The reader may believe a goddess came bearing a message for the king or believe it was only the effect of the smoke from the braziers. The acolyte can offer no corroboration. From the slightly bored expression on her face, I gathered that she saw only the king lying on the floor, not Moira bending over him, the pattern on her shawl changing in the dim and uneven light.
“Eugenides,” said Moira, and I heard for the first time what the Oracle’s voice only echoed. “Tell me again why you pester the Great Goddess?”
“I ask humbly for instruction,” he replied, without lifting his head, speaking in the accent I hadn’t heard since I’d been ill, without the diplomatic overlay of Attolian vowels.
“You ask to have all things made plain to you. How is that humble?”
“Asking for guidance is not humble?”
“Asking may be. Expecting an answer is not.”
“I no more than hope, goddess.”
Moira sighed, shaking her head. “Lies, lies, Eugenides.” She crouched beside him and pushed his hair to one side, tucking it behind his ear so that she might whisper softly into it. “Here is your answer then, humblest of mortals. You will fall, as your kind always fall, when your god lets you go.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Now you know what many men do not.”
She straightened, and stepping behind the pillar, did not reappear on the far side.
It was a little longer before the king pushed himself to his feet. As he rose, so did the acolyte beside me. Relieved, I slid myself from the bench and held on to it while I eased my leg.
“Have you received your answer, Your Majesty?” the acolyte asked dryly.
“Indeed, I have,” said the king, in a speculative kind of voice. I turned to see him watching me. I think I had that air of a stunned rabbit still.
“You are one surprise after another, Pheris,” he murmured, patting me on the back before leading the way out of the dark treasury.
“You have had your answer,” said Attolia.
“Indeed,” said the king, evidently pleased with it.
“Not the answer to the question you asked, though.”
He shrugged, dismissing her concern. “Moira said I will die of a fall, not by the sword. Galen and Petrus can stop wrangling over my health.”
“Men fall in battle.”
That stopped the king.
“They fall ill,” added Attolia, spearing an entirely harmless pastry and transferring it to her plate. They were dining together in a private room after the king’s morning training with his guard. “Eddis cannot force her barons to bow to me, nor can Sounis,” said the queen. “I cannot force mine to bow to them. Not even to stop the Mede will they unite, except through you. The Eddisians accept you as high king over your cousin who is Eddis—”
“Except all the ones who don’t,” muttered the king.
“Because you are Eddisian. The barons of Sounis may not like to see their king bow to you, but they know that otherwise they would be ruled by the Mede. My barons do not like a foreign king, but they comfort themselves with the fact that the king of Attolia is Annux.”
The king tipped his fork back and forth, watching the light reflecting on the tablecloth. He knew this. He knew all of this. There was no reason to say it except to force him to admit that it was true.
“To send people to their deaths and not risk my own is contemptible,” he said.
“Is it?” Attolia said, her words leached of any emotion.
The king had the grace to look embarrassed, and the queen, having made her point, moved on. “A letter has come from Eddis. She reports that someone named Therespides is a cause for concern. He stirs up trouble, suggesting you have no right to be ruler over Eddis.”
“He’s right. That’s why Helen rules over Eddis.”
“She suspects he is being paid for his efforts. Who is he?”
“He used to be on your payroll, or rather, the payroll of your former master of spies. Relius used to give him money in exchange for information,” said the king.
“Eddis has no evidence of clandestine meetings, and the Mede ambassador is only one possible source of the money,” said Attolia, delicately chewing her lip.
“She should send that ambassador back to the Medes,” said the king.
“And admit she is no longer sovereign and no longer in need of her own ambassador?” Attolia countered.
The king conceded, waving his hand. “You’re right. Sounis can shoot him instead.” The queen was not amused.
“Did your cousin Cleon truly break your fingers?” she asked abruptly.
Startled, the king said, “Cleon broke one of them, mostly by accident. My exceptionally more vicious cousin Lader broke two more. Why do you ask?”
“Cleon offers the most amenable ear to Therespides. Eddis says she would like to have him out of her court.”
“She should exile him, then.”
“My suggestion as well, but she feels she cannot without causing more difficulties. You and I agreed you would have new attendants once the scandal over Sejanus died down.”
“We agreed I might have attendants who didn’t hate me, or at least ones who weren’t standing around watching while someone tried to kill me.”
“Eddis asks, if you have gotten over your unfortunate history with him, whether Cleon might be one of them.”
With only an appearance of consideration, Eugenides said, “Cleon Omeranicus is already my attendant. Wouldn’t it cause confusion having two Cleons?”
The queen deferred with an almost invisible shrug. It would hardly serve to pick one’s government servants by the convenience of their names, but she knew an excuse when she heard one and didn’t press further.
“Maybe Lader?” she suggested.
The king’s laugh was light, but bitter. “Only if he comes back from the dead.”
Most of my days were spent in the waiting room. It was not a requirement; officially I was free to come and go just like any of the other attendants. Unlike them, I was afraid to venture too far from the king’s protecting presence. I walked alone to the library to meet my tutor through well-traveled passageways and did not give in to the temptation to explore beyond them. Instead I tucked myself into a corner of the waiting room where the light from the window above obscured my presence. Safe enough there, I could think my own thoughts or listen to the talk around me.
