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There is always a moment of disorientation when he wakes. He no longer drifts slowly towards consciousness; the state of waking comes upon him in a moment, and he would jerk in surprise were it not for the memory of broken hands throbbing with pain, skin scraping against raw stone, wrists clattering against iron manacles. He holds himself still, and then he remembers that there are no chains in this prison—and then, only then, does he realize he is not in prison at all.
The realization comes to him sooner than usual, this morning. A blessing. He is lying in a very comfortable bed, on the finest Eddisian sheets. The heat of summer still clings to the palace, but the sheets are cool, and the weight of the down blanket on top of them is comforting, not oppressive. His body aches, as it often does, but the pain is not so sharp, and the groove of the mattress where he has settled is very comfortable. Yes, he is very comfortable. The only reason he is awake at all is that there was a shift in the bed, as his companion rose.
Relius stirs. He stretches and cricks his neck, and peers around the room. There is a gloom upon it, still, with the curtains drawn against the sun. The door to the anteroom is ajar, though, and sunlight spills into it, alighting on the empty plates of last night’s dinner, the wine cups, the bronze candlesticks with the candles burned down to nothing. His eyes adjust, and he finds Teleus a moment before Teleus sees him. He is dressing in a corner of the bedroom, but he stops and sits on the edge of the bed. His lips brush Relius’s forehead.
“Go back to sleep,” he says.
It has been five days since Relius returned to Attolia. For five days, Teleus has come to his room to keep him company in the night, thinking only to stay until Relius falls asleep so that he won’t disturb him with his early rising, and Relius has demanded he stay longer with varying levels of hysteria. For five days, Teleus has risen with the dawn, and softly commanded Relius to go back to sleep, and Relius has obeyed. On this morning, he pushes himself all the way up and leans against the headboard.
“I want to go into the city anyway,” he says around a yawn.
“You’re still recovering. You should stay here.”
“It’s Shabbat,” Relius reminds him.
“And you can’t be restful in the palace?” They stare at each other for a moment. Teleus sighs. “Will you at least take a chair?”
He will not take a sedan chair, because that would require him to commission labor on the sabbath and handle money, and because he likes the walk. He makes a noncommittal noise, hoping Teleus will take it for agreement. The stern look on his face gets sterner.
“You know, when I met you, I had no grey hair at all,” he says, although there is an edge of softness in his voice he can’t disguise. He waves at his head. “Now look at me.”
“You weren’t old when I met you,” Relius says seriously.
He punctuates the words with a kiss, and Teleus steals another before he stands and resumes dressing, allowing Relius to rise from the bed and retreat to his more-elaborate dressing room.
Alas. Clothes are a headache, these days. He dresses in a deep red tunic with even-darker embroidery around the cuffs and hem—one of his favorites, elegant but understated. It is too big. It bunches awkwardly around the frogs at the chest and bags around his middle, although the style is meant to be close-cut. He has to tighten the belt around his trousers several notches, and thinks again about speaking to a tailor so that he will not look ridiculous. But of course, as soon as he gets his clothes altered, a few weeks of healthy meals and fresh air will have caused him to gain weight again. He finds this dithering extremely tiresome, not least of which because he is embarrassed when confronted by his own vanity. He clutches at the loose fabric with his discolored, three-fingered hand and scowls at the mirror. His skin is still dull and prison-pale.
Teleus appears behind him, and pushes his hand out of the way to wrap his arms around Relius’s waist.
“As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons,” he murmurs. The words rumble through his chest and Relius leans back against him. “I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. Let him lead me to the banquet hall, and let his banner over me be love. Sustain me with flagons of wine, replenish me with apples, for I am faint with love.”
“It sounds better in Ivrit,” Relius says after a moment.
“Eleven years,” Teleus says mournfully. “Eleven years I have put up with such abuse.”
“Eleven years I have put up with your lectures.”
“Yes, and see what happens when you don’t listen to them?”
Teleus spoke without thinking, and in the mirror, Relius sees him flinch. He knows that Teleus is not, on the whole, a self-conscious person. He is supremely confident in his own moral sense, in the performance of his duties, in his treatment of his friends and the few remaining members of his family. It makes him magnetic and infuriating in turn. But this—this thing between them, sometimes causes him to doubt. He will swear up and down that he has no problem with Relius having other lovers, but he broods over any little thing that might drive him into the arms of another. There is nothing Relius can do to prevent such brooding; he could point out a thousand and one times that the longest affair he has had lasted nine months and that this one has lasted eleven years, and still, Teleus would not be comforted.
