“Whoever’s library it is, I would say you’re the only one who’s going to set it to rights.” He started to leave.
“Galen,” Eugenides said.
“Yes?”
“Get your trash off my desk. I want to use it.”
Galen snorted. “I’ll see if I can find someone who’s not too busy.”
Despite Galen’s unsympathetic words, one of his assistants showed up in the afternoon to collect the medicines, bowls, and the unused bandages. Eugenides looked at the remaining clutter but didn’t move to sort it. He turned away and stared into the fire for the rest of the afternoon. The desk sat untouched.
In the morning he picked up the pen nibs that had been spilled. He dropped them one by one into their case, where they landed with tiny ticking sounds. When the case was full, he stirred them with one finger before he fitted the lid into place and went back to sitting in front of the fire.
Every morning, when the sunlight forced its way around the edges of the window curtains, trimming them in light, he dragged himself out of bed and went to the desk to clear something away before he sat down in the armchair. He wasn’t used to being awake in the morning. He was used to being awake late in the night, when the rest of the palace was sleeping. He sat in front of the fire until early afternoon, then went back to bed until evening. Galen came to check on him every few days. Eddis and his father alternated in their weekly visits. Except for the servants who delivered trays of food, he was alone. He stayed in the quiet of his study, and no one bothered him.
When the desk was clear of all but a small phial of lethium, a few drops of which he took every night in order to sleep, he moved on to the library. One day that, too, was tidy, and he had to think of a new reason to get out of bed in the morning. Finally he got up to collect a few scraps of paper and one of his pens and sat down to see what writing with his left hand was going to be like.
He had to open the ink bottle with his teeth. The paper slid on the desk and needed to be held in place. If he used his stump, the bandages didn’t give him any purchase unless he pressed down quite firmly. The stump was tender, and it hurt. If he used his forearm, he not only covered up most of the paper he was trying to write on, he covered the top part of it—meaning that as he wrote, he would smear what he’d written. Sighing, he got back up and went into the library and over to the chest that held maps in wide, flat drawers. There was a deeper drawer at the top to hold map weights, but it was almost empty. Only two mismatched weights were left. There was a third he almost overlooked at the back. Eugenides put them in the pocket of his robe and carried them to his desk. They held the paper in place. He dipped the pen into the ink and began trying to write.
He practiced his writing a little every day and was working on it one afternoon when someone crossed the library to knock on the frame of his open door. He looked up to find his father’s secretary standing with another man just behind him.
“Yes?” said Eugenides.
“I’ve brought a tailor,” said the secretary. “Your father mentioned that you might need your dinner clothes refitted or a new set altogether before you can come down for dinner.”
“Am I coming down for dinner?” Eugenides asked. He hadn’t thought about it. Now that it had been brought to mind, he longed for a permanent excuse to miss the formal dinners with the queen and her court.
The secretary looked at him without speaking. The tailor waited patiently.
“I guess I’ll have to, eventually,” said Eugenides, and rinsed his pen. “I don’t know why the old suit won’t fit, though.”
The tailor helped him dress, doing up the buttons on the undershirt when Eugenides fumbled with them. Dressed, Eugenides bunched in his hand the extra fabric of what had been a fitted overshirt.
“I’m thinner,” he said, surprised.
“Probably because you don’t eat,” muttered the tailor through the pins in his mouth, and looked up in time to catch a warning glance from the minister of war’s secretary. He looked back down at the cloth he was pinning, but he didn’t forget the rumors he’d heard. Having seen the queen’s Thief with his own eyes, he thought that they were probably true: that the Thief sent his food back to the palace kitchen without touching it, that he kept to his room, seeing no one, that he’d probably die soon, and the whole city grieving as if he were already gone and that vicious bitch of Attolia to blame. The tailor shrugged and paid close attention to his work.
“The undershirt will have to be recut,” he said. “I might need a few days to get it done.”
“Take your time,” said Eugenides.
The gibbous moon, slightly more than half full, shone from a clear sky on the queen’s palace in Attolia. In the summertime, when the palace windows were open, she could lie in the darkness of her bedchamber and listen to the wheels of the heavy carts rumbling in the streets as farmers dragged their produce into the city for the morning market. It was winter. The windows were closed, and when she woke and looked into the darkness around her, the room was silent. She flicked the covers off with an angry sigh and stood up. From the doorway to an anteroom, an attendant appeared. She collected a robe and gracefully slid it over the outstretched arms, settling it on her mistress’s shoulders.
“Does Your Majesty require something?” she asked.
“Solitude,” said the queen of Attolia. “Leave me.” The attendant dutifully left her post and went to stand in the hallway outside the queen’s chambers. The queen moved to a window and pulled aside the heavy curtains to look at the moon while passing a sleepless night, one of many.
When Eugenides paused in the entranceway to the lesser throne room, those closest to him halted their conversations, puzzled to see a stranger in the doorway, then shocked when they recognized him. He looked older, and unfamiliar after his absence. He’d had the barber clip his hair short again, and his right arm was hidden in a sling. As the court looked him over, silence spread away from the bottom of the stair into the throne room like a wave through a small pond, and he stood immobilized by the stares.
“Eugenides,” said the queen.
He turned to find her in the crowd. She held out a hand, and he stepped down the stairs and across the throne room to take it and bow over it.
“My Queen,” he said.
“My Thief,” she answered.
He lifted his head. She squeezed his hand, and he forbore to argue with her.
“Dinner, I think,” said the queen, and the court moved into the Ceremonial Hall, where dinner would be served at the queen’s pleasure and a little earlier than the kitchen had planned. Cursing under his breath, the chef rose to the occasion.
Eugenides sat between a baroness and a duchess, the queen’s younger sister. The loudest sounds in the room were the footsteps of servers bringing the food. People tended to look in sequence at Eugenides, then at the queen, and then at the plates in front of them. Someone coughed or cleared his throat. Someone at the far end of the table mentioned the harvest, which had been good, and the duchess to his right picked up the thread of the conversation. She chatted about the weather, which was cold. It was winter, so that wasn’t surprising. When the food came, Eugenides ate the vegetables. He left the meat, because he couldn’t cut it, and ate a small piece of bread without spreading cheese on it, because he couldn’t do that either.