Return of the Thief

by Megan Whalen Turner

  Eugenides nodded. “We will avenge them. Marshal the men to attack at dawn. They must be ready as soon as there is light to see.”

  Barons, generals, the other royal councilors anxiously turned to Attolia, to Eddis, to Sounis, their trusted military leaders, only to find Eugenides’s adamantine conviction reflected in all three faces.

  “Your Majesty.” It was my grandfather Susa, a braver man in that moment than ever before. “We all want vengeance, but if it is true that the Continent has abandoned us, we cannot be foolish.” Almost begging, he said, “We must retreat, Your Majesty, not attack.”

  Eugenides didn’t answer. He appeared to be waiting. “Brother,” he murmured, “a single spark will do.”

  Through the open front of the tent, light flared in the black night, larger than campfires, larger than bonfires. There was a sound like a thunderclap, loud but distant, rolling through the air. More explosions followed the first; flames as high as the trees shot into the air, thunder boomed again. The king didn’t even turn his head.

  “The Medes’ powder stores,” he said.

  We could hear a sound like men screaming, though men’s voices could not have carried so far.

  “The elephants,” said the king. He rested his head wearily in his hand. “They are stampeding through the camp.”

  “That will wake Bu-seneth,” Trokides said bitterly.

  “No,” said the king. “Bu-seneth woke earlier. Nothing will ever wake him again.”

  I was not the only one who shuddered, though I was the only one who had seen the Mede general on his back with his throat cut, his tent reeking of blood and ashes, the small triangular knife from the king’s pocket sunk in his chest, pinning a singed scrap of vellum in place. All that was left of the surrender was the deceptively docile signature of Eugenides.

  “The Mede keep an orderly camp. It was easy to find their officers. I am sorry I could not find Nahuseresh or Erondites. Nahuseresh says I am a bastard, not a king.” I saw Attolia follow his gaze, this time to Eddis, as the king continued. “A Thief and not a king. He wanted to know what I can steal now, and I look forward to showing him.”

  To Susa, he said, “We will have no better chance than this.”

  Susa bowed deeply. “We will marshal the men, Your Majesty.”

  In silence, everyone else bowed, first in the direction of the king, then to Attolia, Sounis, and Eddis, before they headed to their tasks. Then those three took their leave as well. Sounis bent to say something to Eddis and then followed his father away to rouse the Sounisians. No one spoke a word until Petrus screwed up his courage and stepped forward.

  The king said, “Not now.”

  Petrus girded his loins. “There may be no time later for the proper care of the wounds,” he said. He meant that the king would put him off right up until the dawn when he rode into battle.

  The king shook his head again, and mild-mannered Petrus gave in. He withdrew, and I knew why. Even I did not want to be near the king. I followed Attolia and Eddis as they withdrew from Attolia’s tent. The maps and markers, the campaign tools were all in the council tent with the king, but there was a campaign desk with paper and pens to lay out their battle plans. Attolia ignored it. She turned to face Eddis.

  “Once, when I said he had saved me, you said I had saved him. From what?”

  Eddis didn’t need to answer. Saved him from becoming the Thief, the murderous figure sitting alone with his dead.

  Attolia said, “Gen’s father didn’t want him to be the Thief. But it was his father who gave him the gold to go after Hamiathes’s Gift.” Each step led to the next. “His father didn’t care about a mythical rock; he just wanted his son out of Eddis.”

  “Yes,” said Eddis.

  “Because your council had just voted to kill him.”

  “Yes,” said Eddis again.

  “They have always been afraid of him.”

  “Afraid of what he would become.”

  “And you? Have you been afraid?”

  Eddis was amused. “No.” She shook her head.

  Attolia didn’t believe her. “But you’ve always known he could take your throne.”

  “No.” Eddis’s amusement gone, she said fiercely, “What I have always known is that I am the last Eddis, that my country will not outlast my lifetime. That it will be destroyed in the fires of the Sacred Mountain or overrun by invaders, or it might become part of a new country, under a new king, with a new name. Which would you hope for if you were me?”

