A messenger coming from the palace approached Motis to whisper in his ear. Motis, rather than passing the information to the queen’s senior attendant, took the man directly to the queen. The king leaned his elbows on the fence Fryst had refused to jump, waiting to hear what news was too important to wait until his riding lesson was over.
The queen called to him. “Costis’s ship has been sighted off the coast.”
“What flag?” asked the king.
“Round!”
This was evidently the best possible answer, and there was a great sense of relief in the air. The queen stood up. Then she sat again very quickly, and the king’s smile vanished.
Phresine was at the queen’s side. The king leapt the fence.
After a conference in low voices, in which Attolia insisted she was fine, the queen was lifted into her carriage. The king climbed in beside her and they rushed away, leaving the attendants to pile into the other carriages or follow on their horses. As they traveled back to the palace, people who might have smiled and waved as they passed hesitated, their smiles evaporating just as the king’s had, like summer rain on hot stones. Petrus was waiting for them when they arrived. A guard had raced ahead of the royal party. The queen was tenderly conveyed to her rooms.
No one cared, or even noticed, that I had been left behind.
I had taken a few steps as everyone rushed for the carriages, but it was already too late. No one even looked back to see me watching as they pulled away.
I had no idea how to navigate my way back to the palace. I knew it was uphill. I also knew that none of the streets ran straight. There were so many turns to take, and it was so far to go on foot. I was a small, unnatural person in fancy clothes; both of those things would draw a great deal of attention, none of it benevolent. As the carriages rolled away, I stood despairing.
“Left you behind, didn’t they?” said the stable master, and I swung around with relief. If I had been forgotten, I had also forgotten him.
“Probably never gave you a thought. All fine looking and smelling of perfume. They were born beautiful and mistake being beautiful for being good.”
I swallowed, well aware that I was neither beautiful nor good, and certainly not as kind as the stable master, who nodded at Fryst and said, “Well?”
I didn’t understand until he squatted and linked his hands together at knee height, an invitation to mount. Hesitantly I lifted my good foot, nowhere near enough, and the master straightened, reconsidering. My hopes fell. Of course, it was ridiculous to think I could ride the king’s warhorse.
Instead of giving up, the stable master took me by the shoulders and positioned me better. “Don’t grab my head for balance,” he told me, putting his hands around my waist. “I’ll put you on your stomach and you see if you can swing your leg over as you sit up. I’ll be right here holding you.”
When I nodded, he lifted his hands and I flew into the air. I had just enough time to remember to grab at the front edge of the saddle with my good hand. The master held my good leg while I slid the bad one across the polished leather of the saddle, and then I was sitting up, looking between the ears of the king’s warhorse, which went on obliviously working at the bit in his mouth.
“That’s fine, isn’t it?” said the master.
It was glorious.
“Fryst is learning all kinds of new things today,” he said.
Back in the palace, I made my way to the king’s apartments, my heart full of conflicting feelings—a nebulous worry for the queen and the leftover bubbling delight of my ride on the king’s horse. Seeing me sway in the saddle, the stable master had stepped into Fryst’s stirrup and mounted behind me. With his horse trailing on a rein, we had traveled at a walking pace through town. A very sedate first ride, and I had loved every moment of it. I smiled my thanks at the stable master who had been so unexpectedly generous.
“Go on, boy,” was all he said.
The king’s apartments were empty. The guards at his door guarded no one. Not a single attendant was there. I went to the queen’s apartments, where I found all of them in their waiting room, sitting in silence.
“Get out,” said Xikander when he noticed me, throwing a handful of something at my face. “Your hideous face has cursed our queen.”
If not for the kindness of the stable master, I would have backed away. No one else was going to defend me. They mistake being beautiful for being good. I turned to see what Xikander had thrown. Almonds. I crouched down to pick them up. When I had all of them, I stepped to where Xikander sat beside a little gold-and-green painted table with three fragile legs, its top crowded with cups and small plates. I opened my hand to let the nuts drop one by one into the bowl he had taken them from. Then I picked up his wine and threw it in his face.
As the son of the house, I’d been protected from any direct attack by the servants. Not so from the dear members of my extended family, who lived in and around the Villa Suterpe. I used my invisibility to my advantage, but my invisibility was not my only defense. I also bit—as Xikander discovered when he leapt up to strike me. Lamion grabbed his arm, impeding him just enough to let me catch Xikander’s hand and sink my teeth into the fleshy part of his palm.
Xikander shouted, smacking me with his free hand while Lamion hung on to him. Hilarion jumped up to pry the two of them apart, only to have Xikos come to his brother’s defense. The gold-and-green table went over with a crash, and Luria, the queen’s attendant, threw open the door to the waiting room to a scatter of broken dishes and a sudden, embarrassed silence.
I took my teeth out of Xikander’s hand. Everyone else stood up and straightened their clothes. White-faced, Luria pointed at me and at the ground next to her, as if summoning a dog. I went.
Directing all the force of her glare at the king’s attendants, she pulled the door closed.
“Hand,” she said, and took mine to tow me into the waiting room of the queen’s attendants. Caeta, Silla, and Chloe were there, pretending to embroider.
