A Conspiracy of Kings

by Megan Whalen Turner

  Our parents’ behavior seemed to be no surprise to either Ina or Eurydice, who left them to each other and ran toward me. To my relief, the Eddisians in the court didn’t seem to mind the disruption of the ceremony they’d planned, and I was able to seize Ina and Eurydice in my own arms and all of us could babble our questions and answers at one another while the Eddisians looked tolerantly on. The majordomo efficiently dispatched my guard to quarters and swept us all inside to rooms where we could be private and I could ask about the one person I had looked for but not seen, the queen of Eddis.

  Ina told me, “She has taken her court to Attolia and waits to see you there.”

  “Her Majesty has kindly given us this time together,” said my mother, “knowing that we have much to catch up on.”

  Indeed, we did. Settling on the couches, we shared our adventures. Ina and Eurydice told me how Ina had led them out of Brimedius, while my mother sat between me and my father, looking comfortably at each of us in turn and speaking very little. She did not appear particularly brave or daring, hardly even strong-minded. She seemed as quiet as ever, but I didn’t doubt that she had done just as Eurydice said and run a sharpened stick down the throat of one of Brimedius’s hounds. Even with the evidence of their happy outcome, I am left with nightmares at the dangers they faced and know I have many debts to repay to people and to gods for their safe arrival in Eddis.

  It was the next day that my mother sought a word in private, looking for me in the small chamber attached to the palace library where Gen used to have his bedroom. Pausing at the threshold, she framed a question. “I thought you would be in a hurry to be on your way to Attolia?”

  “I am in a hurry,” I said. “But that’s no reason you should be made uncomfortable. It will be much more pleasant for you if we go back to the main pass and await the soldiers returning to Attolia and then travel with them.”

  “It will be slower, though, won’t it?” she asked, as she settled lightly on the arm of a chair opposite me.

  I looked studiously at the book in my hand.

  My mother waited.

  I finally gave up and closed the book. “I broke the truce at Elisa and I shot an unarmed man. I shot the ambassador. I cost the lives of her soldiers and Attolia’s as well as my own, and my hands are covered in blood. What if Eddis thinks there was a better way? What if she is glad she has not already agreed to marry me, and what if she wants nothing to do with me now?”

  My mother said very reasonably, “You can’t hide from someone in her own palace. If you don’t go to Attolia, she will come here.”

  I hunched my shoulders and went back to looking at my book.

  My mother stood, saying peacefully, “I will tell your father that you will go tomorrow by way of the Old Aracthus Road. The rest of us will travel with your borrowed military.”

  She looked back before she pulled the door closed. “Your questions—you know I am not the one to answer them.”

  She was as right as ever, and so I have come to the queen of Eddis, to ask her for answers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SOUNIS folded his hands and waited. He had arrived at the palace late the night before and had risen early in the morning, expecting to find no one but the two honorary royal guardsmen and his own personal guard in his anteroom. Instead he found Ion, the attendant of the king of Attolia, waiting by a bench against the wall.

  “You’re still here, then?” asked Sounis, in surprise and pleasure.

  “Yes, Your Majesty. My king thought that you might wish to dress with particular care this morning. There will be an official reception in a few hours.” Ion was smiling. They both knew that Attolis hadn’t been referring just to the ceremony planned for the day.

  Sounis looked down at the clothes he’d put on. He hadn’t given them a thought, but Eugenides was probably right. He opened the door wider and turned back toward his bedchamber.

  Ion had brought scissors, and after he shaved him, he trimmed Sounis’s hair and added a light coating of oil. He opened a small jar and took a pinch of gold powder and shook it to cling to the oil.

  “Ion,” said Sounis, dismayed.

  “It’s for luck,” said Ion. He packed his case and went to Sounis’s wardrobe.

  “My clothes are still in cases in my reception room, except for what I am wearing.”

  But Ion was already pulling a suit from tissue paper. “His Majesty—”

  “I hazard to guess,” said Sounis. “The tailors still had my measurements?”

  “Indeed,” said Ion, and helped him out of his clothes and into a linen shirt so fine that it was easy to see the shape of his arms right through it. It was covered by a sleeveless tunic in dark blue.

