A Conspiracy of Kings (29 page)

Sounis swallowed. “I did not realize,” he said.
“I would have come to your rooms to speak to you.”

Eddis smiled. “I intrude?”

“No,” said Sounis, trying to breathe. “Of
course not.”

Ion had excused himself to the anteroom, but the door was open,
and Xanthe as well as the queen’s other attendants came in
and left from time to time. Eddis’s attention never wavered.
When Sounis finished, she said, “Your mother was right, I
think.”

“She usually is,” said Sounis.

“Did you think I would change my mind?”

“I failed to persuade my barons, and I fell back on
violence and murder.”

“You made your choice,” said Eddis.

“I did. I hope you understand why I cannot back away from
it.”

“Even if I condemn you for it, as you condemned
Nomenus?”

“Even then,” said Sounis.

“Sophos,” said Eddis sadly, “I sent my Thief
to Attolia, and when she had maimed him, and knowing the risk, I
sent him back. I have started a war of my own, sent my cousins to
die, taken food from the mouths of widows and children to feed my
army.” She took his hand. “We are not philosophers; we
are sovereigns. The rules that govern our behavior are not the
rules for other men, and our honor, I think, is a different thing
entirely, difficult for anyone but the historians and the gods to
judge. There is no reason I can see that I would not be honored to
join Eddis to you. But it is complicated by many things that I must
tell you about first.”

“Of course,” said Sounis, his grin too boyish to be
reminiscent of his uncle. “More talking!”

“Yes, and some of it important. I would
ask—”

But Sounis was too pleased to register any nuance. He only knew
that he was happy. He interrupted her. “I thought, when I
first met you, that you would marry Gen.”

“I would sooner have strangled him,” said Eddis.

“I didn’t see that,” said Sounis. “I
still don’t, honestly. He has saved Attolia.”

“Gen and I are too close to marry. If he has saved
Attolia, then she has saved him as well, and I’ve told her as
much. But—”

“Your Majesties.” Ion bowed in the doorway.
“Please forgive me. The king and queen of Attolia ask that
you join them.”

Eddis sighed and let the matter go, thinking there would be time
enough to reveal her plans to Sounis after he had sworn his loyalty
to the king of Attolia. She and Sounis rose and walked to the
anteroom, where they were greeted by the beaming attendants and
Sounis’s magus, who stood with a broad smile splitting his
face. Eddis felt the blood rising in her own face as the magus
bowed.

“Our felicitations, Your Majesties,” he said.

“We thank you,” Eddis said to the magus, and kissed
him on both cheeks.

“We certainly do,” said Sounis, and kissed him as
well, before being kissed in turn by Xanthe. Then, in response to
Ion’s polite prodding, the room was emptied out into the
passageway.

Eddis and Sounis parted on the way to Attolia’s throne
room. Eddis was to enter by the main doors and wait with the rest
of the court. The magus and Sounis continued on to a retiring room
where the king and queen of Attolia waited.

Eschewing ceremony, Eugenides said, “You
shot
the ambassador?”

“You gave me the gun,” protested Sounis.

“I didn’t mean for you to shoot an ambassador with
it!” Eugenides told him.

“Oh, how our carefully laid plans go astray,”
murmured the magus.

“You shut up!” said Gen, laughing.

The doors to the throne room opened, and there was no time to
say more. Those awaiting the sovereigns observed their smiles and
smiled in turn.

Attolia took no part in the ceremony, not even ascending her
throne, but standing instead to one side of the dais while the
complicated oath was read out by the high priestess of
Hephestia.

Sounis swore his personal loyalty and his obedience to Attolis.
He swore his state to Attolis’s service in the event of war,
external or internal. He pledged his men to Attolis’s armies
and his treasury to Attolis’s support. He swore on behalf of
himself and his heirs loyalty to any heir of Attolis, binding the
two nations together permanently. Attolis, in his turn, promised to
protect and defend Sounis and his state, to preserve Sounis’s
autonomy in all matters internal to the state, to make no
interference in Sounis’s authority except as it affected the
needs of Attolia.

