“Oh, poor king,” said Sounis.
The barmaid brought the wine and cups. When she was gone, Eugenides dunked a finger in his wine and flicked it at Sounis.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE long summer twilight was in the sky outside, but the lamps were lit in the small dining room, casting a warm glow over the diners reclined on their couches. The king’s attendants moved quietly through the room with platters of food and amphorae to refill wine cups.
“Why not refuse the ambassador, send him home?” Sounis asked.
He watched Attolia out of the corner of his eye. She was still cool, like a breath of winter in the warm evening air, but in the last few days he had begun to sense a subtle humor in her chilly words.
When Gen had complained earlier that evening that Petrus, the palace physician, should stop fussing over him like a worried old woman, Attolia had asked, archly, “And me as well?”
“When you stop fussing,” Gen had said, slipping to his knees beside her couch, “I will sleep with two knives under my pillow.”
Attolia had looked down at him and said sharply, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Only when Eugenides laughed had Sounis realized her implication: If she ever turned against Eugenides, a second knife wouldn’t save him. He almost swallowed the olive in his mouth unchewed.
As he stared, Attolia had brushed Eugenides’s cheek almost shyly before sending him with a wave back to his own couch.
“One cannot toss ambassadors back like bad fish,” said Eugenides. “You treat them with care, or you’ll find you’ve committed an act of war.”
“If we have one of their ambassadors, the Medes, in turn, have one of ours,” said Attolia.
Sounis knew from the magus that Attolia’s spy network had been devastatingly compromised. He understood why they were willing to accept the risk of having a Mede ambassador sowing dissent in their palace if it meant they had some representative of their own in the Mede Empire.
“We would like to know where the Mede emperor is gathering his army, his navy,” Attolia said. “The Great Powers of the Continent, and those on the Peninsula, don’t believe he is raising one. They insist that it is saber rattling. Which,” she conceded, “it might be. The emperor is dying, and dying men rarely start wars with their last breaths. But I believe that his heir has already seized power, and a conquest is a reliable means to cement his authority.”
“Only if he can trust his generals not to turn on him once they come home as heroes,” said Sounis.
“In this case, his general is his brother Nahuseresh,” said Eugenides. “Civil unrest from that quarter is more than we could hope for.”
Eddis said, “The Continent wants proof of an attack before they take any risks to counter it. They don’t want to offend the Mede Empire and so precipitate the war we all are trying to avoid. Though they would of course be willing to stage troops here,” she added drily.
Sounis winced. Small countries like Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia were as vulnerable to the “aid” of the Continent as to the conquest of the Medes. In his lifetime Sounis had seen small city-states on the Peninsula absorbed by their larger neighbors in the guise of “safekeeping.”
Sounis sensed that it would be impolite to ask outright if Eddis had any spies across the Middle Sea. Her spies more probably were deployed closer to home, in Attolia. Or in Sounis, he supposed. He resolved to ask the magus for more information about his own sources of information.
“The ambassadors of several states have conveyed their sovereigns’ offers to improve megarons on our coast and to move their soldiers, under their own command, into the fortified positions,” said Eugenides. “As opposed to loaning us the money to fortify our own borders.”
“What we have received most,” said Attolia, “is lectures warning us not to be provoking, that we risk losing the support of the sovereigns on the Peninsula and the Continent.”
“If the Medes are going to attack, what point is there in not being provoking?” asked Sounis.
Attolia replied. “So long as the emperor publicly denies any animosity and continues to send an ambassador to my court and yours, the Continent can continue to do nothing.”
“But why?” asked Sounis. “Why the wishful thinking?”
Eugenides shrugged his lack of an answer. “They may be too busy with instability closer to home.”
“So we walk on eggshells?” said Sounis. “Hoping that if the Mede does attack, the Continent and the greater Peninsula will come to our aid in time rather than allow the emperor a foothold on this side of the Middle Sea?”
