The King of Attolia

by Megan Whalen Turner

Eugenides considered. “Very well,” he agreed with cold reluctance.

  Aristogiton and his men hurried toward Teleus, responding to his summoning wave. Costis waited while the captain gave the squad leader his orders, then Costis and Aris caught up with the king, who had already started back to the palace. He was walking slowly, his hand still on his hip. Costis had never seen him so dignified. His stately dignity faded a little when they got close enough to hear the curses he muttered under his breath. He was less inventive than usual, and by the time they reached the reflecting pool he was repeating the same phrase again and again like a chant.

  Walking so slowly, Costis had ample time to consider his commitment to the goddess Philia. Ten gold cups.

  With all the money he had, added to all he could conceivably borrow from the moneylenders in the city, he could afford one gold cup. His father might have enough for another. The priests wouldn’t expect them all at once. Only if Costis waited too long, or died before delivering on his promise, would he risk the goddess’s displeasure. That displeasure would spread to his family, in which case his uncle might be willing to give the gold for two more, possibly three. If harvests were poor, or other signs of the goddess’s ill will appeared, he might empty the family treasury and buy four cups. That still left four unpaid for, and anyway, Costis hated the idea of asking his uncle for money.

  He was thinking of full-size drinking cups, made by a goldsmith and decorated with figures. If he offered the goddess ceremonial cups instead, smaller models of drinking cups, very plain ones, his money would go farther. It might stretch to three small (tiny) cups, and his father’s to three more. And if he saved every coin, wore the clothes the army provided, ate the food the army provided, which was nourishing enough, if occasionally infested, and if he never spent a copper in a wineshop with his friends, he might pay for the remaining four small (very small) cups, in ten or fifteen years. He could just forget his oath, he supposed, and hope the goddess didn’t notice.

  The king reached the top of the stairs that led down to the reflecting pool and stopped. He turned a little to face Costis, his hand still pinching his side.

  Guilt-stricken, Costis gasped in horror, “No! No! I’ll get the ten cups, I swear it!”

  The king’s coat was light gold, the color of the hills in the autumn heat, embroidered in matching satin threads. His tunic underneath was a contrasting dark mulberry color. The blood didn’t show against the fabric, but it welled between the king’s fingers, and its bright stain spread in a messy spiderweb across the back of his hand.

  “Costis,” the king said in the patient voice of someone dealing with the insane, “I just need a little help on the stairs.”

  Of course. The stairs. With a wound in his side, the stairs would be difficult. Costis pulled himself together and looked over to Aris, standing there as pale as the king. “Go for the physician,” he said.

  “No!” the king contradicted sharply. Both Costis and Aristogiton turned to him in surprise.

  “Oh, gods all damn it,” the king said softly. He lifted his hand to rub his face, saw the blood all over it, and put it back on his hip. He turned carefully to look at the walls of the palace itself. The heads and shoulders of spectators were visible on the guard walks at the top. The king looked back at the walls that circled the grounds. More people.

  “So, so, so,” he said, defeated. “Get the physician. Have him meet me in my rooms.”

  Aris went.

  Eugenides stood with his head bent and his shoulders bowed. “How many cups, Costis?” he asked without lifting his head.

  Costis flushed. “Ten.”

  “Silver?”

  “Gold.”

  “Ten gold cups for my sake?” He looked up, surprised. “I thought you hated me.”

  “I do.”

  Eugenides started to laugh and gasped instead. Costis put a hand on either shoulder to steady him.

  “I have a superstitious fear of falling,” Eugenides admitted. “Let me put an arm over your shoulder while we get down the stairs.”

  Costis ducked his head and presented his shoulder.

  The king didn’t move. “Wrong arm, dear,” he said, dryly. He had to use his left hand to cover the wound, because he had no right one.

  Embarrassed, Costis stepped around behind the king to the other side. The king’s arm dropped heavily across his shoulder. When Costis straightened, the hook hung just in front of his eyes. For the first time, he could see its knife-edge. There was a smear of blood on it, and one corner of the cuff of the king’s coat was soaked.

  Costis flinched and looked away from this compensation to the king’s handicap, only to find himself staring directly into the king’s face instead. Eugenides matched Costis look for look, his expression grave, his eyes like pools of darkness deeper than Costis could penetrate. For a moment Costis could see, not so much what was hidden but that there were things hidden that the king did not choose to reveal. Things that were not for Costis to see. There was no understanding him, but Costis knew he would march into hell for this fathomless king, as he would for his queen. So long, he worried, as they didn’t order him in opposite directions at the same time. What he would do when that happened, Costis couldn’t guess.

  The king’s arm tightened across his shoulder, and Costis broke free of his thoughts and started down the steps.

  The king’s left foot landed awkwardly on the stair. He hissed.

  Costis reached across to support him with his right hand, and his concern must have shown on his face.

  “Hoping to get out of paying for those cups?” the king asked.

  Costis snapped the hand back to his side, and the king laughed.

  “Miniatures?”

  “Full size,” said Costis obstinately.

  “Was it to keep me from getting hurt? Because this”—he stopped for a breath—“this hurts.”

