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Although he’d known better, Teleus had waited to observe the rites for the lost. Weeks after the Mede had been beaten back from the Leonyla, the mood in the capital was still dazed; the city had run dry of wine celebrating the end of the war, and then had drained the surrounding countryside of its stores to celebrate again when the queen safely gave birth to not one, but two healthy children. When the euphoria - and the headaches - finally passed, what remained was a stunned sort of optimism. The worst had come: the Medes had invaded, the Greater Powers of the continent had not sent aid, and yet Attolia and her neighbors stood, still free. If there was a bitter aftertaste to the victory, it was only that the joy was borne on far fewer shoulders than it should have been.
He had expected that bitterness. He had, quite frankly, expected worse. Teleus was a practical man, and he had known that on the very slim chance the Little Peninsula survived the gristle mill of the Mede and the Greater Powers with its autonomy intact, it would do so with heavy losses. He had not even feared the possibility of dying, except for what it would have meant for the safety of the queen if the fighting had come so near that he suffered a mortal wound in her defense.
After all, Teleus was a guard, not just a soldier. He had known he might die in Attolia’s service long before the Mede had ever come to their shores.
He had not considered that it might be harder to live. Truthfully, while the battle still raged, he had not had the time. It was only afterwards, escorting the three monarchs to the Attolian capital, feeling the city exhale in relief around them as they arrived, that it had begun to sink in.
He had survived. But Relius -
The war against the Mede had been a brutal, bloody, civilized affair. Bodies were retrieved and burned each evening. Names were listed. Keepsakes were saved, to be passed into the hands of grieving families when the last of the battlefield pyres were no more than the memory of ash on the wind. While Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis sat long hours around a table forging a treaty to unify their kingdoms, Teleus had spent hours bent over a desk of his own, writing letters to the parents, children, wives, and lovers of the guards who had fallen. He’d spoken of the accomplishments of their service, their loyalty to their brothers and to the king and queen. Where he could, he had offered assurances: it was a good death. It was a noble one.
He had known, even as he did so, that he would receive no letter in return.
His hand had cramped after the first hour, his grip more used to the leather-wrapped steel of a sword hilt than the delicate hollow of a quill, but he had persevered. It would have been a disservice to leave the task to the scribes; they were his men, and he was their Captain, even if only for this one final act. Those missives he could deliver himself, he did. The rest had gone out with wave after wave of messengers, taking news both sorrowful and joyous to towns across the peninsula.
Draining though it had been, it was not a task he had been willing to delay. His predecessor had never tolerated hesitation in his lieutenants, and Teleus still held to the principles that had been drummed into him as he’d risen through the ranks. Better to know the bad news, and deal with it, than always worry about what might be true, and let the worry make you foolish. The dead guards’ families had deserved to be able to grieve, not linger in uncertainty.
But more fool him, he had waited to perform the rites.
He had been interrupted in his writing just once, at Attolia’s summons. When he’d arrived at her rooms, ink still smudged on his hands where he’d not been able to wash it off, she’d dismissed her attendants to the antechamber. Then she had asked him, very frankly, if he wished to leave her service.
“My Queen?” he had said.
She’d looked at him, then, the skin under her eyes purple with exhaustion. The winds carrying them home so quickly had made for choppy seas, and even several days later, she had not fully recovered her strength. “I would prefer you stay until the king returns, but I will not keep you if you no longer wish to remain here. If you want to choose a new captain and never see the capital again, that is your right.”
“And go where?” If he had been derelict in his duties, she would not have hesitated to tell him so. But he hadn’t understood - he had never seen her look at him in the way she did then.
“There’s a farm in the Modrea Valley. Or go to Sounis, if you prefer to avoid the pastoral life. Sophos will write his father and find a place for you.”
“My Queen,” he had said. “Do you want me to leave?”
Attolia’s fingers had flexed, very slightly. “I nearly killed you, once, because the king almost died and I blamed you for it.” She held up a hand, forestalling his protest that the blame was rightly placed. “And we both have forgiven each other our failures in that matter. But Relius is dead because I sent him out alone and unprotected.”
“For Attolia.”
“For Attolia,” she’d agreed, and her voice had cracked, fatigue splitting her open so that grief could pour out like oil from a shattered amphora. “He died, as you would die, for Attolia. And I am Attolia. It would be easier if you were angry at me for it; I am angry at myself, for sending him. And for knowing that I would do it again, if I had to.”
But he hadn’t been angry at her. He had chosen Relius, and he had chosen his queen, and he had known that one day he might have to sacrifice one for the other. He’d faced the truth of that, in a cell under the palace, thinking he would be ordered to torture a man he loved. He had faced Relius’s death, and then he had faced his own, and he had not regretted having chosen. He had not.
“Do you want me to leave?” he’d asked again.
“No,” the queen had said. “No, Teleus, I want you to stay, and I despise that I want to ask you for more when you have already lost so much.”
“You are not asking for more than I am willing to give,” he’d told her, and the grief had sparked into fury.
“I am going to kill you one day!” Attolia had shouted. “I am going to kill you the way I killed Relius, and I cannot - I do not -” She had been crying. Her words had broken off into horrible, angry gasps.
But even as she’d raged, he’d stood silent. He had not known how to accept her guilt any more than she had known how to express it. They had made their choices, he and Relius as much as Attolia, and it was too late for anyone to regret them.
That had been the end of it; she had not summoned him again.
And still, as the Little Peninsula celebrated, recovered, celebrated again, he had waited. He was not in the habit of lying to himself. If he was a fool, then he had decided that he would have a fool’s hope. Relius had planned to travel north before working his way around east. He would have passed several places where the Little Peninsula shared borders with its one-time allies. Maybe, just maybe, he had been intercepted by forces less lethal than the Mede. The former Secretary of the Archives was both well-known and, courtesy of his stay in the Attolian dungeons, easily recognizable. More importantly, he was useful; even most Mede officers would have seen him as too valuable to kill immediately. And with the king pursuing the invaders into Roa, pushing them back from the Attolian border, was it not possible he might find Attolian prisoners, held as future bargaining chips, along the way?
After all, there had been no body. There had been no list, no letter. It had not been impossible, though the chance was so small that calling it a possibility seemed generous. Teleus had known it would be a miracle - but then, if anyone could be accused of regularly delivering miracles they had no right to pull off, it was Attolis Eugenides.
He raised his gaze to look at the statue of Alethe, though he didn’t have to tilt his head back far to do so. She had been carved staring frowningly into the distance, lantern held high, but hers was a small statue, in a small temple. Although she held a position of some prominence in the old pantheon, her domain that of sight and discovery, Alethe’s shrine was one of the least visited along the Sacred Way. It was open, if unspoken, knowledge that she ruled these areas in the same way Relius had once ruled the palace archives - the truth, yes, but only a portion of it.
Two days past, Teleus had been at the docks to meet the king’s ship when it had glided into harbor. The air had been charged with the frenzied energy of a giddy crowd, and he had felt it catch hold in his own chest, filling him with a rattling tension that he could not soothe.
Perhaps it had been hope. Perhaps it had been fear. It was not always easy to tell the two apart.
He had watched as the king stepped down from the deck into the waiting crush. As he’d shouted orders at the Guard to form up, to keep the crowd back, he had not stopped watching. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d been aware of the men filing off the gangplank in order of precedence, from the generals and attendants all the way down to Costis and his Mede, slipping quietly off the ship to disappear into the masses of people. He felt each footstep fall like a blow, tipping the scales of his composure.
