The Queen of Attolia (17 page)

She had no skill with the paddle, and it was half an hour before they reached the dock. Attolia pulled the boat against it, and Eugenides stepped out. He turned and offered her his hand. Once she, too, was standing on the dock, he moved back several steps, closed his eyes, and stretched his arms up over his head to ease the stiffness in his shoulders. Attolia reached to pull from its fabric padding the knife she carried along her ribs, but it was gone. Gone as well were the ceremonial knife from her belt and even the tiny blade hidden in the twists of her hair.

She looked at Eugenides to see his eyes open and his hand holding all three knives, their blades spread in a fan. He tossed them one at a time into the air, catching each by the blade as it came down and tossing it up again, juggling them one-handed, then holding them out, handles first, to the queen. She hesitated, expecting him to pull them back, but he didn’t move.

“Have all three,” he said.

When she’d taken them, he pointed to a spot just below his heart.

“An upward stroke here,” he said, “would be most efficient, but almost anywhere would do the job. You
can push me into the water,” he said. “I don’t know if I can swim with one hand or not.”

Attolia waited, sensing a trap. The moon disappeared behind a cloud. Eugenides was only a dark form against the darker water behind him. “Before you make a decision,” he said, “I want you to know that I love you.”

Attolia laughed. Eugenides flushed in the dark.

“I have been surrounded by liars all my life and never heard one lie like you,” said Attolia, smiling.

“It’s the truth.” Eugenides shrugged.

“This is a feeling that’s come upon you suddenly? Since our recent engagement?”

“No,” said the Thief quietly. “When I stole Hamiathes’s Gift, I loved you then. I didn’t understand it. I thought you must be a fiend from hell,” he admitted, cocking his head to one side, “but I already loved you.”

He said, “Before he died, my grandfather used to bring me to your palace so that I could see it for myself. There was a party and dancing one night, and the palace was full of people. I went to the kitchen garden to hide because it should have been empty, but once I was inside, the door opened from the flower gardens, and you came in by yourself. I watched you walking between the rows of cabbages and then dancing under the orange trees. I was above you, in one of the trees.”

Attolia stared. She remembered the night she danced under the orange trees. “And how old were you?” the queen asked. “Six?”

“Older than that,” said Eugenides, smiling at the memory.

“Calf love,” said the queen.

“Calf love doesn’t usually survive amputation, Your Majesty.”

“A good thing I cut off your hand, then, instead of cutting out your heart,” said Attolia cruelly. “You think you still love me?”

“Yes.”

“And you think I’ll believe you?”

Eugenides shrugged. “You can kill me here, Your Majesty, and be done with this. Or you can believe me.” He’d seen her in a pale dress dancing in the moonlight, pretending an entire troupe of dancers danced the harvest circle with her, her arms open to embrace the sisters and friends who existed only in her imagination, and he’d never seen anything so beautiful or so sad. He’d remembered that moment when he’d seen her flush at being called cruel. Afterward, when the magus offered to send him information more current than that in his own library, Eugenides had accepted gladly and read carefully, trying to see whether Attolia could be the monster in human guise she was accused of being, or only a woman who ruled without the support of her barons. In the end he had taken advice his grandfather
had given him years before and gone to see for himself.

“I love you,” he said. “You could believe me.”

Attolia looked at him a moment longer, still holding the knife ready. Then she slid it back into its padded sleeve in the front of her dress and stepped forward. She laid one hand on his cheek. He stood as if he were frozen.

“This is what I believe,” she said. “I believe that at the top of the stairs you have friends waiting, and if I climb those stairs without you, I will surely die at the top.”

“There’s the boat,” Eugenides said quietly, not moving under the warmth of her hand.

“You didn’t tie it to the dock, and it has floated away. If I did reach it, could I hope to paddle it past the rocks?”

“No.”

“Then let us climb the stairs together,” said the queen, and she turned away from him.

