CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EUGENIDES DIDN’T NOTICE WHO HELPED him up. When someone pushed an iron collar under his chin, he lifted his head and stared up into the sky. The rain fell on his upturned face, and he wondered if his gods were watching. The collar closed with a heavy click, and a key was turned in the lock. There was a rattling sound as a chain was run through its metal ring. The chain dragged, and he leaned back automatically to keep his balance. Following a sharp tug, he marched with the other prisoners, crossing the slick mud without looking at it, staring instead into a yawning black pit that he lowered himself into one step at a time. He couldn’t see, except to see the queen dancing in her garden, couldn’t think except of her dressed in palest green with flowers embroidered around the neck of her gown as she watched them cut off his hand. My God, he thought, I am so frightened. O my God, if you will not save me, make me less afraid. He fell on the steep trail.

He hit face first, and the stones in the mud cut into his cheek. He had fallen so quickly that he’d dragged down the two others chained with him. They at least could brace themselves with their chained hands as they tried to get to their feet. Eugenides’s arms were bound to his sides, and his feet, seeking purchase, slid across the wet ground. One of the men made it to his feet, but he rose too quickly. Eugenides choked as the chain pulled hard against his collar, and his weight pulled the other man off-balance to fall again. Somewhere in the dark and the rain around them, someone laughed. The man got to his feet again and this time, while still leaning down, helped Eugenides up. Once upright, Eugenides was facing Nahuseresh, who stood looking on, much amused. White-hot hatred burned through Eugenides. If he was still without hope, at least he could think clearly again.

“Sir,” whispered the man beside him, “at the next cliff, we will jump with you.”

Eugenides turned to look for the first time at the men chained on either side. Both men nodded to assure him that they were willing to sacrifice their lives, but Eugenides shook his head. Attolia had promised the two men would be safely returned to Eddis, and he believed her. If the two soldiers were not to die in the dungeons of Ephrata, he would not drag them to their deaths at the base of a cliff. Eddis would need every soldier if she was going to survive his failure. He shook his head again and wondered what had gone wrong, what mistake he had made.

By dawn they had reached the lower slopes of the hillside and were met by Medean soldiers with horses. Attolia looked through them for her own men.

Nahuseresh explained their absence. “Your guard captain chose to hold the megaron until our return,” he told her. Attolia nodded. “I was surprised, I admit, at his timidity,” the Mede said. “Perhaps he is more used to guarding than fighting.”

“Perhaps,” said Attolia. “Perhaps he only knew his presence would be unnecessary once you were here to protect me.”

“Ah,” said the Mede, “it may be that was it.”

Or it may have been the numbers of Medean soldiers that Nahuseresh had left in the barbarian hovel to encourage Teleus not to step foot outside it. “We must talk, you and I, about the captain of your guard,” Nahuseresh said to Attolia, putting an arm around her for comfort. “I was informed, you see, by a most remarkable woman where you would be. I would not otherwise, I fear, have been on hand to rescue you.”

“A remarkable woman?” The queen looked at him sharply. Jealous? Nahuseresh wondered.

“Why, yes, to slip past Kamet, sleeping by my door, to wake me in my bed, she is most remarkable, don’t you see?”

“I do. And did she shake you by the shoulder or just speak your name?”

“She spoke my name.” The Mede looked at the queen, wondering how she had guessed.

Nahuseresh was a light sleeper, a matter of necessity for him, and when he’d opened his eyes in the darkness of his room and seen a moving flicker of white, he had been instantly alert, slipping his hand under his pillow for the long knife he kept there before he’d rolled quickly to one side. He’d found a woman standing calmly by his bed looking down at him. He had been puzzled to find her dressed in the dark robes of the queen’s attendants and not in white and had glanced around the room seeking another assailant, but he and the woman had been alone, and he supposed the white he had seen had been a trick of the moonlight.

“Nahuseresh.” She had said his name again. “Will you hear my message?”

It was an odd turn of phrase. Nahuseresh had not heard it before. Of course he would hear her message; was he not lying on the bed less than three feet from her? He had wanted to ask where she’d come from and what had become of Kamet, who should have been sleeping in the anteroom, but if all she brought was a message, he was willing to hear it.

“What is it?” he’d asked.

“The queen of Attolia is not drowned,” the woman had said. “Eugenides will carry her into the coastal hills.”

“Is that so?”

The woman had gone on placidly. “He will bring her to the Pricas Spring and from there down the watercourse of the Pricas to the Seperchia, where the queen of Eddis waits.”

“And how do you know this?”

The woman had been silent.

“And why should I believe you?” Nahuseresh had asked.

“I do not ask you to believe me, only to hear my message,” the attendant had answered, and smiled and inclined her head graciously.

Nahuseresh related her message to the Attolian queen. “She could only have known these things if she was a conspirator against you,” he explained. “Or perhaps the lover of a conspirator,” he added, “and if you look to see who that conspirator might be, I think you will find the captain of your guard a likely candidate. Who admitted the Eddisians to the megaron at Ephrata? Who allowed them to leave again? Who sent Eugenides to the dock and who was just a moment too late to reach you there?” he asked the queen.

“I see,” said Attolia.

“I am sure you do,” said Nahuseresh. “If it was Teleus’s woman who told me of Eugenides’s goal…”

“His goal?” Attolia asked sharply.

“The Pricas,” the Mede said. The queen’s attention seemed to be wandering, no doubt put into flight, Nahuseresh thought, by surprise at the idea of honest Teleus as a conspirator.

“Yes, of course,” said Attolia. “If it was Teleus’s lover, she would have learned of the plans from him.”

“I summoned your attendants the next day, and she was not with them. They claimed no one was missing, but I am sure you will discover for yourself who is absent, and then you must let me deal with her.”

“Surely she deserves a reward,” said Attolia.

“You are mistaken.” Nahuseresh corrected her gently. “Had she spoken earlier, she might have been rewarded. Now I will see that she gets what she deserves.”

“I defer to you,” Attolia said, subdued.

Nahuseresh smiled and held her close as he led her to her mount. He did not intend to relate the events that had followed the mysterious woman’s departure. Having delivered her message, to be believed by Nahuseresh or not, she had left so quietly that he hadn’t heard a door close behind her.