Return of the Thief

by Megan Whalen Turner

  “Oh, Eugenides,” Nahuseresh mocked him. “The Continental Powers? Do you really think they are coming to save you?”

  “I do, actually,” said the king.

  “They sent you to your death,” said my grandfather.

  “You lie,” said the king.

  “I do not,” Erondites answered. “You think the Continental Powers are your allies. You are wrong. They do not fear the Medes. You are the danger. You took Attolia, subdued Eddis and Sounis. You summon ships—the Neutral Islands deliver them up. You control the passes and the sea roads. You threaten their trade routes, Eugenides. The Medes, the Continent, they cannot allow another power to grow on the shores of the Middle Sea.”

  “You fool,” said Nahuseresh. “Who do you think put the bomb in the cairn?”

  Bu-seneth said something contemptuous that I did not understand. To the king, he said, very seriously, “That you survived was our good fortune. The gods delivered you to us.”

  Nahuseresh pressed down again on the king’s knee, making him gasp in pain.

  “The Continent musters its armies in Melenze,” said Bu-seneth. “They promised you aid to ensure that you would march north—to spend your armies against ours. When the Little Peninsula has given its all, only then will they step up to fight. Your cause is lost, Eugenides. You waste the lives of your men by persevering.”

  “So you say,” the king spat.

  “Let your soldiers go home,” said the general. “The emperor bears them no ill will. Disband your armies now and I promise you, on my honor, that you will still be king while you live and your throne will pass to the emperor only after your death.”

  “No!” protested Nahuseresh, outraged. “I am to rule Attolia!”

  Bu-seneth knew that a change in tone, a surprising moment of compassion, can break down the most resistant prisoner. He repeated the offer. “You have no heir—you’ve seen that your wife cannot bear you one. Be king under our emperor, defy the Continental Powers that have betrayed you. Sign the surrender, Eugenides, and I will send Nahuseresh home rolled in a rug.”

  “You would not dare,” said Nahuseresh.

  Bu-seneth had been sitting on a stool by the brazier. Slowly he rose to his feet. I’d been drawn out from my hiding space and any of them could have seen me, but I could not look away from this contest, nor could anyone else. I might have risen to my feet and danced without drawing their attention.

  “Do you think anyone cares about your ambitions?” Bu-seneth asked Nahuseresh. “Do you think your brother cares? He does not. You are not the next ruler of Attolia; you were never meant to be. You are a laughingstock sent here so that you would be out of their way instead of whining uselessly underfoot.”

  The king must have had all his wits still about him, because he was shaking with laughter as well as with pain. “Useless,” he choked. “And you called me a fool! How could you not see that it is Erondites who is meant to pull my strings?”

  My grandfather’s smirk was all the proof Nahuseresh needed.

  “Sign the surrender,” Nahuseresh snarled, kicking the king until Bu-seneth pushed him back. Nahuseresh went on shouting, “The Braels are not coming! The Gants are not coming! You will die and your silly truce will break, your armies will scatter, and we will beat them one by one, burn your fields and destroy every city, every town, burn it all to the ground.”

  “No,” said the king, his voice shaking.

  “There is no one coming to save you, Eugenides!”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  He did. I could hear it in his voice and so could Bu-seneth. The general ordered Nahuseresh back like a man directing a dog. Then he returned to persuasion. “I have honed my soldiers on yours, and our battles have served their purpose. My men are ready, and tomorrow we will begin in earnest to destroy your armies. Sign or die, Eugenides; either way, you have lost. Sign and you save their lives. That is all you can accomplish here.”

  Nahuseresh yanked the irons out of the fire, sending sparks flying dangerously into the air to fall and singe the carpets. This time, the king did not bear the pain in silence. He screamed. Then he wept. In terrible pain, he did not surrender to save himself; he gave in to save his people. With a shaking hand, he signed at the bottom of the vellum sheet that Erondites held in front of him. He accepted Erondites as prime minister and left his kingdom at his death to the emperor of the Mede.