“Indeed,” said Attolia. “And we pray that no one on this little peninsula of ours will offer them the foothold for free, which your rebels may be doing as we speak. You and your magus in your overcautious treaty writing are wasting time you don’t have. You need to find your most significant adversary, and you need to destroy him, annihilate him root and branch. If you can capture him alive and have him publicly ganched, so much the better.”
Sounis looked away.
Eugenides looked into his wine cup. Eddis met Attolia’s gaze, but offered her no support.
Her chin up, Attolia said, “You think I am overly harsh. You inherited your throne free and clear. And you”—she turned on her husband—“took one readymade. Sounis has little in common with either of you.”
“He is an appointed heir,” said Gen, speaking into his folded arms, as he reclined back on his couch with the toes of his boots tapping.
Attolia shook her head. “They will deny that in a heartbeat, making sparks from his father’s illegitimacy if they choose.”
Gen said blandly, “It isn’t Sophos who is illegitimate.”
“He has the magus,” said Eddis, turning the conversation back to the point.
“The magus is not much beloved in Sounis these days,” Attolia responded.
“There is my father,” said Sounis.
Attolia looked at him. “And are you certain he will support you when he learns that you have sworn loyalty to Attolis?”
Sounis said nothing, staring down at his wine.
Later they rose together and made their way toward one of the larger throne rooms where there would be music and dancing. The kings of Attolia and Sounis fell a little way back.
“Is she right?” Sounis asked bluntly.
Attolis shrugged. “She is right that I took the throne she secured. Eddis has her barons in the palm of her hand, and they would follow her cheerfully through the gates of the underworld, but Attolia is not wrong that my cousin inherited her throne on the strength of my father’s right arm. He swore that she, and no one else, would be crowned. Only Attolia has faced a revolt in her own house.”
“Then you think I should take her advice?”
“I know that if you don’t look for an alternative, Sophos, you certainly won’t find one.”
The next day, as Sounis crossed a spacious flower-filled courtyard, Ion asked him if he would like to take a seat on a bench in the cool colonnade that overlooked the garden.
“Perhaps Your Majesty would like to rest a moment?” Ion suggested. Sounis was on his way to another appointment with his tailors, and not looking forward to it. He’d thought they were finished with their work, but Eugenides had ordered an armored breastplate—out of sheer perversity, Sounis was certain. The tailors wanted to be sure the fabric of the embroidered coat he would wear under the armor wouldn’t bunch or chafe. Sounis had little patience left for the tailors, and he said yes, he would like to delay just a moment to look at the flowers.
He was grateful for all that had taken place in Attolia. He could have been in a dungeon, or still at work in Hanaktos’s fields, or dead, for that matter. He wasn’t. He was sitting with an appearance of ease in the shade, but he was growing desperate to return to Sounis. He had been weeks in Attolia without news of his mother or sisters. His father had reached the border with Melenze; he knew that much but could only guess at the activity of his rebel barons. The
queen’s warning about the passage of time had been unnecessary. Sounis’s every worry pricked him like the tailors’ pins. He sat for a moment to pick through them and to consider the queen of Attolia’s troubling advice.
Ion had wandered down the colonnade to give the king of Sounis his privacy. Or so Sounis had assumed. When he caught a glimpse of bright fabric moving between the garden beds opposite, he leaned forward and tracked its progress. The woman was moving toward the corner where Ion was waiting. When Ion stepped from the colonnade down into the garden, he disappeared from sight, but Sounis’s ears were good, and he heard the murmur of greeting.
Sounis sat back with a smile. He was jealous. Were it not for the inconvenient meeting he was presently avoiding, he would have been walking with Eddis in the far more spacious and private gardens behind the palace. His smile faded the instant he saw the ambassador for the Mede Empire approaching from the opposite direction.
“Please, Your Majesty,” said the Mede politely, “do not rise. I have no desire to interrupt your contemplations.”
“Won’t you join me?” said Sounis diplomatically, his heart sinking.
“If you can spare a moment of your time?” Wrapping his robes around his knees, Melheret settled beside him on the stone bench.
“Certainly,” said Sounis. Impossible to say no when he was already sparing the time on his own self-indulgence.
