A Conspiracy of Kings (15 page)

Eugenides waited for him in the bedchamber, sitting on an
upholstered bench. He indicated the seat beside him. Sounis stood
for a moment looking down at him before taking the seat. He was
looking for some sign of the friend he had traveled with through
Eddis and across Attolia in pursuit of a mythical relic and saw
none. The king of Attolia’s expression showed no sense of
irony or humor, just a blank courtesy. Sounis sat beside him and
looked straight ahead.

Everyone else in the room, including the magus, remained
standing. Neither the queen of Eddis nor the queen of Attolia
attended.

The king of Attolia nodded agreeably but made no personal
comment. He asked if Sounis would give his oath of loyalty.

“If Attolis can make it worth the sacrifice,” Sounis
answered.

“And if not?” Attolis inquired politely.

Sounis crossed his legs, as if at ease, and offered his
intention to go to Melenze and use their resources to fight Attolia
and to delay the encroaching Medes. “Better to be king of
some part of Sounis than of none of it.”

“The oath of loyalty would pertain to all of Sounis, not
part,” Attolis said.

“You would have my loyalty, but no right to interfere in
the internal management of my state.”

“That is acceptable,” said Attolis.

“Then we are in agreement,” said Sounis.

After a dry and formal parting, Sounis was led back to his own
rooms, the magus beside him. Sounis was thinking over his decision.
A hallway, filled with various members of the court, was no place
to discuss such private thoughts. “The king’s rooms are
very plain,” he observed instead.

Attolis’s attendant, walking just ahead, turned to speak
over his shoulder. “They are not the royal apartments. His
Majesty chose these rooms in preference and has arranged for the
queen to remain in the royal apartments, as it suits them
both.” He managed to convey that they had rooms every bit as
nice as any in Sounis and also that it wasn’t anyone’s
business but theirs where their king slept.

Sounis straightened up, and when the attendant turned away, he
made a face at the magus. Gen was welcome to his attendants.
“They looked familiar, didn’t you think? Just
like—”

“Yes,” the magus replied.

The attendant’s ears were all but standing out from his
head as he strained to hear what the king’s rooms looked
like, but Sounis left the rest of his sentence unsaid. The magus
had also seen the resemblance in the plain walls and plain
paneling, and in the king’s desk with its careful arrangement
of papers and pens, to the library of the queen of Eddis, where
Eugenides had lived as her Thief.

When they were back in Sounis’s own bedchamber and the
attendant was gone, Sounis spoke more freely.

“I thought he would be more like the Gen I know once we
were in private.”

“You were never in private,” said the magus.

“Still,” said Sounis.

“My King,” said the magus hesitantly, and Sounis
waved him to speak. “I believe we must go forward with the
understanding that Attolis’s responsibility as king will
outweigh his affections as a man. But that does not mean that I
doubt his friendship. Or that I believe his friendship is
unimportant. On the contrary, no treaty, no matter how cleverly
worded, will hold without it.”

Sounis threw up his hands. “Tell
him
that,” he said.

In the ways of accommodation between nations, many viewpoints
were exchanged in the process of moving from an agreement in
principle to one locked in words. Sounis had no supporting barons
with him, and so he and the magus wore themselves hoarse in one
meeting after another. They talked long into the night, so that
Sounis could make informed decisions and the magus could carry
Sounis’s words back to more meetings the next day. Sounis was
ferried from appointment to appointment by one or another of the
king of Attolia’s companions. They took it in turn to be
available at all times, waiting in his anteroom with a brace of
honorary guards, ready to lead him up and down the endless
corridors of Attolia’s palace.

In his meetings, Sounis was careful to keep to words he had
discussed in advance with the magus, well aware that each one was a
link in a chain that would bind him and his country to Attolia. He
was determined that his agreements would engender no unforeseen
consequences and that the ties between Attolia and Sounis would not
be all at the expense of Sounis.

In the evenings, after a day of meetings, he sometimes walked in
the queen’s garden, with the king and queen of Attolia and a
crowd of others or, more rarely, with the queen of Eddis. She had
not yet returned to her own home and had announced that she would
remain until negotiations were complete.