And as the last lowly sailors stepped off the boat, Teleus had realized that like the wine, the king’s store of miracles had been emptied.
Afterwards, it had felt right to come to Alethe. He had immediately dismissed the great temple of Hephestia, where kings and queens were mourned. Nor did he linger at those of Miras or the Sky God, where offerings were left for soldiers killed in battle. After all, Relius was not - had not been - a soldier.
He might have even found it amusing, Teleus thought. The observances for the lost were the provenance of sailors drowned at sea and traders set upon by bandits in the hills, not the wealthy patronoi who adorned the court. Relius had never admitted to enjoying the sour taste his low birth left in the mouth of the barons’ council, but neither did he try terribly hard to hide the fact that it did, and Teleus suspected he would have liked this one last chance to rub it in their faces. They would have hated anyone who had the ear of the queen, of course, but it was all the more offensive for that power to be given to the impoverished and illegitimate son of a steward. For that man to then be unswervingly loyal to Her Majesty’s interests instead of what the barons’ council referred to as “the good of Attolia” was simply the final straw atop a long list of unsuitable qualities. Those in Erondites’ camp in particular had despised him more than anyone in court until Attolia had married the Thief of Eddis, at which point Relius had dropped down the list slightly - but only slightly.
But whether or not Relius would have been amused was a moot point. Teleus was alone, and the barons would receive no whispers of what happened within the walls of this temple. Nobody who sought Alethe’s patronage wanted to be seen visiting the goddess of spies.
He stepped closer to the statue, pulling the thin book from his tunic and placing in the shallow dish of the altar. Then, in the quiet of the empty temple, he dropped to his knees and folded himself into a bow to pray.
“Goddess, guide the path of one who has been lost.”
They had not walked the same path, he and Relius. But they had walked their paths together, rising from obscurity to the queen’s confidence through equal measures of skill and loyalty.
“Where his body lies cold, let it return in flame to the Earth and the Sky. Where his soul lies restless, let it free to slumber unending.”
And now the years stretched before him, the road beneath his feet splitting away to take him to a destination he no longer wanted, and he didn’t know how to turn back to where the two had diverged.
“Goddess, guide his path to the fields of dreaming.”
Guide mine, he thought. I am lost without him.
It was a long rite, in the manner of most Attolian prayers, and a repetitive one. His legs ached, then grew numb. The refrain felt meaningless in his mouth, his voice no more than a dry whisper asking the goddess to guide the lost spirit to its resting place. Not six months ago he had seen men burn because a god in the body of his king had willed it, and yet the memory felt hazy, unreachable. Reality pressed inescapably in all round him: he could hear the faint sounds of revelry from the city below, muted by distance, and the closer but less constant noise of supplicants traveling the Sacred Way. Under his fingertips, the flagstones of the temple floor were worn smooth from the passage of years and traffic. The air was heavy with heat and smoke and silence, and Relius was dead.
He did not track the passage of time, but when he finally straightened and opened his eyes, he was not alone. There was another pair of knees in his periphery, covered by trousers of vibrant and familiar red silk. “Your Majesty.”
The king had not been prostrated. He had seated himself tailor-style perpendicular to the altar, regarding Alethe’s marble face with a mirror of her unsmilingly searching expression on his own. Only as Teleus sat up did his gaze finally shift. “Captain.”
Teleus knew if he looked around, he would see no one else. The Thief might enter rooms with no one the wiser, but Attolis was usually belled by his entourage. Even lost in prayer, Teleus had not heard the stomping of heavy boots, nor the clink of metal armor. He had not even heard the quieter rustling of fabric, the awkward shuffle as attendants jostled for position.
Pointedly, he did not look. He would not encourage behavior he disapproved of, even if there was a small part of him that was grateful for the privacy granted by the king’s….discretion, in leaving the palace. Instead, he shifted back onto his heels and waited for Attolis to speak.
The king eyed him consideringly for a moment, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. At last, he said, “I should be more concerned about the lack of yelling, but as I’m hoping that we can both agree that I was never here -” He didn’t wait for Teleus to respond, unfolding himself in a flutter of silk - and then he paused, cocking his head and glancing at Alethe’s statue once more, eyes narrowed. After a moment, he shrugged, too casual, and Teleus knew that whatever answer he had been hoping for, he had not received it. “Ah, well. Back to work, I suppose.”
Teleus stood, flexing his feet against the uncomfortable prickling as his nerves came back to life. He’d been kneeling for long enough that his legs had gone numb and unsteady, but he would not stumble. “Indeed. Let me escort you back to the palace, Your Majesty.”
“If you must,” the king sighed, but he led the way out of the temple without any further complaints. He did not speak again until they were at the end of the Sacred Way and the palace gates were in sight; when he did, his voice was old, and very tired. “Teleus. I am sorry. He will be missed terribly.”
“Yes,” Teleus said. A half-step behind the king’s shoulder in their procession of two, he could only catch a glimpse of Attolis’s face in profile. The king would not be able to see his own at all. “He will be.”
In spite of everything, life in the palace did not take long to resume some semblance of normalcy. As the weeks passed, the court settled back into the business of leisure and luxury, and Teleus sometimes caught himself looking around, searching for another person who recognized the grim humor of it all. The world had irrevocably shifted, but the petty gossip and jostling for influence continued as it always had, fueled by the multitude of positions and titles that suddenly needed to be filled without any acknowledgement of why. Indeed, within the palace walls it sometimes seemed as though the war might never have happened, except for the ways in which its effects now inconvenienced the wealthy and powerful. If he heard one more person moaning about lost revenue from Roan trade routes, he might be tempted to follow in Costis’s footsteps and punch them, consequences be damned.
Not coincidentally, he spent much more time these days reviewing the squads stationed outside the palace. At least in the city, there was an awareness that while things had changed for the better, they had done so at a cost. Forgetting that was dangerous, like standing on the edge of a cliff - if he let himself slip between what was and what had been, it would feel as though he could just walk into the wing of apartments where Relius’s rooms were and find him there, fussing with the fall of his clothes. For a moment, he would feel as if he were no longer hollow-chested, the heart torn out of him and left bloody in an army camp south of the Leonyla.
And then he would remember, and the remembering would shatter him as unforgivingly as the rocks in the harbor. So: he would not let himself forget.
But he did not visit that part of the palace if he could avoid it.
Still, it was inevitable that he would sometimes have to, and this was one of those occasions. The determination of how to pension Attolian land to Eddisian veterans was a complex matter, but it was one made needlessly more complicated by the barons' council insisting upon its involvement. Sauntering in several minutes after the appointed meeting time, Baron Ephrata had opened the discussion by pointing out the abundance of uncultivated land on his neighbor’s holding. Said neighbor was the Baron Laimonides, who objected to this claim vehemently and at great volume - and then they were off. The council had happily settled in for what was sure to be long hours of squabbling when the queen cut through the chatter by observing that one of their number was, in fact, absent. Then she had looked at Teleus, undoubtedly noticed the way his hands were already beginning to clench into fists, and said, “Please let Erondites know we require him," effectively banished him from the chamber.
It was, he had to admit, a sensible decision. Teleus would follow his queen through anything, but he was not a courtier. His increasingly low tolerance for the endless backstabbing and maneuvering of Attolia’s barons - and the glower it would put on his face - would not make it any easier for her to soften them up for negotiation.
