Return of the Thief

by Megan Whalen Turner

  “I have exiled people for less than a play like that, Cenna,” said the king sourly.

  “But it was funny, Gen, wasn’t it?”

  “Time will tell,” said the king. And indeed, it is a play still performed in the capital every year or two, to the delight of its audiences.

  “Moira’s priestesses will be more careful how they select the judges for their contest in the future,” said Attolia, sitting at her dressing table. She had sent away Phresine, who usually undid the pins from her hair, and made no move to remove them herself. Her hands remained folded in her lap.

  “We have more important things to worry us,” Eugenides pointed out. “The Namreen are still on the hunt. Costis may still be alive.”

  Attolia nodded absently.

  “Irene?” Eugenides prompted.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “Sophos asked my advice about a prisoner he is holding.”

  “Ion Nomenus,” Eugenides guessed. “Is he still in that pig shed?”

  “He was moved down to a cell in Hanaktos.”

  “I suppose Sophos wants to release him.”

  “Of course he does,” snapped Attolia. “Sophos would let a viper nest in his shoe if it said pleassssssse.”

  Eugenides laughed, but she was too angry to join him. She said, “Nomenus betrayed him. Sophos should have killed him on the spot and he didn’t have the stomach for it.”

  “He didn’t,” Eugenides agreed.

  “He let a traitor play on his weakness, and the result of his mercy is that he is asked for even more mercy.” She finally began to work at the pins in her complicated braids, pulling them too hard, catching a few hairs with each pin and pulling anyway. “Nomenus has petitioned to be pardoned.”

  “Many of Sophos’s barons did worse and suffered not at all.” Eugenides crossed the room to stand behind her.

  Meeting his gaze in the mirror, Attolia glared. “We are kings and queens, not all-powerful gods. We cannot reward the good men and punish the bad ones just as we would prefer. He should leave Nomenus to rot and I told him so,” she said, daring her king to disapprove.

  Eugenides wisely let a moment pass, and when he spoke it was not to argue over the just deserts of a traitor. “You’re angry at Sophos for asking you to make that decision so he wouldn’t have to.”

  “I do what I must because I am queen of Attolia. I am not here to cut Sophos’s food for him.” She yanked on a pin.

  He stilled her hand with his own. Startled, she regretted her choice of metaphor, but he lifted her hand away gently and began to free the pins himself.

  “Give our friend more credit than that,” he asked of her. “He came to you because you have greater experience. You gave him your counsel. The decision is his, and Sophos of all people would never try to evade that responsibility.”

  As the pins painlessly slipped free, Attolia said, more sympathetically, “I told him he should save a better man. Nomenus is a liar who will only lie to him again.”

  She was eyeing him once more in her mirror.

  “Whereas I am filled with truth as a hive is with honey,” he said, his voice sticky-sweet.

  “Oh, what a lie that was,” she said, her expression finally softening.

  By this time, I was ranging farther from the king’s side. If people still saw me and warded off ill luck with a flick of their fingers, they did no more than that, and I was careful never to venture where the king’s favor might not protect me. The day after Cenna’s play, as I returned from another pointless visit to my tutor, I was surprised to see Juridius. I thought he might be an apparition until he threw an arm over my shoulder.

  “Hello, brother. My grandfather who is Susa invited me to the festival.” So he, too, had seen the plays. I wondered what he had made of them, but he had not sought me out to talk about Moira’s competition. I should have guessed it by the way he said “my grandfather who is Susa,” as if Susa was not my grandfather as well.

  We stood for some time, arm in arm, in a brotherly fashion, while people passed by, and he told me the news of home, none of it what I wanted to hear. Having talked quite loudly about the family and our mother’s prestigious visitors, and her reconciliation with her father, he said more quietly, “My grandfather who is Erondites misses having an informant among the king’s attendants, Pheris.”

  I tried to pull away and he tightened his grip.

  My mother’s charming brother Sejanus had used his position as attendant to torment the king and further an assassination attempt. My uncle’s crimes were the very reason I’d been sent to the palace as a pretend heir.

