“I could serve you now,” Eugenides whispered.
“Could you?” Attolia asked.
“Yes,” the Thief swore. She could see the tendons in his neck as he strained against the straps.
With plausible seriousness, the queen asked, “What could you steal for me, Thief?”
“Anything,” he assured her. “I can steal anything.”
“And why would I trust you?”
“I would give you my word.”
“Your word?” The queen was amused. “What good is that?”
No good at all.
Attolia smiled. “And what about your queen? She would rather see you serve me than see you suffer? Did she tell you so before you left Eddis?”
She had.
“Of course,” said Attolia. “And Eddis has nothing I want, so you are no threat to her. What a wonderful tool you are, one that cannot be turned against your mistress.”
She bent over him, reaching for him with both hands. He shuddered at her touch, but she only cupped his face in her hands and looked into his eyes. “Your queen thinks she is safe sending you to me because I cannot use you against her. I think I can. And what I want is not what Eddis chooses to give me.
“Your ambassador says your queen has accepted my right to have you hanged,” said Attolia. “But not to have you flogged to death, nor to have you hung upside down from my palace walls, nor to have you starve to death in a cage in the courtyard. He says I mustn’t exceed the restraints of law and tradition. He says I might offend the gods, though he didn’t say which ones. I care very little for the opinion of any god, but I still think tradition might hold the best solution to my problems with you.”
She released him and stepped back. A burly jailer unracked a curving sword from its place on the wall. Eugenides had been frightened before, so frightened that he’d felt as if his heart had turned to stone in his chest. Seeing the sword in the jailer’s hand, he looked again at the queen and felt the whole world turned to stone. The air around him was solid, and he was suffocating. He threw himself against the leather straps of the chair, against the solid air all around him, against the obduracy of the queen of Attolia.
He begged, “Please, please,” as if his heart were breaking.
The man beside him lifted the sword. It caught the firelight on its edge a moment before it swept down, biting deep into the wooden arm of the chair. His right hand disappeared behind the blade.
Attolia saw his body jerk against the straps. She had expected him to cry out, but he made no sound. He turned away from the sight of his right arm, and she saw his face grow white as the blood under his skin drained away. His eyes were squeezed closed, his mouth twisted in pain.
He struggled for breath as his thoughts circled like birds that couldn’t find a perch, searching for a way to change the truth, to change the queen of Attolia, but her decision was final, the action irrevocable.
“Eugenides”—he heard her cool voice through the agony—“have I exceeded the restraints of tradition? Have I offended the gods?” and he heard someone whisper with his voice, “No, Your Majesty.”
“Cauterize the wound,” the queen said briskly. “And have a doctor check it. I don’t want it infected.” The cauterizing iron was ready, and she stayed to see if he would scream when it was applied. He jerked again against the straps but still made no sound, only breathed in sharply and didn’t let the breath go. Attolia watched as his lips flushed blue, and then he fainted, his head dropping forward to his chest, his dark hair covering his face. She leaned close to be sure he breathed again, then repeated her instructions to have a doctor check the wound for infection and left.
As she climbed the narrow staircases to the upper part of her palace, she thrust aside her feelings of unease and concentrated instead on where to temporarily relocate the court. She thought she might move inland. It was time to look into the affairs of the barons there. She would give the necessary orders to begin packing.
Three days later she stood in the doorway of the Thief’s cell. She could hear him before she could see him, and she listened to his labored breathing as her eyes adjusted to the dark.
He lay on his side in a corner of the cell with his injured arm cradled against his chest and a knee pulled up to protect it. He sweated in the damp cold of the cell and didn’t move until Attolia prodded him with one slippered foot. He opened his eyes and looked up at her without expression. The lamp that someone held behind her shone down on his face, and she could see the scar on his cheek. His skin was so pale that the scar showed dark against it.
His eyes were bright, and she bent down to look into them, expecting the hatred she often saw in the faces in her prison, but in Eugenides’s eyes there was only fever and pain and an emotion she couldn’t put a name to.
“Please,” he whispered. His voice was low but clear. “Don’t hurt me anymore.”
Attolia recoiled. Once, as a child, she’d thrown her slipper in a rage and had knocked an amphora of oil from its pedestal. The amphora had been a favorite of hers. It had smashed, and the scent of the hair oil inside had lingered for days. She remembered the scent still, though she didn’t know what in the stinking cell had brought it to mind.
She bent over Eugenides again, needing to be sure her punishment had been effective.
“Eugenides,” she said, “what can you steal with only one hand?”
“Nothing,” he answered hopelessly.
Attolia nodded. Eddis would think twice before risking a favorite in Attolia’s power. He was very young, she realized. She hadn’t considered his age before and reminded herself that his age didn’t matter. All that mattered was the threat he posed. Still, seeing him huddled on the floor, she felt a little surprised that Eddis would endanger someone so young. But Eddis was not much older, Attolia thought. Not many years ahead of Eddis herself, Attolia was a far more experienced queen. She turned to the jailer.
“I said I wanted a doctor to check him.”
“He did, Your Majesty.”
“The bites on his leg are infected.” She pointed with one finger at the swollen red skin that showed through the torn cloth.
The prison keeper looked suddenly wary. “He checked the burns, as you ordered, Your Majesty.”
“Only the burns?”
“I suppose, Your Majesty. Those were your orders, Your Majesty.”
Attolia sighed in irritation. A familiar, not uncomfortable emotion. “If I didn’t want him dead of one infection, why would I want him dead from another?”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty.”
“You’ll be sorrier.” She turned to the captain of her guard, who had accompanied her. “Get him back to Eddis before he dies.” She left the cell and made her way up the many stairs of the palace to her private anteroom. She passed through it and into her bedchamber, where she sent away her various attendants and sat for a long time in a chair looking out over the sea as the last sunlight faded from the sky. She dismissed thoughts of the Thief lying on the floor of his cell, but found herself thinking instead of her favorite amphora, broken, and the oil spilled.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE QUEEN OF EDDIS STOOD in the courtyard to meet her Thief when they brought him up the mountain. With her stood those of the court she couldn’t order to be elsewhere. She remembered Eugenides asking once why so many of the events around her looked like a circus and why he always had the part of the dancing bear. When she saw the litter they carried him in, it looked like nothing so much as a cage, though it was closed off by curtains and not bars.