When the invocation was complete, Sounis walked back to the dais to take his leave and accept a parting gift from Attolia.
As the horses and men waited, one of her women brought it forward: a small wooden casque with a bowed top and a plain brass latch. Sounis was as hesitant as anyone who receives a gift and is unsure whether to open it immediately or not. The queen’s companion, versed in the moment, turned the case in her hands and lifted the lid. Inside the case was a dueling pistol, a king’s weapon, wheel-locked, chased in gold. Eddis had seen it earlier that day. When Sounis lifted it out and tipped his head over the locking mechanism, she knew he was reading the letters inscribed there: Onea realia. “The queen made me.”
Sounis thanked the queen prettily, years of training providing the appropriate words. As he went to replace the pistol in the box, he paused. There was a tab to lift the bottom of the box and clearly room to store something underneath. Keeping the gun in his hand, he reached with the other, but Gen forestalled him, holding the inset bottom of the box down with a single finger.
“You have heard my queen’s advice. My gift is below. Would you wait to see it until you have decided what you will do with hers?”
Sounis nodded and returned the gun to its place. He took the box in his arms and hefted it, judging what he could from its weight, like a child with a present. It was heavy enough to be a substantial amount of gold. He handed the box to the magus, who handed it in turn to someone else, to be packed.
“Your destination?” Eugenides asked.
“Brimedius, to free my mother and my sisters.” He and Eugenides had talked through his strategy in the tavern. It had been their one chance for a private exchange. “Then on to the pass to Melenze, to my father.”
“Fare with the gods, and be blessed in your endeavors,” said the king of Attolia.
Sounis bowed first, then embraced the king, and they kissed. Moving on to Attolia, with just a shade of deliberation, too slight to call a hesitation, he embraced and kissed her as well. Then he stepped before Eddis.
No ceremony was ceremonial enough without the appropriate clothing, and Sounis was wearing his best, his embroidered coat with the shining breastplate on top that Eugenides had commissioned for him. Eddis was just thinking of how much older he looked, with his finery and his scars and his appropriately solemn expression, when he met her eye. His stern gaze dropped. Sucking in his scarred lip, he cast her a sheepish smile.
The pain was as unexpected as a thunderclap in a clear sky. Eddis’s chest tightened, as something closed around her heart. A deep breath might have calmed her, but she couldn’t draw one. She wondered if she was ill, and she even thought briefly that she might have been poisoned. She felt Attolia reach out and take her hand. To the court it was unexceptional, hardly noticed, but to Eddis it was an anchor, and she held on to it as if to a lifeline. Sounis was looking at her with concern. Her responding smile was artificial.
“I will look forward to hearing of your future adventures,” Eddis said. It was stiff, and he looked disappointed. She did not release Attolia’s hand, subtly discouraging an embrace, so Sounis bowed instead. His polite expression returned. He bade her farewell and then went back down the steps to his men. The usual discordant shout of commands and the clatter of hooves and weapons and wheels against the plaza followed before the king and his retinue were finally departed. Throughout, the queen of Attolia never let go of Eddis’s hand.
When Sounis was gone, and the rest of the royal guard was dismissed, Eddis left the plaza and went directly to the highest part of the palace, from which she could catch a glimpse, even if it was just dust rising above the road, of Sounis, as he drew farther and farther away. She would have gone to her room and locked herself in, but it would have been recognized as highly irregular. On the roof, she was not alone, but only her attendants were nearby, and it was not so unusual as to cause talk. It was as much privacy as she was likely to find without drawing attention to herself.
She heard the king of Attolia arrive. She didn’t turn, and sensed rather than saw him draw near. From behind, his arms closed around her, and she was wrapped inside the long cloak he wore. When she grasped its edges, he used his hand to reach up and adjust the cloth of the capacious hood, creating a space no larger than the two of them.
“Did you send Attolia to me at the farewell?” Eddis asked.
“Not I,” said Gen quietly. “The magus. I thought you knew that you loved him—the two of you have been like magnets drawing ever nearer to each other since you met—but the magus was concerned. He thought the grief of leave-taking might surprise you.”
“I feel very stupid.” She leaned back into his embrace. “‘I will look forward to hearing of your future adventures.’” She shook her head in disgust and sniffed. “I should have had something better to say, something…more appropriate.”
He couldn’t disagree. Sounis had clearly hoped for some message of her affection to carry with him. “You could write him a letter,” he said. “A fast horse will catch him before he reaches the pass.”
“It’s not a letter I want to send after him,” she said. “It’s fifteen hundred crossbowmen and a thousand pikes.”
“You helped pick the numbers.”
She sighed. “I was still sensible then. I am less so now.”
“He wouldn’t thank you for a company of nannies.”
She looked out over the parapet. “Will he forgive us?”
“You aren’t stealing his country.”
“Neither am I helping him keep it.”
“Helen,” Gen said, “you sent me to Attolia.”
She stiffened.
He held her tight. “We do what we must, but we are not defined by our circumstances. Sounis will not change.”
