The King of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #3)

by Megan Whalen Turner

He no longer had a squad, but he was still a member of the Guard, not a disgraced outcast.

When breakfast was over, the king stepped around the table and bent to kiss his wife’s cheek.

The king looked around. “I thought it was that way.” He pointed. “No, Your Majesty,” the attendants patiently chorused.

It’s a joke, Costis. You are a joke. If you don’t want the king’s joke to be a success, then do your duty, and do it well.

“For the assassination or the heir, Your Majesty?” asked Costis.

much the way he respected the business edge of a sword.

“Most of my male cousins are dead.”

The late war between Eddis and Attolia had cost Eddis dearly. She had suffered and lost on a greater scale than the larger, richer nation of Attolia, but at the end of the war, the Thief of Eddis had become the king of Attolia.

Eugenides was angry and pleased to be so.

Once again, the Attolians had seen that the king was nothing more than a clown.

She knew that he had both hated and loved those cousins who were now beyond both love and hate.

The queen wept on her wedding night.

The whole court knew he was in love with the queen. The whole country knew it.

It would mean a return to the rooms underground where Eugenides had been imprisoned, where he had lost his right hand.

“I am so sick of people who all seem to be smarter than I am and know more than I do. I want to go back to the farm. These people make my family look easy to get along

“If he choked on a bone and died, I wouldn’t care. But I can’t . . . I sound like a sanctimonious old philosopher, but I can’t stand by and watch people get murdered, Aris. I never meant to have anything to do with people like this. I wanted to be a soldier.”

If he wanted to redeem himself, he needed to admit to the king what he had done.

The king sat with his feet on the chair and his knees drawn up to his chest, looking over them and out the window. So motionless was he, and so silent the progress of his tears, that it was the space of a breath before Costis realized the king was crying.

He sternly reprimanded that weak and traitorous organ, but he couldn’t help remembering that his own homesickness had sucked the life out of every day when he had first left the farm.

Why should he care, really, if the king was homesick?

She is brilliant and beautiful and terrifying. It’s a fine way to feel about your queen, not your wife,” he added.

“Oh, Goddess, please let the little bastard be all right,” he prayed. “Oh, please let there be nothing wrong. Let this be a mistake. Let me look like a fool, but keep him safe, ten gold

Softly he said, “I thought that being king meant I didn’t have to kill people myself. I see now that was another misconception.”

He was still speaking softly. Three men dead and he wasn’t even breathing hard, Costis noted.

Walking so slowly, Costis had ample time to consider his commitment to the goddess Philia. Ten gold cups.

“Costis,” the king said in the patient voice of someone dealing with the insane, “I just need a little help on the stairs.”

“Ten gold cups for my sake?” He looked up, surprised. “I thought you hated me.”

Eugenides matched Costis look for look, his expression grave, his eyes like pools of darkness deeper than Costis could penetrate.

“Why can’t you act like a proper king?” Costis hissed in his ear.

Costis’s heart sank—for king and for queen, and for himself, who was uncomfortably loyal to two people at the same time.

The king lifted a hand to her cheek and kissed her. It was not a kiss between strangers, not even a kiss between a bride and a groom. It was a kiss between a man and his wife, and when it was over, the king closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the hollow of the queen’s shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day.

“Hideously,” said the king, without sounding injured at all. “I am disemboweled. My insides may in an instant become my outsides as I stand here before you, and no one will even notice.”

“She fainted. That’s all,” Ornon said more quietly. “There is a great deal of blood. She is a woman and she was upset. It is not a surprising reaction.” Costis looked down at the woman in his arms. She had a name. She was Irene. He’d never thought of her having any name except Attolia, but of course she was a person as well as a queen. Lying in his arms, she felt surprisingly human, and female.

“Upset at the sight of blood?” he said. “Not my wife, Ornon.” “Your blood,” the ambassador pointed out. Eugenides glanced at the hook on his arm and conceded the point. “Yes,” he said. He seemed lost in a memory.

“YOUR Majesty,” Costis whispered. Eugenides opened his eyes and turned his head on the pillow. Costis was on his knees by the bed.

He saw Aris first, sitting on the floor, his knees drawn up and his arms locked around them.

If Aris was sentenced to die, Costis wouldn’t leave him.

He wrapped his arms around his legs and sat.

“Like the fight between the king and the queen.”

“I would see My Lord Attolis,” she demanded angrily. Never had she addressed him before by his name as king.

“Of course, it was a sham. Would our queen be cow-eyed for the goatfoot that stole her throne? Are you mad?”

No woman could slap her husband across the face and still pretend affection. No man could be slapped and still pretend to be a man.

They talked in low voices for a while. The king, holding her hand in his, said, “I hope your father appreciates what a good friend you are to me.”

The king was sitting up in bed, the bedclothes twisted under him. He was propping himself on the stump of his right arm and staring down into his blood-covered hand.

She reached out and touched the king’s face, cupping his cheek in her hand.

“Ouch,” he said again as the queen gathered him into her arms.

They looked as surprised as he, and Costis felt it wasn’t any of their business, anyway, how the king and queen resolved their quarrel.

Costis knew, even before he saw the dark hair on the pillow, who it was.

“I want you to stay here until he wakes.” “Yes, Your Majesty.” “You may sit.” “Thank you, Your Majesty.” Costis didn’t move.

You’re here in case he is . . . unwell when he wakes.”