  Bu-seneth, having gotten what he wanted, stepped back uninterested as Nahuseresh vented his humiliation and his rage. Kicking at Eugenides, Nahuseresh shouted, “You will be a puppet and my brother will pull your strings. All you will ever be is a thief. Admit it.” He tried to stamp on the king’s fingers but missed. “Show us what you can steal now!” he snarled as the guards lifted the king onto a stretcher.

  Ion Nomenus had taken the signed surrender away to sand the ink. Done with the task, he moved as if without purpose to stand by the doorway, blocking me from view. As they lifted the king, he flicked his hand behind his back and I rolled under the canvas onto the wet grass outside.

  It had grown dark and a light rain was falling. I could hear the king sobbing as they carried him past, crying out that he was the king, he was Attolis, he was annux still. Tears streaking my own face, I got to my feet and limped after him. The men holding him saw me and shrugged at one another. I followed them as they took him to a small tent with a cot in it and nothing else. They chained him and left. They did not try to confine me and were right not to bother.

  After a while, the sound of the king’s gasping and crying lessened and he fell silent. I lifted my face and saw through the tears in my own eyes that there were none in his. He was looking back at me with a face like an open grave. Then he smiled, and a chill like the ones I felt in Hephestia’s temple shuddered down my back.

  He slid his hand free of the manacle around his wrist and probed in the embroidered cuff of the opposite sleeve. He eased out a knife with a triangular blade no longer than his finger and used it to slice through the leather strap around his chest. He put the knife away and worked his way along a row of tiny invisible pockets until he found the key he wanted. He unlocked the chain around his waist and sat up, using his sleeve to wipe his face clear of the last signs of his suffering, silently mocking my amazement.

  He made the sign of needle and thread with his fingers, pointed to the gaudy colors on the front of his coat, and tapped the pocket at his wrist. Then he lifted his hand to make the sign for excellent.

  That tailor has terrible taste, but he knows where I like my pockets.

  He tipped his head at my astonishment and used the sign for my tutor. Relius.

  I had guessed that Relius had shown him my signs; that wasn’t what surprised me. Relius was clumsy and slow. Eugenides wasn’t signing like him or even like Melisande. He was communicating as Juridius and I did. Not only was everything he said clear, he knew the sign for my tutor, and I had never taught that to Relius. Why would I have needed to?

  Eugenides unlocked the chains around his ankle and poked a finger with distaste through the burned holes in his clothes. He splayed his first two fingers and held them to his chin—making a forked beard. I knew who he meant.

  Nahuseresh tells me I am not king. We’ll see if he really prefers the Thief.

  Another sign whose meaning was easy to guess.

  But you’re hurt.

  Not as badly as Nahuseresh thinks.

  Your leg—

  He shook his head, almost pitying me. His face crumpled and he wiped back and forth under his nose, mimicking his earlier suffering.

  My cousins know better than to trust my tears. You should, too.

  He raised an eyebrow when I didn’t laugh. Every moment the air seemed tighter, the ringing in my ears seemed higher. I could feel myself shaking as if it were cold. He ruffled my hair, a reassuring gesture that had no effect.

  He glanced up. I need a heavier rain. There was a rumble in the sky, then a patter on the canvas above us that gradually
increased to a drumming sound.

  He indicated I should help him out of his coat. He winced and scowled as I pulled it off him, then he wrapped me in it and put me into his place on the cot. Rolling me to face away from the doorway of the tent and covering me with the blanket the guards had left, he artfully arranged the folds to make me look larger. He patted my shoulder. Wait for me. Then he rolled under the fabric edge of the tent, just as I had rolled out from Bu-seneth’s.

  I listened to the sound of the rain and shivered.

  There was sticky blood all over me. My face was pocked with tiny wounds. As I touched my cheek, I found a bit of rock embedded in the skin below my eye and picked it out. There was drying blood from my nose and mouth, and my head ached, the pain pressing against my skull from the inside out as if my head were an overfull wineskin ready to burst.

  It seemed like a very long time to me before Eugenides returned. When he did, we took the coat and my own blue tunic and arranged them under the blanket, their bright colors peeping out to catch the light of a lantern if the guards looked in on us.