As for the new Erondites…well. No matter how his fellow barons might scorn him, Pheris could no longer pretend to be incapable of understanding simple instructions. But he was still a boy, with a boy’s whims and moods. Knowing what awaited him, he might drag his feet for any guards who tried to chivvy him along, taking advantage of his new status and their unwillingness to manhandle the head of a noble house. He knew Teleus too well to try and do the same to him.
And because that understanding was mutual, Teleus didn’t try to tell himself that he didn’t know where Pheris would be. Since their return to the capital he seemed to crave solitude even more, pushing back against the new demands on his time and person the only way he could. He was not in the gardens, and his little dappled pony was happily munching hay in her stall, which left -
“Try again,” said a calm, accented voice. “Just because geography is not neat and orderly like your sums doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive for accuracy.”
He pushed open the heavy wooden doors to the study, and felt his breath catch. There, as expected, was Pheris, leaning over a roll of paper with a quill in his hand and an expression of ferocious concentration on his face. Next to him, familiar and yet wrong, wrong, wrong, Kamet straightened with quickly masked surprise. A less well-hidden flash of alarm rose on its heels. “Captain. Is Costis -“
Teleus shook his head and looked to Pheris, who was watching him with - pity? Worry? His face felt tight, the skin around his eyes and mouth pulling hard to keep his expression even. The alternative was to collapse, and he would not, could not, let himself. Not now.
"Her Majesty sent me to ask you to join her and the council," he said. "They are discussing the land grants."
Pheris eyed him a moment longer, then carefully wrote a few words on the corner of his sheet of paper. He shaped the letters slowly, neatly, and as he wrote Teleus shifted his gaze to the tall window facing out on the sea. Motes of dust floated across his vision in the sunlight. The room smelled warm and musty with old books and soft velvet curtains, and the scent caught in his throat and lodged there as though he might choke on it.
Pheris tore the scrap of paper free, and offered it with a dignity that verged on sarcastic. It read, Her Majesty sent you so you didn't have to listen to them talk.
Ah, Teleus thought. He might have been dangerous, this boy who saw so much. If the last Erondites had done anything at all to earn his loyalty - but the old baron had not. And instead here was Erondites renewed and reborn, this boy in whom Relius had taken so much pride. This boy, carrying his family’s rotten legacy with such grace.
”Wish she'd do you the same favor?" he said, and found he could breathe again.
Pheris shrugged in a way that somehow managed to express that he was resigned to his lot in life involving a string of tedious meetings, and also didn't care because he wasn't planning on participating anyway. And then he signed, slowly enough that Teleus could follow the gestures, she likes you better.
Kamet, who’d been eyeing Pheris’s hands with a concentration that rivaled his pupil’s, choked on a laugh.
“So, so, so,” Teleus said.
Pheris sighed mournfully, then looked back at Kamet, a question in the set of his head.
“Tomorrow, I think. I have some copying to do myself, and you will not have any patience left after your meeting. Besides, we should both go outside and look at things in the sun. Tomorrow morning we’ll see if you can’t make a map worthy of your journals.”
Old man, Pheris signed.
“Yes,” Kamet agreed, too easily. Teleus wondered if he ought to be offended; by that standard, he was positively decrepit. Relius would have threatened to box Pheris’s ears at the insult, mock outrage covering genuine indignation, but then, Relius had been vain that way. Kamet merely smiled so politely that it raised the hairs on Teleus’s arms and added, “And if you don’t want to end up half-blind like me by the time you reach your majority, you’ll take my advice.”
Pheris must have recognized the futility in arguing with that tone, because he swung his legs over the side of the stool without further protest.
“Until tomorrow, then,” Kamet said, and nodded at them both. “Captain.”
Teleus nodded back. And then he turned and gestured Pheris through the door, and they walked together in silence to where the queen waited for them. He could not have said what happened at the meeting, but when he finally fell asleep that night, he dreamed of the quiet sound of pen on parchment and of a window overlooking the sea.
The next morning, the king found him at dawn practice. This was not a particularly challenging thing to do; although he had hardly seen Attolis since their unexpected meeting in Alethe’s temple, Teleus did not skip the dawn practice unless he was away from the palace or attending the queen. Repetition made a good swordsman, and could be more reliably achieved than the gunpowder flash of talent and creativity that might make a great one. Although Attolis made improbable feats of survival an altogether too-frequent habit, it was not a talent he could share with those around him. Teleus did not care that his men admired the king, who was quite possibly the best duelist Teleus had ever met, but he did not want them to emulate him.
Not that there was any danger of that at the moment. The man in question staggered up to the training ground in the traditional pose of the recently and reluctantly awoken, one hand clapped to his forehead as though to ward off the sun. And then, in spite of the fact that he had no obligation to be there and was probably meant to be somewhere else entirely, he leaned against a wall, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes, for all intents and purposes settling in for a long wait. The king, Teleus remembered, had been thrown off the roof of the Eddisian palace as a baby, and it showed.
The squad assigned to him this morning had clearly been instructed to keep their distance, and they hovered around the perimeter of the training grounds, caught between their king’s command and the knowledge that neither their captain nor their queen would approve of them being too far away to protect Attolis in an emergency. His attendants, less torn, waited in the shade of one of the nearby buildings.
So Teleus did not acknowledge that there was anything unusual about the day’s practice, and the king did not call him over to force the issue. As the sun crept higher, he walked among the rows of men, observing more than anything else. It was the duty of the veterans to offer corrections and guidance around these day to day matters; criticism from their captain would bite too deep to feel warranted. He was only slightly less sparing with praise, though he did offer an approving nod when Costis managed a neat disarming maneuver while he was watching. Costis, he was glad to see, had not let his form degrade during his adventure in Roa. If anything, all that time scrambling over rocks and seaside cliffs had made him more agile, and the waiting had taught him patience.
Like Kamet, Costis seemed to have taken the return to palace life in stride. He'd been reinstated to the Guard after his return, but Teleus had delayed assigning him a squad. Watching him fight, it seemed a wise choice. It was an open secret that he and the king had continued to meet to practice long after Attolis had earned the respect of the rest of the Guard, and while Costis would never presume special treatment, Teleus knew the king had not spent months smacking him with a stick to let him linger in obscurity as one of two dozen squad leaders.
By comparison, the king, still propped against the wall with his eyes closed, did not give off the impression of a man who could hit anyone with a stick, let alone a bladed weapon. If he hadn’t been standing, Teleus might have thought him asleep. He didn’t seem to move at all until the last of the Guard had gone off to the mess hall or patrol; although Costis hesitated at the archway leading out of the yard until the king cracked one eye open, he was waved off as well. Only when the king straightened from his slouching lean did Teleus look over, acknowledgement and a question both.
In answer, the king shed his jacket, lifted a practice sword, and tipped his head in clear invitation.
Really, it was no wonder his cousins used to thrash him. Teleus did not bring his own wooden sword to the Guard’s practice every day, but one of the king’s attendants had clearly been prepared, scurrying forward to offer him a second blade. The king took a stance in prime, and Teleus mirrored him. They saluted each other.
“Begin,” the king said.
The first exchange was exploratory. The second made Teleus frown. The king was not attacking with intent, but neither was he pretending to be less skilled than he was. The back-and-forth of their blades was nearly conversational. When Teleus pressed him, he skipped backwards neatly to gain distance, circled, and approached with the same moderation.
This time, however, he opened his mouth. “Pheris didn’t want to tell you about Kamet, you know. He was worried you might be upset with him.”