  “Boots, too?” said Sounis.

  “He likes to think of everything.”

  “Yes, yes, he does.”

  “An opal earring, Your Majesty? Or would you prefer onyx?”

  When Sounis was finally presentable to Attolian standards, Ion opened the door to the reception room and bowed. Xanthe, the oldest of Eddis’s attendants, was standing just outside. She turned away and said to someone not in view, “Your Majesty, the king of Sounis.”

  Eddis was waiting for him on a carved seat by the window. She stood. Her dress was of linen as fine as his own. It had an overdress decorated in knotted cord and a waist of satin covered in tiny beads in the same pattern as the knots.

  Sounis swallowed. “I did not realize,” he said. “I would have come to your rooms to speak to you.”

  Eddis smiled. “I intrude?”

  “No,” said Sounis, trying to breathe. “Of course not.”

  Ion had excused himself to the anteroom, but the door was open, and Xanthe as well as the queen’s other attendants came in and left from time to time. Eddis’s attention never wavered. When Sounis finished, she said, “Your mother was right, I think.”

  “She usually is,” said Sounis.

  “Did you think I would change my mind?”

  “I failed to persuade my barons, and I fell back on violence and murder.”

  “You made your choice,” said Eddis.

  “I did. I hope you understand why I cannot back away from it.”

  “Even if I condemn you for it, as you condemned Nomenus?”

  “Even then,” said Sounis.

  “Sophos,” said Eddis sadly, “I sent my Thief to Attolia, and when she had maimed him, and knowing the risk, I sent him back. I have started a war of my own, sent my cousins to die, taken food from the mouths of widows and children to feed my army.” She took his hand. “We are not philosophers; we are sovereigns. The rules that govern our behavior are not the rules for other men, and our honor, I think, is a different thing entirely, difficult for anyone but the historians and the gods to judge. There is no reason I can see that I would not be honored to join Eddis to you. But it is complicated by many things that I must tell you about first.”

  “Of course,” said Sounis, his grin too boyish to be reminiscent of his uncle. “More talking!”

  “Yes, and some of it important. I would ask—”

  But Sounis was too pleased to register any nuance. He only knew that he was happy. He interrupted her. “I thought, when I first met you, that you would marry Gen.”

  “I would sooner have strangled him,” said Eddis.

  “I didn’t see that,” said Sounis. “I still don’t, honestly. He has saved Attolia.”

  “Gen and I are too close to marry. If he has saved Attolia, then she has saved him as well, and I’ve told her as much. But—”

  “Your Majesties.” Ion bowed in the doorway. “Please forgive me. The king and queen of Attolia ask that you join them.”

  Eddis sighed and let the matter go, thinking there would be time enough to reveal her plans to Sounis after he had sworn his loyalty to the king of Attolia. She and Sounis rose and walked to the anteroom, where they were greeted by the beaming attendants and Sounis’s magus, who stood with a broad smile splitting his face. Eddis felt the
blood rising in her own face as the magus bowed.

  “Our felicitations, Your Majesties,” he said.

  “We thank you,” Eddis said to the magus, and kissed him on both cheeks.

  “We certainly do,” said Sounis, and kissed him as well, before being kissed in turn by Xanthe. Then, in response to Ion’s polite prodding, the room was emptied out into the passageway.

  Eddis and Sounis parted on the way to Attolia’s throne room. Eddis was to enter by the main doors and wait with the rest of the court. The magus and Sounis continued on to a retiring room where the king and queen of Attolia waited.

  Eschewing ceremony, Eugenides said, “You shot the ambassador?”

  “You gave me the gun,” protested Sounis.

  “I didn’t mean for you to shoot an ambassador with it!” Eugenides told him.

  “Oh, how our carefully laid plans go astray,” murmured the magus.

  “You shut up!” said Gen, laughing.

  The doors to the throne room opened, and there was no time to say more. Those awaiting the sovereigns observed their smiles and smiled in turn.

  Attolia took no part in the ceremony, not even ascending her throne, but standing instead to one side of the dais while the complicated oath was read out by the high priestess of Hephestia.

