sparring partner this morning?” the queen said, turning back to Eugenides.

  “I did.”

  “Costis will serve you well,” she said, and swept out of the room. The rings slid again across the rod. The leather curtain dropped, and the only sound was that of the many receding footsteps in the hall.

  Costis was still hunched over, blinking his amazement into the darkness of his hands cupped over his eyes. When the crowd of footsteps had reached the stair at the end of the hall, he finally lowered his hands to the floor on either side of his knees. He rested them gingerly on the wood boards, as if there had been an earthquake and he wasn’t sure it was over. He sat up slowly. The earthquake wasn’t over. The king still sat on the stool, his legs still stretched in front of him, still crossed at the ankle.

  The king rubbed his face with his hand, pausing to finger gently the bruise beside his mouth.

  He said at last, “That was terrifying, but I suppose you are used to excitement?”

  Costis stared at him blankly.

  “She wouldn’t hang Teleus. She doesn’t have anyone to replace him.”

  As if the king had risked Teleus’s life in an effort to save Costis, instead of failing in an attempt to eliminate one of the queen’s most powerful supporters. Costis knew what he had seen.

  “I told you she wouldn’t take the farm.” Eugenides smiled, entirely without royal dignity, and left.

  “Do you still wish you’d hanged me?”

  She hadn’t heard him come in, but he had moved an inkpot on her desk, sliding it across the wood so that she would know he was there before he spoke. He was considerate in every detail. She didn’t turn.

  “Men’s necks have been broken by a single blow,” she said.

  He tossed a cushion to the floor and stepped around her to settle on it, sitting cross-legged near her feet. “I can’t keep on apologizing,” he said.

  “Why not?” she asked, over his head.

  “Well,” he said pensively, “I think you would be bored.”

  It was vain to hope that he might cease to have things to apologize for. “What happened?” she asked coldly, and Eugenides hunched his shoulders and minded the fringe on the pillow under his ankle, laying each thread out straight.

  “I was angry at Teleus. Costis came to his rescue.” He scattered the fringe back into a tangle. “I thought you were going to hang poor Costis.”

  “I would have if you hadn’t chained him so neatly to Teleus.”

  “Like an anchor to drag him down,” the king agreed.
r />   “I thought that we had an agreement about Teleus.”

  “We did. We do,” the king assured her.

  “So you risk him to save the life of a treacherous, worthless guard?”

  “You called Costis your loyal servant earlier.”

  “He was a loyal servant earlier. He is no longer. You will not rehabilitate him with me.”

  “Of course not,” he said humbly.

  She released a sigh of frustration and asked reluctantly for the truth. “Were you lying?”

  “I never lie,” he said piously. “About what?”

  “The sand, the snake.”

  For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question. “You should ask Relius. Your Secretary of the Archives has suspected something for weeks and has all but turned himself inside out trying to find out more.”

  “Then why didn’t you speak?”

  “I don’t want the kitchens purged, or the guards.”

  “You want to save people from punishment they deserve?”

  “Oh, no,” said the king, “I only want to be sure that those that deserve it the most are the ones punished.”

  “Say the word, then, and they will be.”

  He only shook his head and she gave up for the moment.

  CHAPTER THREE

  COSTIS woke earlier than usual the next morning, when one of the barracks boys knocked on the frame of his door.

  “Captain’s orders,” he called. “Everyone not on duty is to be on the parade ground in full uniform at the dawn trumpets.” Costis could hear the same orders repeated down the hall by another boy.

  “I’m supposed to spar with the king,” he said groggily.

  “Captain said to tell you not today, that he has asked the king to begin training tomorrow.”

  “All right, thank you,” Costis said, and the boy moved to the next door. Costis pushed aside his blanket and got to his feet. Aris had helped him set his room in order the night before, and everything was back in its place. The bits of broken wine cup were swept into a pile. The king’s empty wine amphora still sat on the table with the remaining wine cup. When he had time, Costis would have to carry them back to the palace kitchens or send them back with a boy.