Parry. Thrust. Dodge the counter - “I’m not.” Pheris had found solace in Relius’s rooms, but he had always understood the privacy of the space. He would not have invited anyone else there. Nor would he have asked anyone to replace his tutor. Not on his own.
“No,” the king agreed. “You’d be angry with me if it was going to be anyone.”
“I’m not,” he said again.
“You aren’t going to try and argue that the Setran ex-slave of our former Mede ambassador is a poor choice to tutor the head of one of Attolia’s most powerful houses?” the king asked. “That’s what most of the barons have been doing. I don’t think they’ve ever spoken so highly of Relius before now, but apparently a Mede runaway can’t possibly hope to match his abilities as a mentor. Then they usually suggest a second cousin somewhere who just happens to be wonderful with children.”
Teleus rolled his eyes and pushed forward into a series of bruising attacks that left his sword arm ringing with the impact of the blades. “Would you have picked him if he was a bad choice?”
The king had to consider it, but only briefly. “Probably not. I’m growing soft in my old age.”
“True,” Teleus said, after the end of another hard flurry of blows that failed to land. “You should have won by now.”
The king laughed. “Ah, Teleus. I’m not done with you quite yet.” But he applied himself to the business of fighting in silence, and this time, when he came forward, he did so in earnest. They clashed, withdrew, clashed again.
Then, between one strike and the next, the king said, “What was the book that you left on Alethe’s altar?”
Teleus didn’t flinch - but in the moment of complete blank stillness that followed the king’s question, Attolis hooked the guard of his practice sword around Teleus’s own and twisted his wrist so they were locked together, neither one able to attack. Then he waited.
“I -“ Teleus said. “I don’t -“
“I don’t need specifics,” the king said. “Was it one of Relius’s?”
Strength came back to him in a furious rush. The king had had the opportunity to disarm him, and wasted it by bringing them to a standstill. In close, it was a matter of brute force to put his weight into their crossed blades and shove. The king, nearly a head shorter and significantly lighter in build, blinked up at him from the dusty ground. In the distance, his attendants tittered. The sound hardly registered over the roaring in his ears.
“It was mine,” Teleus said. “It was a collection of verses. I was in the middle of transcribing it from a copy in the archives. Do you need me to tell you the poet, too, or are you satisfied.”
“No,” the king said pitifully. “Look at me. I’m covered in dirt, and now I’m going to have to get changed again.”
“Your Majesty.”
“You’ve been taking lessons from Phresine, I see, but there’s no need to be polite. Go on, yell if you’d like.” The king flopped backwards into the dirt.
With effort, Teleus unclenched his jaw. “Why do you care?”
“Am I not allowed to take an interest in the lives of my subjects and court?” Attolis said to the sky. “I didn’t think you were the scholarly sort. It was curiosity, Teleus, nothing more.”
“Like hell it was,” Teleus said.
Attolis shrugged, which looked faintly ridiculous in a man flat on his back. “Believe me or not, it makes no difference. Thank you for the match, captain.”
It was as clear a dismissal as he’d ever heard. He stared down at the king for a few seconds more. Then, because the alternative was picking Attolis off the ground and shaking him like a ragdoll, he stalked away. If he was in a particularly foul mood for the rest of the morning, there was no one foolish enough to comment on it.
The discussions around how to parcel off land to Eddisian veterans continued, and Pheris seemed determined that he would need to be fetched to each one. Teleus suspected this was not entirely his fault; it was unlikely anyone in the palace had consulted Erondites when they planned these meetings, and even more unlikely that Pheris would choose to spend any of his free time drinking and socializing with the other barons. The meetings were thus inevitably scheduled at times when he would rather be occupied elsewhere, and almost as inevitably started late as the council wandered in at their leisure. Little wonder he waited for Teleus to retrieve him, instead of sitting around an empty room bored out of his mind.
Kamet had him working on mathematics today, which Teleus suspected meant that Kamet was busy with other matters and wanted his pupil to be occupied with something that required little attention or feedback. Pheris took to numbers and patterns with a joy that would have made him the darling of any quartermaster willing to look past his physical form, and more than once Teleus had seen him happily spend hours scribbling long strings of formulae, working out one or another of the proofs set to him by Sounis’s magus. He was, however, not so engrossed in his current task that he didn’t notice Teleus coming in, and Teleus tipped his head in acknowledgment when Pheris caught his eye and grinned.
And perhaps this was the other reason Pheris insisted on a personal summons. He no longer looked so openly concerned that Teleus might begin weeping on the spot whenever he walked through the doors of the study, but Teleus was not blind to the way Pheris watched him. Every time Teleus came to get him, he seemed a little more reassured, his face lighter than it had been in months.
Kamet, however, was another matter. He was frowning down at his papers, and although he glanced up briefly when Teleus entered, the furrow between his brows didn’t wipe itself away. He was clearly preoccupied, and Teleus took advantage of his distraction to look at the mess spread in front of him on the desk.
Letters on fine paper, written in a script he couldn’t read. Laid partially across them was a heavy book - a dictionary, he realized. Kamet’s thin fingers skimmed through its pages, his eyes flicking back and forth as he translated whatever was written in the correspondence. Even as efficient as he was, it would be a slow, tedious business.
Teleus said, without quite thinking about it, “You should make flags.”
Kamet blinked, surprised out of his focus. Pheris stopped halfway down his slide off his stool, teetering dangerously. “What?”
“Flags,” Teleus said. “For the dictionary. So you can get to the section you want faster. Like this.” He took a scrap of paper from the desk, folded it twice until it was a long, skinny strip, and put a sharp twist in the bottom half before tucking it into the book, snug against where the pages were bound together. He flipped the cover closed, so Kamet and Pheris could see the way the twisted paper created just enough of a separation between pages to allow someone to catch a fingertip and open it at that point. He pointed at the flat piece of paper that still stuck out. “Then label them, so you know which is which.”
Kamet and Pheris were staring. “Thank you,” Kamet said eventually. “I - yes. Yes, I’ll do that. Thank you, I was worried I would be here all day.”
“It was Relius’s trick,” he said, swallowing past the name. “I just paid attention.”
“Still.”
Pheris’s feet hit the floor, an uneven one-two beat. He looked even more worried about imminent weeping than he had the first time Teleus had come to get him. As soon as his legs steadied, he made for the door with every appearance of planning to shepherd Teleus right back through it, never mind the difference in their heights.
“There is -“
Teleus, letting himself be shepherded, turned back at Kamet’s voice.
“There is room for another,” Kamet said hesitantly, and waved at the armchairs where - where he and Relius used to sit, sharing wine and olives. “During our lessons. If you would like, and are not too busy. There are probably things you know that Pheris should learn, if he is to be a part of this court.” His mouth twisted, rueful. “And sometimes it helps to have company, when the memories are too quiet to be alone with them.”
It was odd, Teleus thought. The whole court knew that Kamet had once been a high-ranking slave. Teleus himself had marked Kamet years ago as possessing all the insight and attentiveness that position required of anyone who wanted to survive it.
But he had not, at the time, considered what else Kamet’s position had meant - or what it would mean for him to be brought to Attolia, one more piece in the game of kings and emperors. He had been wrenched away from everything he knew twice over. He had lost more in a few decades than most men would in their lifetimes, and so Kamet, recognizing loss in another, did not pity Teleus.
He just understood.
“Thank you,” Teleus said in turn, and saw in Kamet’s face that he knew it was for more than the offer. Then he let Pheris huff, tangle a hand in his sleeve, and pull him from the room.