  “I’m not sure. I think I prayed that you would be safe, Your Majesty.”

  “That’s more ambiguous.” Eugenides considered. “I’ll have to die for you to be free of that promise.”

  “I’ll get the cups, Your Majesty.”

  The king shook his head. “You would spend your life paying for them.”

  Costis would never pay off the debt. He’d prefer to march into hell, but that option wasn’t available. Odd that you could be so angry at someone and devoted to him at the same time. “I’ll get them,” Costis said simply.

  “Costis, I am speechless.”

  “Not noticeably, Your Majesty.” His entire life, which he had been hoping for the past two weeks might be restored, was gone again. He wished the king wouldn’t laugh at him.

  They walked beside the reflecting pool. There was a great black hole in the water lilies where Teleus had fallen in. The water that had come with him when he’d climbed out of the fountain had splashed onto the edge work and was drying in the sun. One smashed lily trailed across the edge and into the water. Eugenides began again, hesitantly. “As it was undertaken on my behalf, we might ask the royal treasury to address the debt.”

  Ten gold cups would hardly be noticed by the royal treasurer. Costis swallowed.

  “Have I offended you? I didn’t mean to.”

  Costis shook his head. “No, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “Which goddess should we dedicate them to?”

  “Philia.”

  She was an Attolian goddess. Not one of Eugenides’s gods. “I see. I suppose it’s good to curry favor where you can. You never know who might rescue you when you overreach.”

  Costis believed in his gods, prayed to his gods, and sacrificed to his gods, but Eugenides was rumored not only to believe in his gods but also to speak to them and to hear them answer. The idea made Costis uncomfortable. The gods may have walked the earth in the time of the legends, but he preferred to think of them safely on their altars.

  “Of course, that’s assuming I live,” said the king. “I might not.” He sighed. “I probably won’t live to s
ee my bedchamber.” If these were death agonies, they were fake ones, Costis thought, and was sure of it when they reached the shallow stair at the far end of the reflecting pool. No one on the verge of death has the strength to pile one foul word on top of another like a man compiling a layered pastry of obscene language, from the bottom step all the way to the top.

  He was more concerned when the king’s steps slowed as they approached the hunting court, and the halt was accompanied by no curses or complaints. Then he heard voices coming toward them and realized it wasn’t the pain, it was the anticipation of company that had stopped the king in his tracks.

  The crowd came trampling across the flower beds, guards, nobles, and servants.

  Eugenides made a noise. Costis bent his head to hear.

  “Arf, arrf, bark, bark, bark, yap yap,” muttered the king.

  They were quickly surrounded. Voices hammered at them from all directions, and there were faces pressing close on every side. Hands, whose owners Costis couldn’t see, tried to pull the king away. Costis pulled back, and the king yelled in outrage. Costis wondered if somewhere in the crowd was a man who would finish the work the assassins had begun.

  “Hey,” he said loudly to a well-dressed middle-aged man who stood in front of him, but was turned toward the king. “Hey!” Costis said again, and the man turned. Costis put his hand out flat on the man’s chest and shoved. All of the muscles in his arm and in his back pushing like a ram, he drove the man backward until he bumped into the man behind him and both fell with arms windmilling. To avoid being dragged down, those who could stepped back, crowding the people behind them and leaving an open space in front of Costis.

  On the edges of the crowd he could see guards. They were on the outskirts, like the palace servants, only spectators on the scene. It was not their place to approach the king without being directed to do so. Costis recognized most of them by sight, if not by name. He trusted them more than the yammering nobles around him.

  “To the king!” he shouted, and the guards, after a startled look, to be sure it was they who were being addressed, came. They shoved their way through the crowd.

  Costis said, “Don’t let anyone get close.”

  Costis was half-carrying the king, whose steps had faltered. Costis could feel him tremble. There didn’t seem to be any point in following the curving path if the flowers were already trampled, so Costis made directly for the gateway into the hunting court.

  Frantically, he bent his head to the king who appeared to be choking. Costis made a grumpy noise. The king was laughing.

  “That was the Baron Anacritus you just dumped on his backside. Did you know?”

  “No. I don’t care either. Where are your attendants?” Costis asked bitterly.

  “I dismissed them while I went for my quiet walk. No doubt someone is telling them right now what fun they are missing. They will be here soon.”

  “Not soon enough,” said Costis.

  “Anxious to get rid of me?”

  “Why can’t you act like a proper king?” Costis hissed in his ear.

  They reached the hunting court at last.

  “Oh gods, stairs,” Eugenides muttered in despair.

  Costis sighed. The king had a long way and many stairs ahead of him. The royal apartments were on the far side of the palace. It would be best, probably, to find the nearest staircase and climb to the walks at the roofline. That would take him across to the inner palace, and from there he could go down and then up again to his rooms.

  Thinking that surely someone else would escort the king that far, Costis was eyeing the first set of steps ahead of him. They led up from the hunting court to the portico entrance to the palace. Eugenides was looking at his feet. He didn’t see the queen arrive.