  “Erondites wants to know when they will move grain to the stockpiles at Perma,” Juridius whispered in my ear. “I told him I could find out from you.”

  I yanked my head back to look him in the eye, thinking it a cruel joke, not believing my brother would betray me so, and to my grandfather, of all people. Juridius made a pretense of reassuring me. “Melisande is an old woman, scared of shadows,” he said. “You have nothing to fear from Erondites.”

  Having revealed that I was no fool, he still thought he could treat me like one. I tapped a finger to his temple. He was empty-headed if he thought I didn’t know that my grandfather wanted me dead.

  Slapping my hand away, his smiles all gone, Juridius said, “You are his heir, Pheris, heir to the house of Erondites. You must do what is best for the family.”

  I shook my head. My treacherous brother shook his, mocking me.

  “Tell me, Pheris,” he said, “do your new friends know that you are not the idiot you pretend to be? Does the king?” He tightened his arms further, making it hard for me to breathe.

  Melisande knew how dangerous it was to be me. It was her hope that people might take pity on a poor witless boy, where they would fear and despise a clever one. She had taught me to play the fool and led my family to believe I was one. In Attolia’s palace, they’d taken my idiocy for granted. If they found out that I had understood all the secrets I’d overheard, that I knew the significance of the things I had seen, they would murder me.

  My weak, traitorous body shuddered, and Juridius laughed.

  “So,” he pressed again. “When are they moving the grain wagons to Perma?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Pheris.” He lingered over my name. “Do you want them to know about Emtis?”

  If not for the wall, I might have fallen. Emtis was the illegitimate son of one of my father’s cousins, a servant, but with a few tenuous privileges of family. He had come to the villa when I had recently lost Juridius’s companionship.

  Juridius, less than a year younger than I was, had grown from an infant into a sturdy boy with no need of a nurse. My father had sent for him to join the rest of the family in the villa, to learn to ride and hunt and sit at the table as the heir to our father, a son to be proud of. Forlorn, I had tried to approach him in the house, to invite him back to our former games. At first Juridius had been puzzled by the way I was treated, then uncertain, and then, when it was clear to him that he could not be my companion and also the proud son of my father, he’d joined the others in chasing me off.

  People are frequently cruel in just such an artless, unreflective way. Juridius was only doing what everyone expected of him. Not Emtis. He burned to pass along the humiliation he felt to someone else. Melisande could threaten the other servants, but she couldn’t protect me from him. She could only beg me to stay inside our home, the only place I was safe, and I had refused. I would not give up my freedom, so Emtis had followed me from the house to the stables, to the kitchen garden and anywhere I tried to hide from him. He was a grown man and I was a child, and eventually, driven to my wits’ end, I did something terrible. I became the monster people had called me all my life. Emtis lived, but he would never hurt me again.

  Juridius was the only person who had suspected the truth of what happened, and he’d used it to rid himself of my company. He’d said, “I hate it when you try to sit next to me in the hall,
and I am sick of seeing you looking at me from the doorway with your weepy eyes. I am the heir of my father. I am the son who should be oldest.” He warned me to stay away from him or he would tell everyone what had caused our cousin’s accident.

  He never had, though. He’d kept my secret and I’d thought he always would, that somewhere still inside him was the brother I’d played with on Melisande’s hearth, my beloved companion.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, standing in the passage outside the palace library. “You’re the one who is the monster,” he reminded me. “You’re the one who refuses to help his own brother.” He drove his elbow harder and harder into my chest. Afraid for myself, thinking of nothing else, I finally gave in. And when Juridius was gone, I staggered back to the king, telling myself over and over that nothing had changed. I had never been meant to live long.

  The king was not an early riser. After a week of nightly banquets, he was moving particularly slowly the next day. He had promised to meet Sounis to spar, but he yawned and stretched and took so long to get up that in the end, he threw on his own clothes and raced out the door, moving too fast for me to follow. Wary of running into Juridius on my own, I went with Lamion and Sotis to prepare the breakfast room near the guest apartments.