T
HE STEPS LEADING UP FROM
the beach were cut into the side of a fissure in the cliffs. From time to time wooden steps stretched across the fissure to carry them to better footing on the opposite side. Eugenides let the queen go first, that she might set the pace and that he might keep an eye on her. The climb warmed her and loosened her muscles, but her feet in their felt slippers were still wet and cold. Each step hit like a blow. She checked the knives in their places frequently. At the first turn, where a wooden bridge crossed to the far side of the narrow canyon, she turned to speak to Eugenides. He was below her, cautiously out of reach.

“You didn’t suborn Efkis,” she said.

“No,” Eugenides answered, “that was a lie. There was no royal messenger. The lieutenant was my cousin Crodes. He has been practicing his Attolian accent for months. The royal messenger pouch we had from your embassy in Eddis.”

“But you moved your men past Efkis’s guard. And your cannon,” she said. “Eleven cannon. How did you get those past?”

“They were wood.”

“Wood?”

“Wood,” said Eugenides. “Fake. We brought them all down the Seperchia on one boat and then threw them over the side at the end and floated them to shore.”

“Bastard,” Attolia said.

“Not that I know,” Eugenides responded, and for a second a smile flickered on his face, the same sly smile of the successful archer that Attolia remembered. The smile disappeared in an instant.

Attolia turned to begin climbing again. She declined to look back at Eugenides. She climbed ferociously, spending her anger on the stairs. Eugenides followed, listening as her breath grew more labored, waiting for her to get tired and slow down. Having set the pace, the queen refused to reduce it. Struggling to breathe without panting, she kept climbing.

“Your Majesty,” Eugenides said.

The queen stopped and swept around to stare down at him.

Eugenides had spoken before he’d thought of anything to say. He only wanted her to stop, hoping that when she began the climb again, she would go more slowly. He looked up at her, tongue-tied by her beauty and her scorn.

“I thought you might like the earrings,” he said lamely.

It was as if he could hear the blood moving through her and could hear her flushing with rage.

She said venomously, “I might like the earrings? As much as I would like to marry a half-grown boy? A one-handed goatfoot?” She used the lowlanders’ slang for the mountain people of Eddis. “When I am actually willing to marry you, I will wear your earrings. Don’t wait for it, Thief.”

She turned her back on Eugenides and started climbing again as fast as before.

“Your Majesty,” he called.

“What now?”

“It’s a long climb,” he said, very subdued. “If you keep going like that, you’re going to die of apoplexy before you reach the top.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first you drove to apoplexy,” snapped Attolia, but resumed her climb at a slower pace. Eugenides followed, still a safe distance behind her.

They climbed in silence for another half an hour. They could see the end of the stairs above them when Eugenides succumbed to temptation and produced under his breath a credible imitation of a small goat bleating. Attolia heard him. Her head lifted, and she froze for a moment, her hands tightened into fists. She reached for the knives and again found them gone,
though she had checked them in their sheaths several times during the climb. Murderously angry, she turned and started deliberately back down the stairs toward the Thief. Eugenides skipped backward step by step as the queen advanced.

“The more stairs we go down, the more stairs we have to climb up again, Your Majesty,” Eugenides called.

The queen stopped. After years of intrigue and outright war with her barons, she knew when she was beaten. Without assistance she could not free herself from the Thief. His armed companions waited at the top of the cliff to escort her to her wedding, and there was no help at hand. She schooled herself to patience, always her best resource, and turned back to the climb.

When she reached the top of the stairs, the coastal hills hid the higher mountains beyond them. They were silhouetted against the lightening sky, but it was still dark, and the men before her were difficult to make out. She looked them over coolly. Most of them were in the uniform tunics of Eddis’s soldiers, but she could see older men dressed in sober civilian clothes. The fat one, she thought to herself, was one of Eddis’s ministers. She supposed the other old men were ministers as well. Eddis honored her with their company.

There was no sign of a camp. The horses and pack animals were staked in rows, their saddles on, their packs loaded.

The officers and ministers approached, variously grave
or embarrassed. As they got closer, Attolia recognized more of them. Eddis’s minister of trade, her minister of the exchequer. A little ahead of the other men was a man who was neither grave nor discomfited. He was absolutely poker-faced. With narrowed eyes, the queen recognized him as well, Eddis’s own chamberlain, brought along to perform the obligatory introductions, which he did without a whisker’s deviation from his usual palace style. Only once did he falter, looking over his shoulder.

