Return of the Thief

by Megan Whalen Turner

As everyone tried to imagine the scale of the disaster, Attolia looked to Relius.

  He said, “I have—”

  “—taken liberties,” Orutus hissed.

  “—told Teleus to have the ambassadors of Kimmer and Roa arrested.”

  “Send word to the city walls to close the gates,” ordered Attolia. “Do it now. No one is to leave the palace or leave the city until further notice.”

  As Relius left, Attolia turned to Costis. “Do you have any idea how close this army is now?”

  “The farmers told me they were expected to have their surpluses gathered in Put for sale in a month.” I had no idea where Put was, so this meant little to me.

  “We have at least that long, then,” said Sounis.

  “There is almost no farmed land between Put and the border with Attolia to supply an army. That might slow their advance,” Eddis said.

  “Unless they have laid caches in those places ahead of time,” said Attolia.

  “All the surplus in Roa cannot feed an army that size. How, how can they possibly lay caches?” said Casartus angrily. Both he and Orutus had taken Costis’s news as a personal attack, the behavior of men very afraid of the blame that might land on their shoulders.

  Attolia ignored them. Leaning forward, she addressed Sounis and Eddis. “You will want to speak privately with your own council. Let us meet again this afternoon.”

  To Pegistus, Piloxides, and Casartus, she said, “You will consider how to address an army of seventy thousand on our northeast border.” To Costis, she said, “Get a bath and a nap. It will be a long day.”

  I wasn’t there when they met. Nor was Relius, as Orutus had his way.

  “Neither your position nor mine is official,” Relius said to me. “Not even a war will dislodge Orutus’s sense of self-importance.”

  Official or unofficial, eavesdroppers or none, every word spoken in the council chamber was common knowledge in the palace before the sun set. In the king’s waiting room, the attendants picked apart the day’s rumors.

  “Not all of the Mede ships were sunk at Hemsha. Sounis’s magus thinks they might have landed supplies at harbors west of Put, maybe at Nedus and Mesithilia.”

  I sat in a corner, pretending to address a math problem on my slate that the magus had set for me. Once Relius had reached out to him about the number sequence I’d found so fascinating, he and the magus had begun to negotiate a very prickly sort of friendship as they colluded in my education. It didn’t surprise me at all that the magus would be so familiar with the harbors of Roa.

  No one could guess how quickly an army so vast might move, but all agreed that if the Medes were to be stopped, the only chance was at the Leonyla Pass. The Medes would be coming down the coast from Roa. They would have to cross over the coastal mountains to reach the interior of Attolia, and the only place an army that size could do that was the Leonyla.

  “Pegistus swears that if we fortify that pass, we could hold it forever,” said Sotis. “He says we can starve the Medes out.”

  “If they can cache supplies at the ports in Roa, they can resupply from there as well,” Motis said. “We don’t have the ships to protect our ports and blockade theirs too.”

  “The Brael ambassador has said his king will give us ships,” said his brother, Drusis.

  “And why would the Braelings do that?” Xikos asked. “That would be war with the Medes, which is what they have been trying to avoid, and war with Roa, to boot.”

  “I don’t think the Braelings need to worry about being at war with Roa,” Motis pointed out, making Xikos scowl.

  Drusis said what everyone was thinking. “No one needs fifty thousand men to conquer the Little Peninsula. The Braelings have to know that the Continent will be next.”

  “I heard the Gants have promised troops as well,” said Motis. “Ferria leads the League of Seven this year, and her ambassador says they’ll send men and artillery. They all want the Medes stopped before they are sitting on Melenze’s doorstep.”

  Xikos asked, “If we can hold the Leonyla forever, then why are the Medes attacking there?”

  “That’s why they are moving so fast,” said Ion, who’d been sitting quietly with his feet propped on a bench, looking out the window at the darkening sky.

  “They mean to get to the pass before we have time to assemble a defense,” Drusis told Xikos.

  “Given the bickering today in the council chamber, they may well do it,” said Ion.