Quite honestly, Teleus had had no plans to accept Kamet’s invitation. But like a man poking at a bruise, he found himself pacing down the corridor towards one of the residential areas of the palace a few days later, sheaves of paper in his hands. He resisted the urge to shuffle them like a green undersecretary at his first big meeting.
He was, he told himself, doing this for Pheris. Teleus’s lapse in mentioning Relius had upset him; he would not distress the boy further by avoiding him now.
“You cannot limit yourself to what you only know with certainty,” Kamet was saying as he walked in. Two pairs of eyes, one brown, one hazel, flicked to him in unison, then Kamet tapped the paper on the desk, drawing Pheris’s attention back to it. “Take this map as an example. Knowing there is a town does not tell you whether that town is a safe place to rest for the night. Is it large or small? Are its residents honest or untrustworthy? Knowing there is a river does not tell you whether it becomes a dried-out bed in summer or swells to become impassable in winter, and yet you may have to make a decision about whether or not to attempt a crossing long before you reach its banks.”
Pheris wrote something in his notebook, and Kamet peered at it. “Yes, exactly so. There are times you will need to rely on gossip, or rumors - but there will also be times when the stories you need are much older. For instance: what do you know of Hamiathes’s Gift?”
As Pheris bent to begin writing out his answer, Teleus made his way across the room to the two cushioned chairs in the far corner. After a moment’s indecision, he settled into his usual seat with a stack of reports from the training halls. It meant facing the empty chair across from him, but it also meant keeping Pheris - and Kamet - in clear view.
He needn’t have bothered. As he turned his attention to the first report, a part of his mind could not help but catalogue all the differences it was noticing. Kamet’s voice was slower and softer than Relius’s had been, his accent giving the words a gentle lilt instead of Relius’s smooth polish. Where Relius would have paced, driven by a restlessness he had never entirely mastered, Kamet stood still, with hardly a rustle of fabric to betray him. Even with his eyes closed, Teleus could not have mistaken one for the other.
He stared at the report without reading a single word. Every steady breath was an effort.
Gods. Gods.
In another life, there would have been a farm in the Modrea. There would have been milk from the goats and wheat from the fields and happiness, and he missed it all with a ferocity that burned through him.
He missed Relius. When he blinked, the letters in front of him wavered. His breathing hitched.
The door opened, nearly inaudible, and then clicked shut again. He looked up. Pheris was alone at the desk, pushing himself around so that he could get off the stool.
They had wept together for Relius once before. But this time, when Pheris grabbed his hands, his own eyes wet, Teleus thought they might be weeping for themselves, too, and everything they had wanted that would never be.
Kamet had been waiting some distance down the hall when they had finally emerged, red-eyed and exhausted, and he had taken one look at the pair of them and said, “Outside, both of you,” so firmly that they’d done it without thinking. The fresh air had helped. When Pheris had calmed enough to start looking longingly towards the stables, Teleus patted him on the shoulder and sent him off to his pony and the cheerful care of the stable master. Maybe they would have better luck in cheering him up; they could certainly not do worse than Teleus himself had.
For a moment, there was silence.
“I’m sorry. That was too much.”
“No,” Teleus said. “I miscalculated. I apologize for the disruption.”
Kamet waved a hand. “We can make up the work. And -” His lips pursed, frustrated. “I was the one who miscalculated. I had heard that you two had been close, but I didn’t realize - he meant a very great deal to you, didn’t he.”
“Yes.” The words spilled through the cracks in his composure. “I would have come back for him. From war. From anything. I would have tried to come back, for him.”
“Ah,” Kamet said, very quietly. “Then I’m sorry he is the one who has gone ahead to a place from which he cannot return.” He paused, then added, “If you would like for us to find somewhere else for our lessons, I am sure Pheris will understand.”
“No. No, it’s - he’s comfortable there. Stay.”
Kamet looked at him, then nodded. “Thank you. I think it makes him feel safe to be there, though he won’t admit that.”
“Relius encouraged it. I called him a soft-hearted idiot when he told me that he let an Erondites into his private office unsupervised,” Teleus admitted, and Kamet laughed.
“I didn’t know Relius well,” Kamet said, “but when you have spent most of your life not trusting anyone, it can be...difficult, to give it in moderation. It is nothing, or everything, even when you wonder at the apparent lack of good sense in your own choices.”
“Speaking from experience?” Teleus asked.
“So, so, so,” Kamet said dryly, vowels rounded in a passable impression of an Attolian accent. “We all must live with our flaws.”
However unintentionally, Kamet had made a good point: Teleus was not the sort of man who believed in half-hearted commitments, and he did not intend to become one. So the next day when he had finished with practice and his own shift on duty in court, he went back to the residential wing.
Pheris looked positively anxious when he entered the office, but Kamet smiled, pleased in spite of the slight pinch of worry around his eyes. “Captain. Good afternoon.”
He nodded to them, then made for his chair. He had not brought any work with him today. This was the work, and it would need his full attention. He sat and listened to Kamet asking Pheris questions about the different ways in which countries might determine leadership, and the soft scratch of Pheris’s pen as he answered, and when the lesson was over he stood, nodded again to them both, and left.
He went back the following day, and the next. His schedule rarely permitted him hours of free time, so a few days after that, he brought duty rosters, and spent the duration of a lesson on expenditures for a noble household assigning graduating trainees to their new squads.
If his chest still ached sometimes at the scent of paper and Relius’s rosewater perfume, it was easier to bear when it did.
So the weeks slipped by, summer fading into fall. Since returning to the palace, Eddis and Attolia had taken up the habit of visiting the queen’s garden together at least once a week, and Teleus, in turn, had made it a habit to be there when they did. Two monarchs outside together was an uncomfortably tempting target for any would-be assassin. He would not entrust anyone other than Attolis himself with their safety, and as Attolis had been strictly prohibited from - the phrase Eddis had used was “circling like an anxious sheepdog” - it fell to Teleus instead.
When the queens had first begun to spend time here, it was warm enough that the trees that lined the outsides of the paths had provided welcome shade. As the weather cooled, the orange trees began to bud, the lemons soon followed, and the brisk air now carried the faint scent of citrus blossoms. Pleasant and private, it was the ideal place to spend an hour or two conversing on any topic, from matters of state to -
“Why on earth does anyone have children,” Eddis grumbled. She and Attolia were walking slowly along one of the gravel paths that bordered the rectangle of lawn in their preferred part of the garden. Teleus paced behind them, far enough back to give them the feeling of privacy, and more of his men stood at each corner of the hedges that sectioned this area off from the others.
Attolia raised one eyebrow. “I assume you mean aside from the obvious reason.”
“Sophos is blushing at this very moment and doesn’t know why,” Eddis said. “I mean aside from both of the obvious reasons. Sophos has sisters. I’m sure at some point there will be another nephew who could become Sounis. We could have started a new tradition.”
Attolia adjusted her hold on her daughter, sleeping in her arms. Phresine had settled on the grass with the prince, who was less prone to waking the instant someone stopped rocking him. “It’s a little late for that.”
Eddis glanced down at herself and raised her own eyebrow at the understatement. “I’m well aware.” Then she grimaced, pressing a hand to the sore muscles of her back. She was doing that more often now, but Teleus knew better than to suggest she rest. The last guard who had offered to help her to a seat had had to stand watch for another hour with his ears burning red from her snorts of laughter. “Ah, well. At least she’ll grow up in Sounis, safe from any cousins who might steal her favorite earrings.” She cast a fond look at Eugenia.