“He said he wouldn’t be here,” one of the ministers said in a carrying whisper, and the chamberlain went on with the formal greetings of the queen of Eddis in absentia.

“And now?” the queen asked the open air.

“We’ll move as quickly as we can across the hills to the Pricas Spring. There we will be able to cut down to the main pass,” said Eugenides behind her. “There will be some hasty negotiations, and we’ll be engaged, with your barons as witnesses.”

“A dull ceremony,” said the queen.

“We can have pomp and glitter at the wedding—and the coronation.”

Attolia turned to give him a cold look. He smiled an equally cold smile and turned to the men who’d come to join them.

“No unexpected difficulties?” the minister of trade asked.

“No unexpected ones,” Eugenides reported.

The chamberlain spoke to the Attolian queen. “Your Majesty, I regret that we cannot offer you any rest after what must have been an extremely tiring journey, but I am afraid we must reach the main pass with all possible speed. We have a horse for you, if you can ride?”

“I can,” said Attolia, meaning that she would rather cooperate than be tied to a saddle.

The chamberlain cleared his throat. “If I may offer it, Your Majesty, I have a dry cloak for you.”

“You may offer it,” the queen said.

He glanced down at her feet. “We have dry shoes as well. If you will excuse me.” He bowed politely and went away to fetch the cloak and soft leather boots as well. When he returned he knelt to remove her slippers and slipped the warm boots on in their place. They were a good fit, and the queen silently curled her cold toes in relief.

They helped her onto a horse that had been brought near as Eugenides stood farther away and watched. Attolia didn’t look in his direction. She mounted the horse and was led away without once glancing back.

They climbed higher into the coastal hills and then turned to ride along a narrow trail. They spent the day in the saddle under hanging clouds. The coastal hills were less uniform than the sheer rise of the Hephestials inland of the Seperchia River. The path rose and dipped along the lifting shoulders of land. At nightfall they rode out
onto the side of a hill overlooking Attolia and found a camp made on a terrace there. The camp was deserted except for a messenger left to report that Xenophon had encountered no difficulty in the retreat from Ephrata.

Attolia was shaking from exhaustion and accepted the help of one of the soldiers to dismount. He was an older man in uniform but had no tabs on his collar to indicate that he was an officer. He didn’t seem much awed by being so close to a queen. Perhaps he served in his own queen’s household. He looked oddly familiar, and she wondered if she had met him on some state occasion in Eddis or at her own palace in Attolia. His hands gripped her around the waist as she slid off the horse. They tightened, and for a moment she was irrationally frightened, caught by him, her feet dangling above the ground. His eyes were hard. She stared at him, and he dropped his gaze, then lowered her gently the last few inches to the ground.

She turned away from him and asked the minister who was near what would happen when they reached the queen of Eddis. “There will be negotiations, Your Majesty. I assume.”

“On the subject of dowry?” the queen asked, lifting her eyebrow.

“I assume so, Your Majesty. Her Majesty’s chamberlain will escort you to your tent.” The minister excused himself. The older soldier had disappeared.

The largest tent was hers. The chamberlain led her to the doorway and stopped beside it to bow. He was punctilious in his politeness to the captured queen, and she thought perhaps the politeness was more hateful to her than scorn would have been. She hadn’t seen Eugenides all day.

Inside the tent, for her comfort, there were rugs and cushions on a low sleeping couch. She was left alone. The guard waited outside. The queen stared at the empty tent for a moment. Had she been expecting company, she wondered, dinner guests, maybe, to eat the cold supper that waited on a tiny table by the bed? She crouched on the sleeping bench and ate. When she was done, she was almost too tired to stand but dragged herself up to go to the opening of the tent and pull aside the flap that covered it. The guard turned to eye her nervously. A young man not used to the presence of royalty, Attolia guessed.

“I want to see Eugenides,” she said in her best regal manner.

