As the queen approached, Eugenides dropped his eyes. He wanted, desperately, to be sick or to drop to his knees, cover his face with his hands—hand—and cry. If he didn’t look the queen of Attolia in the face, he hoped to avoid doing either.
“Where there’s life there’s hope, Eugenides,” Attolia said as she looked him over. His hair lay in damp tendrils on his forehead. The light rain beaded there and dropped onto his face. There was a spatter of mud across one cheek mixed with heavier drops of blood. She looked carefully for any injury but saw no signs and assumed it was someone else’s blood. She stooped a little to see his eyes better and followed their direction. He was looking at the water runneling the mud by her left foot. She straightened.
“You’ll be chained by the neck to two other prisoners,” she told him. “If you and they live to reach my megaron at Ephrata, the other two will be safely returned, without ransom, to Eddis.” Eugenides didn’t move. His hope of heaven could have been in the dirt at her feet, so fixedly did he stare there. “Do you understand?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
“What will you do now?”
“Oh”—he tried unsuccessfully to keep the tremor out of his voice—“grovel, I suppose.”
“I’ve heard you do that before,” said Attolia, briefly amused in spite of herself.
Eugenides swallowed. “That was begging,” he said with a better effort at lightness. “There wasn’t much opportunity for groveling last…time.” He stumbled, then added evenly, “I am very good at groveling.”
“Anything to save your skin?” Attolia asked.
“Nothing is going to save my skin,” Eugenides said flatly.
She gripped his chin between her thumb and forefinger. She felt the breath go out of him at her touch. He resisted for a moment and then gave in, raising his head to look her in the eye. Even in the red glow of the torches his face was pale. The muscles in his jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth. He was afraid.
Attolia wasn’t surprised that the mask that hid his feelings was gone. His training hadn’t been in fear and diplomacy; it had been in silence and stealth. As he looked at her, his eyes were bright with anguish. He had heard of her threats, as she had known he would. She could see that he had no expectations of mercy from her. No hope that she would be something other than ruthless and cruel.
Eugenides was afraid and he was a fool and he knew it. He had forgotten what it felt like to be at the mercy of the queen of Attolia. The blood pounded in his ears, and his entire body was rigid to fight the trembling in his knees. He was sick with it. He remembered that feeling but thought it had been caused then by the pain in his head. Now there was no pain, but the same feeling in the bottom of his stomach. He would beg, he knew, for any mercy she would show, but he thought there would be none. Even if she exacted no revenge for herself, she would exact it for her throne, and for the Mede, to show him that she had committed herself and her country to him. A shudder he couldn’t stop shook the Thief. He would lose his sight, and his hearing, his power of speech before he finally died. Dead is dead, he had told himself over and over. Dead is dead. But worse than dying was knowing that she would be the one to take those things from him. Because she hated him.
He could tell her he loved her. He ached to shout it out loud for the gods and everyone to hear. Little good it would do. Better to trust in the moon’s promises than the word of the Thief of Eddis. He was famous in three countries for his lies. Why should she believe anything he said, when he was standing with Mede swords at his throat?
Attolia felt him tremble under her hand. For two years he had been trying to build his defenses against her, and in a moment she saw them all stripped away. Certain he could not stand against her, Attolia stepped back, forgetting that being defenseless didn’t preclude attack.
Eugenides took a deep breath and let it go slowly. Then he lifted his chin toward Nahuseresh, who was stepping nearer, having delivered his orders to an underling. The Thief leaned closer to the queen to speak almost into her ear. “From shadow queen to puppet queen in one rule,” he whispered. “That’s very impressive. When he rules your country and he tells you he loves you, I hope you believe him.”
He anticipated her blow and leaned back. Her hand only brushed his cheek in an entirely unsatisfying manner. “At least that’s one lie I didn’t tell you,” Eugenides said.