“The king of Attolia keeps you close,” said the Mede, by way of an explanation for his unusual approach.
“He is a good friend,” said Sounis.
“Or perhaps just a jealous one,” said Melheret gently. “His invitations take precedence and leave little room for you to confer with others…others who may have information of great use to you.”
Sounis wondered if he was supposed to be surprised. Of course the constant meetings with the Attolians prevented even more awkward meetings with the ambassadors of the Peninsula and the Continent. Sounis had sent the magus to deal with those ambassadors, with careful instructions to make no commitments. The Mede he had meticulously avoided since their first exchange over the remchik.
It was as Attolia had said, one didn’t want to make a misstep and start a war. Sounis wanted nothing to do with the Medes, but no sensible ruler offended another’s ambassador on purpose. He just hoped his uncharitable opinion of Melheret didn’t show.
“You don’t like me, Your Majesty. I see my cause is lost.”
Oh, gods, save me from having to protest my undying affection for the Mede, thought Sounis. “No, Ambassador, not at all,” he said aloud. He might as well put his worries to good use. “I am unsure of my course, I will tell you. I—” He stopped short of saying he was still tracing designs in the plasterwork at night instead of sleeping. “Truly, I do not know what is for the best. Attolia counsels violence and I—I want to believe that I can bring my barons together peacefully, that I can convince them to honor me as their king without defeating them first. The cost to my countrymen in gold, in lives, will mean that even as I win, I will count it. It will be years before Sounis can recover what it has lost.” To say it aloud was to be overwhelmed by it; waging a war to make peace seemed a sick sort of joke played by the gods.
“You are no butchering monster, Your Majesty,” said the Mede. “Anyone can see that. If you will forgive me, let me say how I honor you. No, do not blush; you must accept your compliments.”
Sounis’s head was bowed but not to hide a blush. “I pray the gods will guide me on my path,” he said, wishing that a convenient hole would open in the stone pavers under his feet and that he could drop through it, or better yet, drop Melheret.
“You are a man of good faith, and I know you will not offend the gods,” said Melheret. It was an obvious preamble to a larger point, but fast-approaching footsteps announced Ion, who swept up to where they were seated.
“Ambassador,” he said, with diplomatic calm, “I must have forgotten your appointment with His Majesty; please forgive me, and let me ask you to arrange another. His Majesty is due to be on his way to his tailors now.” He looked at the Mede with steely determination, and the Mede, unruffled, rose to his feet.
“Please forgive my forwardness in greeting you here, Your Majesty. I have had news from Sounis that I wished to impart, but now is not the time.”
Ion watched him go with what looked like loathing. Then he bowed to Sounis. “Your appointment, Your Majesty?”
“Please.”
Sounis followed his borrowed attendant back to his rooms, thinking over what Melheret had said in parting, that he had news from Sounis. It was bait, and Sounis would have to decide if he would take it. If he did, it would mean another meeting, arranged in a more official way, with the Mede. If he met with the Mede, he might then be expected to meet with all the ambassadors, the prospect of which gave him a headache. He was beginning to think he would never leave Attolia.
“Ion.”
“Your Majesty?” said the attendant. He had delivered Sounis to his own anteroom and had asked permission to withdraw. “Is there something else you require?”
“A word,” said Sounis. He walked through his reception room, where his tailors waited, to his bedchamber without looking back to see if Ion followed.
“Close the door,” he said.
When he heard it shut, he turned around.
“Your Majesty, I apologize,” Ion said.
“Did you arrange the meeting with Melheret?”
“No.”
Sounis waited.
“I did arrange the meeting with Zenia that the ambassador used to his advantage, and I will have to inform the king.”
“And what will he do?”
“Send me away,” said Ion. “This is one too many mistakes to forgive.”
“You would prefer to stay?”
Ion shrugged at the irony of his situation. “I would.”
“You could apologize,” Sounis suggested. “He has a soft spot for idiots. He’s always been very kind to me.”
Ion shook his head. “I do not think he has any such soft spot for me, Your Majesty.”