“You won’t return to Eddis at all?” Attolia asked.
There was a pause.
“Not to stay,” Eddis said. Her gaze was unfocused, but her head had turned, unerring, in the direction of the mountains. “There will be matters to take care of, of course. People to resettle. Things we’ll want to preserve. But if she rules, she’ll do so as Sounia.” Then she laughed, wry and a little sad. “Or perhaps she’ll be Sounis, instead. She can take after both of us, that way.”
“She’ll take after both of you regardless,” Attolia said firmly. “She will be her mother’s daughter - Eddis’s daughter - no matter what title she rules under.”
Eddis breathed out, slow and measured. “Yes,” she said. “She will be. But she won’t be Eddis.”
They walked on in silence for a long moment.
Slowly, Attolia said, “You make…choices. As queen. You sacrifice things that may not be yours, for the sake of your country and your people.” She glanced back at Teleus, pacing behind them, and met his eyes for an instant. “And you hope that your love for them is enough to earn forgiveness for the pain you cause.” She looked at Eddis again and lifted her shoulders in a minute shrug, careful not to disturb the sleeping infant she carried. “I cut off my husband’s hand. I have done worse to others, because I believed it was necessary to protect Attolia. And I would rather live with that every single day for the rest of my life than the knowledge that I could have done something to keep my people safe, and didn’t.”
“Because you are Attolia.”
“Yes,” the queen said. “As you are Eddis. And if your daughter is Sounis, then she will understand.”
And although she did not respond, the weight that seemed to lift off of Eddis’s shoulders was answer enough.
Later, as the queen was walking back to her rooms to rest before her next appointment, she said, “You are quiet, Teleus. Was I wrong to suggest that she should hope for forgiveness?”
“No,” he said. “But you do not need to hope for what you have always had.”
Her stride faltered for an instant. “Always? That seems dangerous.”
“You are Attolia,” he said, “and My Queen. I will always forgive you, even when there is nothing that needs to be forgiven.”
She exhaled softly. “Thank you, Teleus.”
“You’re welcome, My Queen.”
Perhaps Eddis had guessed what was about to happen, that day in the garden. It was not long afterwards that Pheris found him in the halls, a triumphant gleam in his eye, and yanked out his slate to write in exuberantly large script, IT’S DONE.
And so it was. A compromise had been reached at last, and the first wagons began to roll down the winding road from Eddis. More soon followed. Although the Eddisian veterans had been granted allotments in the countryside, where there was land for farming, reports from Rhea indicated that some caravans had even made their way as far east as the port town. “Craftsmen and artisans,” Attolis said with a shrug, when he heard. “I suppose they saw the bulk of their customers packing up to leave and decided they’d better start looking for business elsewhere.”
Freed from his most onerous responsibility, Pheris was happy to spend even more time with his books and numbers. By contrast, the king and queen grew busier, and as a result, so did Teleus. There were more petitions at court, expected but no less aggravating for their predictability - the Eddisians were buying up all the seed, filling up foreign merchants’ ships with their cargo, and generally being uncivilized barbarians - at least according to their Attolian neighbors. By the time Teleus was released from standing guard at the royal dais each afternoon, he usually wanted nothing more than silence and an amphora of wine. If he no longer had the energy to visit Relius’s study as often as he would have liked, neither Pheris nor Kamet seemed to begrudge him his absences.
It was a surprise, then, when Teleus returned to his quarters before the midday meal to see Pheris limping fretfully back and forth in front of his door. He had to have been there for at least an hour; Petrus’s salves and exercises had done wonders in helping him walk more smoothly, and his limp was rarely so pronounced unless he was tired or sore.
“Pheris?”
The boy caught sight of him and yanked out his notebook. Where’s Kamet?
Teleus blinked. “He wasn’t in Relius’s office?”
Pheris shook his head, and added, No note. His fingers trembled, smudging the letters.
So Kamet had not expected to miss their morning lesson. Teleus frowned. It was possible, of course, that the Mede emperor had decided to retaliate against him for his betrayal, but Teleus should have known about any assassination attempt on the palace grounds by now, successful or not. “Did you ask His Majesty?”
Pheris shook his head again. He’s busy.
“You’re Erondites,” Teleus said. “Let’s see if you can interrupt him.”
He took Pheris’s arm after the first time the boy stumbled, trying to walk faster than his fatigued body would allow. “Kamet is fine,” Teleus told him. “The only time he ever leaves the palace is when he’s visiting the city with Costis, and Costis would never let anything happen to him.” Pheris glared, and Teleus sighed. “I’m not going to let you hurt yourself because you’re worried. You can walk at a reasonable pace, or you can let me carry you.” Pheris glared harder, but he slowed down and let Teleus keep a steadying hand under his arm as they approached the king’s apartments.
Both attendants and a squad of guards waited in the antechamber, which was a good sign. “Is he inside?” Teleus asked the squad leader, Laimon.
“Yes, sir. He asked for Squad Leader Ormentiedes and the scribe Kamet an hour ago, but it took some time to find Ormentiedes. They only just started talking.”
Pheris went limp with relief, sagging into Teleus’s hold. Teleus was debating whether or not he could leave him in the antechamber to wait for Kamet when the door to the inner rooms swung open. Costis stuck his head out and said, “Could someone send for the captain? And Erondites?”
Every single person in the room looked at Teleus. Costis craned his neck a little further around the frame to see what they were staring at and flushed. “Ah. I didn’t see you there, sir.” His brow furrowed as he noticed Pheris. “How did you know -”
“Coincidence,” Teleus said. “We were looking for Kamet. What does His Majesty need?”
Costis rolled his eyes. “I have no idea, sir. He hasn’t gotten to that part yet.”
Teleus resisted the urge to mimic the gesture and followed Costis deeper into the apartment, Pheris in tow. They arrived at the door to a small office, and Costis pushed it open and gestured them through.
“You think a Setran ex-slave of the Mede couldn’t represent the peninsula as an envoy to the Braeling court?” the king was saying cheerfully as they walked in. “But you’re so cultured. Hello, Pheris. Captain. That was fast.”
Kamet turned just enough to nod and throw Pheris an apologetic smile before he whipped his head back around like a snake to glare at the king. “Insults this early in the negotiation process are undignified. Try again.”
“The Greater Powers may think we pose enough of a risk to try and betray us when an opportunity arises, but they do not seem to care whether there are repercussions for doing so,” the king said, as casual as though they were discussing the price of wine in the market. “I would like to make it clear that there are.”
“How?” Kamet said suspiciously.
“By sending the notorious Kamet e dai Annux and his equally notorious guard - oh, don’t look so obviously relieved to be going with him, Costis, you’ll hurt my feelings -“
“What feelings?” Kamet said, over Costis’s protests.
“Beset on all sides!” The king accused, before continuing as though he had not been interrupted, “- to carry a declaration that all diplomatic ties between the Continental Powers and the Unified Peninsula are hereby severed until there is a formal apology, with concessions, for attempted regicide.”
“Those are your repercussions?” Kamet asked. “The Braelings will laugh us out of the audience hall.”
“Probably,” the king said. “But it’s the principle of the thing. Will you do it?”
Kamet and Costis exchanged a long look, and Kamet sighed. “I can,” Costis said, “but -“
“I have a responsibility to Pheris,” Kamet finished, and turned to look at the boy in question. “You need someone to nag you about subjects other than mathematics,” he told him frankly, before addressing the king. “If Your Majesty can find another tutor who is acceptable to both of you, I’ll go.”