Luria cupped my cheek in her hand, looking at the damage Xikander had done, which was not much. He hadn’t been able to get a good blow in.
“Grown men,” said Luria, shaking her head in contempt. I thought of the wine splashing in Xikander’s face and was ashamed of myself.
She dampened a cloth and held it to my face. “You don’t belong in here,” she said. “Not now.” She thought for a little while, looking into the fire burning on the hearth as if the answer were there. “Do you even know what’s happening?” she asked. I shook my head. “The queen was going to have a baby. Now she has lost the baby, and she is very ill.” She looked again at the fire. “The king will not want any of them for company—that I am sure of. He won’t want you, either, but he should not be alone, and you at least will be quiet.”
She took me then through a hallway to a small room near the queen’s bedchamber. The king was there, in a chair by the fire, with his elbow on his knee and his head in his hand. He looked up briefly and shook his head. Luria fetched a footstool for me. Putting her hand to her lips, as if that were necessary, she sat me on the stool.
“You go to Chloe if he wants anything. You understand?”
I nodded and she went away.
The sun shone in the window without lighting the dark room. The paneled walls were painted black, with decorations leaved in gold. Wreaths of laurel surrounded pictures of manly virtue, reminding me that these were a king’s apartments once, before they were occupied by the queen.
Luria came back with a tray of food and wine. The king shook his head again, but she pressed a cup on him.
“The queen?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” said Luria. “Petrus is . . .” She looked down and blinked a few times, hunting for a reassuring word and not finding it. “Is doing his best.”
I stayed in that corner, listening with the king to the voices in the other room. We heard the queen cry out. The king would have gone to her, but Phresine was already at the door, waving
him back. For all his power and the gods’ goodwill, he could no more help his queen than I could jump up and fly. Phresine came out carrying bloody cloths. She shook her head at the king and hurried past. She came back with clean towels, but her hands were still stained with blood. It was not the last trip she would make.
The king paced. I don’t think he was used to being helpless. Not the way I was.
When Imenia came in and the king looked hopeful, she said quickly, “It’s Teleus. He would speak with you.”
The king shook his head. “Not now,” he said. “Tell Teleus to . . . keep them safe.”
The sky grew dark as the sun set. Imenia came to light the lamps. She brought more wood for the fire and went away without a word. She returned with more food, but again the king wouldn’t eat. She gave me bread and cheese wrapped in a napkin and I gnawed at it, feeling guilty for being hungry.
Petrus came to the door and talked in a low voice to the king, and they went away together.
When the king came back, his face was wet with tears. Talking to me, because I was there and because the words forced themselves out, he said, “If the bleeding does not stop, she will die.”
Imenia came to the door. “Have the sacrifices been made?” the king asked her.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“All of them? New gods and old?”
“All.”
The king sat on a stool in front of the fire and bowed his head. “Ula, goddess of the hearth and healing, tell me what I can offer to save my wife,” he whispered.
Imenia had slipped away again, so it was just the king and I alone in front of the small fire as it hissed and popped. It was mostly coals, their red glow only bright enough to make everything around them seem that much darker.
“Genny . . .” It was no goddess in the fire answering the king’s prayer. It was the voice of a woman, one who doted on him, but he didn’t seem to hear. “Genny,” she called again, but he didn’t lift his head, and she was already disappearing. “Earrings!” she called as she faded away. “Ula is tired of grain and bread and cakes of corn!”
Finally he looked up, but by then she was gone. “Cakes of corn?” he asked me. “Did you hear ‘grain and bread and cakes of corn’?”
I shook my head and pinched my ear. Earrings.
“Earrings?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Are you certain?”
I had never been more certain of anything in my life.
“Get them,” the king told me. “Get the best, the finest ones, Pheris, and bring them here.”
I jumped to my feet and went rocketing through the apartments. Polemus came to the door of the king’s waiting room. “The queen?” he asked, but I was already past him, only slowing when I reached the guard room and found them blocking the door, unsure if I was a messenger or an escapee. Luria, coming behind me, must have signaled, because they let me pass.
The guards at the king’s apartments had no reason not to admit me, and I went straight to the bedchamber and the king’s writing desk, where a small plain box held his personal things. An emerald signet ring with a carving of a dolphin on its face, a few pins, and other jewelry. The royal jewels were elsewhere, but they didn’t matter. The box was locked and there was no time to worry over a key. I threw it on the ground and, perilously balanced, I smashed it with all the strength of my good leg. Then I dropped to my knees to root through the pieces. Shaking the earrings free of wooden splinters and clutching them in my fist, I struggled back to my feet to find all the king’s attendants standing between me and the door. I wiped my chin and waited to see what they would do.
Hilarion stepped aside and the others followed his lead. I squared my crooked shoulder as much as I was able and walked past them. When I reached the passage outside the apartments, I began to run again, back to the king, at my best speed.
Luria waited for me in the guard room. She stopped the other attendants, allowing only me to continue to the king. She did not need to tell me to go more quietly; the silence in the queen’s apartments was stricture enough.
The king looked up as I stood catching my breath in the doorway, clutching my hand to my chest.
