The King of Attolia

by Megan Whalen Turner

  Hunger and a stiff neck woke him hours later. He stretched painfully and decided that sooner or later he would have to leave his room or starve. He also had better check the duty schedule. Officially, he was still enjoying his three-day leave to go hunting with Aristogiton, but emergencies might have changed the schedule, and if he hadn’t been arrested already, maybe he wouldn’t be. Maybe his part in the play enacted in the throne room would be overlooked in the moment and forgotten in the future. He could only hope so. He went to the mess hall.

  It was almost empty. Tight little groups of men huddled together, talking in voices that carried only as a murmur. Costis sliced himself some bread and cheese and helped himself to a cup full of olives and ladled the day’s stew into a bowl. He piled the bread on the stew, the cheese on the bread, balanced the cup of olives on top of the cheese, and still had a hand free to collect a cup of watered wine. He sat by himself. Almost before he had unstacked his meal, he was surrounded.

  “Any news?” the men settling on the benches around him asked.

  “I’ve been in my room since dawn,” Costis said.

  “So we have news for you,” someone said.

  “Maybe,” said Costis. “Teleus and the others were freed. I know that much.”

  “Were you there?”

  “You weren’t on duty?”

  “I was in the crowd.”

  “Aeeie, that was a stupid place to be.”

  “So,” Costis agreed. “I won’t do that again.”

  “You went back to your quarters? You haven’t heard anything else?”

  “Like what?” Costis asked warily.

  “Like the fight between the king and the queen.”

  Costis put his cup down. In whispers they told him the news.

  The queen had gone directly from the throne room to the king’s apartments. “I would see My Lord Attolis,” she demanded angrily. Never had she addressed him before by his name as king.

  “I am here,” he had answered, stepping into the doorway wearing a nightshirt and robe, rumpled and pale, but resolute. He had been waiting for her. He’d leaned against the doorway for support, while the roomful of perplexed attendants scattered like chaff trapped in a small space with a high wind.

  As the queen raged at him, he responded, first calmly, then with his own heat. “Is there no one that you will see punished?” the queen shouted. “Are you so fond of Teleus now that you preserve his life at all costs?”

  “I only asked you to reconsider.”

  “There is nothing to reconsider!”

  “You know why I need him.”

  “Not anymore,” the queen declared with finality.

  The king ignored the finality. “Now more than ever,” he insisted.

  “He has failed—”

  “That is not entirely his fault!”

  “Then you will unmake my decisions?” Attolia dared him to try.

  “You said I could,” Eugenides flatly replied.

  Pushed too far, the queen lashed out. The king made no effort to avoid the blow. His head snapped around, and his forehead struck the doorjamb. He staggered and caught himself. By the time he opened his eyes, she was at the door and then she was gone.

  Before his attendants were released from their dumbstruck paralysis, he had stepped through the door and swung it closed. It slammed with a report like gunshot, and they heard the tumblers of the lock fall into place.

  Sejanus attempted a cutting comment, but it missed its mark in the uneasy confusion, and its edge blunted on a sullen unanticipated sympathy for the king.

  “Yesterday, I thought he loved her,” Philologos said plaintively.

  “I think he did,” said one of the others.

  “And she—”

  “And I think,” said Hilarion, cutting short further discussion, “that we are not all needed here, and as all of us have been up through the night, some of us, at least, should go to bed.” He put a hand on Philologos’s shoulder and pushed him toward the door that led through the king’s wardrobes to the cell-like, semiprivate rooms where the attendants slept. “Who knows but that you will get up to find that the world has inverted itself yet again?” He looked around the room at the other attendants as if in warning, but spoke to Philologos. “Remember, the love of kings and queens is beyond the compass of us lesser mortals.”

  If anyone noticed, no one commented that he had called the Thief of Eddis a king.

  “She didn’t love him,” the guard to Costis’s right said. He sounded relieved. “It was a sham.”

  Before Costis could disagree, the man on his left said, “Of course, it was a sham. Would our queen be cow-eyed for the goatfoot that stole her throne? Are you mad?”

  Costis opened his mouth again.

  “And would you still be loyal to her if she were?” The man across the table spoke.

  Costis closed his mouth.

  The men around him shrugged their shoulders in contempt. The question was moot to them. Their queen would never be other than beautiful and passionless in their eyes, and their low opinion of the king was in no way changed by what they would have seen in any other man as insane courage in facing Attolia in a rage.

  “I would,” said Costis stolidly.

  His comrades eyed him in confusion. The question put forward had been so preposterous, it had already been forgotten.

  “She is my queen.” Costis frowned at Lepkus, the man across from him, daring him to disagree. “Nothing else matters,” he said. “I will be loyal until the day I die.”

  Someone sucked in a breath. The question was no longer rhetoric and doubtful conversational exaggeration. Their loyalty was being questioned, and there was only one response possible.

  “Of course,” said the men around them. Some of them taking offense at the question, they all reaffirmed the unswerving loyalty of the Guard. “Of course.”

