“We’re keeping the horse,” Gen pointed out.
“You use the Thief’s skills for yourself, and you will lose the favor of our god.”
“But I didn’t use the skills for myself,” Gen protested. He’d used them for Alyta, who’d done nothing to deserve her husband’s anger.
“Are you sure?” asked his grandfather. “When you look at that very fine earring, don’t you want to keep it?”
“Yes,” Gen admitted. He’d never seen anything like it.
His grandfather had set aside his anger by then, and his words were more compelling for it. “Without the god’s favor, you will fall,” he warned. “And never know what you have lost until you hit the ground.”
Gen didn’t say anything; he had no interest in a smack that would make his ears ring all day. Shaking his head, the old Thief stopped the horse and shifted in the saddle so he could look his grandson in the eye. “That earring goes on an altar as soon as we reach the city. You can take it to the temple of Alyta. She will be happy to receive it on behalf of her namesake, I am sure.”
Embroidered in swirls of silver thread, the fine silk of her pearl-gray shawl lay like a cloud lightly wrapping her shoulders. The deep purple of her gown was the color of the mountains at sunset, its pattern shot through with streaks of silvery blue that widened as they descended until they met together in the skirt that fell to the floor in ripples around her feet.
“Do you know who I am?” the queen asked as she spun gracefully around to show off the costume.
“A goddess,” said the king, with a certainty that brought color to her cheeks. “But I don’t know which one,” he admitted.
It would be the first time in years, since before the war with the Medes, since before she was married, that a traditional midsummer banquet would be held in Attolia’s palace, and all over the city, people were planning their costumes. When she had ruled alone, Attolia had dressed as Hephestia, sole head of the pantheon of the Eddisian gods, but with a king by her side, that costume had been put away. She had spent the morning closeted with her attendants, selecting a new one.
“Alyta,” said the queen.
“Goddess of the mountain rain?” the king said, a little wary.
“Phresine suggested it—”
“And I get to play her jealous husband?” said the king, remembering days when he had been secretly afraid his world might dissolve like a sugar cone in the rain. “Remind me to have Phresine cast into outer darkness.”
“—because I am a descendent of the goddess,” said Attolia, ignoring him. “Or am supposed to be, on my mother’s side, and you are Eugenides.”
He didn’t understand. “I am Eugenides,” he said, puzzled. “Do I not need a costume? I might like this idea better now.”
“No, you go as your god,” said Attolia, as if this connection between Alyta and the Thief were clear. The king’s face remained blank.
“You do not know the story of Alyta’s earring? Phresine told it to me,” said the queen.
“Oh, indeed,” said the king, loudly enough that the queen’s attendants could hear it from where they sat in the waiting room. “Phresine, source of all the edifying stories I have somehow never heard before!”
So Attolia retold it for him. How Alyta’s earring was stolen by a troublemaker and how the god of Thieves stole it back for her. How, in return, Alyta had promised him his heart’s desire.
“And what was that?” asked the king.
“No one knows,” the queen answered. “When anyone asks, the man playing the Thief always refuses to tell.”
The king nodded. Attolia reached out and took his hand. “It’s a fine idea,” he said, without meeting her eye. When he looked up at last, he stood to share the tenderest of kisses. “You are any man’s heart’s desire,” he said.
So a tailor began to work through the night on a suit of soft, silvery-brown moleskin, and while he worked, the king lay awake.
The celebration of the equinox was a celebration of peace and stability, of the stars and planets in their courses, of all things right in the world. It was a time to set aside worries and hard work and revel in the confidence of good things to come, that confidence often expanding into extravagance and socially sanctioned silliness. When the queen descended the grand staircase, dressed as the goddess Alyta, with her king by her side, in a suit not brown, not gray, but somewhere in between, with no crown but thrush feathers woven into a ring on his head, the cheering could be heard by the guards in their places up on the roof walks.
Still, the court knew their mercurial king well, heard the brittleness behind his laugh, saw the distraction behind his smile, and behind their own smiles began checking ledgers for any missteps they might have made. Eugenides mostly observed while his wife ruled, but his observation was as keen as a razor’s edge and sometimes as dangerous.
They were not surprised, only unsettled, when he disappeared, as he still could, from a hall filled with people. They looked to their queen, and because she hid her worries far better than her husband did, they were reassured that whatever occupied the king, it was no concern of theirs. The wine flowed, the music played, and the court danced while the king took his invisible paths out of the palace and across the city, revelers passing him in the street too busy with their own entertainment to see anything but another Eugenides, one of a thousand out that night celebrating.
In the temple of Alyta, the king did not approach the altar. He sat instead at the back of the nave, head tipped down, examining his boots as he tapped their toes together, remembering a visit to the temple made many years earlier.
His grandfather had sent him in alone. Gen had stood some time debating with himself as he shifted from foot to foot. He could have hidden the earring in his boot or under his belt; his grandfather would have been none the wiser. Cynical, even at such a young age, he suspected that the earring would make it no closer to the goddess’s treasure room than the high priestess’s pocket. She would sell it for its gold in the market. Even more than giving up the earring, he hated the idea of its delicate beauty being melted away to nothing but an indistinguishable lump of metal, no matter how precious.
His grandfather’s warning had been very clear, and logical as well. “You jump best when you believe in yourself. You believe in yourself because you know you are the Thief. Fail to deliver up to the gods what you know they demand, and you will never be the Thief. Not here.” He’d poked him in the chest. “Not here, where it matters most.”
At last, with a sigh, Gen had reached up to slip the earring over the edge of the wide, shallow bowl on the altar. He was too short to see, but he heard it slide down the metal surface until it plinked ever so lightly against the other offerings inside.
When he turned to leave, he found he was not alone after all—a figure stood near the entry door, dressed in the flowing robes of Alyta’s priestesses. As he approached, she stepped to meet him, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. She was very tall—he remembered that, but everyone is tall to a child.
“Thank you,” she had said. “It was a generous gift.” And he had suspected, even then, that the generosity was not in the reluctant release of the earring, but in its theft.