  It will do. He nodded with eerie certainty. Don’t be afraid. He might have meant that I should not be afraid of the Medes, but I think he meant that I should not fear him, either. I did, though. He was terrifying, even more than he had been when he confronted the Pent. I was more frightened than I had been when he learned the grain wagons had been burned. I still followed him out from under the side of the tent into the dark.

  In the pouring rain, even two figures as strange as the king and I were anonymous as men hurried past with their heads down. Eugenides confidently led the way across the camp. There were two guards at the entryway to Bu-seneth’s tent, and we circled around to the back. The stakes that held the walls down were meant to keep out the wind, not trespassers. When Eugenides lifted the fabric, I pushed underneath it, afraid to meet the general on the far side, but more afraid to disobey. I came face-to-face not with the general, but with the man who’d saved me. He lay on his back only a foot or two away, his eyes closed and his chest soaked in blood. I scrambled away from him as quickly as I could as Eugenides rolled in after me.

  “Ion Nomenus,” he said, speaking aloud, though quietly enough not to reach the ears of the guards outside. “He should have stayed in his pigpen.”

  Sickened, I turned away. The whole tent reeked.

  Eugenides said, “If there is a hue and cry, hide yourself behind the chests again. No one will expect to find you here, and I will come for you when my work is done.” Then he was gone.

  I settled tentatively on the cot where I think Ion Nomenus had probably slept. It was behind a partition made by the campaign trunks and Bu-seneth’s traveling desk. There was a stool near the head of the cot holding a miniature set of household gods and three small plain figures, two men and a woman, mementos of his family, probably. I swallowed, wondering who would miss him.

  There was a sound, something wet and intermittent I had not heard at first over the drumming of the rain. Ion Nomenus’s eyes were partly open. He blinked.

  “Water?” he whispered.

  I fetched him a cup of watered wine from a carafe on the desk, dipping the end of my sleeve in the cup and dribbling the wine on his lips. The wound in his chest sucked and bubbled. He blinked again, his eyelids growing heavier.

  I wanted to tell him he would be all right, but we both knew he would not. All that was left was for him to make some sound loud enough for the men standing by outside to hear, and I and the king too would be prisoners again. I hated to think of covering his mouth.

  He tucked his chin, trying to see the wound in his chest.

  I shook my head at him. Don’t look.

  His head fell back. The wound sucked.

  He could have called out—I think he had enough strength. I don’t know if the guards would have heard him. I know he didn’t try.

  He whispered, “I always looked out . . . for myself.” He drew another painful, burbling breath. “No more of that now.”

  He was staring at me through the narrow opening of his eyelids that was all he could manage. “So . . . just once I can . . . choose a side for better reasons.” He coughed and squeezed his eyes shut, knowing he must swallow the blood or let it out. It ran down over his chin.

  “Tell my king . . .” he whispered, then changed his mind. “No, don’t tell him,” he said. “. . . no more of that now.”

  It was the last thing he said.

  When Eugenides returned, he found me still crouching there next to Ion Nomenus.

  Come, Pheris. He lifted the edge of the tent for me. Miserably, I crawled around Ion Nomenus to join him.

  There was a distant sound of shouting. The king nudged me in the opposite direction as men hurried by, their eyes passing over us. I don’t know if they didn’t see us or if they didn’t care. We walked, unnoticed by anyone through the city of tents. It seemed to go on forever, and when we finally reached the edge of it, my heart sank even lower. Terrified of being caught, I had not even considered how far we had to go.

  “Courage,” said the king in my ear.

  We passed the Mede pickets, again without being noticed. Perhaps the king guided us away from the sentries; I never saw them. We stumbled out to the empty land between the two enemy camps, through the scrub and the churned-up mud, sinking into the marshy ground and wading across the shallow streams. The king paused several times to look back, but he seemed expectant, not fearful.

  The rain had stopped and some of the clouds had cleared. I fixed my eyes on the distant light of campfires. The king was limping more heavily, and I worried with every step that my leg might give way entirely. The king began to utter the most outrageous vulgarities. Traveling with soldiers for weeks, I had not heard such language.