He held out his own hand and I dropped the earrings into his palm, the ones that Heiro had given him at his investiture, with the tiny amphorae and the even tinier sprays of golden flowers.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
The other jewels weren’t his and they didn’t matter to him. These did. For Ula, who is always given corn and bread and oil, I knew they were perfect.
He dropped from the chair to his knees. Speaking words that I didn’t understand, he reached his hand so far into the fireplace that I was sure his skin was scorching in the heat. He dropped the earrings onto the coals and used his hook to cover them. Then he sat back again with his head bowed and stayed there until Petrus and Phresine came.
Petrus was cautious, he was always cautious, but his relieved smile broke through all his hedging. The crisis had passed. The queen would live.
Hilarion came after that to tell the king that Teleus was in the waiting room, and the king nodded and rubbed his eyes with his hand. Phresine had stayed after Petrus returned to the queen. “You will send for me if she wakes?” the king asked her.
“Of course,” she said, “Your Majesty.” I admired the way she could make the words sound so much like “You Idiot.”
The king smiled just a little. He waved me out of the room, and I followed Hilarion back to the waiting room, passing Teleus on the way. To my surprise, Hilarion took me by the hand.
“It has been a long night for everyone,” he said, and he walked me himself to the king’s apartments and to Ion’s room, where I had been sleeping on the floor.
“I think you’ve earned the bed tonight,” said Hilarion. “Or would you rather have your own room?”
I preferred my own little closet, so he scooped up my blankets and we went there. My mattress was still leaning against the wall. He put it on the floor and dumped my blankets. Then he helped me out of my clothes and tucked me in.
“Do you have what you need, little monster?”
I nodded. All I wanted was to lay my head down.
He patted me tentatively on the shoulder. “Rest up, then. The king will no doubt call for you tomorrow.”
No one called me. I slept all day and woke in the night. There was a tray beside me with watered wine and a roasted game bird. I gnawed the meat off and tossed the bones down the airshaft, remembering the first time I’d done that. Then I cautiously poked my nose out of the closet and made my way to the attendants’ waiting room. Hilarion had been kind to me earlier; he had never been cruel, but he’d never been particularly kind, either. Petrus had said the queen would live, but I had been blamed all my life for soured milk, and bad grain, and other people’s carelessness. Hilarion’s approval might be gone as quickly as it had come.
The attendants were talking quietly. It was only Polemus, Sotis, and Cleon. There was a three-handed game going, and Sotis was complaining about the wine. They wouldn’t have been playing cards if the queen were dead. I crept back to bed and slept again.
Lamion woke me in the morning, stepping over me to get a coat for the king.
“Rise and shine, Pheris,” he said. I blinked sleep and astonishment out of my eyes, as Lamion had always called me monster and had never used my name before.
The king stayed with the queen for the next few days. The palace was very quiet, as all state business had been postponed. There were the usual whispered speculations, but there was no official news and no official mourning for a baby that had left the world before it even came into it. The only dedications made were to thank the gods for our queen’s continued health.
People talked more openly about the arrival of the slave Kamet from the Mede empire. The palace guard was exuberant to welcome home Costis, one of their own. The Mede ambassador demanded that the slave be returned to his master, and all of Attolia heard of how his demands
were rejected. The more astute took note of Kamet’s attendance at meeting after meeting, while the less so entertained each other with stories of the king’s visit to the kitchens for sweetened nuts once he was sure the queen was out of danger. That was an easier subject to make jokes about, and making jokes eased people’s fears.
Very few knew about the intense effort that was orchestrated by Relius, the former secretary of the archives, after Kamet’s unexpectedly public arrival, to isolate the Mede ambassador and intercept any attempt to warn his emperor that Kamet had arrived in Attolia and that the secret location of the Mede navy had almost certainly been revealed. All the king’s plans relied on that embargo.
“He kept them safe for you,” whispered the queen from her bed.
“He did,” said the king. “I only wish he’d done it with a little less flair. Galleys racing to a ship in the middle of the harbor, by all the gods.”
“Safe,” whispered the queen again, and he leaned over the bed to tuck the covers around her.
“Yes,” he allowed, “they are safe and your captain is a champion. Do I need to send Phresine for some lethium-laced soup?”
Her lips curled with a hint of fragile amusement, and he kissed her cheek.
A most amazing and strange thing was happening to me. Wherever I went in the palace, people greeted me. People to whom I had been invisible now nodded and smiled as we crossed paths. I was free to go anywhere I liked, with no fear of being caught alone in a stairwell or an empty room. Xikos kept his insults to himself, and even my grandfather Susa smiled grimly when we met.
“Enjoy yourself,” he said, “while you can.” I don’t know if his warning was malice or just honesty—it was hard to tell with Susa—but I took him at his word. I went directly to the stables. Not only did the master let me ride Fryst again, he said he would look for a pony to add to the royal horses.
It was many days before the king and I were alone. He was again reading reports at the writing table in his bedroom. I was laying out a triangle on the floor using pebbles from the garden, piece by piece turning it into a spiral and then slowly changing it back again.
Return of the Thief Page 10