The sentry offered to send a message to the Thief.

“Take me to him instead,” Attolia commanded. “It’s faster, and I am tired and want to rest after speaking to him.”

The soldier hesitated, and glanced at a lighted tent beyond the queen’s. Attolia started toward it. Let the sentry try to stop her by force if he dared. Making the best of an impossible situation, he hurried to get ahead of her.
The doorway of the tent was open, and as Attolia approached, she looked past the sentry’s shoulder into the warm light of the lamp hanging on the central tent post.

Eugenides sat on a low stool. The heavyset man kneeling in front of him was wearing the green trimmed tunic of a physician and was just easing the cuff off his arm. Eugenides’s eyes were closed. As the cuff came free, he shuddered and dropped his head to rest on the other man’s shoulder.

Attolia stood still, remembering that the night before she had thought that Eugenides was too young to have bones that ached.

“Eugenides.” The sentry used his name, which was also his title.

“What?” the young man snapped as his head came up and he opened his eyes. He saw the queen standing beyond the doorway and froze for a moment, looking sick, before he turned stiffly to sweep up a towel from beside him and wrap it around the bare stump of his arm. He stood then and stepped toward the door cradling the arm, all expression wiped away from his face and his voice. “Can I help you, Your Majesty?” he asked politely.

“What has happened to the army under Piloxides?”

“I don’t have news yet,” said Eugenides. “The attack on Piloxides was a feint, meant to distract him. There was no complete engagement.”

Attolia returned to her tent without speaking.

In her sleep she heard gentle rain falling on the roof of the tent and woke to shouting. Her legs were still wrapped in the blankets and she was just sitting up when Eugenides pushed the cloth away from the door and stepped into the tent. The lantern hanging in the tent had been left burning, and by its light she could see the sword unsheathed in his left hand.

“What luck you have,” he said, stepping toward her.

She wouldn’t cower. She lifted her chin as he crossed the tent toward her. When he reached her side, he did not raise the sword as she had expected. He bent down and kissed her briefly on the lips.

Shocked, she pulled her face away and kicked at the blankets binding her legs. By the time she was standing, livid with fury, Eugenides was gone, and the flap of the tent had dropped behind him. She stalked to the doorway to push the cloth aside.

The sentry, the same young man as before, stood outside. “Please stay in the tent, Your Majesty,” he said more firmly than he’d spoken before, hopeful that she might obey.

Soldiers with their blades bare crossed in front of the tent at a run. Attolia stepped out of the doorway and let the door cloth fall behind her, cutting off most of the light from inside. It was raining again, though not hard. The moon was gone, and it was difficult to be sure what was happening. As her eyes adjusted, she
could see men coming across a ridge that ran along the edge of the mountain terrace. “Who is it?” Attolia asked, her heart in her throat.

“Your Majesty, please go inside,” the sentry said again, his voice raised.

Attolia stood her ground. Short of pushing her, the sentry couldn’t get her back into the tent, and he looked no more willing to use force than previously. She saw the crests on the armored helmets of the soldiers coming over the ridge and her eyes widened. They were not her troops. They were Medes.

The Eddisian camp was in chaos as the soldiers in it rolled out of their sleeping blankets, dragging their swords from their sheaths and snatching up their hand-shields before running toward the Medes in haphazard order. The Medes strode down the ridge in the orderly formation that had won their empire, the soldiers shoulder to shoulder, with their shields locked. They were perfectly organized into an overwhelming fighting unit, and Attolia looked away as they met the first line of Eddisians.

She had tried to explain the Eddisians once to Nahuseresh. He’d pressed her to commit her army to taking the pass up to Eddis, thinking that once they were past the danger of the cannon overlooking the gorge, they could easily sweep through to the top of the pass and win the mountain valleys. She’d refused, doubting that her army would succeed in fighting its
way past the cannon without being eviscerated. Nahuseresh had attributed her reluctance to an entirely understandable female timidity. He didn’t seem to understand that the people of Eddis had very little to do all winter beyond develop superior artisan skills and train for war.