As he opened his mouth to say more, Nahuseresh reached the queen’s shoulder, and the queen struck again, this time boxing Eugenides’s ear hard with her cupped hand. Eugenides staggered, slipped on the slick ground, and fell backward onto his bound arms. His face twisted in pain, and he bridged, arching his back to get his weight off his arms, then rolled onto his side. She hoped the fall would shut him up but considered kicking him to be sure. She had no desire to hear him protesting his undying love, but he was so very stubborn when you finally got down to some substance under all the lies. She wondered if his stubbornness always led him to make any bad situation worse.
“He insulted you?” Nahuseresh asked.
Attolia turned. “Not for the first time,” she said, rubbing her hand, wiping away a speck of mud. She tucked her arm back through the Mede’s and walked away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EUGENIDES DIDN’T NOTICE WHO HELPED him up. When someone pushed an iron collar under his chin, he lifted his head and stared up into the sky. The rain fell on his upturned face, and he wondered if his gods were watching. The collar closed with a heavy click, and a key was turned in the lock. There was a rattling sound as a chain was run through its metal ring. The chain dragged, and he leaned back automatically to keep his balance. Following a sharp tug, he marched with the other prisoners, crossing the slick mud without looking at it, staring instead into a yawning black pit that he lowered himself into one step at a time. He couldn’t see, except to see the queen dancing in her garden, couldn’t think except of her dressed in palest green with flowers embroidered around the neck of her gown as she watched them cut off his hand. My God, he thought, I am so frightened. O my God, if you will not save me, make me less afraid. He fell on the steep trail.
He hit face first, and the stones in the mud cut into his cheek. He had fallen so quickly that he’d dragged down the two others chained with him. They at least could brace themselves with their chained hands as they tried to get to their feet. Eugenides’s arms were bound to his sides, and his feet, seeking purchase, slid across the wet ground. One of the men made it to his feet, but he rose too quickly. Eugenides choked as the chain pulled hard against his collar, and his weight pulled the other man off-balance to fall again. Somewhere in the dark and the rain around them, someone laughed. The man got to his feet again and this time, while still leaning down, helped Eugenides up. Once upright, Eugenides was facing Nahuseresh, who stood looking on, much amused. White-hot hatred burned through Eugenides. If he was still without hope, at least he could think clearly again.
“Sir,” whispered the man beside him, “at the next cliff, we will jump with you.”
Eugenides turned to look for the first time at the men chained on either side. Both men nodded to assure him that they were willing to sacrifice their lives, but Eugenides shook his head. Attolia had promised the two men would be safely returned to Eddis, and he believed her. If the two soldiers were not to die in the dungeons of Ephrata, he would not drag them to their deaths at the base of a cliff. Eddis would need every soldier if she was going to survive his failure. He shook his head again and wondered what had gone wrong, what mistake he had made.
By dawn they had reached the lower slopes of the hillside and were met by Medean soldiers with horses. Attolia looked through them for her own men.
Nahuseresh explained their absence. “Your guard captain chose to hold the megaron until our return,” he told her. Attolia nodded. “I was surprised, I admit, at his timidity,” the Mede said. “Perhaps he is more used to guarding than fighting.”
“Perhaps,” said Attolia. “Perhaps he only knew his pre
sence would be unnecessary once you were here to protect me.”
“Ah,” said the Mede, “it may be that was it.”
Or it may have been the numbers of Medean soldiers that Nahuseresh had left in the barbarian hovel to encourage Teleus not to step foot outside it. “We must talk, you and I, about the captain of your guard,” Nahuseresh said to Attolia, putting an arm around her for comfort. “I was informed, you see, by a most remarkable woman where you would be. I would not otherwise, I fear, have been on hand to rescue you.”
“A remarkable woman?” The queen looked at him sharply. Jealous? Nahuseresh wondered.
“Why, yes, to slip past Kamet, sleeping by my door, to wake me in my bed, she is most remarkable, don’t you see?”