“Done,” the king said instantly, and pointed - at Teleus.
“What,” Teleus said.
But Kamet looked thoughtful. “Oh, I hadn’t considered - but if I made a curriculum, and all you had to do was check the work was getting done….”
“I have neither the time nor the ability -”
“I can’t very well ask the Baron Anacritus’s second cousin,” the king said.
“Your Majesty, it would be grossly irresponsible -”
“Anyone who isn’t trying to sway him to their camp is either going to treat Pheris like he’s incompetent or like he’s going to have them murdered in the night,” the king interrupted. “Would you subject him to that?”
Teleus glared. It was an unfair question, and the king knew it. But still he continued, ruthless. “Or perhaps you think Kamet should stay. But Kamet and Costis have already demonstrated the ability to escape an empire, if need be. Would you have me risk someone less capable in their place?”
“Just to deliver a message?” Teleus growled.
“It’s an important message,” the king said. The Thief’s eyes glittered in his face. “The Greater Powers killed Relius. They killed Philologos. Because of their actions, Hilarion and Xikos and Sotis and Perminder and nearly two full squads of your Guard are dead, and that’s not even counting everyone the Mede slaughtered when the allied army failed to come to our aid. I am not going to let them pretend that those deaths don’t matter.”
Teleus looked at Pheris. “I cannot promise much,” he warned.
Pheris drew himself up as straight as possible and signed, each gesture sharp enough to cut, They killed Relius. I want them to know.
I want them dead, he thought. But even that was not enough. It would never be enough, and he knew it. He could have killed Yorn Fordad, but Yorn had betrayed them - betrayed Relius - on the orders of his king. And the Brael king had probably ordered it in council with his ministers, and after discussion with the other allied monarchs, who had been in council with their ministers…Teleus could batter himself on the Greater Powers until one of them swatted him like a fly, and it still wouldn’t bring Relius back, nor any of the others. What good would a message do?
But the king believed it was important.
He sighed. “Then I agree.”
The study felt emptier, with just himself and Pheris to occupy it. After their meeting with the king, it had not seemed like any time at all before Teleus and Pheris were standing at the Attolian harbor, watching a ship bound for Ferria recede into the distance with Costis and Kamet aboard. Then they were alone, and it was too quiet.
Pheris had a list of topics to study and books to read, of course, but - as Kamet had predicted - he was unenthusiastic in everything but his mathematics. As Teleus had no idea how to encourage him, they often sat there in silence, only occasionally interrupted by the sound of Pheris’s pen. It was frustrating to be aware of how poorly he was doing; it was worse to be unable to fix it.
But he had agreed to try. He would not do less than that. So he came to the office day after day, and sat with Pheris while he scowled at dry histories and wrote increasingly short essays about how a baron could resolve little disputes between his tenants and bigger ones between his peers. Occasionally, he asked how Pheris was finding the text he was reading, and accepted his sullen shrugs in answer.
They were both grateful when the first letters from Kamet arrived. Pheris had his own creased sheet of paper already open on the desk when Teleus walked in, looking genuinely excited about reading something for the first time in weeks. As soon as he spotted Teleus, he waved a sealed envelope at him and signed, From Kamet, the moment he had both hands free again.
“Thank you,” Teleus said, and sat in the armchair to open and read it.
In Costis’s plain script, it began:
Sir,
Greetings and well-wishes to you and Their Majesties - then there was a splotch, as though Costis had hesitated before adding - and Erondites. Kamet says he will be reading this before you do. We have reached Ferria, and will spend at least a few days here to resupply before traveling north towards the channel.
Costis Ormentiedes
Below that, in a much prettier hand, was Kamet's message.
Dear Pheris,
Don't look so offended; I suspect the captain would have already known you read this without my saying so. Go work on the assignments I set you in your own letter. I expect a reply sent to the Attlolian trade house in Ferria by the time we pass this way again.
Captain Teleus,
We are keeping out of trouble, and hope you and Pheris and Her Majesty are as well. (As there is no hope to be had that His Majesty will do the same, I will not bother on his account.) I have been thinking on the journey about how to make your task with Pheris easier, and wonder if a little shared scholarship might not ease the way for you. Before we left, His Majesty mentioned you had an interest in poetry - and while I would normally complain about his meddling, the truth is that I would appreciate being able to discuss the subject with someone who actually enjoys it. Ferrians are like the Attlolians in that they use verse in their plays, though their comedies are much less likely to lose a playwright his head than yours are. I have included a partial translation of a speech from one of their most popular tragic productions below, and am curious to know your thoughts. Costis fell asleep in the middle of it, but I do not think this is a fair assessment of its worth.
Kamet e dai Annux
O stars! Tonight sweet sleep eludes us all,
And you, beloved daughter, king's own pride,
Must watch them tremble and threaten to fall.
Their burden is love, carried deep inside,
My secrets that no soul else will recall.
I'll speak them soft, to your mouth I confide:
As vanished night fades, name my heart as true.
Triumphant, o princess, my love for you!
He looked up to find Pheris watching him. “Good work with the letter. How did you reseal it without scorching the paper?”
Pheris grinned and held his hand out. Teleus passed him the envelope, which he took over to the small stove. Then he put a kettle on the stove and mimed pressing the wax seal to its metal side.
Teleus nodded. “Well done. And what did you think of its contents?”
Pheris rolled his eyes.
“Yes, I remember your opinion on adult goings-on,” Teleus acknowledged, amused. “You write your reply, then, and I’ll write mine.”
As Pheris pulled himself back up onto his stool and began scribbling rapidly, Teleus turned his attention to his own response.
Costis,
We are well. Be advised that the river route to the channel will be faster, but riskier. Safe travels.
Kamet,
Pheris appreciated hearing from you. His Majesty has not been dunked in a rain barrel in several years. Someone ought to correct that. Although I am no scholar, it seems a good translation; rhyme and metre are difficult to maintain across languages, even with such a universal subject.
Teleus Laskares
He looked at the half-filled sheet of paper. He was a poor correspondent, he knew that much, but even so, this was embarrassingly sparse. Relius would have laughed at his meagre effort.
Relius had been the one who liked poetry, though. His eye caught on the empty space in the bookshelf, slim enough for a few sheets of sewn-together foolscap.
He remembered the king asking, “What was the book you left on Alethe’s altar?”
When Pheris had shown him that Relius had taken the book of poems with him, Teleus had wanted to make another volume. He had planned it as a surprise - that Relius would come back and go to replace the book on the shelf, only to find something else already in its place. Both those books were gone, now.
Perhaps it was time to write something new.
On a whim, he took out a fresh sheet of paper. Carefully, line by line, he copied the translated verse over. Then he added a postscript to his letter.
If you have translated other verses, please send them.
Kamet had been right. The first time he arrived at the study with an armful of books from the archives, thumping them down on the small table, Pheris had looked at him like he was mad. But then Teleus had said, “I thought - a collection of translated poems,” and Pheris had lit up. He’d grabbed one of his own books off the desk and flipped through it, searching, then pointed at a page in triumph. It was a description of a court even farther east than Magyar, and included a short, evocative stanza from one of the court ladies on the beauty of the palace. “Thank you,” Teleus said, and dutifully copied it.
It was easier, after that. He complained about the authors who spent paragraphs praising the poet-bards of Melenze and then failed to include a single example of their work, and Pheris offered his own grumbling about those who thought a recitation of dates and battles was what constituted history. Sometimes when Pheris grew too frustrated to hold a pen, Teleus read aloud, and they would debate whether a verse was worth copying.