The queen’s garden lay behind the palace. Large and walled
for privacy, it was a miniature world of alleys and outdoor rooms.
There were fountains and reflecting pools with benches beside them
and expansive lawns around them, and there were smaller benches
discreetly tucked into alcoves between high hedges.

Attolia remained as intimidating as ever, cool and beautiful,
with never a word that was unkind or one that was kind, either. She
was a wellspring of information that had, as far as Sounis ever
found, no end. She spoke freely about the organization of her army,
and her creation of a separate branch of it specifically for her
artillery. She offered ready information on how she moved her
cannons, how she supplied her ships, and how she circumvented the
destructive traditions of the patronoi by making the best use of
her okloi, offering promotions and land grants for twenty-year
veterans and receiving in return their uncorrupted loyalty. It was
information too important not to have, and Sounis steeled himself
to continue asking questions as often as she would answer.

Eugenides remained as distant as his queen. His mask of
formality seemed unassailable, and Sounis continued to search
without success for some sign of his friend in the king’s
remote expression.

For many reasons, Sounis preferred his quieter walks with Eddis.
These were more lightly companioned, with her ladies and one of the
king’s attendants following some distance behind. At first
the discussions were much the same as those with Attolia. Eddis was
a welcome anchor in his unsure navigation of the political seas,
and he turned to her for advice to supplement the magus’s. On
occasion the magus walked with them, though as the days passed, he
excused himself more often than not, leaving Sounis and Eddis alone
in each other’s company.

It seemed to Sounis that if he was not in a meeting discussing
an interest rate or a trade of goods or if he was not walking in
the garden, he was reluctantly standing in the light of a window
while being fitted for clothes. He wouldn’t have minded the
never-ending measurements if he could have eaten during the
process, but the tailors insisted that raising his arms would spoil
their work. If the measurements were irksome, the clothes
themselves, when they began to arrive, appeared disturbingly
expensive.

After the third suit of the day, he called for the magus.
Leaning down from where he was posed on a felted wooden block, he
said quietly into the magus’s ear, “Do I need this much
lace? And how are we paying for it?”

The tailors paused in their work as if under a magician’s
spell, their pins poised, their lips pursed. The king’s
attendant on duty that day was Ion, standing patiently in a corner.
He cleared his throat politely and said, “His Majesty’s
wardrobe is a gift from My King.”

Sighing, the tailors returned to their work. “Attolis is
very generous,” they murmured.

“Indeed,” said Sounis, thinking that the attention
to frippery was the only sign of the old Eugenides he had seen.
When the tailors were finished and had stripped away the carefully
marked patches of fabric, he stretched and stepped down from the
wooden stand.

“Your Majesty?” said the tailor apologetically.

Sounis had been heading back to the clothes that had been
borrowed for him to wear until the tailoring was done. “You
said that suit was the last?”

The tailor bowed. “We still have the uniforms to
fit.”

Sounis sighed as he stepped back up, suspecting that the king of
Attolia was torturing him.

“Would I be wrong,” Sounis asked one evening as he
walked with Eddis, “to think that I talk to you, you talk to
Gen, and Gen talks to Attolia, who talks to the magus, who talks to
me?”

Eddis laughed. “Not always. Sometimes, as in this case,
someone approaches my Eddisian ambassador Ornon, here in Attolia,
and he talks to me, I talk to you, you talk to Attolia, Attolia
talks to Gen, and he talks to me.”

“I see you appear in that progression twice.”

“Oh, more than that, because after Gen talks to me, the
process reverses. He goes back to Attolia, who talks to you, who go
to the magus, who repeats the information to me, who gives it to
Ornon, who takes it to whoever started this particular political
ball rolling in the first place.” She ended breathless, but
smiling.

They had been discussing the Neutral Islands, the scattered
island states that were spread off the shores of Sounis, Eddis, and
Attolia. Most of the islands in the archipelago changed hands
intermittently between Sounis and Attolia, but some had established
their independence from either power and maintained it by keeping a
scrupulous neutrality.

