Attolia didn’t particularly care for the new ambassador from Medea. His oily style of compliments and indirection didn’t suit her, but that was the required form in the court he came from, and he was certainly insightful and in this case quite accurate.
The waters of the Aracthus would eventually overfill its reservoir and flood Eddis’s capital city if the dam remained closed. For Attolia, the death of the Thief was worth the loss of a season’s harvest, but his death was the least Attolia could accomplish and the best that Eddis could hope for. There was no reason to satisfy Eddis’s hopes, and she had every desire to confound them.
“Bring him here,” she said, and the guards obediently brought Eugenides back to the base of the throne. Attolia leaned forward in her chair to look at him. He swallowed convulsively but met her eyes without flinching even as she cupped her hand under his chin.
“That was hasty of me,” she said. She continued to stare into Eugenides’s face but spoke to the guards. “Take him back to his cell and let him wait. I believe,” she said slowly, “I will think a little more before I decide what’s best to do with you.”
Eugenides looked at her without expression. He turned his head to go on looking at her over his shoulder as he was led away. She wondered if he guessed what punishment she had in mind. Let the Eddisian babble about offending the gods, Attolia thought, sitting back in her throne. They were not her gods, and she would not worship them.
“A pity about the ransom,” she said.
“Not a significant sum, surely?” the Mede beside her replied.
“Not to your emperor, perhaps,” said Attolia. “Here on this coast of the middle sea, where we are less wealthy, I could put a sum like that to good use.”
“Then take it please, as a gift from my emperor,” said the Mede, as Attolia had hoped he would.
“You jest?” she asked the Mede.
“Not at all,” he answered. “Nothing would please my master the emperor more than to be of assistance to so lovely a ruler as yourself.” He made an elaborate bow, and Attolia smiled, very pleased.
CHAPTER THREE
EUGENIDES STOOD IN HIS CELL with his shoulders against the damp wall. Resting the back of his head against the stones made the front hurt worse, so he dropped his head toward his chest. He didn’t want to go back to sleep. He imagined his grandfather waiting for him at the gates of the afterworld, and he didn’t want to have to tell him that he’d spent the last few hours allotted to him napping. The old man would not be impressed by false nonchalance.
All the tools of his trade were still tucked into their pockets in his clothes, but none of them was of any use. No part of the locking mechanism on the door was accessible. Eugenides had checked.
Pulling himself away from the wall, he staggered along it. His balance was off, and he kept his right hand on the wall to steady himself, feeling the cool stones with his fingertips. There was a gouge in the heel of the hand. The pain from that wound distracted him from the worse one in his head, and from the innumerable tears where the dogs had caught him with their teeth.
He circled the cell. There was no window with bars to be filed through. The only light came through the narrow opening in the door. There were no loose stones or miraculous tunnels, and the door remained unshakably closed.
Silently he called on the God of Thieves but didn’t even know what to pray for. Should he pray to die quickly? It seemed too much to ask to escape Attolia entirely. In the end he prayed for help, any help, and left it to the god to decide what was best.
Someone slid a tray of food through the slot in the bottom of the cell door. He staggered to the upper part of the door and looked out at the prison keeper.
“I heard she was going to hang you but she changed her mind,” said the keeper. “Don’t worry, lad, she never changes it for the better.” He laughed and banged the bars of the window with his truncheon. Eugenides snatched his fingers away. “Enjoy the meal. It might be the last,” the man advised as he moved away.
Eugenides sat down to drink the watery soup but left the hard chunk of bread beside the bowl. He didn’t enjoy his meal, but sick as he was, he probably appreciated it more than any of the other prisoners in the queen’s cells. Once sitting, he didn’t have the strength to stand. His head hurt abominably. He could neither rest it on the wall behind him nor lean it on his knees, pulled up in front of him. Finally, reluctantly, he lay down and pillowed it on his arms, and darkness closed over him again. His grandfather would heap scorn on him like coals.
He was still asleep when the keeper returned much later.
“Look lively!” he yelled into the cell. “She’s made up her mind.”
While the keeper turned the key in the lock and pulled the door open, Eugenides struggled to his feet and was standing, though unsteady, when the prison guards came in to take his arms.
He walked between guards down underground passageways to an open doorway. The room stank of blood. He could smell it from outside, and he hesitated, but one of the guards nudged him forward. He took a shaky breath and stepped across the threshold. There was fire burning inside on a circular hearth surrounded by a low stone wall. Long-handled iron tools that looked like blacksmithing tools but weren’t rested on the wall, their tips in the fire to heat. The fire smoked, and the room was unbearably hot.
There was a huge wooden framework threaded with ropes and pulleys, oddments hanging on hooks on the walls that Eugenides didn’t want to see. And dragged out to the middle of the room, sitting cockeyed to the fire, covered with dust as if it had been stuck in an unused corner for a long, long time, was a chair with overlong arms and leather straps to keep a person in it.
Near the chair, dressed for dinner in a cool green gown the color of sage leaves, was the queen of Attolia. Embroidered around the neck of the dress was a ring of flowers, white petals on the green ground, with delicate leaves a shade darker than the dress.
The Thief stopped in the doorway. He looked from her to the chair beside her. He was puzzled only for a moment. He looked back at her but cried out to the patron God of Thieves, “God, no,” and threw himself backward. The guards caught at him. He sank through their arms, then stood again to drive the heel of his hand up under one guard’s nose. The guard dropped as if he’d been hit with an ax, but it was all the strength the Thief had in him. He grabbed for the doorway, but they pulled his fingers free one by one and carried him thrashing to the chair.
The guards swore, but the Thief made no sound that she could hear, except that one plea to his god. She had thought believers were as rare in Eddis as they were in Attolia. The Thief, though, had seemed to cry out in earnest, not merely from habit. Faith did return in extremis, Attolia observed. She had seen that happen before.
Finally the guards forced him into the chair and, as they did so, banged his head against the back of it. The little fight remaining in him went out in a breath. His eyes rolled white in his head, and his head dropped to his chest. After a time his eyes opened, and he lifted his head again. The leather straps fixed him to the chair, and he couldn’t move.
“Your Majesty.” He turned to her and said desperately, “Let me serve you. Let me be your Thief.”
Attolia shook her head. “I offered you a position in my service once before. You refused me for a mistress you said was more kind.”