Of course, even he had had no foreknowledge of what was going to happen. He would never have guessed that he could so compound calamity with disaster, but the truth hardly mattered now. Costis thought of the papers they had taken away and tried to remember exactly what was in them that could be mistaken for plans of treason. The Secretary of the Archives could see treason in a single word. One hint of a plan and Costis would be put to torture instead of hanging in the morning. He knew that when torture began, Truth, which had mattered very little to begin with, soon mattered not at all.
He stepped to the window and looked out at the shadows falling on the barracks across from him. The midafternoon trumpets would be sounding soon and the watches would be changing. He was supposed to be on the palace walls. Behind him he heard the curtain rings sliding on the rod across his doorway. He turned to face the men who would take him to the palace.
There were no guards. Standing alone in the doorway was the king. The ruler, anointed by priests and priestesses, of all the lands of Attolia, the official father of the people, the lord of the barons who’d one by one sworn him their oaths of obedience, the undisputed, uncontested, and absolute sovereign of the land. The swollen discoloration by his mouth closely matched the elaborate purple embroidery on his collar.
“Most people in your circumstances would kneel,” said the king, and Costis, who had been staring transfixed, belatedly dropped to his knees. He should have bowed his head, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the king’s face. Only the king’s returning stare broke his rigor, and he finally lowered his head.
The king stepped to the table, and out of the corner of his eye Costis could see the jug held in his hand, a finger looped through the handle and two cups pinched in his fingers. The king lifted them onto the table, putting the jug down first. With a flick of his hand he sent one of the cups spinning into the air, and carefully set the other on the wood. Catching the one in the air as it began to fall, he set it delicately beside its partner. He moved casually, as if this little bit of juggling was second nature. Yet it was necessity made into grace because the king had only one hand.
Costis closed his eyes in shame. All the events of the day, which had been so nightmarish and unreal, were terribly, terribly true, the mark beside the king’s mouth unmistakable and incontrovertible, every knuckle of Costis’s fist indelibly represented there.
Eugenides said, “You did swear less than two months ago to defend my self and my throne with your life—didn’t you?”
He’d gone down like a rag doll.
“Yes.”
“Is this some Attolian ritual that I am unaware of? Was I supposed to defend myself?” He had one hand; he couldn’t have defended himself against a man both taller and heavier, a whole man.
“I beg your pardon.”
The words were those of a gentleman. They sounded odd, even to Costis, under the circumstances, and the king laughed briefly, without humor. “My pardon is not a matter of civil pleasantry, Costis. My pardon is a very real thing these days. A royal pardon would spare your life.”
A royal pardon was impossible. “I just meant that I am sorry,” Costis said, helpless to explain the inexplicable. “I have never, I would never. I—I…”
“Don’t usually attack cripples?”
Costis’s shame closed his throat. He heard the wine being poured into a cup.
“Put the mattress back on your cot, sit down, and drink this.”
Moving stiffly, Costis did as he was told. By the time he took the cup and sat gingerly in the presence of the king, the king himself was seated on the stool, leaning back against the wall behind him with his legs out and crossed at the ankle. Costis couldn’t help thinking he looked like a printer’s apprentice after a bar fight and not at all like a king. He took a drink from his cup and stared into it in surprise. The wine was chilled. Sweet and clear, it was like liquid sunlight and better than anything Costis had ever had in his life.
The king’s smile spread slowly. “A royal prerogative, that wine. Be careful of it, it isn’t watered. Have you eaten today?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
The king turned his head and shouted at the curtain, and after a moment there were footsteps in the corridor and the curtain was drawn aside. Laecdomon, one of the men of Aristogiton’s squad, stood in the doorway. Aris was a friend of Costis’s. It couldn’t be pleasant for him to be standing guard outside with his squad.
The king asked for food to be brought from the mess hall. Looking contemptuous, Laecdomon bowed and went away.
“That’s a loyal servant I could do without,” the king said quietly as he turned back to Costis. “No doubt he thinks the food is for me, and he will bring a hard loaf and olives sealed in a jar.”
Costis couldn’t blame him for his opinion of Laecdomon. He’d never liked the guard. Laecdomon was a little surly, a little aloof, and Costis had been glad not to have him in his own squad. Aris didn’t much like him either, but complained more often of another one of his squad, Legarus, whom he called Legarus the Awesomely Beautiful. In addition to a pretty face, Legarus was born to a landowning family, as Aristogiton was not. Legarus would never rise to squad leader no matter how elevated his family, and this occasionally caused tension in Aristogiton’s squad.
The king interrupted Costis’s distracted thoughts.
“Tell me, Costis, why do people persist in offering me food I can’t eat and then looking like wounded innocents when I point out that I can’t cut it myself? Or open a jar? Or apply soft cheese with a trowel, much less a butter knife?”
Because you’re a jumped-up barbarian goatfoot who abducted the Queen of Attolia and forced her to accept you as a husband and you have no right to be king, was Costis’s thought. Aloud, he said, “I don’t know, Your Majesty.”
Guessing at the thoughts, Eugenides must have found them amusing. He laughed. Costis hid his flush in another swallow of the wine. It was cool in his mouth, and it eased the sick tight ball of despair in his belly.
“Where are you from, Costis?”
“Ortia, Your Majesty. The Gede Valley above Pomea.”
“How big is the farm?”
“Not big, but we’ve held it for a long time.”
“The house of Ormentiedes, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a younger son?”
“My father is.”
“You would have been hoping for land for service?”
Costis couldn’t speak. He nodded.
“Costis.”
Costis looked up.
“If it wasn’t premeditated treason, she won’t take the farm.”
Costis waved his hand, unable to put into words his knowledge that the truth of his crime was less important than the seeming.
“I am king,” Eugenides pointed out mildly.
Costis nodded and drank again. If Eugenides was the sovereign ruler of Attolia, why were they both sitting, waiting for the queen to return? If the king guessed again at Costis’s thought, he made no sign this time. He swung his legs back and stood up to refill Costis’s glass. Costis shivered, wondering if he should allow the king to serve him. Should he stand when he had been told to sit, should he help himself to the king’s wine? Before he could decide what was best, Eugenides had replaced the jug on the table and dropped gracefully back to the stool.