“Did you warn him not to offend the gods?”
“There was no need,” said Attolis, smiling. “He couldn’t offend the gods with a pointed stick.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WE left Attolia with horses underneath us and all the provisions we had missed on our previous journey. We had an escort fit for a king, and we moved no faster than the magus and I had traveled on foot. Your letter reached me before we got to the pass, and I read it over and over until I had it by heart.
Once in Sounis, we moved across country, avoiding the roads and towns. I had a tent that appeared like magic every night, with a bed in it, as well as a table and folding stools for our meetings.
It even had a writing desk so that I could have sent letters, but everything I wrote seemed silly under the circumstances. Eugenides had warned me in the tavern that letters would go astray and that once we left Attolia messengers could no longer be relied upon to be loyal or safe—just as I must assume that anything I said aloud in his palace would be conveyed directly to the Mede. The magus had said the same thing. Both of them had urged me to keep my plans to myself until we were inside Sounis. It reinforced a sense I had of being on my own every minute, in spite of being surrounded day and night by soldiers and advisors.
The food was never-ending. When I pointed out the attentions to my appetite, the magus had to remind me that I was Sounis. Across my little state there are merchants who dream of putting PURVEYOR TO THE KING over their shops. There are men whose lives will change if they can provide me with soap. I am a patron of the arts now. I can found my own university instead of just dreaming of sometime attending the one in Ferria. It gave me something to think about besides war.
As you know, we didn’t get as far as Brimedius. We crossed through the main pass to Sounis and forded the Seperchia to avoid the fortified megaron there, then moved across the foothills heading inland. We had reached Atusi, where I meant to pick up the road to Brimedius, when we met the rebels. I had just brought my small army out of the hills and onto the road when my scouts came in to tell me that the rebels were both ahead of us and behind us.
I had prepared my Attolians and my Eddisians carefully. Every time I talked with the Attolian commander, I remembered
what Eugenides had said: “He does not actually run on all fours and bay at the moon, but you will have to explain what you want from him very carefully.” I know he did it to make me laugh, and it helped. I would have otherwise been too much intimidated by a man who reminded me so much of my father.
We were already assembled on the road. On our right, two ridges reached out from the foothills, and a shallow valley lay between them. To our left, olive trees came almost to the road. The road curved around the foothills, keeping the rebels ahead of us and behind us out of sight. It was an excellent place for a trap, and we had sprung it. My scouts warned me that the men behind us on the road were farther back but mounted and coming up fast.
Around the curve of the hill ahead of us, we had our first view of the men approaching from that direction. I sent my Eddisians forward and turned back with the Attolians and my mounted force, leaving our pack train with supplies in the middle.
It was my first battle. It was exhilarating and terrifying and sickening. The Eddisians and Attolians did just as they’d been instructed. The road sloped down slightly toward the Sounisians in front of us, and the Eddisians rushed down it to attack.
The force behind us was twice the size of ours, or more. When it hit the Attolian formations, the Attolians broke. They made an attempt to re-form but broke again and began to scatter. Their captain, at my signal, called the retreat. Some of the Attolians turned back toward the Eddisians to re-form with them, but fully half ran into the olive trees to seek cover there. The Eddisians had no one to cover their flanks; to save themselves from being surrounded, they were retreating into the shallow bay between the two hillsides. I was with my mounted men, trying to provide some cover to give the Attolians time to re-form. We weren’t very effective, and I wasn’t any use at all. Although Procivitus’s instruction had helped my sword work, it was of little use to me on horseback. All I could do was wave my sword around to defend myself and try not to cut the ears off my own horse. I had to hope that my countrymen didn’t really want to kill their own king. The magus and my personal guard never left my side until we turned to run ourselves, ahead of the Sounisians, toward the protection of our Eddisian pikemen.
The Attolians who had run to re-form with the Eddisians appeared disorganized. Though my horsemen had slowed the approach of the army behind us, the bulk of it was rounding the curve of the hill and would soon be charging across the small valley onto the Eddisians and the Attolians who had not yet reached cover inside the Eddisian formation.
Without needing a signal, the Eddisian captain whistled a retreat. The Eddisians went in better order than the Attolians had, but they went fast, heading toward the trees behind them, where the charge of rebel horses would do less damage. They would fight in smaller groups, withdrawing back uphill until they could regroup safely.
My mounted men were racing toward the trees at about the same time. The horses would have to be abandoned. I had been toward the front of my men when we were fighting. When we turned to retreat, I fell behind. My guard was still with me, but only barely, when I loosened my grip on my reins. In the blink of an eye, I fell off.
I landed badly, just exactly like a sack of rocks, and tumbled across the grass until I landed flat on my back with all the wind knocked out of me and without the breath to curse my breastplate, which I was certain had done me more damage than it had saved me from. When I could get my feet under me and straighten up, my cavalry was already far away. They had slowed and looked back in confusion, but I waved to them to ride on. I was not too far from the hillside that had hidden the rebel army on the road behind us, and once I got my feet moving, I scrambled up it. With my chest aching for air, my hands and feet felt as if they belonged to someone else. I kept falling on my face, but I eventually made it to the top, covered in grass stains and still not able to get a breath, to find the consequences of battle laid out before me.
