The King of Attolia (10 page)

But a murmured conversation in an out-of-the-way corner did. It sounded like a conspiracy, and no conspiracy that had Baron Erondites as a member could be good for the queen.

The question was what to do with the information. It had obviously worried the valet, so he had passed it on to Costis, which made some sort of sense, though he wished the valet had chosen someone else. Now that Costis was the possessor of the information, what was he going to do with it?

Tell Relius. Costis’s lip curled in distaste at the idea, but telling the queen’s master of spies was the obvious
course of action. Relius knew everything about every palace intrigue. Perhaps he already knew about this one and it was old news. At any rate, this was not gossip, and no gentlemanly rules applied. Loyalty to the throne was all that was needed to guide Costis’s actions, that and a sense of self-preservation. Like the valet, Costis would pass on the information and then try to forget as quickly as he could that he had ever known it.

He watched Sejanus more closely that day. Suspecting his motives, Costis found everything about Sejanus even less amusing. He resolved to speak to Relius as soon as he was dismissed by the king.

In the afternoon, the king and queen sat to hear the business of their kingdom. At least, the queen sat to hear the business; Costis was still not sure what the king was doing. Costis paid more attention than Eugenides seemed to. He found many things surprisingly interesting, some things distasteful, and some horrifying.

The king, on the other hand, seemed to find everything boring. He slumped back on the throne and stared at his feet or at the ceiling. He never appeared to be listening and at times appeared to be asleep, though Costis suspected him of feigning the sleep just to be provoking. If so, the queen remained unprovoked. She coolly administered the court as if the king were not there.

Only once had the king seemed alert, when one of Relius’s men reported the first rumors that the barons
of Sounis had risen in revolt against him and that his heir, Sophos, had disappeared, probably having been abducted by the rebels. Even then the king had had no comment to make. He had spoken in court only once, and that was only because he had been blatantly nudged by the Eddisian advisors.

That day a discussion had been going on for some time about where to garrison Eddisian troops. The barons who hosted the troops paid for their upkeep, and several had complained of the unfair distribution of the burden. One of the assistants to the Ambassador from Eddis had turned to the king and asked point-blank, “What does Your Majesty think?”

“What?” Eugenides had to shake himself out of a daydream. He glowered at the Eddisians, angry at being disturbed.

Ornon cleared his throat. “Baron Anacritus would like to be relieved of the burden of supporting our garrison. We are discussing where else they might be stationed.”

“Baron Cletus is next door. Put them there.”

“Ah,” said Ornon diplomatically. “Our engineers have observed that there is a gorge which makes that posting tactically…compromised.” It made the posting tactically useless, as it separated Baron Cletus’s land from every major travel route. Costis had been listening while all this had been explained in detail. He had caught back a sigh, not looking forward to hearing it all again, but he was spared by the king’s whim.

Eugenides waved his hand and said airily, “Build a bridge.”

There was much surreptitious eye rolling, but the king had been asked for his decision, he’d made it, and it had to be taken seriously. The discussion turned to the logistics of bridge building. Afterward, as they traveled together toward the royal apartments, Eugenides had prided himself on his performance. “Very clever,” the queen had said dryly. Costis noticed that he never saw the assistant to the Ambassador from Eddis after that. No one addressed the king anymore, and he went back to woolgathering.

He was certainly not paying attention to a report on the organization of an upcoming trip that the royal retinue would take at harvesttime when the door behind the throne opened and Relius slipped between the guards posted there. He came in at the back of the room so that he could step up to the thrones from behind and lean down to whisper into the queen’s ear. Like the Captain of the Guard, he continued to address himself only to Attolia unless forced to speak to Eugenides.

In response to Relius’s message, Attolia dismissed most of the court. The few people scattered through the large room waited in near silence, the only sound the light footsteps of the Secretary of the Archives as he crossed the open marble floor to the door of an anteroom. The heels on his elegant leather shoes
tapped. The short cape that hung from his shoulders billowed against a coat even more expansively embroidered than the king’s. The guards at the door opened it on his signal, and he stepped inside, reappearing as an escort to a slow-moving party. One man was carried in a chair, and another, with his eyes bandaged, was led by the hand. The third man walked on his own but with a shuffling gait that suggested an injury.