  “I don’t understand why you don’t hate him,” said Attolia.

  “The same reason you don’t and Sophos doesn’t, because of who he is,” Eddis said softly.

  “And who is he now?” Attolia cried, and Eddis took the stricken queen in her arms, pulling her close to comfort her.

  “He is still our Gen, Irene. He can bear his god a little while without losing himself.” A movement outside the tent caught her eye, and she said with forced lightness, “And look there, Emipopolitus’s enemies have united against him.”

  Attolia opened her eyes to see that mild-mannered Petrus had not given up; he’d gone to his rival and recruited his aid. By the light of a single lantern, he and Galen were approaching the council tent together.

  “Galen will not be turned away,” said Eddis. “Gen is not the first Thief Galen has cared for.”

  Neither Galen nor Petrus came out again for a while, and when they did, they both had that satisfied look of men who have met a challenge and overcome it. By then, the soldiers already awakened by the return of the king and the explosions in the Mede camp were well on their way to being ready for battle. Their officers were meeting in Attolia’s tent to discuss the plan for the day.

  In the gray light of false dawn, the Medes were readying as well, but their war elephants were gone, their camp in disarray and many of their officers dead. They sent a messenger asking for a parley, stalling for time.

  The king, in fresh clothes, his hair still wet from washing, climbed into the saddle of the horse they’d brought him. He pulled the reins experimentally, and the horse obediently turned in place. When Yorn Fordad approached, lifting his hand as if to lay it on the king’s knee in friendship, the horse danced aside, leaving the hand hovering in the air before the Brael gave up and let it drop.

  Fordad said apologetically, “Please understand, Your Majesty, that I acted in obedience to my king.”

  Eugenides laughed. “When I lie, Fordad, I don’t beg people to forgive me for it.”

  Fordad bowed stiffly and said, “I will pray for your victory on the field, Your Majesty.”

  “Pray that I triumph today, Fordad, or that I die,” said Eugenides, bending from the back of the horse to look the Braeling in the eye. “If I live through this day and I am not king, then all that remains will be the Thief, and every sovereign of the Continent who betrayed me will wake choking on their own blood, I swear it. Your king in his innermost chamber, with his rune stones laid out on the table and his ship lamps by his bed and his curtains trimmed in beads of carved jet, he will not be the first one to die, but the last. I say it three times, Fordad. It will be so. It will be so. It will be so.”

  As Fordad staggered back, the king jerked at the reins of his horse and rode to the parley. In the confusion that followed, the Braeling took a horse and rode for Stinos and was not seen in Attolia again.

  For the first time, Eddis and Sounis as well as Attolia and Eugenides rode down to the parley with the remaining Mede generals and Nahuseresh, who had taken charge of them. Uneasily, the Mede officers stood behind their self-proclaimed leader. They knew the cost of failing their emperor, and none of them had wanted to be in command, afraid their careers and perhaps their lives might already be over.

  Arriving in front of them, the king smiled. “But where is Erondites?” he asked.

  “I am in command here,” Nahuseresh announced.

  Eugenides ignored him. “We can hardly negotiate without the man in charge.” He raised his voi
ce. “Erondites!” he called toward the scattered tents in the distance. Standing in the stirrups, he called again, roaring at the top of his lungs, “Erondites!” And a bolt of lightning cracked the sky. It struck a tent in the Mede camp. Canvas blossomed into black smoke and red flame. As the tent burned, Eugenides said to the stunned Mede, “That is all the parley that happens today.”

  In eerie silence, unbroken by any sound from either army, the king rode back across the empty battlefield. When he pulled up outside the council tent, his father dismounted and approached, laying a hand on the king’s leg. Feeling the tremor in it, he opened his arms to catch the king as he fell.

  Interregnum

  Eugenides was standing in the dark, alone.