“I do. And did she shake you by the shoulder or just speak your name?”
“She spoke my name.” The Mede looked at the queen, wondering how she had guessed.
Nahuseresh was a light sleeper, a matter of necessity for him, and when he’d opened his eyes in the darkness of his room and seen a moving flicker of white, he had been instantly alert, slipping his hand under his pillow for the long knife he kept there before he’d rolled quickly to one side. He’d found a woman standing calmly by his bed looking down at him. He had been puzzled to find her dressed in the dark robes of the queen’s attendants and not in white and had glanced around the room seeking another assailant, but he and the woman had been alone, and he supposed the white he had seen had been a trick of the moonlight.
“Nahuseresh.” She had said his name again. “Will you hear my message?”
It was an odd turn of phrase. Nahuseresh had not heard it before. Of course he would hear her message; was he not lying on the bed less than three feet from her? He had wanted to ask where she’d come from and what had become of Kamet, who should have been sleeping in the anteroom, but if all she brought was a message, he was willing to hear it.
“What is it?” he’d asked.
“The queen of Attolia is not drowned,” the woman had said. “Eugenides will carry her into the coastal hills.”
“Is that so?”
The woman had gone on placidly. “He will bring her to the Pricas Spring and from there down the watercourse of the Pricas to the Seperchia, where the queen of Eddis waits.”
“And how do you know this?”
The woman had been silent.
“And why should I believe you?” Nahuseresh had asked.
“I do not ask you to believe me, only to hear my message,” the attendant had answered, and smiled and inclined her head graciously.
Nahuseresh related her message to the Attolian queen. “She could only have known these things if she was a conspirator against you,” he explained. “Or perhaps the lover of a conspirator,” he added, “and if you look to see who that conspirator might be, I think you will find the captain of your guard a likely candidate. Who admitted the Eddisians to the megaron at Ephrata? Who allowed them to leave again? Who sent Eugenides to the dock and who was just a moment too late to reach you there?” he asked the queen.
“I see,” said Attolia.
“I am sure you do,” said Nahuseresh. “If it was Teleus’s woman who told me of Eugenides’s goal…”
“His goal?” Attolia asked sharply.
“The Pricas,” the Mede said. The queen’s attention seemed to be wandering, no doubt put into flight, Nahuseresh thought, by surprise at the idea of honest Teleus as a conspirator.
“Yes, of course,” said Attolia. “If it was Teleus’s lover, she would have learned of the plans from him.”
“I summoned your attendants the next day, and she was not with them. They claimed no one was missing, but I am sure you will discover for yourself who is absent, and then you must let me deal with her.”
“Surely she deserves a reward,” said Attolia.
“You are mistaken.” Nahuseresh corrected her gently. “Had she spoken earlier, she might have been rewarded. Now I will see that she gets what she deserves.”
“I defer to you,” Attolia said, subdued.
Nahuseresh smiled and held her close as he led her to her mount. He did not intend to relate the events that had followed the mysterious woman’s departure. Having delivered her message, to be believed by Nahuseresh or not, she had left so quietly that he hadn’t heard a door close behind her.
“Kamet!” he had yelled, and had been both relieved and irritated to hear the secretary scrambling out of his bed to answer.
“Master?” He’d stood in the doorway, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“A fine watchdog you are. I thought you’d been stabbed or at least drugged,” Nahuseresh had said, sliding his knife back under his pillow and flipping his covers aside. “We have had a visitor.”
He had told Kamet about the woman’s message. “Fetch the lens and a light so that we can signal our boat offshore. Do we have a map of the coastal province of Eddis?”
“Do you believe her?” Kamet had asked.
“I am not sure. I will look at the map before I make up my mind.”
“But you might believe her?”