  “Not everyone will,” said someone down the table. Costis couldn’t see who. He leaned forward to look. It was Exis, squad leader in Costis’s old century. He was a patron, educated, and known for being clever.

  “The Eddisian will find people to support him,” said Exis. “He is the king, remember, and he can make it worth their while to bolster his power. The queen will need us.”

  “Who will win if the king and the queen are at odds?” No one could doubt that they would be. No woman could slap her husband across the face and still pretend affection. No man could be slapped and still pretend to be a man.

  “Who will win?” Exis suggested with a shrug, “Baron Erondites.”

  If the king and the queen fought each other, the Baron Erondites would wait until they were both too weak to oppose him and then attack. Inevitably. The men around the table nodded in unhappy agreement.

  “Where are you going, Costis?” they asked when he pushed himself to his feet.

  “To check the duty schedule, and if I am not on it, to my room. I can await my fate there.”

  “Don’t look now, but I think your fate is on its way. Our new captain just came in, and he is headed your way.”

  “New captain?”

  “You hadn’t heard? Enkelis already had the captain’s gear packed and moved out of his quarters. He says the queen freed Teleus, she didn’t reinstate him. He tried to run Aristogiton off, but Aristogiton told him to his face that he hadn’t been relieved of his oath of service and he wouldn’t leave until the queen told him to go. We’ve all been waiting for the queen to come out and settle Enkelis, but the day is almost over, and she hasn’t left her rooms. Aristogiton and his squad are confined to quarters. Nobody even knows where Teleus is.”

  The new captain arrived at their table, and the men respectfully stood. Enkelis nodded at Costis. “You are wanted. Clean yourself up and come with me.”

  Costis stepped between the guards and into the king’s guardroom. Sejanus smiled. “Our dear whipping boy is among us again. What brings you, Costis? Hope for revenge?”

  “I’m on duty. I am to remain on duty until
relieved or until the king dismisses me.”

  “And whose orders are those?”

  “My captain’s, Lord Sejanus. From whom else would I take my orders?”

  Philologos got up from his bed to find that the world had not reinverted itself and was in fact exactly as he’d left it, much to his distress and the distress of many others. The queen did not leave her apartments. The king, when they eventually knocked on his door, got himself out of bed to open it, and told them to go away. He did admit the Eddisian Ambassador, but their conversation did not go sweetly, and Ornon stalked out in a rage.

  The queen’s attendants refused to admit anyone to the queen, and refused to carry in messages, though some did leave on unrevealed errands. Ministers were left to their own devices. Counselors counseled themselves. There was no break in the ordered routine of government, but the palace seethed with disquiet.

  Costis ate his meals in the king’s guardroom and slept at night for a few hours on the narrow bench that ran around the walls. The attendants took it in turn to sleep on the wider benches at either side of the doorway to the bedchamber. They were on hand, in case the king called in the night, but he did not.

  The next day there were more visitors. Costis, torn by conflicting loyalties, made a mental note of those who came. These were men who might start a new government with the king. They waited in the guardroom while the attendants stepped in to ask if the king would like to see them. Mostly he said no, though he did allow Dite to come sit by his bed for a while. Lady Themis was turned away. An hour later her younger sister was admitted by the guards at the hallway door. She looked pale as she asked an attendant if she could see the king.

  “His Majesty is not—”

  “Let her in,” said the king from the bedchamber.

  Lifting his eyebrows in surprise, the attendant waved Heiro toward the door. She went to the bedside and sat.

  They talked in low voices for a while. The king, holding her hand in his, said, “I hope your father appreciates what a good friend you are to me.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” she said softly, and left.

  The king slept then for the rest of the afternoon.

  CHAPTER TEN

  COSTIS woke with a start that rolled him off the narrow bench and onto one knee beside it. Groggy, he struggled to wake fully. He’d been asleep for only an hour or so, and had slept only a few hours altogether since the king was attacked. There was screaming. The screaming had woken him. Rubbing his eyes, he staggered across the guardroom and pushed between the men standing there, shoving aside attendants as needed and wondering why they stood like posts in his way. Only when he reached the door and struggled himself with the latch did he understand. The door was locked. The king was screaming on the far side, and they could not get in. He pounded at the door, but it was as solid as the ages. He shouted into the face of the attendant standing helpless beside him, “The key! Where’s the key?”

  “We have no key,” Cleon shouted back.

  Costis threw up his hands. Spinning, he looked around the room and snatched the gun out of the hand of the first guard he saw. Leaning it into the crook of his elbow, he pulled open the leather cartridge box on his belt. Even fuddled with sleep, he could load the gun. The gestures were automatic. He tore the paper cartridge open with his teeth and poured a bit into the priming pan, closed the pan and tipped the rest into the barrel, dropped the bullet, still wrapped in paper, into the barrel and rammed it home, then replaced the rammer in its groove beside the barrel and lifted the gun.