The flat top of the hill was scattered with the bodies of dead men in the uniforms of Sounis and Eddis. The outposts of both armies had met here. As I stood staring, I thought, These are my dead. All of them. The battle hadn’t been unanticipated or forced on me, as the raid in the villa had been. I had chosen it. These men, Eddisian and Sounisian alike, had died for my decisions.
When the magus stepped from the bushes toward the back part of the hill, I was more than horrified. I was perilously close to distraught.
“You aren’t supposed to be here!” I shouted. “Get back!” When he ignored me, I was almost weeping. “If they catch you, they’ll kill you.” The magus just walked closer and grabbed me in his arms to hold me tight. When he pulled away and looked into my face, I knew that he would tell me that I was Sounis and that I needed to pull myself together.
“Your uncle,” he said, “in all the years I saw him rule, never had a moment of self-doubt. Never a regret for a single life lost. Do you understand?”
I understood that I didn’t want to be my uncle.
He patted me on the back and disappeared into the bushes, to work his way down the hill. Instead of continuing toward the Eddisians, he must have turned toward the trees as soon as I had fallen. He’d left his horse and worked his way back along the hillside toward me. I could only pray that the gods would lead him safely back to the rest of the troops. I turned around to face the people climbing up the open face of the hill. They had seen me fall. So long as I, too, didn’t try to hide in the bushes, no one would look there for the magus. I drew my sword.
When the first men of Sounis reached the top of the hill, I shouted clearly, “I am the king of Sounis,” on the slight chance that the silvered breastplate with the Sounis colors in velvet underneath didn’t identify me clearly enough. I raised my sword as they approached, but there was little I could do to stop them from surrounding me at a safe distance. We waited then for the baron of Brimedius to arrive. He came puffing up over the edge of the hill just ahead of the Mede I’d met in my father’s tent, Akretenesh.
“What a surprise to see you here,” I said to him, not surprised at all.
“Your Majesty,” said the Mede as he bowed very low, “you are among friends here. It is a misunderstanding, a sad misunderstanding that has taken place.” He looked at the dead men and shook his head. I wanted to throw my sword at him, but there wasn’t much point. Instead I offered it to Brimedius, who politely handed it back, and we all went down the hill.
And so by late afternoon I was in Brimedius, almost exactly as I’d originally planned.
Our pack animals had been abandoned during the fighting, as had our horses. They were collected up by Brimedius’s men, and I had my luggage with me when I arrived: my new clothes, my books and papers, my traveling writing desk, and the small case holding Attolia’s gift. All of them were trundled up to a guest apartment.
Servants brought bathwater, while an attendant helped me out of the breastplate and clothes. Unfortunately, he also helped himself to your letter, which I had tucked against my chest.
“Give that back,” I said angrily. But by this time I was half undressed and in no good condition for browbeating anyone. He regretfully refused to return it to me, and I was helpless. We both knew it. There was no reason to blame the attendant, but I did. I quite frankly hated him. I hated them all passionately.
I sat in the hot water and sulked, ignoring the servants while they meticulously unpacked my luggage, taking out and keeping every parchment and paper that contained anything written, and the blank paper and writing supplies as well. Attolia’s box was resting on a table in plain sight. I watched out of the corner of my eye as the attendant opened it, removed the gun and the bullets and bullet mold. I looked away as he lifted the divider to examine what was underneath. I tried not to hold my breath as he considered whatever was there, but didn’t touch it, then replaced the pistol and lowered the lid.
So he knew what was in the box, but I didn’t, though I could guess it wasn’t parchment or paper, or he would have taken it. I had opened the box a number of times, even removed the
pistol and slid my fingertips across the felt board divider, wondering fiercely what message the king of Attolia had sent me, but I had not looked to see it for myself. I hadn’t yet decided what I would do with Attolia’s gift or her advice. I wanted too much to believe that there had to be a better way to lead people than through intimidation. Gen had as much as said so when he urged me to look for alternatives.
Whatever was in the box, the servant had left it, with the gun and its bullet mold on top. What a strange world it is, where prisoners are left their weapons and the written word is a mortal danger.
I had an excellent dinner and wine in the company of Brimedius and Akretenesh, who were carefully assessing me. A sullen temper in no way impeded my appetite.
I am not Gen. I cannot tell a convincing lie. He and I had agreed that I was foolish to try when every thought that crosses my mind seems to appear on my face for all to see. Gen counseled that honesty would be my best policy, so I let Akretenesh see the truth: that I was wholly in his power and bitterly unhappy about it.
I did not conceal my scorn as Akretenesh explained the regrettable chain of events that had driven a wedge between me and my barons, all of it the fault of my uncle who was Sounis. As Melheret had, Akretenesh offered himself, and the Mede Empire, as a neutral negotiator. I said no, thank you.