They came before the queen, and slowly the people left in the throne room drew around them. Costis’s drowsiness fled.

“They were arrested simultaneously, or very nearly,” said Relius.

“In the same place?”

“No, Your Majesty. One in Ismet, one in Zabrisa, one in the capital.”

Zabrisa and Ismet were the names of Mede towns. Zabrisa, Costis knew, was on the coast. There was a map of the Mede Empire in the room where the king met with his Mede tutor, but Costis couldn’t recall seeing Ismet on it.

“Then the first arrested did not betray the others?” said the queen.

“No, Your Majesty. None of them even knew of the others.”

“Then you have a larger tear in your net.”

“I believe so. Immeasurably so, Your Majesty. There
are sources who should have warned me by now of these events…had they been able.”

“I see,” said the queen. Attolia’s spies in the Mede Empire were strangely silent. Frightened into hiding, Costis guessed, or dead.

“Who betrays us, Relius?” asked Attolia.

“My Queen, I will know by this time tomorrow, I swear it.”

Attolia turned to the men before her. “How is it that you have returned if you were arrested by the Mede Emperor?”

“We are messengers, Your Majesty, from the emperor’s heir.”

“And your message?”

“He is preparing an army against you, Your Majesty. We were read the provisions for the forces, the levies of men, weapons, and food.”

“Fetch them chairs,” ordered the queen. When the two standing men had been gently cared for, seated in chairs and supported with pillows, she said, “Go on.”

“The armies he is gathering are vast, Your Majesty. The entire empire is directed against us.”

“The Continent has armies as well. They will not let us be so easily overrun.”

But the spy shook his head. “The Heir Apparent says to tell you that the Continent will not act on hearsay, nor act in time. His forces are spread across his empire, and he will keep them so until the navy is ready.
He will deny that he intends to invade until he brings his army together at the harbor. Once they have swept over the Peninsula, the Greater Powers will have no easy means to evict them. The Heir says they won’t even try. They have their own battles to fight among themselves.”

“The next Emperor of the Mede is sure of himself, indeed, if he sends you back to me with messages of his intent. In my experience, patronoi, my opponent’s self-confidence is usually my best asset.”

“My family are okloi, Your Majesty. We have no land of our own,” the man said humbly.

The queen disagreed. “You have all three served Attolia well. There will be land for you. The secretary will see to it.” Relius escorted the men away.

When they were gone, the queen made no move to resume business. She stared into space. The king spoke at last.

“The Mede are returning sooner than you expected.”

“Not necessarily,” said the queen. “The old emperor still lives. The Heir cannot move until he takes the throne. He is consolidating his power more quickly than I had hoped, however.”

“Is it Nahuseresh pushing him?”

Attolia shook her head. “I am afraid it is his own desire motivating him. Relius says that Nahuseresh remains out of favor.”

“Yes. Relius.” The king paused. “Your master of spies is a liar, and this time he is lying,” the king said slowly, “to you.”

Attolia frowned, then almost imperceptibly shook her head.

“Have him arrested,” said the king. After another pause he added unequivocally, “Now.”

If he succeeds in having me killed, you could be the next Captain of the Guard
. What, then, if the king destroyed Relius? Who would replace him?

Costis hardly breathed. The king hadn’t ordered the arrest himself, though he could have, but he had directed the queen to do so, in public. Now they would see if the queen could protect her own or not.

“Fetch Teleus,” she said, and a messenger hurried from the room.

You might not think he can act like a king, but he thinks he can.

They waited like a wax tableau. Costis wondered if others’ thoughts were racing silently in circles, as his were. The queen gave no indication what she was thinking. Not even her gaze shifted until Teleus was standing in front of her. Her husband was sovereign of Attolia, and her country was riddled with Eddis’s soldiers. She ordered the arrest of her secretary.