Sounis bowed over the king of Attolia’s hands, kissed the
backs of them both, and held the real one to his forehead. Attolis
pulled him close to kiss him on the brow, and the court clapped in
congratulations.

Stepping back, Sounis said, “Congratulate me, My King. I
am to be married.”

Eugenides smiled. Attolia looked sharply at Eddis, who shook her
head. The room quieted.

“She is your subject?” asked Eugenides.

“Indeed not,” said Sounis, insensible to the
significance of the question.

“Well, then,” said Attolia, drawing his attention as
she stepped onto the dais. She seated herself and laid her hand
over Eugenides’s, forestalling him. “It would not be a
matter wholly internal to Sounis. You would have to bring it to
your king for approval.”

His expression changing, Eugenides looked from his wife to
Eddis, and then back to Sounis, who stood confused and uncertain
before him.

His easy manner yielded. “Indeed,” said Eugenides
quietly, “I would not see your loyalty divided between myself
and your wife. There is an easy answer, though, if she is also
sworn to me.”

“No,” said Sounis, swallowing misery whole.
“She is not.”

“Then perhaps you should broach the subject with her
before we speak again.”

“Indeed,” Sounis managed to say in the bleak
silence.

He bowed, and the ceremony was wrapped like a package and
hastily sealed by the priestess of Hephestia. The sovereigns
retired without meeting one another’s eyes, and the rooms
were cleared. The court withdrew to change out of its sumptuary and
into less precious clothes. With the magus’s hand under his
arm, Sounis stumbled back to his own apartments to find the queen
of Eddis and her attendants waiting there.

Eddis was in the reception room. She sent her attendants back to
the anteroom. The magus excused himself, pulling the door closed
behind him, and Eddis and Sounis were alone.

Sounis approached her where she sat on a low seat and took her
hand before he dropped to one knee to offer his apologies. “I
misspoke. I am sorry. I swear I did not know that he meant to do
this, or I would not have engaged you in a promise to be
immediately broken.”

“It need not be broken,” said Eddis. He held himself
as if he were in pain, and she cursed herself for hurting him, but
she had not considered that the ceremony would slip from its
careful scripting.

Sounis shook his head as if trying to clear it. “I cannot
argue with his interpretation of my oath, though I would not have
sworn it had I seen this outcome. You think he will change his
mind?”

Eddis shook her head then and said gently, “No. I mean
something else, Sophos. I was not unaware of Gen’s
requirement when I accepted your proposal.”

He stared at her for a moment before jumping to his feet.
“No!” he said, staring down at her. “You cannot
yield your sovereignty of Eddis to marry me. You cannot believe
that I would allow that?”

“Sophos…”

“It would be monstrous!”

“You do not understand,” she warned him.

“I understand enough!” he answered. “I
understand that he will make himself a great king over Sounis,
Attolia, and Eddis. I understand that I cannot allow it. How can
you not see that?”

Eddis stood very slowly and took a deep breath. “I do
see,” she said. As he watched helplessly, she pulled her
skirt free from where it had caught on the upholstery, and she
crossed to the door. She tapped its latch and someone on the far
side opened it. It closed behind her without a sound.

Sounis stood at the window, looking across the city toward the
port, and as he watched the shadows of clouds move across the water
in the distance, he felt a chill on the back of his neck. It was
self-doubt, the black beetle that had pursued him all his life,
pinching at him, poisoning his every success, whispering in his ear
about his flaws and his failures and his unworthiness. He
hadn’t felt it in months, but the pinprick of its claws was
instantly familiar. They informed him with their tiny tattoo that
he had almost certainly done something immensely, irrevocably, and
unforgivably stupid.

He turned away from the view and lunged across the room to throw
open the door to the anteroom.

“The queen of Eddis,” he said as he headed for the
outer door of the apartment, past the startled magus. “Which
way, which way back to her rooms?”

The royal guard stared at him.

“Which way?” Sounis shouted.

The guard pointed. Sounis rushed through the outer door of the
apartment and disappeared down the hall.

