The King of Attolia (13 page)

The shade was creeping closer. Costis looked up at the sound of running footsteps, a barracks boy with an urgent message, he supposed, but it was no barracks boy who hurried around a corner and into the narrow court. It was someone from the dog runs, a kennel apprentice by his uniform. He stopped, gasping, in front of Costis.

“My master sent me to ask for help. The hunting dogs have been released into the court. There are bitches in heat, and the dogs are fighting. We can’t get them back to their runs without help. Can you bring guards to help, sir? My master is afraid the king will have the dogs slaughtered and him, too.”

Costis sent him on to the officer of the day in his office, then he fetched the layabouts out of the nearest dining hall and led them off toward the kennels.

“Why hurry?” grumbled the men. “Why spoil a good joke?”

“Because it’s no joke for the Master of Hounds,” Costis said.

“No joke for us, either,” said someone else when they reached the court. They had come through the palace and were on the porch outside the palace doors that led out to the hunting court. From there, steps led down to a barking, snarling chaos of dog. The noise assaulted the ears and overwhelmed the shouts of the men working below. The kennel keepers with sticks and ropes were trying to drive one dog at a time out of the pack and lead it back through the open gate to the dog runs. Already there were palace guards assisting where they could. Some stood on the steps below the portico, catching at the stray dog pushed up the stairs by the melee. A hunting dog stood lower than a man’s waist but higher than his knee, and weighed half what a grown man did. It was no laughing matter to seize one and keep hold of it without being bitten.

A dog raced up the stairs toward Costis, heading for the open palace doors behind him. Costis and his men shouted and waved the dog back. It shied down the steps again.

“SHUT THAT DOOR!” Costis roared above the
din, but had to point to make his meaning clear. Two guards went to work swinging the twelve-foot-high doors to seal off the palace from the hunting court.

Next Costis checked the other exits. There were only four: two large gateways and two small arched doorways. One of the large gates was open, and led back into the kennels and the stables. In normal circumstances, the animals would have been brought through that gate to gather in the court before leaving with the royal hunt. The other gate led through the outer wall of the palace to the hunting road into the royal preserves. It was safely shut, but stairs on either side of it led up to the palace walls. Costis was glad to see guards already blocking the top as well as the bottom of the stairs. With more waving and pointing, Costis sent men to block the entrances into the palace gardens. Shouting at the top of his lungs, he sent men to the stables to fetch pitchforks, rakes, and brooms. There was little hope of dragging the dogs one by one back to their runs before the king arrived. They would have to drive the entire wild, barking mess through to the stable yards and deal with the problem there.

There was no way to know how much time they had, but Costis assumed the king must be scheduled to pass through soon, or the dogs wouldn’t have been released.

Two dogs snapping and snarling at each other threw
themselves against his knees, and he almost went down. The Master of Hounds caught him by the elbow and steadied him. Costis explained his plan, and the two men separated to gather the kennel keepers and soldiers into a circle around the dogs. With brooms and rakes they stood shoulder to shoulder and began to force the dogs through the gates and into the yard beyond. More guards had come from the palace to join them. Looking to his left, Costis was surprised to see Aristogiton, sword in hand, prodding the dogs.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted.

“What?”

Slowly the tenor of the barking changed as the dogs moved together. Costis tried again. “I thought you were on duty?”

“I am,” answered Aris.

“Where’s the king?”

“In the garden. He was supposed to meet the Secretary of the Navy, but he canceled. We left him in the garden to come help here,” Aris shouted, and nodded over his shoulder toward the small arched doorways behind them.

The noise had lessened, and they could hear each other without shouting, though they still had to raise their voices.

“The king canceled?”

“No, the secretary.”

If the king hadn’t been scheduled to pass through the
hunting court, then why had the dogs been released? Someone had to have known in advance that the secretary was going to cancel his appointment. Costis’s knees understood before his head did. They felt suddenly weak, and his stomach roiled. Costis looked up at the palace wall, where the guards still stood blocking the route to any stray hound, looking down into the courtyard and not into the garden. His hands were shaking.