Much of the conversation was boring. Philologos pined for a young woman named Terse, without any sympathy from me. Verimius pursued the poet Lavia, who wrote terrible poetry about Celia, one of the queen’s attendants. Cleon was in love with a girl whose father was a devoted member of the queen’s party at court, which was awkward, as Cleon’s family was deeply in debt to my grandfather who was Susa.
“At least you’re not an Erondites,” Verimius consoled him, with a sidelong glance at me.
Indeed, one of the satellite members of the house of Erondites had been found very bruised at the bottom of a staircase. He insisted that he’d tripped.
Some things I saw I did not yet understand: why a guard stared at Layteres, the second son of Baron Xortix, and why Layteres pretended so poorly not to notice. The other guards in Aristogiton’s squad watched them both with expressions I couldn’t read. Medander’s purpose as he surreptitiously carved the edge on a die was more clear. He saw my eyes on him and put the die in his pocket, scowling.
Verimius and Medander talked openly about their dislike of the king, oblivious not only to my attentive ears but also to the reaction of the guards standing duty at the doors and the squad leader sitting on the bench nearby.
“He knows nothing of how to rule,” Verimius sulked.
“He did not agree to let you have the disputed land?”
“He said it is the queen’s decision.”
“Pathetic,” said Medander. “He is supposed to be king. It is the queen who rules while he keeps low company. Promoting filthy okloi.”
“Well, Costis was a patronoi.”
“Two olive
trees and a goat don’t make an estate. He should have been hanged. His friends, too.”
One of the guards standing by the door was Clopius, a good friend to one of the men in Aristogiton’s squad, the men Costis had risked his life to shelter from the queen’s rage. I remember this moment particularly because Clopius died trying to protect the king after the ambush at the roadside tomb.
Xikos was less direct.
“So, Hilarion, are you for the king now?” he asked in his needling way.
“And if I am?” Hilarion responded.
“Well, it hardly matters, does it? The king is not for us, is he? None of our bootlicking will make him treat us as real companions.” He’d used “our,” but he meant “your.” He just didn’t have the nerve to insult Hilarion outright.
“I wouldn’t think your bootlicking would make anyone treat you as a real companion, Xikos,” said Hilarion, laughing at him. “I am for the king because I am for the king. That is all.”
“Oh, surely there is some self-service there? Convince him of your loyalty and improve your fortune?”
“And do you think my fortunes are in doubt, Xikos?”
It was Xikos who needed to have his fortunes repaired. It had been a godsend to his family to have him made an attendant of the new king, and he’d squandered the opportunity. Rather than blame himself, Xikos pretended it was the king who was at fault.
On the rare occasions the king and queen were in the king’s bedchamber together, the waiting room also held the queen’s attendants, but it was mostly filled with men. Hilarion was married, his wife sometimes joined him in the evenings, but she always left before the heavy drinking began. Dionis, Lamion, and Verimius were married, but their wives lived in the country. That left them free to participate in all the flirtations of the court, which Lamion did to a lesser extent and Verimius to a greater.
One person who was always welcome in the waiting room was the ambassador of the Braelings, Yorn Fordad. He often joined the attendants at the card table and could count on being waved into the bedchamber for a private audience if he caught the eye of the king. Fordad was a solid man with a kind face and a deep, friendly laugh. Unlike so many Braelings, he was not blond, but his skin was just as fair as his countrymen’s, and when he was too long in the sun, it burned a bright pink. He kept his chin bare, but when he was playing cards, he liked to stroke his luxurious mustache.
His fellow ambassador, Besin Quedue, who represented the Pents, no one liked. He’d only recently been sent to serve in the Attolian court, having gotten into some sort of trouble at home. Before his arrival, the small state of Attolia hadn’t warranted an official ambassador from the mighty Pents; they had relied instead on Fordad as an extraordinary ambassador to protect their interests. Fordad bore Quedue’s company patiently and did his best to guide him, but the Pent ignored his advice.
In everyone’s hearing, Quedue had assured Fordad that he didn’t expect to be stuck in a backwater like Attolia for long. “Father says there will be a spot for me in the subordinary council in a year or two. All I need do is amuse myself in the meantime. The queen is lovely, hmmm?”
“She has a husband,” the Braeling cautioned him.
“He is an infant. It is a marriage of convenience.”
“Mmm,” said Fordad.
“I’ve heard he pretends not to recognize the Mede ambassador. He won’t play games like that with me!” said the Pent.
The Braeling rolled his eyes to the heavens—we all saw it. We also saw that when the door to the king’s bedchamber opened and people rose to their feet, the Pent ambassador bowed as low as anyone else.
Later Verimius remarked to Cleon, “Please gods, no one tell that Pent what happened to Nahuseresh. Talking right in front of us as if we were furniture. If he’s going to be rude, you’d think he would do it in his own language.”
More perceptive, Cleon asked, “If we couldn’t understand him, how would we know we were being insulted?”