  Sounis swore his personal loyalty and his obedience to Attolis. He swore his state to Attolis’s service in the event of war, external or internal. He pledged his men to Attolis’s armies and his treasury to Attolis’s support. He swore on behalf of himself and his heirs loyalty to any heir of Attolis, binding the two nations together permanently. Attolis, in his turn, promised to protect and defend Sounis and his state, to preserve Sounis’s autonomy in all matters internal to the state, to make no interference in Sounis’s authority except as it affected the needs of Attolia.

  Sounis bowed over the king of Attolia’s hands, kissed the backs of them both, and held the real one to his forehead. Attolis pulled him close to kiss him on the brow, and the court clapped in congratulations.

  Stepping back, Sounis said, “Congratulate me, My King. I am to be married.”

  Eugenides smiled. Attolia looked sharply at Eddis, who shook her head. The room quieted.

  “She is your subject?” asked Eugenides.

  “Indeed not,” said Sounis, insensible to the significance of the question.

  “Well, then,” said Attolia, drawing his attention as she stepped onto the dais. She seated herself and laid her hand over Eugenides’s, forestalling him. “It would not be a matter wholly internal to Sounis. You would have to bring it to your king for approval.”

  His expression changing, Eugenides looked from his wife to Eddis, and then back to Sounis, who stood confused and uncertain before him.

  His easy manner yielded. “Indeed,” said Eugenides quietly, “I would not see your loyalty divided between myself and your wife. There is an easy answer, though, if she is also sworn to me.”

  “No,” said Sounis, swallowing misery whole. “She is not.”

  “Then perhaps you should broach the subject with her before we speak again.”

  “Indeed,” Sounis managed to say in the bleak silence.

  He bowed, and the ceremony was wrapped like a package and hastily sealed by the priestess of Hephestia. The sovereigns retired without meeting one another’s eyes, and the rooms were cleared. The court withdrew to change out of its sumptuary and into less precious clothes. With the magus’s hand under his arm, Sounis stumbled back to his own apartments to find the queen of Eddis and her attendants waiting there.

  Eddis was in the reception room. She sent her attendants back to the anteroom. The magus excused himself, pulling the door closed behind him, and Eddis and Sounis were alone.

  Sounis approached her where she sat on a low seat and took her hand before he dropped to one knee to offer his apologies. “I misspoke. I am sorry. I swear I did not know that he meant to do this, or I would not have engaged you in a promise to be immediately broken.”

  “It need not be broken,” said Eddis. He held himself as if he were in pain, and she cursed herself for hurting him, but she had not considered that the ceremony would slip from its careful scripting.

  Sounis shook his head as if trying to clear it. “I cannot argue with his interpretation of my oath, though I would not have sworn it had I seen this outcome. You think he will change his mind?”

  Eddis shook her head then and said gently, “No. I mean something else, Sophos. I was not unaware of Gen’s requirement when I accepted your proposal.”

  He stared at her for a moment before jumping to his feet. “No!” he said, staring down at her. “You cannot yield your sovereignty of Eddis to marry me. You cannot believe that I would allow that?”

  “Sophos…”

  “It would be monstrous!”

  “You do not understand,” she warned him.

  “I understand enough!” he answered. “I understand that he will make himself a great king over Sounis, Attolia, and Eddis. I understand that I cannot allow it. How can you not see that?”

  Eddis stood very slowly and took a deep breath. “I do see,” she said. As he watched helplessly, she pulled her skirt free from where it had caught on the upholstery, and she crossed to the door. She tapped its latch and someone on the far side opened it. It closed behind her without a sound.

  Sounis stood at the window, looking across the city toward the port, and as he watched the shadows of clouds move across the water in the distance, he felt a chill on the back of his neck. It was self-doubt, the black beetle that had pursued him all his life, pinching at him, poisoning his every success, whispering in his ear about his flaws and his failures and his unworthiness. He hadn’t felt it in months, but the pinprick of its claws was instantly familiar. They informed him with their tiny tattoo that he had almost certainly done something immensely, irrevocably, and unforgivably stupid.