  “Get back!” he shouted at the men watching him in confusion. “Get back!” he shouted louder when they didn’t move. Not until he put the muzzle against the lock of the door did they understand and dive for cover. There was a burst of light and a shattering blast from the gun. Costis blinked the afterimage from the muzzle flash out of his eyes and looked through the smoke. The door had a chunk as wide as his hand chewed out of it, but the lock still held. Costis reloaded. Everyone in the room was shouting, but no one stopped him. He raised the gun again. This time he turned his face away before he fired. When he looked back, the lock was twisted metal and the door was slightly ajar. He blew out his breath in relief. He’d felt the wind of the second bullet as it ricocheted off the door and past his ear. He didn’t want to have to fire a third time.

  The king was sitting up in bed, the bedclothes twisted under him. He was propping himself on the stump of his right arm and staring down into his blood-covered hand. His nightshirt was spotted red. The room appeared to be otherwise empty, but Costis checked every corner and the latches on the windows to be sure there was no intruder before he turned back to the king, his knees beginning to weaken in the aftermath of the excitement, his hands to shake. By that time the king was surrounded by his attendants, all of them calling suggestions.

  “A drink of water, Your Majesty.”

  “Some burnt wine?”

  “Go away,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.

  They had never seemed more like yapping dogs to Costis, although he couldn’t really blame them. With the possible exception of Sejanus they all seemed rattled.

  “Just have a sip, Your Majesty,” said one, offering a glass.

  “Just a nightmare.”

  “A clean shirt—”

  “Go away!” Eugenides shouted. “Go away!”

  The attendants backed off for a moment, but then closed in again. They opened their mouths to speak, but the queen’s voice interrupted from the doorway. “I think His Majesty’s wishes are plain.”

  Every attendant turned to her, aghast.

  The queen looked back at them. “Go,” she said, “away.”

  They bolted for the door.

  Costis, beginning from the far side of the bed, and trying to leave with a little dignity, was the last to reach the door. He looked back. The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop. Without meaning to, he stopped to watch.

  She reached out and touched the king’s face, cupping his cheek in her hand.

  “Just a nightmare,” he said, his voice still rough.

  The queen’s voice was cool. “How embarrassing,” she said, looking at his maimed arm.

  The king looked up then, and followed her gaze. If it was embarrassing to wake like a child screaming from a nightmare, how much more embarrassing to be the reason your husband woke screaming. A quick smile visited the king’s face. “Ouch,” he said, referring to more than the pain in his side. “Ouch,” he said again as the queen gathered him into her arms.

  Costis turned in confusion to the attendants standing around him. They looked as surprised as he, and Costis felt it wasn’t any of their business, anyway, how the king and queen resolved their quarrel. It wasn’t any business of theirs at all. He reached back for the door. Hooking his hand into the hole where the lock should have been, he seized it by the splintered wood and swung it closed.

  The attendants looked at him in outrage, but no one said a word that might draw the attention of the queen. Costis looked over the shoulders of the attendants and met the eyes of his guard.

  “Clear the room,” he ordered.

  At that, the attendants did protest in low but vehement tones. Sejanus’s voice cut through. “By what authority do you act with such confidence, Squad Leader?”

  Costis didn’t answer. Sejanus knew his rank and the rank hardly mattered. Even as a lieutenant he had no authority over a king’s attendant.

  “How do you propose to enforce your order?” Sejanus added in his infuriating and condescending drawl, and in doing so, gave Costis the answer.

  “At gunpoint, if necessary,” Costis said.

  Sejanus’s hand went to the knife at his waist. Without a moment’s hesitation, half the guards in the room put their hands on their own swords and the other half grounded the butts of their guns and started loading them.

  Costis didn’t take his eyes off Sej
anus. The rest of the attendants were sheep. Where Sejanus went, the others would follow, and when Sejanus lifted one shoulder and exhaled his contempt, Costis knew he had won.

  “I’m sure none of us wish to disturb Their Majesties,” said Sejanus.

  In the hallway outside the guardroom, Costis posted his guards. He stood at the door himself after he had checked the rest of the king’s apartment to be sure it was empty. The hallway was crowded with the king’s attendants and also with the queen’s women. Someone had fetched the benches from down the passage and moved chairs out of the receiving rooms. Costis stifled a yawn and put a hand to his ear, which had begun to throb. It was swollen and stiff with drying blood, and when he looked, he saw blood on his shoulder as well. Evidently the ricochet of the second bullet hadn’t entirely missed him. The queen’s senior attendant approached, and he stiffened. Phresine was an older woman with graying hair neatly twisted away from her face. She smiled at him and stepped close enough to wipe his ear with a white cloth. It was wet and smelled of lavender.

  “Well done, Lieutenant,” she murmured as she worked gently to sponge away the blood. When she was done, she smiled again at him and settled on a bench not far away.

  Her support was reassuring in the face of the baleful glares from the king’s attendants, and Costis was sorry when she left only a little later. Another of the queen’s attendants, Luria, came down the hallway to speak to her, and when they had exchanged their whispered words, the older woman stood. She nodded to the other attendants, and all the queen’s women glided away, leaving the guards and the king’s attendants alone with each other in the hall.