“Gen—” Sophos started to ask another question, but I interrupted him.
“No,” I said, “not Gen. Eugenides from now on. I never, never want to hear Gen again in my life.”
The magus laughed while I shook my head.
“You haven’t spent any time in the king’s prison,” I said. “And you haven’t had to drink your way through every disreputable wineshop in the city of Sounis. I cannot tell you how sick I have been of cheap wine and of being dirty. Of talking with my mouth half closed and chewing with it open. Of having bugs in my hair and being surrounded by people who think Archimedes was the man at the circus last year who could balance four olives on his nose.”
The magus looked around at the books piled in my study. “I remember that Archimedes. I think it was five olives,” he said with a straight face.
“I don’t care if it was twelve,” I said.
The magus rubbed his hand across the carefully bound copy of the second volume of Archimedes. It was on top of the stack beside him. “You should have a few more modern writers,” he said. “Eddis has been isolated too long. I’ll send a few volumes with the next diplomatic party.”
I thanked him, both of us thinking of the threat of the Medes. “Who will Sounis marry now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” the magus admitted.
“You could always ask Attolia,” I suggested.
He rolled his eyes and left, taking Sophos with him.
I was left to myself then, to luxuriate in my cotton sheets and to recover my strength. I made the reluctant physician bring me the books from my library to check the dating on the pillars outside the maze’s entrance. They were unlike anything I could find recorded, and I came to believe that Hamiathes’s Gift had been hidden in the temple under the Aracthus by every generation for hundreds of generations before the invaders had arrived on our shores and had been removed by each successive generation only with the gods’ approval.
If you want to keep something safe from thieves, hide it carefully and keep a close watch over it.
My father visited often but briefly. On one visit he mentioned that Sophos had spent his days in the palace pointing out to one cousin after another that my tedious vow about handling a sword had been honorably retired. Several people did stop in to see me and to comment how much I had grown to look like my father, and not all of them seemed insincere. Maybe in the future my aunts and uncles would be willing to overlook the fact that I read too many books and can’t ride a horse, sing a song in tune, or carry on polite conversation—all accomplishments that are supposed to be more highly valued than swordplay but aren’t.
When the queen came by, she told me that the resemblance to my father was all in the way we both hunch over and then deny that we are in pain. I tried to insist that my shoulder didn’t really bother me and it was time for me to be up. She laughed and went away.
After another week, when I was finally out of bed and resting in a chair, she came to visit and stayed longer than a minute or two. The evening sun was slipping around the shoulder of Hephestia’s mountain and filling the room with orange light.
“Sophos went to see your family shrine to Eugenides,” she said. “He admired all the earrings you’ve dedicated, particularly the duchess Alenia’s cabochon emeralds.” Someone must have told him how angry the duchess had been when I’d stolen them, so to speak, from under her nose. I suspected it was the queen.
I admitted that it was a little embarrassing to have him admire offerings to a god I hadn’t previously believed in.
“I know,” she said. We both looked at the Gift, turning over and over in her hands.
“Will you go on wearing it?” I asked.
“I couldn’t stand it, I think,” she said.
“Where will you put it if you take it off?” The temple was gone. It couldn’t be returned there.
She was quiet for a long time. “I’m going to take it up to the sacred mountain and throw it into Hephestia’s fire.”
“You’ll destroy it?” I was shocked.
“Yes. I’ll take witnesses from here and from Sounis and Attolia as well, and when it is gone, Eddis’s throne will descend in the same way as the thrones of other countries.” She looked up at me. “Moira told me.”
I nodded, remembering the messenger of the gods in her long white peplos.
“It wasn’t meant to go on forever and ever,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t belong in this world.”
“In a hundred years no one will believe it was real,” I said.
“But you’ll still be famous.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. Lately fame had become a lot less important to me.
“Yes, you will,” she said. “Because you’re going to write it all down, and it will be a book in your library. But first you will tell me everything,” she said. “The things the magus didn’t know.”
It was a relief to explain everything to her, to tell her about the prison and about the temple and what I’d thought of the magus in the beginning and what I thought of him in the end. What it meant to be the focus of the gods’ attention, to be their instrument, used to change the shape of the world. And it was nice to brag a little, too.
It took me many days in the snatches of time she stole from royal functions and meetings with her ministers, but she wanted me to tell her everything, and I did. In the months since then, I have written it down. I will show it to her soon and see what she thinks. Maybe I will send a copy down to the magus.
“So Sophos thinks you’re going to marry me.”
“While I think you’ll marry Sophos.”
“I might. We’ll see what he’s like when he grows up.”
“I thought your council wanted you to marry that cousin of Attolia’s?”
“No, that was just because he might have been better than Sounis. Now I needn’t marry either. Which is fortunate for us all. They would have hated Eddis, but Sophos…I think Sophos might be happy here.”
“Anyone lucky enough to be married to you would count his blessings.”
“Flatterer.”
“Not at all.”
“Eugenides…”
“Yes? Stop biting your lip, and say it.”
“Thank you, thief.”
“You’re welcome, my queen.”