A few more weeks passed, and Kamet’s next letter arrived when he was there to receive it. Court had ended early for the day; the weather was foul enough that most of the palace denizens were inside, avoiding the mud, and very few of them had any interest in standing in the drafty throne room. Teleus had already settled in his chair when there was a quiet knock on the door.
“Come in,” he called. A palace errand boy entered.
“Sir, letter for you.”
Teleus took it with a nod of thanks, and ignored the way that the boy and Pheris pulled faces at each other as he tossed Pheris’s envelope onto the desk. He hadn’t tossed it onto the floor, at least; that was practically an admission of friendship among boys their age.
Teleus took his envelope and sliced it open, pulling the sheet of paper free.
Sir,
Greetings and well-wishes to you, Erondites, and Their Majesties. We are at the channel; there is a heavy Pent presence here, due to the proximity to their border, but we did not have any trouble on the river. Once we have crossed, it will be another few weeks to the capital.
Costis Ormentiedes
Kamet had added:
Dear Pheris,
I think you will enjoy this next assignment; there are some fascinating theories being put forth on the continent about how one can use math to calculate the orbits of celestial bodies. None of them are described in this letter. Please send your reply to the trade house in Ferria, as I’m not sure we’ll be staying in Brael long enough to receive it there.
Captain Teleus,
I must write without receiving your reply, but hope that you enjoyed the translation. If you did not, please disregard the remaining portion of this letter. If you did, however, I was fascinated to learn that for all they are neighbors, the Braels take an entirely different approach to poetry. Theirs was once an oral tradition, with storytellers relating the histories and myths of their people through verse. It’s much more similar to the Mede style, and I find it pleasant to listen to even without understanding much of the language. One of the boatmen translated a selection for me as follows:
In the dawn of the world
He came silent, gleaming,
His hair crowned with silver,
His hands holding fast.
He spoke the world into being,
Shaped the earth from the sky,
Shaped the tree from the earth,
Shaped the bird from the tree.
He spoke soft, calling,
And the birds called back.
He stood, proud-shouldered,
And the trees reached tall.
Let me speak now of him,
So his tale shall be known,
The story of his rise and fall,
Of Adrir, born of stars.
It goes on for at least another sixty verses, he said. More, depending on who is telling it. Be grateful I only have so much paper to spare.
Kamet e dai Annux
Teleus read the letter once more, then tapped Pheris on the shoulder with it. “Give it back when you’re done.”
Pheris scanned the first part of the text, mouth quirking with silent laughter at Kamet’s scolding. He slowed when he reached the poem, mouthing along to its words as though he could hear them being recited in front of him.
“Better than the last one?” Teleus asked, and he nodded fervently before dropping his eyes back to the page to re-read it.
When he was finished, he handed the letter back and then signed, Are there any books of Mede poetry?
“I don’t know,” Teleus said. “But let me copy this and we can go find out.”
The third letter was singular, and short. It read:
Dear Pheris and Captain Teleus,
We are a few days’ travel from the Brael capital. By the time you receive this, we hope to be on our way back.
Wish us luck.
Kamet e dai Annux
Costis Ormentiedes
It was strange to return to Alethe’s temple. Nothing had changed within its marble walls, and yet he felt as though he had never seen any of it before, from the dished altar to the frowning goddess, eternally searching. Pheris peered around, wide-eyed, as they stepped up to the statue together.
No priestess?
“Someone must care for the temple, but I’ve never seen her,” Teleus said. “You know what to do?”
In answer, Pheris took out a pair of earrings. He placed them on the altar - and then he froze.
From the shadows behind the altar, a woman emerged. “I remember you,” she said. She was looking at Teleus; her voice was raspy, as though she rarely spoke. The missing priestess, he realized. “The goddess appreciated your offering. Honesty is a valuable gift no matter the form it takes.”
He bowed, unsure of what else to do. After a moment, Pheris followed suit. By the time they straightened, she was gone, the soft fall of her footsteps fading back into the depths of the temple.
Teleus cleared his throat and knelt, helping Pheris arrange his limbs to sit comfortably. Then, closing his eyes, he prayed.
The news arrived in the morning: Meleo of Gant had claimed victory over the Southern Gants, uniting them into a single nation. There was suddenly a third power on the continent to rival the Braels and the Pents, and it was hungry after months of war.
“They’ll be looking to expand into Pent,” Pegistus said, at one of the many meetings called to discuss the Unified Peninsula’s response. “But they have better ports for trade than Brael does, and they’ll take advantage of that if they’re smart. The Greater Powers will be occupied with scrambling for a new equilibrium for years, if not longer, and they’ll all want outside allies. Lucky for us.”
“Lucky?” the king said, entirely indifferent in a way that made the hackles rise on the back of Teleus’s neck. “Yes, I suppose it was.”
Teleus waited until everyone else had filed out of the room, leaned in close to Attolis’s chair, and hissed, “What did you do.”
"I needed Meleo of Gant to win a war," the king said. "And Meleo of Gant needed supplies. Weapons. Powder. Shot."
Teleus stared at him.
The king said, "What do you think was in the Eddisian wagons?"
The wagons, Teleus thought. The ones that arrived so unexpectedly at Rhea, which the king had said were filled with craftsmen. And cannon shot. The foreign merchant ships that suddenly no longer had room for Attolian wares, because they had taken on Eddisian cargo instead.
“Costis and Kamet were a distraction,” he said slowly, and the king spread his hands in acknowledgement.
“I think Kamet suspected. I had him start learning Brael as soon as we returned to the capital. They should already be on their way back.”
“My King,” Teleus whispered.
“I told you it was an important message,” Attolis said, and smiled.
When Costis and Kamet’s ship had docked in the harbor, Teleus had been there with Pheris to meet it. The king had threatened to come with them, but had been stopped by the simple expedient of the queen scooping up the Princess Eugenia and plopping her gently into her father’s lap. Pheris had laughed at the king’s expression, and even Teleus had cracked a smile. There would be no more rites in Alethe’s temple for a long time.
He returned to his usual duties with no small amount of gratitude. Pheris, too, seemed glad to have Kamet back, and for his part, Kamet swore that he was finished with meddling in international politics.
“We’re done,” Costis said firmly, when Teleus asked him the same question, and then looked startled when Teleus clasped his arm and said,
“Then welcome back, Centurion Ormentiedes.”
“Sir! Thank you, sir!”
The six-month anniversary of the end of the Mede War came and went. Teleus celebrated with the court, then went back to Relius’s office. A thin book sat on the desk, recently bound. He picked it up, then slid it into place on the shelves.
A week later, he was in his rooms when he heard a frantic pounding on the door. He opened it to find one of the guards who kept watch at the palace gates. He was young enough that he had probably only been promoted after the war, and was clearly nervous to be addressing his captain directly for the first time. “Sir! There’s a man at the gates - looking for you - says he used to be Secretary of the Archives -”
It was like being hit by cannonfire, a blow that might as well have fallen from the sky for all that he'd seen it coming. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. “Who?”
"Uh -"
"Who?" he roared.
“Relius,” the young man said, and then Teleus was running.
He didn’t know how he got to the gates. He wasn't aware of anything in his way, not the palace residents asking what the fuss was or the guards barring the path into the courtyard - only the man, dusty and bedraggled, insisting that they let him through.
Teleus didn’t have the breath to shout, but the man heard him anyways. He looked up -
And, returned at last, Teleus's heart began to beat.