“It is not much to Eddis’s advantage to have Attolia dead,” Nahuseresh had said, thinking aloud as he was fitting his feet into his slippers. They were deerskin, lined with lamb’s wool and one of the few luxuries he’d brought to the barbarian coast with him. “Her titular heir is not fond of the Mede, but he would not hold the throne long. If Eddis held the queen rather than killing her, and the Attolians were persuaded to answer to her puppeted commands, we could be driven off this shore, and between them, Eddis and the controlled Attolia could deal with Sounis.”
“So what the woman said is plausible?”
“I don’t know yet,” his master had answered caustically. “You haven’t brought me my map.”
Kamet had laughed and gone to fetch it. Together they searched for a marker of the Pricas Spring.
“It will be close to the chasm of the pass,” the Mede had muttered, running his index finger across the carefully inked lines. “If it weren’t very close to the chasm, the watercourse would lead down the coastal hills to the sea, not into the river.”
“There,” said Kamet, pointing. His trained eyes had found the words before his master.
Looking at the map, measuring distances by eye, Nahuseresh had said, “It’s plausible. The springwaters have cut a canyon down to the Seperchia. If Eugenides landed somewhere in here, he could move that distance in a day and on the next perhaps reach his queen.”
“There are no landing sites marked,” Kamet had countered.
“No doubt the Eddisians have landing spots on their rocky shores that they do not advertise to their neighbors.”
“So you will believe the woman?”
Nahuseresh had stared into space for a while, thinking. “I would be a fool, I suppose, not to act as if I did.”
“You will retrieve the queen?”
“We will certainly bring her back,” his master had answered. “Whether she will be alive, I cannot say. Alive, she would be very grateful.”
“If she dies, there will be an internal war for the throne,” Kamet had said.
“And someone will surely wish for the assistance of our emperor,” Nahuseresh had answered with a confident smile.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Kamet had murmured under his breath.
Led by the Medean ambassador to a horse, Attolia permitted him to assist her into the saddle. Sitting above him, she still managed to gaze up from under her lashes. She felt a small glow of pleasure at her skill in imitating her attendant Chloe. “Will you have the prisoners chained and brought to the megaron, the main hall, for me?” the queen asked meekly.
“As you wish, my dear,” Nahuseresh said.
“I want one of them to carry a message for me to Eddis. I’ll pick one after I have my bath.”
“You can’t pick now?” he asked with a smile.
“After my bath,” Attolia said, and Nahuseresh deferred with a bow.
/> There were olives to ride through and then a road to follow past the tiny village of Ephrata. The road ran along the top of the bluffs overlooking the sea, curving as the bluffs curved and then climbing the spur on which the megaron sat. From the village Attolia had seen the bodies hanging from the megaron’s walls, but she didn’t ask about them until she and Nahuseresh were riding beneath them, through the gate to the main courtyard.
“Alas, traitors,” said Nahuseresh. “I know how you deal with criminals, and I knew you would not disapprove.”
Attolia’s executions had been limited to those actually guilty of a crime. Two of the barons suspended upside down above the gate had been among those whose rare loyalty was unquestioned, but she didn’t choose to argue with Nahuseresh.
“I thank you for your concern on my behalf, Nahuseresh,” the queen said, her voice pleasant.
“Of course,” Nahuseresh replied.
Inside the courtyard Nahuseresh ordered grooms for their horses, a meal to be prepared, and an escort for the queen to her chambers, quite comfortably directing the queen’s soldiers and servants. When they looked to their queen for confirmation of these orders, his face darkened.
“You don’t object, I am sure,” he said.
“Not at all,” said the queen. “I rely on you.”
He went on then with his orders, and the servants slid away without lifting their eyes again.
To one of his own guard he said, “The queen wishes to be undisturbed. You will see that no one enters her chambers,” and excused himself to take care of what he called “other matters.”
The queen walked with her escort to her chambers, leaving the Mede guard outside the door. Inside she found her attendants white faced and silent. Attolia pulled the cloak from her shoulders and held it out. An attendant stepped forward to take it.