“Oh my god,” he prayed to Miras. “Oh my god, oh my god.”

“What?” Aris still didn’t understand.

Costis dropped his rake and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where did you leave the king?”

“In an alley, just beyond the naiad fountain and the reflecting pool. What is the matter? I left Legarus at the entrance.”

“And at the other end?”

“There’s a gate. It’s locked. Costis, for god’s sake, it’s locked and it’s not fifteen feet from the guards on the palace wall.”

Costis reached for hope. “Do they know the king is in the garden? Did you send a message up to the wall?”

No, Aris hadn’t.

“Get your men. Give me your sword.” Costis grabbed at the buckle and stripped belt, sheath, and sword from Aris and began to look wildly through the crowded court for Teleus. He had to have come with the guards.

Teleus looked up at his shout. His eyes met Costis’s for a moment, then turned to look at the guards on the wall above him, taking in the situation at a glance. Costis was already running, naked blade in hand and sheath in the other, for the nearest entrance to the garden.

This was not the relatively small queen’s garden. This was the much more expansive palace ground. It had never seemed so large and so full of pointless obstacles—shrubs, fountains, paths that curved in serpentine courses between waist-high banks of flowers that made it impossible to move as fast as he desperately needed to go.

If he choked on a bone and died, I wouldn’t care.
It wasn’t true.

Costis prayed as he ran. To Miras, his own god, and to Philia, goddess of mercy, that she would preserve the king from harm. “Oh, Goddess, please let the little bastard be all right,” he prayed. “Oh, please let there be nothing wrong. Let this be a mistake. Let me look like a fool, but keep him safe, ten gold cups on your altar if he is safe.”

The gods above knew that the king could be laid out by a toddler with a toasting fork. What hope had he against an assassin, trained as a sword is sharpened, honed to one purpose, to murder? Costis could only pray that he would not be too late.

Blood on the flowers, blood on the green grass, blood blossoming like a rose in the still waters of a fountain. In his mind Costis saw it all. What would the king think
when the assassins came? He would call his Guard to protect him, and there was no one there but Legarus.

Costis’s feet pounded on the path. When it dropped down a set of stairs to run beside a long rectangular reflecting pool, Costis leapt from the top of the steps to the bottom and at the far end of the pool went up more steps in a stride. Behind him he heard someone stumble. There was a grunt, and a splash.

At last he rounded a hedge and came face-to-face with Legarus, who had heard running feet and had been drawn away from the entranceway in the hedge. He had his sword out, and Costis was lucky not to run right onto it.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY!” he roared, and Legarus fell back in confusion.

“Attolia! Attolia!” Costis shouted in warning as he ran beside the hedge. Out of breath, he reached the opening and hurtled through it.

The king sat on a stone bench in an open space at the far end of the alley between tall hedges and flower beds. There was a fountain, with a shallow pool underneath. His legs were stretched out, crossed at the ankle and resting on the tiled lip of the pool. No doubt he had been contemplating reflections of the clouds in the water or watching the fish. Costis could see the amused smile he had prayed for, the lift of one eyebrow. It was for nothing, all the panic, and the running. There was no one there but the king, quietly sitting by a fountain,
and Costis, standing in the gap between the hedges with a naked weapon in hand, looking like an idiot frightened by shadows.

The king was safe and, as usual, laughing at Costis. Costis didn’t care. He hunched forward in relief, gasping for breath. His sword still in his hand and his hands on his knees, he smiled back at the king as the assassins stepped into view.

They must have been concealed by the bushes, but to Costis they appeared as if by magic. One minute they were not there, the next they towered over the slight figure on the bench. Costis screamed an inarticulate warning and stumbled forward, but he might just as well have stayed in the hunting court. It was hopeless before he had taken his first step and over before he’d crossed half the length of the long, narrow alley between the high hedges. There was nothing for him to do.