  Yorn Fordad tipped the last of the stuffed grape leaves onto the Epidian ambassador’s plate. “You were as surprised as I was, then?”

  “Utterly.”

  “Melenze can’t be pleased,” said the Epidian.

  “Ferria will be frantic.”

  “I talked to her ambassador,” said Fordad. “Camoria says Ferria will leave her larger warships with the allied navy, but she’s calling the fast ships home. She’ll ask her merchants to bring their ships in as well. He’s afraid the merchants will refuse, take their ships out of the Middle Sea entirely.”

  “Any word of the Roan ambassador?”

  “None. They’ve arrested some of his retinue, but he and his junior man have disappeared into thin air.”

  “I suppose we can all be thankful we are not the ambassador of Kimmer today.”

  The Epidian agreed. “I cannot imagine a worse position to be in.”

  “Nor I,” said Fordad.

  The ambassador from Kimmer had been summoned to explain the passage of the Mede army through his country. He was still protected by his diplomatic position, but only just. That he seemed to have been left completely in the dark by his own government was all that kept Attolia from pitching him into her darkest dungeon.

  The clouds were lighter gray against the black night sky. All the birds were asleep, and insects in the bushes were singing songs to their gods. Eddis was not surprised when the king arrived at her shoulder, and she didn’t look in his direction. She’d heard his attendants approaching on the gravel paths, and she was well aware how much it distressed him to be announced wherever he went by their noise. She’d come to the garden to sit in the quiet and the moonlight, and she was relieved to hear the attendants’ footsteps receding when Gen directed them back to the terrace to wait. The guards stayed. Teleus had been adamant that security be tightened.

  When Eugenides sat beside her, she leaned against him.

  “They have to support you,” she said.

  “They will,” he reassured her. “They love a war.”

  “You don’t know what they’ve been like.”

  “I do, actually,” he said. If anyone knew the temper of the Eddisians, it was the Thief.

  “And afterward?” she asked.

  “Let’s survive this, Helen, before we worry about that.”

  They were quiet, she worrying, he waiting.

  Finally she said, “I know what you’re thinking, and we cannot risk losing you, Gen.”

  “Helen, today should have made it abundantly clear to all of you what I realized staring into a fireplace full of coals praying for my wife. I cannot lose Irene. I cannot lose you and I cannot lose Sophos. Rid yourself of this notion that I alone am indispensable.”

  Chapter Two

  There was no more talk of Emipopolitus. On estates all over the Peninsula, the barons were gathering their men and equipping them for war. Every industry was directed toward the effort. Armorers were busy night and day. There were uniforms to be made, belts and boots and shoes. Carts. Saddles. Harnesses. The demands of war were endless and their fulfillment had to be recorded in exact detail, every coin spent accounted for. The queen’s indentured set aside their tax records and moved into the war offices. The palace errand boys were run off their feet. Sounis and Eddis returned to the mountains, Sounis continuing on to his capital, both of them intent on rallying their people.

  Perminder of Sounis remained to join the king’s attendants. Eddis didn’t even ask if Cleon’s apology had been accepted. He returned to the mounta
ins with her.

  The ambassador from Roa was not seen again. The Attolian, Sounisian, and Eddisian ambassadors to Roa and Kimmer and Zaboar were recalled. Protests were sent to those courts and to the Greater Powers of the Continent, who were also in treaties with our treacherous allies. Attolia sent an envoy to the emperor, demanding that he withdraw his armies.

  The king thought this was silly.

  “The rules of the civilized world must be followed,” said Fordad, mocking sincerity. He and the king were alone and he could speak freely.

  The king snorted as he sipped at the liquor Fordad shared with him when the king dropped by his apartment late in the night. “If the rules of the civilized world were followed, the Mede and the Brael empires would both be the size of Attolia.”

  “Not true, Your Majesty,” protested Fordad, still mocking. “Remember the Melian dialogues.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” said Eugenides bitterly. “If you have the might to do it, you have the right to do it. The most important rule of all.”

