The Queen of Attolia (The Queen's Thief #2)

by Megan Whalen Turner

She never worried about his complaints. She worried only when he was quiet. Either he was plotting something so outrageous it would bring her entire court to her throne howling for his blood, or he’d been fighting with his father, or on very rare occasions it meant he’d been seriously hurt.

“You started a war in my name without telling me?”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘the present’?” the king asked. “Perhaps the next hundred years,” the magus answered, and the king snorted in irritation. “I thought you might mean that. Let’s keep our predictions to my lifetime, shall we?”

The smile on his face made the magus feel worse, not better.

The magus suspected that the very blandness of his voice covered over some ugliness the way a covering of leaves can hide a pit trap. The magus didn’t risk falling. He changed the subject.

If I am the pawn of the gods, it is because they know me so well, not because they make up my mind for me.”

He didn’t seem to understand that the people of Eddis had very little to do all winter beyond develop superior artisan skills and train for war.

“He had to be forcibly dissuaded from strangling his son.” “So have we all from time to time,” Eddis said seriously. One of Attolia’s eyebrows rose in carefully conveyed surprise. Eddis took note of the expression, amused to have found at last, she was certain, the original of the look Eugenides had copied. She smiled.

“I would like very much to strangle someone. Why don’t you go away until I decide it isn’t you?”

“I sometimes believe his lies are the truth, but I have never mistaken his truth for a lie. If he needs me to believe him, he has his own way of showing his veracity.”

Attolia smiled. “You make him sound like more trouble than he is worth.” “No,” said Eddis thoughtfully. “Never more than he is worth.”

“I can demand. Whether my demands are met or not, I can demand. I can act as I choose and not as some god directs.”