His steps slowed of their own volition as he got close to the fountain. Numb, he stared at the body there and the spreading cloud of blood. It was what he had imagined and yet nothing he could ever have imagined. He looked at the blood on the graveled path and at the body there. There was more blood on the grass. It wasn’t the king’s blood. It wasn’t the king’s body. Costis heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Teleus, wet from falling into the reflecting pool.
Teleus looked as stunned as he felt. Side by side they stared at the blood pooling at their feet, and side by side they turned to the king, who stood with his hand on his hip and his back toward them.

“Your Majesty?” Costis’s voice came out in a whisper.

The king turned his head. His usually dark skin was so pale the scar on his cheek showed against the lighter skin around it. He was almost green with pallor, as Sejanus had once described him. It wasn’t fear. It was rage.

Softly he said, “I thought that being king meant I didn’t have to kill people myself. I see now that was another misconception.”

Teleus and Costis stood like garden statuary.

“Where are my guards, Teleus?” He was still speaking softly. Three men dead and he wasn’t even breathing hard, Costis noted.

“WHERE ARE MY GUARDS?” the king shouted.

The birds twittered nervously from the bushes around them in the silence that followed.

“Here, Your Majesty.” It was Aristogiton, his men crowded behind him, at the entrance to the alley.

“And where have they been?” In almost a whisper, the king addressed only Teleus.

“They were drawn off by the noise of hounds released in the hunting court, Your Majesty. They went to help get the dogs contained before you returned to the palace.” Teleus was very calm.

“I see,” said Eugenides. He looked at the corpse at his feet. “Have them clean up this mess. That one”—he nodded toward the man farthest away—“may still be alive. You and Costis can take him where someone can ask him who sent them. I am going back to the palace…now that the dogs are safely out of the way…to make my groveling apologies to the queen.”

He stepped toward the path.

“Your Majesty shouldn’t be alone,” said Teleus.

Eugenides turned back. “Your solicitous attention to my health is appreciated, Teleus, but it’s too late for that,” he said.

“Please,” said the captain humbly. “Take Costis and the squad leader.”

Eugenides considered. “Very well,” he agreed with cold reluctance.

Aristogiton and his men hurried toward Teleus, responding to his summoning wave. Costis waited while the captain gave the squad leader his orders, then Costis and Aris caught up with the king, who had already started back to the palace. He was walking slowly, his hand still on his hip. Costis had never seen him so dignified. His stately dignity faded a little when they got close enough to hear the curses he muttered under his breath. He was less inventive than usual, and by the time they reached the reflecting pool he was repeating the same phrase again and again like a chant.

Walking so slowly, Costis had ample time to consider his commitment to the goddess Philia. Ten gold cups.

With all the money he had, added to all he could conceivably borrow from the moneylenders in the city, he could afford one gold cup. His father might have enough for another. The priests wouldn’t expect them all at once. Only if Costis waited too long, or died before delivering on his promise, would he risk the goddess’s displeasure. That displeasure would spread to his family, in which case his uncle might be willing to give the gold for two more, possibly three. If harvests were poor, or other signs of the goddess’s ill will appeared, he might empty the family treasury and buy four cups. That still left four unpaid for, and anyway, Costis hated the idea of asking his uncle for money.

He was thinking of full-size drinking cups, made by a goldsmith and decorated with figures. If he offered the goddess ceremonial cups instead, smaller models of drinking cups, very plain ones, his money would go farther. It might stretch to three small (tiny) cups, and his father’s to three more. And if he saved every coin, wore the clothes the army provided, ate the food the army provided, which was nourishing enough, if occasionally infested, and if he never spent a copper in a wineshop with his friends, he might pay for the remaining four small (very small) cups, in ten or fifteen years. He could
just forget his oath, he supposed, and hope the goddess didn’t notice.

The king reached the top of the stairs that led down to the reflecting pool and stopped. He turned a little to face Costis, his hand still pinching his side.

Guilt-stricken, Costis gasped in horror, “No! No! I’ll get the ten cups, I swear it!”

The king’s coat was light gold, the color of the hills in the autumn heat, embroidered in matching satin threads. His tunic underneath was a contrasting dark mulberry color. The blood didn’t show against the fabric, but it welled between the king’s fingers, and its bright stain spread in a messy spiderweb across the back of his hand.