  Kimmer demanded the safe return of their ambassador from Attolia, and the Attolians certainly didn’t mind seeing him go. His leave-taking was not what the Mede’s had been, with the king interrupting the ambassador’s obsequious, exculpatory farewells to say, “I don’t care what you knew or didn’t know or when you didn’t know it. You will be escorted to the harbor. Goodbye.”

  To Teleus the king added, “Be sure he’s provided a closed carriage.” Teleus bowed and conducted the stunned ambassador out.

  I did not see Teleus return to the palace, but I heard about it that evening when he came to grouse over a bottle of wine shared with Relius. I had lately begun to review my lessons in my tutor’s rooms when there were no formal dinners, and I listened to Teleus’s complaints instead of reading the text Relius had set in front of me. The Kimmeran ambassador had been safe behind a carriage door when the citizens began pelting him with rotten food, but Teleus and his guards had not been so lucky. Though they had not been the intended target of the people’s rage, a fair amount of diffusion in the fusillade was only to be expected. Teleus seemed to hold it as much against the king as against the ambassador.

  “I don’t think the king encouraged it,” Relius told him, laughing. Teleus grunted. I knew he disapproved of the king, and the king disapproved of him. He was taciturn by nature, intimidating even as he relaxed over a cup of wine. The king had once called the captain of the guard stodgy to his face.

  The remaining members of the diplomatic party from Roa had been arrested and were returned to their border under lock and key, a process I am sure was humiliating and uncomfortable. Still, like the Kimmeran ambassador, they were kept from any harm. One of their servants had spit at me once, and I was glad to see them gone.

  It was Yorn Fordad’s unhappy responsibility, as ambassador of the Braelings and also temporary representative of the Pents, to remind Attolia that the Pents had cut all diplomatic ties until there was a full and free apology from the king for attempting to murder their ambassador. The Braelings would offer the Little Peninsula their support, but the Pents would not.

  “Your Majesties, I must assume that this precludes providing any ships to aid in a blockade of the Roan ports. The allied navy could be sent to your aid, but the admiral in charge of the fleet, Admiral Rullo . . .”

  “Is a Pent,” said the queen.

  “Yes. Therefore, I cannot guarantee the allied navy’s timely arrival. Not without an apology.”

  “Which is not going to happen,” said the king sullenly, crossing his arms, slumping down in his chair.

  Having grown comfortable at last in the palace, I found I was again on perilous ground when the king held out his hand to me and said, “What is that?” He was dressed and just about to leave the apartments. Lamion, Dionis, and I were to follow him that morning to his appointments.

  Puzzled, I offered him the slate Relius had given me. Before he left for Sounis, the magus of Sounis had set several problems for me. I had one of them on the slate: a circle, quartered, with the endpoints of two of the radii connected to make a triangle. I thought the king was interested in the math—the magus had told me to find an equation to describe the triangle, and I’d brought the slate with chalk to make my notes during what I knew would be interminable meetings.

  The king took my slate, tipped it back and forth to look at both sides, showing no interest in the figures. He handed it to Lamion. “Get rid of that,” he said, and left the apartments without another word. Then he ignored me for the rest of the day—so pointedly that I was sick that night in the necessaries. I had not been sick in months: I was eating my fill instead of living on table scraps with Melisande; I had been sleeping better, as Petrus’s tonics and hot baths and his exercises, much as I mocked them, had made me more comfortable. And I had not been afraid.

  The next morning, I went to Relius, unsure what I would tell him if he asked where the slate was and why I didn’t have it. He didn’t ask, and the slate, or one just like it, was sitting on the worktable when I arrived. Instead of standing behind me as he usually did, giving me directions and watching my work, he dragged over the other stool and sat beside me.

  “Pheris,” he said, speaking very gently for him, “it is hardly a secret to anyone with eyes that you come here to my study every day.”

  I had grown so much at ease in my new life, I did not understand what he was hinting at. I was proud to be his student.