  She came through the palace doorway ahead of her attendants, who joined her one by one, all showing signs of haste. The people on the stairs moved silently out of the queen’s way, and she looked down at the king, who still hadn’t looked up. Walking stiffly, she came silently down the stairs. The guards broke their cordon to admit her.

  She reached for Eugenides, touched him on the face. He leapt backward like a startled deer, so explosively that Costis almost fell over trying to hold him. The queen snatched her hand back as if she had been burned.

  There was a collective gasp from all around and then silence. Nothing stirred in the courtyard, not even the air, while the queen looked down at the king and the king looked down at his feet. Costis’s heart sank—for king and for queen, and for himself, who was uncomfortably loyal to two people at the same time.

  The queen had begun another slow step backward up the stair behind her when the king caught her by the wrist and pulled her forward. He pulled Costis as well. Costis was sufficiently taller than the king that bringing his shoulder down to provide support put him off-balance. He had to shift his footing with care, and shift it again as the king let go of Attolia’s wrist in order to catch the robe at the elbow and pull her closer.

  The king lifted a hand to her cheek and kissed her. It was not a kiss between strangers, not even a kiss between a bride and a groom. It was a kiss between a man and his wife, and when it was over, the king closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the hollow of the queen’s shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day. “I didn’t have the gardens searched,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Costis realized his mouth was open, and shut it. He couldn’t step away without pulling the king’s arm off his shoulder, but he could look in some other direction, so he did that. He looked at the court, filled with people who were slower than he to realize that their mouths were hanging open. So many stunned faces all in rows. Costis could have laughed, but was still too shaken himself.

  “I’m sorry if I startled you,” said Attolia softly.

  “You didn’t startle me,” said Eugenides. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  Attolia’s lips pressed together. “You needn’t admit it out loud,” she reproved him.

  “Hard to deny it,” Eugenides answered. Costis could hear him smile.

  “Are you badly hurt?”

  “Hideously,” said the king, without sounding injured at all. “I am disemboweled. My insides may in an instant become my outsides as I stand here before you, and no one will even notice.” He reached up again to touch her face, trying to wipe away the bloody fingerprints he had left, but only making them worse. “My beautiful queen. Your entire court is staring at you, and I can’t blame them.”

  They were, too. The queen turned to look. Her glance swept through the crowd like a reaping sickle through grain. Mouths slammed shut on every side. There was a scuffling sound as the people in the back shifted, trying to screen themselves from view. The queen looked back at the king, who was broadly grinning.

  “Where are your attendants?” she said. She looked at Costis for the first time, and at the other soldiers with sudden scrutiny. “Where are your guards?”

  “With Teleus,” Eugenides answered quickly. “Costis and these others were conveniently near to hand. I left the others to clean up.”

  “I see. Still, you should not be standing here.” She signaled to a guard. “Lift him.”

  “I think I will walk,” said the king.

  “Maybe a stretcher?” the queen suggested innocently. “You can lie down.”

  “Like Oneis carried off the field? I think not,” said Eugenides. His arm pressed against the back of Costis’s neck, and they started up the stairs.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THEY laid the king down on his bed. The crowd had thinned as they crossed the inner palace, and as they reached the final set of stairs, he’d let his guards carry him. He’d accused them of laziness for not offering sooner. When Costis looked at him in reproach, he’d said, “Stop giving me the evil eye, Costis, I am mortally wounded. I deserve some consideration.”

  The room was filled with people talking. Those who knew the details of the assassination attempt were
sharing their information. The guards were sorting themselves out under the direction of the lieutenant who had been in the guardroom. The queen was near the door speaking to her attendant, who was wiping the king’s bloody fingerprints from the queen’s cheek. The last few hangers-on, those who had talked their way past guards at various doorways along the route, were in the guardroom, hoping to be admitted by the guards posted there. One by one, the silence by the bed drew their attention.

  Even the king was quiet. Exhausted, relieved, he lay boneless and silent. The skin was dragged thin across his cheekbones. His sweaty hair stuck to his face, and his eyes were closed. His hand, clutching the fabric of his tunic, had relaxed and slipped down to his side, revealing what the careful bunching of the cloth had concealed.

  The tunic had been split by a knife stroke from one side to the other. As the edges of the fabric separated, those by the bed realized how much blood had been soaking, unseen, into the waist of the king’s trousers. The wound wasn’t a simple nick in the king’s side. It began near the navel and slid all the way across his belly. If the wall of the gut had been opened, the king would be dead of infection within days.

  He should have said something, why hadn’t he? Costis wondered. In fact, the king had. He had complained at every step all the way across the palace, and they’d ignored it. If he’d been stoic and denied the pain, the entire palace would have been in a panic already, and Eddisian soldiers on the move. He’d meant to deceive them, and he’d succeeded. It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain.

  The king must have noticed the silence. He opened his eyes. Everyone else was looking at his abdomen; Costis watched his face. Seeing him look anxiously around the room until his eyes fixed on someone by the door, Costis knew that he hadn’t been trying to deceive the palace, or calm the Eddisians. He hardly cared if the palace was in a panic. There was only one person he’d been hiding the extent of the injury from, the queen.