  Eddis and Attolia were already seated and waiting when Sounis arrived from the morning exercise, freshly washed, his hair still wet.

  “Gen is still going at it,” he said. “Whereas I am an idle layabout who refuses to be bullied into sparring all morning.” He dropped onto a chair and flinched as it creaked under his weight. Sotis brought him coffee and he took a cup from the tray without bothering to pinch the tiny delicate handle between his fingers, then blew on it before downing the contents in a single swallow.

  Just then we heard the king. He was making his way along the terrace below the window, singing loudly. I saw Eddis wince, and not at his sour notes. He had to have known we would hear him and that we would recognize the song.

  Without a word, Sounis pulled himself back out of his chair. He reached for the pitcher of water on Sotis’s tray and, looking to Attolia, he waggled it suggestively. After a moment’s uncharacteristic hesitation, she gave a tight nod just as the king reached the chorus.

  Keeping his own dear love in mind

  he said, you are more beautiful,

  but she is more k—

  Sparkling in the morning light, the water arced out the window, the king’s outraged shout proof that Sounis’s aim had been true. The room filled with laughter as Sounis turned to replace the pitcher. When he turned back, probably intending to shout something rude out the window, he did not expect to be face-to-face with his target.

  The king’s attendants had watched, open-mouthed, as he’d thrown his practice sword aside, rushed directly at the wall, and gone straight up it—as if the power that pulls all things toward the Earth had tipped on its side just for him. He toed the rough stones with his soft boots and made it all the way to the windowsill, where he’d had just enough time to snatch at Sounis’s sleeve before he began to drop. While Sounis squawked like a surprised rooster, Eugenides shifted to get a better grip. Sounis tried to shake him off and was pulled halfway out the window. The expressions on the faces of the men below were changing from shock to horror. If Sounis got free, the king would fall. If Eugenides pulled him any farther, they both would.

  Attolia and Eddis tried to draw Sounis back, but Eugenides had planted his feet flat and was pulling with everything he had. Everyone was shouting or laughing, even Attolia. Sounis’s face was growing redder by the moment. Because it was three on one, or more likely because he outweighed the king, Sounis was slowly hauling himself back inside, and bringing Eugenides with him. They had their arms locked around each other’s necks, Eugenides still not giving up, when Attolia said, very quietly, “Gen, enough.”

  They both froze, though neither let go. In the sudden silence, Sounis’s breath was whistling in his throat.

  “You’ve made your little monster cry,” said Attolia, and ludicrously, the king of Attolia and the king of Sounis, still without releasing each other, twisted to look at me where I stood with tears running down my face.

  Sounis said in a kind, if strangled, voice, “He doesn’t mean it.”

  I hadn’t realized I was crying and, realizing it, found I couldn’t stop. The king untangled himself from Sounis and came to drop on one knee beside me.

  “It’s just a game,” he reassured me. “No one is angry.”

  But I only cried harder, until the sobs shook my whole body and I struggled to breathe.

  “Chloe,” said Attolia, restored to her usual formality, “take him and a few of the sweets up to the apartments. He needs a rest.”

  Chloe was something of a dogsbody among the queen’s attendants, tasked with the less pleasant errands. She had offended the queen, I believe, and been sent home for a while. I’d heard her complain about it, and I’d heard the older attendants trying to make her see that the queen offered her a way to prove herself, that a diligent performance of the unwelcome tasks was the path back into the queen’s good graces. I thought Chloe dim-witted, though, and I doubted that she would ever learn.

  She kept her expression pleasant until we’d left the room and the queen of Attolia was out of sight.

  “Ugh,” she said, pulling her hand out of mine. She wiped her hand on her skirts. She wasn’t unkind, so she didn’t hit me, merely suggested I pull myself together.

  “Here,” she said, handing me a sticky ball of honey and sesame seeds. “You’ll be too busy sucking it out of your teeth to cry.” Which was not untrue.