  “The slate seems small,” he said. “But there are new people in the palace, and people seeing things with new eyes. When a country goes to war, it looks for enemies everywhere, and carrying this”—he tapped the slate with one misshapen finger—“you may as well be wearing a signboard on your chest like a man in a marketplace that reminds everyone who sees you that you are an Erondites . . . and that you are listening.”

  I looked down as if a chasm had opened in front of me, waiting only for me to fall in. I had stopped listening to the voice of Melisande in my head and had walked myself right to the edge of it. Seeing his point made, Relius patted me awkwardly on the shoulder.

  “They have forgotten the burned wagons at Perma and your part in Erondites’s attempts to turn the people against the king and queen. You cannot remind them. They treat you like a good-fortune amulet since the queen’s illness, but an amulet is not a person, Pheris; it’s a thing. An amulet does not listen and read . . . and write.” He paused, seeing my distress. “You are just a boy,” he said. “You should not be at play in the world of men, yet you are. We cannot change that. I know that to be regarded as a thing and not a person is painful; still, the king would see that protection last for you as long as possible. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Someday we will not have the Mede attacking on one hand and your grasping grandfather on the other,” Relius promised. “And you will do more than carry a slate. For now, let us practice doing without one. Show me, please, how you indicate time and how much of it has passed.”

  No sooner was the specter of my grandfather who was Erondites raised than the man himself appeared. He was the head of the house, and he had come to the capital to offer his resources to the state. I stayed scrupulously at the side of my king, not traveling the hallways on my own even to reach Relius for my lessons. Within the week, the council of the Greater Patronoi sent a delegation to the palace, carefully choosing a time when the queen had left it to make a sacrifice at Ula’s altar in the city.

  Hilarion had been told that the meeting was a formality, an introduction to the sons of several barons being promoted to command in Attolia’s army. When we arrived, we found not just those barons and their sons, but all the Greater Patronoi, the heads of the most powerful houses in Attolia, waiting. They filled the large council chamber, the very one where the king had chased off the Pent. The chairs at the long table had been moved to the walls, except one pointedly left for the king. When he sat, he might have looked imperious, keeping all the men around him standing; inste
ad, he looked like a boy about to be lectured by his tutors.

  Hilarion leaned to speak in the king’s ear, but the king shook him off. Philologos would have gone to alert the queen until he realized, as I already had, that the brawniest of the barons’ sons were between us and the doors. To get past them would have required an all-out brawl, and the guards standing by would be no help; they were there to defend the king’s life, not to intervene in fights between the patronoi. Some of them were okloi, others patronoi, and it wasn’t at all clear whose side they would come in on. Hilarion was looking daggers at his own cousin, the head of his house. Philologos turned beseeching eyes on his father. They were no more use than the guards.

  Erondites was there, of course, though he left it to my grandfather who was Susa to present the patronoi’s demands. Susa began by laying out the rules of diplomacy, the importance of allies, the respect due to ambassadors and the inviolable nature of their position. The king made little hurry-up motions, which had no effect. When the king tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, Susa paused in his lecture.

  “Are you done?” the king lowered his head to ask.

  “Only waiting for your attention, Your Majesty,” said Susa. He went on to catalog the king’s transgressions: the many examples of rudeness, the theft of the Mede ambassador’s statue, the assault on the Pent, every complaint a thread with which, loop on loop, he meant to bind the king. Susa even blamed him for the shooting of the Mede ambassador by Sounis.

  Far from being humbled by this browbeating, the king progressed rapidly from impatient to resentful. One or two barons shifted anxiously and were glared at by their peers. Any weakness among their ranks put them all at risk. Erondites had convinced them that they could go back to the days when Attolia’s father was a figurehead of a king and the Greater Patronoi were an oligarchy that divided the power of the state among themselves. All they needed to do was force the king’s hand, press him in this moment to make a hasty decision from which he could not retreat.

  “You have embarrassed our state as well as attacked a man who had every reason to believe he was safe from violence,” said Susa.