  He blinked, held his hand before his face, saw nothing. He rubbed his eyes and swung around, careful to keep his balance, but there was no light anywhere. The ground was hard under his feet, but not a floor. Small stones stuck beneath his boots made a scraping noise. Soft at first, there was a sound of voices in the distance, but their words and the direction from which they came were unclear.

  He stretched one foot forward, accustomed to moving in darkness, and paused. There was a light as he waited, growing from a pinprick to the size of a candle flame. It was a candle flame, held in the hand of a man he recognized.

  Lader, said Eugenides.

  Indeed, said Lader. Exactly as you made me.

  I did not make you, said Eugenides.

  You made me dead. Stopped all change at this moment, made me this man forever.

  You made yourself. I did not make that man that you were when you died.

  Lader dismissed the objection with a shrug. It doesn’t change your responsibility for killing all the men that I might have become.

  I am not a judge to know if you would be a better man if you had lived. You broke the laws and offended the gods. I kept the laws and killed you.

  Did you? asked Lader. Did you strike because I had offended the gods, or because you hated me?

  Because you offended the gods.

  Speak truth, Eugenides, Lader compelled him.

  Because I hated you.

  Lader stepped forward, holding the candle higher, its flame casting brighter light and deeper shadows. The candle burned, but Eugenides could feel no heat from it. He did not take his eyes off Lader’s face.

  Here is a message from the gods, Thief. Beware the house of Erondites. What an Erondites knows will destroy you. Beware, Eugenides. Your greatest danger will come from the tongueless one, if you allow it. You know I speak the truth. No one lies here.

  The candle flame guttered and went out. Eugenides was alone again.

  Chapter Ten

  The tent walls were glowing in the light of the afternoon sun when the king rolled over on his bed and opened his eyes. Attolia was on a chair beside him, her lap desk balanced across her knees, only functional because she’d had a supporting leg added to the underside. Reaching out, the king touched her very gently, as if she might be a dream. “Are you well?” he asked.

  “Of course I am well,” she said. “Are you?”

  “I am. I was someplace—dark—I can’t remember. The Medes?” he asked, waking more fully.

  “Routed after the death of Erondites,” Attolia reassured him. “For three days we’ve driven them back.”

  “Erondites is dead, then?”

  “Yes. It was his tent that burned, and they have identified his body.”

  “Three days?” he said, taking note of the unusual quiet all around the tent.

  “We are some distance behind the battle line. Nahuseresh has failed to rally his army and Eddis has pushed the Medes deep into the narrow part of the Pinosh Valley. We have captured a great many prisoners, including . . .” She paused, savoring the moment.

  “Tell me,” said the king, impatient.

  “Three elephants,” she said with the barest hint of smugness, “and two of their handlers.”

  “My queen,” said the king, raising himself on his elbows. “My excellent queen.”

  “The handlers’ uniforms were distinctive,” said Attolia. “We saw them at the first parley. I offered a bounty for any prisoners in those uniforms brought to me alive, and they, in turn, helped capture their animals. If you are feeling well enough, I will send Pheris with a message to break our camp here. What is it?” I heard her ask.

  Sitting on stools outside the door of the tent, Chloe and I were the only attendants waiting on Attolia and the king. I was hanging on every word; Chloe, very prim, was trying to look as if she wasn’t.

  We both heard the king say, very slowly, as if trying to remember, “My dream. I was in the dark and Lader came with a prophecy for me.” He spoke slowly, but with growing certainty. “He said to beware the house of Erondites. What an Erondites knows will destroy me, and my greatest danger will come from the tongueless one.”

  Chloe, sitting across from me, narrowed her eyes. It dawned on me only then that with my grandfather’s death, I had become Erondites, not just a member of my family, the head of it. Instead of any feeling of triumph at how the tables had turned, I felt sick. I shook my head violently at Chloe. Her expression didn’t change.

  “Lader?” I heard the queen ask.

  “Lader,” the king confirmed. “Not someone who wishes me well. Pheris,” he said, and I knew that he knew I’d heard every word. Shaking, I rose from the stool and went into the tent. He lay in the rumpled bedclothes, his hair going in all directions as it always did in the morning, his face creased with sleep. He smiled, and it was the smile I knew.