“There will be no mistakes made, Teleus,” warned the queen. “It will be done immediately.”

Once the captain had gone, they returned to the
tableau. Time slid slowly past, and no one spoke, no one moved. They waited. The doors opened, but it was the Eddisian Ambassador. He bowed to the throne and moved quietly to a space along the wall. The doors opened again, and this time it was Teleus. He had his guards and, surrounded by them, the Secretary of the Archives. Stunned, the court turned back to the king. The truth was on Teleus’s face and on Relius’s. The Secretary of the Archives was guilty.

“He was writing this,” said the Captain of the Guard, shaking a collection of papers in his hand. “He tried to take poison when he saw us in the doorway, Your Majesty.”

“Is the paper a confession?”

“Yes.”

They walked Relius across the room, and he dropped to his knees before the throne. He stared forward like a man who sees nothing clearly except his own death, for whom the sounds of the world are nothing but a muffled din.

Blank of expression, he raised his eyes to the queen. “May I explain?”

The queen looked down at him and said nothing. His lips moved as if he was speaking, but there were no words. He closed his eyes briefly, and he struggled for a breath to begin. “When I told you that I did not know who betrayed us…I lied,” he admitted. “I had already realized that it can only be my fault. I visited a woman
in the town. You know of her, you knew when she left me. I thought she was tired of me, but I should have understood when she disappeared that I let her see too much, that she was a spy for the Mede.” He held his head in his hands. “My Queen—”

Teleus hit him in the back of the head, so hard that he sprawled forward onto the marble steps of the thrones’ dais.

“She is Your Majesty, to you!” the Captain of the Guard snarled.

“Teleus.” The queen reined him in with a word, but his face, unlike the queen’s, showed all his rage and his sense of betrayal.

“The poison?” she asked Relius. He had pulled himself back to his knees.

“I was afraid,” he said.

“Understandably so,” said Attolia. “But does an innocent man keep poison at hand?”

“My—Your Majesty,” Relius corrected himself. “I failed you,” he said. “I failed you, but I swear I never meant to betray you. I was writing all this, so that you would know. I did not mean to hide it from you. You must believe me,” he insisted.

“Must I, Relius?”

If all he had taught her was true, there was only one answer to her question.

His lips formed the word, but he couldn’t force it out. He shook his head.

“No,” agreed the queen, speaking softly. “Take him away.”

When he was gone, no one in the court moved, afraid to be the first to draw her eye.

“You will observe?” the king said.

“I must,” said the queen.

“I can’t,” the king admitted.

“Of course not,” said Attolia. She turned to the chamberlain, whose role it was to issue people in and out of the royal presence, and said, “We are through here.” It signaled the end of the court session for the day. Any further business would be postponed. The chamberlain bowed and began to clear the room. When the king stood, all stopped where they were and bowed respectfully as his guard gathered and escorted him away. Costis glanced back once to see the queen still sitting alone on her throne as the room emptied.

No, Costis thought. The king would not observe Relius’s interrogation. It would mean a return to the rooms underground where Eugenides had been imprisoned, where he had lost his right hand. If he looked sick—and he was so pale he was almost green—Costis thought it was not at the idea of Relius’s suffering, but rather at memories of his own.

They returned to the king’s rooms. He stopped in the guardroom.

“What is the time?” he asked, rubbing his face with his hand like a man distracted. He didn’t even look
pleased with his success in eliminating Relius.

“Just coming to the half hour, Your Majesty.”

“Very well.” As he walked into his room, he reached for the door, blocking his attendants with his arm. “Knock in an hour,” he said. “Don’t bother me before then.”

He closed the door in their faces.

“Well,” said Sejanus, “I suppose not even you are necessary, then, Costis, when the king retires to gloat. I wonder why he doesn’t do this when he wants to crawl into his hole and lick his wounds. It would save us standing in the hallway.”

Costis thought it was probably because the king didn’t want to move the chair for himself, and he probably wanted to be sure the attendants wouldn’t wander into the room in spite of his orders to leave him alone.