The Attolian palace, like any building hundreds of years old,
put rabbit warrens to shame with its corridors and intersections.
At the first of these, Sounis stopped and listened. He heard
footsteps and headed indecently fast in the direction that they
came from, praying he wouldn’t run, unreflecting, into the
Mede ambassador to Attolia and his retinue. At each corner he had
to stop and listen again, but he was gaining quickly. He almost
lost them when he passed a stairwell but then remembered that once
earlier he had climbed stairs between his apartment and
Eddis’s. At the top of the stairs, he saw, down a hallway,
female figures rounding a corner and hurried after them.

With his quarry almost in sight, he might have slowed and
composed himself, but he didn’t spare it a thought. He
rounded the corner and nearly spitted himself on the business end
of an Eddisian pike. Throwing up his arms, he stopped on the tips
of his toes with the point of the weapon an inch or two from his
chest. He thought of the breastplate that he’d been made to
wear for weeks. He lowered himself very slowly and kept his hands
out from his sides. Behind him he could hear his own guard stamping
up the corridor to catch up to him.

The queen of Eddis was surrounded by her attendants, all of them
armed, which was enough to take anyone aback, never mind her
Eddisian guards arrayed in front and behind, watching for attack
from either direction.

Eddis said quietly, “No need for alarm,” and the
weapons disappeared like morning fog. Eddis turned and moved off,
followed by her attendants and her guard, leaving Sounis behind.
Gingerly, he followed, stepping between two of her guards and
catching up. Eddis’s attendants grudgingly made room so that
he could walk beside her. He tipped his head forward, to watch her
profile.

“I have a gift,” he said, speaking quickly, not sure
how much time he had. “I always used to think it was a curse,
but now I am not sure, because maybe it’s like the goats from
the god, and one just has to know what name to call it.” He
had to take short steps, but quick ones, to match her pace.
“My gift is that I always know when I’ve made an ass of
myself.”

Eddis’s eyes glanced briefly in his direction and away
again. She did not slow. As she turned a corner, Sounis thought it
was marvelous that she knew so surely where she was going.

“Whenever I went to my uncle’s megaron, whenever I
met with my tutor, tripped over something that wasn’t there,
said something inane, I knew it. I used to watch other people
making idiots of themselves, and they never seemed to know it, but
I always have. All my life I’ve wished that if I was going to
be an ass, I could just be an oblivious one.” Eddis still
hadn’t looked at him again. “I was stupid. I’m
sorry. It was wrong of me to think that I could allow or disallow
anything you choose to do. You are Eddis.”

She slowed finally and turned to give him a smile. He
experienced a brief moment of relief before he realized that it was
artificial. She walked on.

Sounis stood as everyone else brushed past him and watched her
move farther and farther away. Long years of experience told him to
turn and go back to his own apartments, but more recent events kept
his feet rooted to the floor.

“We all make mistakes,” he said loudly. Eddis surged
on without looking back, but he knew he had caught her ear.
“You sent him to Attolia, didn’t you?” He called
after her, deliberately cruel. “He told you it was dangerous,
and you sent him anyway. Was it worth it?”

Eddis walked even faster, furious. Sounis pushed past her
guards, who flinched but didn’t stop him, and seized her by
the arm. She swung around so sharply he stepped back, but he
didn’t let go. “I do not care,” he said,
“how much of an ass I am right now. Because every night that
I dreamed in Hanaktos, I dreamed of you. Every night. When I
dreamed about my library, you were there, reading a book, looking
from the windows, never speaking, but always there. And I knew that
everything was just the way it should be, do you understand?”
He said, “I’m sorry. I should have had more faith in
you. I understand why you are angry with me: because I disappointed
you, and also we don’t all throw things when we are angry, I
understand that now, too. But we all make mistakes, Helen,”
he said again, “all of us. And I think, I really think you
will regret it if this one time you could forgive me, and you
don’t.

“Please,” he added.

Eddis stared at him for a long time, knowing that forgiving
someone because you have to is not forgiving him at all.

“Come with me,” she said at last. She led him
through Attolia’s palace to a double set of carved doors. At
her signal, the guards pulled them open, and she passed through.
Inside the room, she turned and waited. Sounis stood paralyzed on
the threshold.