  He turned away from the view and lunged across the room to throw open the door to the anteroom.

  “The queen of Eddis,” he said as he headed for the outer door of the apartment, past the startled magus. “Which way, which way back to her rooms?”

  The royal guard stared at him.

  “Which way?” Sounis shouted.

  The guard pointed. Sounis rushed through the outer door of the apartment and disappeared down the hall.

  The Attolian palace, like any building hundreds of years old, put rabbit warrens to shame with its corridors and intersections. At the first of these, Sounis stopped and listened. He heard footsteps and headed indecently fast in the direction that they came from, praying he wouldn’t run, unreflecting, into the Mede ambassador to Attolia and his retinue. At each corner he had to stop and listen again, but he was gaining quickly. He almost lost them when he passed a stairwell but then remembered that once earlier he had climbed stairs between his apartment and Eddis’s. At the top of the stairs, he saw, down a hallway, female figures rounding a corner and hurried after them.

  With his quarry almost in sight, he might have slowed and composed himself, but he didn’t spare it a thought. He rounded the corner and nearly spitted himself on the business end of an Eddisian pike. Throwing up his arms, he stopped on the tips of his toes with the point of the weapon an inch or two from his chest. He thought of the breastplate that he’d been made to wear for weeks. He lowered himself very slowly and kept his hands out from his sides. Behind him he could hear his own guard stamping up the corridor to catch up to him.

  The queen of Eddis was surrounded by her attendants, all of them armed, which was enough to take anyone aback, never mind her Eddisian guards arrayed in front and behind, watching for attack from either direction.

  Eddis said quietly, “No need for alarm,” and the weapons disappeared like morning fog. Eddis turned and moved off, followed by her attendants and her guard, leaving Sounis behind. Gingerly, he followed, stepping between two of her guards and catching up. Eddis’s attendants grudgingly made room so that he could walk beside her.
He tipped his head forward, to watch her profile.

  “I have a gift,” he said, speaking quickly, not sure how much time he had. “I always used to think it was a curse, but now I am not sure, because maybe it’s like the goats from the god, and one just has to know what name to call it.” He had to take short steps, but quick ones, to match her pace. “My gift is that I always know when I’ve made an ass of myself.”

  Eddis’s eyes glanced briefly in his direction and away again. She did not slow. As she turned a corner, Sounis thought it was marvelous that she knew so surely where she was going.

  “Whenever I went to my uncle’s megaron, whenever I met with my tutor, tripped over something that wasn’t there, said something inane, I knew it. I used to watch other people making idiots of themselves, and they never seemed to know it, but I always have. All my life I’ve wished that if I was going to be an ass, I could just be an oblivious one.” Eddis still hadn’t looked at him again. “I was stupid. I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to think that I could allow or disallow anything you choose to do. You are Eddis.”

  She slowed finally and turned to give him a smile. He experienced a brief moment of relief before he realized that it was artificial. She walked on.

  Sounis stood as everyone else brushed past him and watched her move farther and farther away. Long years of experience told him to turn and go back to his own apartments, but more recent events kept his feet rooted to the floor.

  “We all make mistakes,” he said loudly. Eddis surged on without looking back, but he knew he had caught her ear. “You sent him to Attolia, didn’t you?” He called after her, deliberately cruel. “He told you it was dangerous, and you sent him anyway. Was it worth it?”

  Eddis walked even faster, furious. Sounis pushed past her guards, who flinched but didn’t stop him, and seized her by the arm. She swung around so sharply he stepped back, but he didn’t let go. “I do not care,” he said, “how much of an ass I am right now. Because every night that I dreamed in Hanaktos, I dreamed of you. Every night. When I dreamed about my library, you were there, reading a book, looking from the windows, never speaking, but always there. And I knew that everything was just the way it should be, do you understand?” He said, “I’m sorry. I should have had more faith in you. I understand why you are angry with me: because I disappointed you, and also we don’t all throw things when we are angry, I understand that now, too. But we all make mistakes, Helen,” he said again, “all of us. And I think, I really think you will regret it if this one time you could forgive me, and you don’t.