“We’ll see what Galen says,” the queen said, embarrassed, but she waited instead of returning to her meeting with her minister of trade. To her surprise, the physician, when he appeared, was pleased with the results of her interruption.
“He recognized you. He hasn’t recognized anyone else. Come back when you can.”
In the morning Eddis sat by Eugenides’s bedside, waiting for him to wake. She asked Galen about the bruises under his eyes, and he said that the black marks were old blood that had been trapped under the skin. She’d known that much, but she wondered why his nose hadn’t been broken then, if the bruising around his eyes was so dark. Galen explained that the blood was from the blow to his forehead, and it had drained into his eye sockets. He said it might take several weeks to fade. In the meantime the bruises made his face seem even thinner and his skin more pale.
She sat and watched him sleep, remembering many other times she’d seen him with bruises. He’d often had them after fights with his cousins. They’d teased him because of his name and teased him more as his grandfather’s interest in him grew. Eugenides had a tongue that sometimes moved faster than his thoughts, and he responded with taunts of his own, usually more cutting, sometimes so effective that the cousins’ attentions were diverted to his victim and Eugenides escaped. More often the teasing ended in blows and in bruises.
When his mother had died, Eugenides hadn’t waited to tell his father his intentions to be the next Thief of Eddis. His father, the loss of his wife still fresh, had been enraged. Eugenides and his father had fought, both of them exercising their grief in anger with each other, in front of the entire court. The cousins, who idolized the minister of war, increased their attacks on Eugenides, and bad feelings grew until Eddis had moved him out of the boys’ dormitory and into the only free room that she could think of, an anteroom to the rarely used palace library.
He’d cleaned the dust off the shelves and honed rudimentary reading skills into a taste for scholarship not uncommon among the Thieves of Eddis, and when he had fought his periodic, disastrous losing battles with his cousins, he had retreated to the library and his study-bedchamber to nurse his bruises. Eddis had visited him often in times of internal exile. She hadn’t taken his side. It was too obvious to everyone involved that he had brought trouble on himself and was anything but a helpless victim. His cousins had begun to lose cherished objects and find them again on the temple altar dedicated forever to the God of Thieves. Eddis hadn’t supported his cousins either when they had come to her with their complaints. They were her cousins as well, and she’d fought with them herself until her two older brothers had died of fever within the space of a few days and she had become the heir to Eddis. Within a few months she had become queen, and after that no one fought with her except in formal, polite, tedious ways—no one except Eugenides, who continued to abuse her about her taste in clothes and relatives, as if the existence of the cousins were her fault.
“Exile them all,” he’d suggested.
“You know I can’t. Someday they’re going to be officers in my army and my ministers of trade and the exchequer.”
“You can make me an officer instead.”
“You tore up your enrollment papers during the last fight with your father.”
“I’ll be your minister—”
“Of the exchequer? You’d rob me blind.”
“I would never steal from you,” he’d said hotly.
“Oh? Where is my tourmaline necklace? Where are my missing earrings?”
“That necklace was hideous. It was the only way to keep you from wearing it.”
“My earrings?”
“What earrings?”
“Eugenides!” She had laughed. “If Cleon beats you, it’s because you deserve it!”
She never worried about his complaints. She worried only when he was quiet. Either he was plotting something so outrageous it would bring her entire court to her throne howling for his blood, or he’d been fighting with his father, or on very rare occasions it meant he’d been seriously hurt. One of his cousins had broken several of his ribs once in a beating, and once he’d slipped while making his way across an icy wall and had fallen to the ground with his leg twisted underneath him. It was a hazard of thieves, to fall, often to their deaths, as his mother had done.
When hurt, he’d been white faced and quiet, staying in his rooms until he started to heal, and then, when he was feeling better, he’d complained constantly. He didn’t, however, tell her who had broken his ribs or how he’d sprained his knee. Numerous eager tattletales told her about Titus, and the other bit of news she dragged out of the palace physician who’d dragged it from Eugenides while working on the leg. Galen was also used to seeing Eugenides’s bruises and listening with no visible sympathy to his complaints.
Eddis leaned forward to brush the hair away from Eugenides’s damp forehead. Galen had cut off most of the Thief’s long hair, and he looked very different without it. She wouldn’t have guessed that his hair, cut short, would form small curls at his temple and behind his ears. She brushed one of them back into place.
“My Queen,” he said quietly, opening his eyes.
“My Thief,” she said sadly.
“She knew I was in the palace,” he said in a low voice, sounding very tired. “She knew where I was hiding, she knew how I’d get out of the city. She knew everything. I’m sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have sent you.”
He shook his head. “No. I made mistakes. I don’t know what they were. I’ve been trying to think. I just don’t know. I failed you, My Queen,” he said, his voice getting weaker. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry,” said Eddis bitterly, and Eugenides’s eyes opened again. “I’ll tell you she will be sorry when she’s the one hanging head down from her palace walls.” She was crumpling the fine fabric of her dress in her fists. She smoothed it out and then stood up to pace.
“Galen will throw me out if I upset you,” she said, sitting down again.
“You’re not upsetting me. It’s good to see you storming around. She doesn’t storm,” he said, looking away into empty space. “When she’s angry, she sits, and when she’s sad, she sits. If she was ever happy, she’d just sit, I think.” It was more than he had said for days, and when he was done, he closed his eyes. Eddis thought he was sleeping. She stood and walked to the window. It was set high in the wall. The sill was at her eye level, and the glass panes reached nearly to the ceiling. By standing on her toes, she could look down into the front courtyard. It was empty.
“She was within her rights,” Eugenides said behind her.
Eddis spun around. “She was not.”
“It was a common punishment for thieves.”
“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Eddis. “They haven’t cut the hand off a thief in Attolia in a hundred years. And anyway, you’re not a common thief. You are my Thief. You’re a member of the royal family. She attacked all of Eddis through you, and you know it.”
“Eddis had no business in her palace.” Eugenides was whispering. Eddis knew he was tired.