With the exception of a few lying very near Sounis’s
shore, all islands but the Neutral ones were in Attolia’s
hands. When Sounis’s barons had risen in rebellion against
him, the navy of Sounis had disappeared into division and disarray.
The nucleus of Sounis’s navy was owned by the crown, but all
the other ships were owned and outfitted by individual barons, who
called them back to their home ports, isolating them from one
another and from any central command, making them easy pickings for
Attolia’s fleet and pirates. What was left of Sounis’s
navy was trapped in the harbor of the capital city. Unable to break
Attolia’s blockades, Sounis’s islands had surrendered
one by one.

Sounis had assumed that he would cede them permanently to
Attolia, but Eddis was suggesting that he argue for possession of
Lerna and Hanippus. Lerna was the largest of the Ring Archipelago;
Hanippus was almost as big, though isolated from the direct sea
lanes.

Eddis had explained that the Neutral Islands would not be at
ease surrounded entirely by islands under Attolian control.
“Attolia does not want drawn-out hostilities off her shore.
If she gives up Lerna and Hanippus, it is a means to assure the
Neutral Islands of her peaceful intentions,” she said.

“So Hannipus and Lerna controlled by Sounis, which is in
turn bound to Attolia, will make them more comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Very well,” said Sounis, bemused but willing.
“I will direct the magus to raise the issue and discuss it
myself with Attolia. I am surrendering myself to Attolis, but all
my conversations seem to be with his queen.”

Eddis nodded. “Gen leaves the reins in Attolia’s
hands. Which is not what either I or Attolia recommended, but
wisely he ignored us both.”

“Wisely?”

Smiling, Eddis said, “He hasn’t the temperament. He
gets angry. She only ever gets angry at him.”

Sounis, having seen the Thief of Eddis lose his temper, could
see her point. “But it is not what you advised?”

“No,” Eddis replied. She said thoughtfully,
“She and I both thought his presence must inevitably weaken
Attolia and if he didn’t become a strong king, the court
would soon be unstable. He proved me wrong. Either because he can
see what we can’t or just because he demands the world
conform to his own desires. I am never sure which it is that he
does. In this case, he managed to so terrify his barons that they
have assumed a semblance of conformity without undermining
Attolia’s power after all. No one will cross her.”

“Understandable,” said Sounis.

Seeing his shudder, Eddis said, “Give her time. She is
slow to trust.”

“What need is there for her to trust me?” Sounis
asked, surprised. “Am I not the one exposing my neck to the
wolf?”

“Oh, I hope you haven’t said that to her,”
Eddis said, laughing.

“Indeed, I am not that brave,” Sounis admitted.

Eddis did not say what she was thinking: that Sophos held
Gen’s heart in his hand, that he was one of very few people
who could destroy the king of Attolia, and that Attolia knew
it.

“I did say, though, that I wasn’t surrendering to
her and I wasn’t swearing any oaths to her,
either.”

“And?” Eddis prompted. “Was she
angry?”

“She seemed to be pleased,” said Sounis, “for
what that is worth. I find it impossible to know what she is
thinking.”

“She probably was pleased, then. She has her reasons, I am
sure.”

“You trust her?”

“I’m not swearing any oaths to her,” said
Eddis.

Sounis laughed. “I should hope not.”

Eddis changed the subject then, asking, “Do you sleep? You
look tired.”

“Not well,” Sounis answered. “I mostly lie in
bed tracing the patterns in plasterwork.” Every night he
picked apart his decision to surrender his sovereignty to Attolis
and then remade it before morning.

Eddis said, “You should think of something else or you
will end up like poor Polystrictes, asleep in the middle of the
day.”

Sounis smiled. He had never heard of Polystrictes.

“How can you not know Polystrictes?” Eddis
asked.

“Poor tutoring,” said Sounis, glancing over his
shoulder at the magus far behind them, walking with one of
Eddis’s attendants on one arm and one of Attolia’s on
the other. “Tell me?”

They had reached a long, narrow alley between two hedges that
reached over their heads. Leaving the magus and the attendants to
be lost from sight, they turned up it, the shells on the path
crunching underfoot. “He did a favor for the god Ocrassus,
and Ocrassus repaid him with a goat.”