“Ion,” Sounis said, coming to a decision even he found surprising, “tell him that if he releases you, I would like you to accompany me.”
“Accompany you?”
“To Sounis, as my attendant,” he said.
Ion’s eyebrows rose. “You do me an honor I don’t deserve, Your Majesty.”
Sounis’s insecurities nibbled at him. It was an honor Ion probably didn’t want, either, but Ion unexpectedly smiled. “I would be gratified to serve Your Majesty,” he said sincerely.
“You would rather serve Eugenides,” said Sounis. “Only tell him so, and I will have to find someone else to keep an eye on all my new finery.”
The dinner the next night was formal, all the court at tables, with Sounis and Eddis and the Attolias at the head table with the magus and Eddis’s ambassador. All the other ambassadors were carefully placed beyond the range of polite conversation, to Sounis’s relief. He had declined to meet again with the Mede. At last the talking was done, and the court dined in celebration of a treaty concluded between Sounis and Attolia.
Conversationally, Eugenides said, “What are you doing rescuing my attendants from their own folly?”
“Did you let him go?”
“I’m still thinking about it, shocked as I am to find you raiding my overelegant lapdogs for your own companions.”
“I astonished myself,” said Sounis. “I might perhaps have been prejudiced in my earlier judgment of them.”
Eugenides popped a grape into his mouth and said seriously, “I will rethink my own judgments, then.”
Sounis reached for a serving platter set in front of them both. When Eugenides cleared his throat sharply, Sounis pulled his hand back as if he expected to be bitten.
“Fetch the king of Sounis some lamb,” Attolis said over his shoulder, and someone hurried away to do his bidding. Sounis noticed then that the food on the platter was all cut into bite-siz
ed portions.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was reserved for you.”
The king was smiling out at the room. “It is,” he said calmly.
“I seem to remember once sharing my oatmeal with you,” Sounis remarked.
“I seem to remember stealing your oatmeal,” said the former Thief of Eddis, “but it didn’t have sand in it.”
“Sand?” said Sounis, taken aback.
“Sand, and if my queen notices, she will have someone flayed.”
Attolia was looking their way. Sounis hastily dropped his eyes to his plate. Gen was relaxed against the back of his chair, entirely at his ease. “There is still someone in the kitchen who adores the queen, dislikes Eddisians, and hates me,” he said.
“She just hasn’t met you, I am sure.”
“She has, actually,” said the king of Attolia.
Attolia’s eyebrows were descending as she scrutinized the king. She looked from the platter to his face, and back again. She looked at Sounis. Eugenides sighed and reached for the lamb. To allay her suspicions, he was going to have to eat some of it.
“Let me fall on that blade for you,” said Sounis, and served himself.
“You are a prince among men,” said Eugenides.
“A king,” Sounis corrected him with his mouth full.
In the morning the great plaza in front of Attolia’s palace was emptied of booths and vendors and all their wares. No king departs without ceremony, and the stones were swept of straw and manure, and a dais built, before the morning mist had burned away.
There were prayers by the priests and priestesses of various temples to old gods and new ones. The king of Attolia was known for his dedication to his gods, but careful to make no move to offend any others. The high priestess of Hephestia, a massive woman swathed in red, came last to bless the men who were to be sent to Sounis to fight.
Eddis, sitting on the dais, on a borrowed chair that was far more elegant than the throne she used at home, admired the priestess. She was Attolian by birth and had risen to be high priestess of what was a minor temple in the city. Overnight she had become quite powerful, with a new temple rising on the acropolis above Attolia’s palace. She had great wealth at her fingertips and access to the king’s ear. She could have used that power to diminish other priests and priestesses, but she had chosen not to. When she called out the blessing on the soldiers before her, Eddis could hear the Goddess in the priestess’s voice and wondered if others around her heard it as well. Eddis knew that Eugenides did and that it never failed to spark unease in him. Eddis was tired, and the Goddess’s voice made her long for her mountains. She, too, had spent sleepless nights unmaking and remaking her plans.