  At last we approached a copse of trees, difficult to make out in the dark, and the king fell silent. Leaning more heavily on me, he bent to find a stick and knocked it against a tree trunk, alerting the sentry that we were almost on top of him. We heard him scramble to his feet, and the sing of steel as he drew his weapon.

  “Halt,” he said in the dark ahead of us.

  “We did,” said the king.

  “Password,” said the unseen soldier, very officious, no doubt embarrassed that we’d come so close without him noticing.

  The king asked me if I knew it.

  I shook my head. It had been “sword of Clemon” the day before, but it would already have been changed.

  “Get your officer,” said Eugenides to the soldier.

  “The password,” insisted the soldier.

  “GET YOUR OFFICER!” the king roared. There was a crashing in the bushes all around us as soldiers drew weapons and raced in our direction. The man on picket directly in front of us finally unshuttered his lantern. His officer, stumbling into the lighted area, shouted, “Who’s there?”

  “Attolis Eugenides Eugenideides,” said the king. “By the will of the Great Goddess, annux over Hephestia’s Peninsula, king of Attolia, king over Sounis, and Eddis, king from the Macheddic Mountains to the sea, king from the Melenzetti Pass to the River Lusimina, and by my oath to my god, now and for my life, Thief of Eddis.”

  They took him away from me. They brought him a horse and helped him mount, and he rode off. Soaking wet, aching all over, I watched him go. When someone behind me dropped a blanket over my shoulders, I flailed in panic.

  “Sorry, sorry,” the man said, steadying me. He came around to where I could see him, as he gently tugged the blanket tighter. He put his hands on my arms and waited for my nod before lifting me into the arms of someone on a horse who bent down to take me. We followed the king back into the camp.

  The soldiers lined our path and cheered, some firing guns into the air, spending precious ammunition to celebrate. When we reached the council tent, it was aglow in the darkness, all its lamps still burning. In front of it, Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis waited quietly, surrounded by the royal councilors who had been debating through the night. As Eugenid
es carefully dismounted, Attolia stepped forward. She might have taken him in her arms, but she hesitated, and that opportunity passed. “Welcome back, my king,” she said very formally.

  “We have much to discuss,” said Eugenides, and passed by her to enter the council tent.

  Chapter Nine

  He lowered himself into his seat and leaned back by inches. He closed his eyes, but his expression remained hard as stone. Eddis, Attolia, and Sounis did not take their seats beside him. They stood by as the tent filled with silent men. The king had returned from the enemy, but no one here was cheering. Uneasily, they waited.

  When Eugenides opened his eyes, he announced into the silence, “The powers of the Continent have led us here with moon promises. There are no reinforcements coming to Stinos.”

  As the men in the tent looked at one another in horror, I followed the king’s line of sight. He was watching the Brael. By the time I turned my eyes back to the king, he had seen all he needed. Until that moment, I don’t think he’d truly believed the Braels had betrayed us.

  I don’t know if Fordad would have admitted the truth or denied it. Eugenides slowly shook his head, and the ambassador remained silent.

  In the tightly packed tent, a space opened between Fordad and the doorway. He bowed and left, looking neither to the left or the right, passing Petrus at the doorway as he entered with his carrying case of remedies. As Petrus headed for the king, the space made for Fordad began to close, and Petrus was brought to a halt.

  Eugenides was searching the men standing around his council table, noting who was there and who was not.

  He said, “Hilarion. Who else?”

  Petrus answered for the dead. “Xikos. Perminder. Sotis will not live long.” He paused, hating to say it, but knowing the king was waiting. “Philologos.”

  Poor Philo, who everyone had tried to protect, had been riding beside the king. The bomb hidden in the cairn of stones had killed him instantly.

  “The guard?” Eugenides was emotionless.

  Teleus, captain of the guard said, “Clovis is dead, and all of his squad. Treagus and most of his squad as well. Legarus and Trulo from Aristogiton’s.”