  My fears eased, though Attolia’s expression remained speculative.

  “You know the story of the potter and the prophet?” the king asked me.

  Indeed I did.

  “This prophecy—it was not Moira bringing me a message from the Great Goddess. This was a truth delivered by a man who hates me. I will not go breaking all my pots on his say-so. Do you understand? Now find me Teleus, please, and send him here. After that, carry Her Majesty’s message to the camp master.”

  I did as I was told, and as I returned to the king I met Teleus, just leaving the royal tent. With a stern expression and a hand on my shoulder, he steered me away from the entrance. I tried to resist. The dire words I’d heard in the king’s tent were like carrion crows. I had felt their truth in my bones and I was frightened. Teleus pushed me firmly toward a fire ring some distance away. These burned patches, with their rustic seating and a barren expanse of trampled ground, were all that remained of the tent city that had been there a few days before.

  Taking a seat on an upturned log, Teleus folded his hands. “The Braelings and the other Powers have betrayed us,” he said at last, as if I didn’t know that better than anyone. “The king has just informed me that before he left the capital, Relius shared his travel plans with Fordad.”

  Every thought of Lader’s prophecy flew out of my head.

  “We have not heard anything from Relius since he left the capital,” Teleus said.

  I started to shake my head, but managed to draw it only a little to one side, as if I were trying to move the weight of the world with my chin. Hilarion was dead, Lamion, Sotis, even Xikos, a death I wouldn’t have guessed I would mourn and yet did. I would not accept another. The day Relius had left, Teleus had told him to be careful and Relius had mocked him. It was Teleus who was going to war, Teleus who would be in danger, not Relius.

  “We had hoped that he was just unable to get a message through to us.” Teleus was looking down at his hands, trying to get the words out. “He isn’t coming back, Pheris.”

  I miss Relius. The queen had said it to the king when Pegistus’s calculations for the march had been so badly off. They’d been afraid already that something had gone wrong.

  Grief strikes in strange ways. I would never have expected that I would weep someday for Xikos, or that I would see Xortix’s younger son sobbing his heart out when he learned that the lover he’d betrayed had died, or that, losing
Relius, I would think of all the words I’d written with such care in the journals he’d given me, words that he would never read if he was dead—and that my first tears for him would be tears of rage. We sat and cried together, Teleus and I, by the ashes of the dead fire, as the men broke up the few remaining tents in the camp. Then Teleus wiped my face with his sleeve and sent me back to the king.

  I was in the royal tent, rolling the bed linens to go into a trunk, when a messenger arrived, bringing word from Sounis that a new prisoner had been taken.

  “Is it Nahuseresh?” asked the king hopefully. No other prisoner came to mind that was worth sending a messenger on a hard ride when the king would already be on his way to the main camp very soon.

  “It’s Sejanus, Your Majesty.”

  The king paused in the act of stuffing one foot into his trousers. He let me help him attach the straps of his hook and cuff, but all the ceremony of dressing and undressing him had long since been surrendered to the demands of war. “I suppose I should have wondered before now what he might be up to,” the king said thoughtfully. “Pheris, leave the packing for someone else and fetch Teleus. I want to go as soon as possible, and I want you with me.”

  We rode into the main camp as the sun was dropping toward the horizon. The tents were all aglow in the slanting light, and there was a breeze to blow the stink away. It looked like a scene from a storybook, but the king’s mood was as foul as the sewage in the mud between the brightly colored tents.

  The sides of the council tent had been rolled up. The table in the center had been moved away to leave space in front of the four folding chairs draped with cloth and cushioned with furs. The king sat with Attolia on his left and Eddis and Sounis to his right as Sejanus was brought to them in chains.

  “I came to warn you,” he protested on his knees.

  “No,” said the king. “You escaped your arrest and came to join your father. Finding him dead, you are pretending you came to warn me.”