  Very soon I was back in the quiet of the king’s apartments, my ragged breathing evening out. I thought Chloe would leave me there, but she had taken her instructions to heart and followed me every step of the way, past the guards at the door and through the attendants’ waiting room to the warren of rooms behind it. When I lay down, she put the handful of sweets beside my head, then flicked a bedsheet over me. She crouched there a moment, looking down at me.

  “I have little brothers, though none as ugly as you,” she said, “and they only cry when they are ashamed of themselves. I wonder: what are you ashamed of, little monster?” She searched my face as I stared back at her. Then she stood, brushed her skirts straight, and went away, not as dim-witted as I’d thought.

  I cried off and on for the rest of the day. When it was time to dress the king for dinner, I pretended to be asleep and the attendants stepped around my bedding without speaking to me.

  Cenna rode back to the mountains with Moira’s Golden Pen. Eddis and Sounis sailed away to his capital city. I hid from the king.

  If I was anywhere nearby, he could always find me, so I took to slipping off to the closets to hide behind the clothes. When he sent the attendants to hunt for me, they returned both resentful and empty-handed. The king, in turn, began to call me to his side just as I took my first step away, as if this was a game we were playing, as if he were winning. I could not look him in the eye without thinking of how I had betrayed him, while he thought I was trying to avoid the tedium of his meetings.

  “If I have to sit through another interminable session with the western barons about road taxes, then you will, too,” he insisted.

  The only way I could escape from him was to follow the queen when she and the king went their separate ways. The king was careful to call no one to account in front of Her Majesty and I knew he would not risk drawing her attention to my disobedience. That’s why I was present when matters came to a head with the Pent ambassador. Attolia was not scheduled to meet with Quedue. She was to meet with her architects that afternoon, to discuss the new aqueduct. I had trailed behind as she had left the royal apartment, purely to avoid remaining in it with the king. I was unexpectedly entertained.

  The little town of Attolia first took root on the heights above the mouth of the Tustis River. The Tustis was brackish near the coast, and the town drew its water from the clean a
nd clear Chelian Spring uphill from it. After the Invaders came, the city grew larger and more powerful. It was rebuilt closer to the shore, and it needed more water, so the first aqueduct was built to bring it from the upper part of the Tustis River, where it was fresher. As the city continued to grow, the second aqueduct was built during the Trading Empire and the third finished after the traders were gone.

  By the time the first aqueduct was destroyed in an earthquake, the city’s growth had slowed. Although an ambitious project to build a much longer system had begun, the work on it had stopped and started over the years. Attolia was determined not only to see the aqueduct finished, but to erect a beautiful public fountain at its terminus, where the water would be delivered to her people. The engineers reviewed the history and explained their plans. They talked of drop and flow rate, and the precision of measurements and construction required to bring water hundreds of miles without ever allowing it to overflow its course, and I listened, rapt.

  The council room was one of the largest in the old part of the palace, one level below the royal apartments, with a table in the center big enough to seat all the architects, the engineers, and the advisors associated with such a monumental project. There were doors at either end and a wall of windows overlooking the city. Opposite the windows was a row of alcoves, each with its own potted lemon tree. I was behind one of them. The queen did not look upon me with the same indulgence as the king, and it was always better to be out of her line of sight.

  The lemon trees are long gone now, replaced with pedestals holding the busts of famous admirals. The beautiful landscapes that used to cover the walls have been painted over with pictures of the naval battle at Hemsha—a shame, as the work was not well done and war should not be made beautiful to look at.

  Once the talk of the aqueduct moved from engineering to money, how much might be raised and from whom, I dozed off, waking only when chairs scraped across the floor as people rose from the table and bowed to the queen. I stretched and rubbed my leg while waiting for everyone to leave. They were very likely to forget me, and then I would be free to go to the garden. To my disappointment, Phresine said, “Your Majesty, the Pent ambassador requests a private audience.”