As the days grew warmer and the rains tapered off, my grandfather began to worry that it would not be as easy as he’d anticipated to get rid of me once his little joke had played out. He knew he would need to remove me from the king’s proximity, and he started laying his groundwork. As if to underscore the precariousness of all things in life, Baron Hippias, the secretary of the archives, went to bed and was found dead in the morning.
Chapter Five
Spring was well begun when Eddis and Sounis returned to Attolia for the Festival of Moira. Cenna of Eddis was competing that year for the Golden Pen, and they came to see the plays performed. Though they were greeted with open arms by the Attolians, their retinues seemed stiff, and some of the Eddisians appeared outright sullen. Lamion commented on it and Ion said they always looked like that.
The city was full for the presentation of new plays and the selection of the best of them for Moira’s prize. The Invaders may have built Attolia’s amphitheater, across the river from the city, but it was the plays written in Moira’s honor that filled it every day in fine weather. It was the first time I’d seen a play, and I still remember every word of all three presented that year, though the first two were nothing out of the ordinary. No one, of course, has forgotten the third play, Cenna’s “Royal Favor.”
When the narrator first strode out on the stage to introduce his play, the people who came to the theater to chatter with one another and enjoy the sunshine hardly paid attention.
Sing, Goddess! Of the lazy king! Emipopolitus, who connived his way to the throne
by marrying the king’s daughter Bythesea! Oh, foolish princess,
swayed by a pretty face!
Tell us, Moira! Of our indolent king, stuffing himself at the banquet table,
shirking responsibilities and shouting of enemies
only he can see!
“Beware! Beware!” The king endlessly warns of war, sending his dinner guests to hiding
so that he can go place to place, drinking up the wine
left in their cups!
Oh, Emipopolitus, it is you who must beware as your enemies unite against you!
Oh, sorry king, who sees his doom upon him!
How shall he save himself?
Watch now and see
how cunning a man can be,
how hard a lazy man will work
when he serves himself.
As the actors filed onto the stage behind the narrator, the audience gasped. If Emipopolitus’s showy costume had left any doubt who was the target of this satire, the oversized hook the actor wore made it unmistakable. By the time the narrator finished the prologue and waited for royal permission to proceed, the whole theater was dead silent.
Many corrupt businessmen or conniving courtiers have seen a thinly veiled version of themselves vilified in Moira’s plays, or painfully ridiculed as a lesson to others, but mocking the powerful is not without risk. Only success protects a writer from retribution. The king, with no real choice, gave his permission for the play to go on, but settling back into his seat, he murmured to the queen, “Swayed by a pretty face.”
Cenna was engaged in a dangerous business indeed.
Fortunately for Cenna, we laughed until our sides ached as Emipopolitus ran around the stage creating more and more complicated plans that succeeded only by accident in confounding every attempt to unseat him. I was delighted at the end of the play, when all of the lazy king’s enemies, including the narrator himself, climbed into a boat to be carried off to exile, convinced they were on their way to colonize the moon. The actor playing Emipopolitus waved them goodbye. When the boat had been lifted into a flyway above the stage, he turned to the audience.
Chorus and all are flown away, and though I could close the play myself
Give all its elements in capsule form for latecomers and the inattentive
I beg you to excuse me, as I must retire
to drink the wine they left behind.
He waved his hook and wobbled off the stage as the audience roa
red, and the amphitheater filled with claps and whistles and cheers. The king said very mildly, considering how he’d been abused, “I feel I am missing something in the references to wine.”
“I have increased the royal requisitions of it, as well as the other crops we are stockpiling,” Attolia said grimly.
“I don’t see why that’s my fault,” said the king. “Why isn’t Queen Emipopolita the main character of this play?”
Because not even an Eddisian would have dared. It was astonishing that Cenna had gone as far as she had. No Attolian would have had the nerve to create the character of the Princess Bythesea.
At the banquet in the palace that evening, there was talk of nothing but Cenna’s play. Most people had the sense to keep their conversations very quiet, one eye on the high table as they spoke. Only the Pent was sufficiently rude or stupid to laugh out loud.
The Mede ambassador had tried to engage the ambassadors of the Epidi Islands and Kimmer on the subject. Diplomatically, the Epidian claimed not to have seen it. The ambassador of Kimmer said the same, going on at some length about his health and the inadvisability of spending all day in the heat. It might have been diplomacy or truth. “Large crowds inevitably breed disease,” he told Melheret. “I never see plays.”
“Pity,” said the Mede. “It was most amusing.” Turning to Quedue, he finally got the response he had been fishing for.
“Quite riotously funny!” the Pent shouted, loud enough to draw everyone’s attention. He quoted the silliest bits of the play while looking straight at the king as Melheret smiled and the king smiled, the smiles more and more ferocious, and only the Pent failing to notice.
There was no way to deny Cenna the Golden Pen. She had given a voice to all those who resented the high taxes and the requisitions levied to support the war effort, who thought the Medes, twice driven off the Little Peninsula, were no longer a threat. To deny her play the prize might enflame them further.
When she came forward to take the pen, Cenna turned out to be a surprisingly small woman with a head full of curly hair and a cheerful smile. She didn’t look like a troublemaker.
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