Yet he does not cease his other affairs. He tells himself he would, if Teleus actually asked, but that is easy to say, when he knows Teleus never would. Perhaps that makes him a bad person. (Perhaps it is one of many things that makes him a bad person.) Relius looks over his shoulder and tilts his head in a transparently artful manner, frowning deeply.
“Teleus,” he chides. “That was cruel.”
“An apple tree,” Teleus says seriously. “Among a whole fucking forest of wattles.”
“Of what ?”
“Wattles. Useless trees, and if one goes to seed, there will be a hundred there before you can blink.”
“If you keep up with that nonsense, people will mistake you for a farmer,” Relius teases. He kisses him and pushes him away. “Go terrify your men.”
“Happily. You aren’t leaving right this moment, are you?”
“An hour,” Relius shrugs. “An hour and a half, perhaps. Not worth sleeping again.”
“Good,” Teleus says, and on this cryptic word, he departs.
Relius sits in his study. He stares out the window at the rising sun and watches the birds flitting about, and softly recites the morning blessings to himself, as is his habit. It was a way to mark the days, in Pents. He could never be sure of the Sabbath, though. There had been… some days of enforced ignorance, towards the beginning, and he could not keep an accurate count. He steers his mind away from that, into pleasant nothingness, until there is a knock on his door. It is a boy with a tray—bread still warm from the oven, honey and marmalade, and a small pot of tea. Relius smiles to himself. Sometimes Teleus’s sentimentality beggars belief.
He is just about to stand and go down into the city when there is another knock on his door. This time it is Pheris. At first Relius frowns, worried that he has forgotten to tell Pheris there will be no lessons today—in truth, that he is not sure when their lessons will restart properly. He tires more easily, still. But there is a particular look on Pheris’s face, sly and hopeful, that makes him realize the boy knows perfectly well that he is being impertinent. Very well, Relius tells him. He can join Relius in his trip to the city, as long as he consents to leave his slate behind. They will not allow him to write on it in the synagogue.
Pheris agrees readily enough. He sets his slate down on the desk, and they leave the palace. It is a slow, leisurely pace they set, and as they are walking, Pheris asks Why can’t I write?
“How much do you know of the Zebians?” Relius asks instead of answering.
Little, Pheris admits, which surprises Relius not at all. The few Zebians in Attolia are concentrated in the coastal baronies, predominantly in large cities—he knows of none in all the Erondites land.
“To begin with, we originate in land that is now part of the Mede Empire. Our texts speak of a patriarch, called Avraham, who was born east of Sidussa, on the northern coast of the Great Southern Ocean. We believe in a singular God, and that Avraham struck a covenant with God and was promised land in return. The process of claiming that land was long and complicated and I will not go into it now—suffice to say, eventually thirteen brothers, descendants of Avraham, established a kingdom called Israel covering the isthmus between Anan and Medea, and some of the territory on either side of it. You know of the Three Cities? They are treated as more or less a single entity now, but their proper names are Irshelyehu, Irshelshim, and Irshelzeb, named after three of the brothers.
“The isthmus is placed to great advantage, facilitating trade on both the Great Southern Ocean and the Middle Sea, and at times the kingdom prospered. But it was also a prime target for conquest by its neighbors. On two separate occasions, the cities were taken, the main Temple was destroyed, and significant portions of the people were banished, most to either Sunenix or Attolia, although some have made their way to the greater peninsula. The most recent conquest, of course, was done by the Medes, but at first the Medes had no interest in expanding to Anan. They conquered Irshelshim and Irshelyehu, the primary cities, and left Irshelzeb alone, until a half-century later when it, too, was conquered. That is how the people, who had previously been called Ivriim after their language or Israelim after their kingdom, came to be called Zebim in our traditional tongue—Zebians in demotic.”
Pheris nods along, still looking curious, with his head cocked.
And we are going to one of the temples in Attolia?
“Not exactly. Our sacred book tells us that there can only be one Temple, at a sacred site in Irshelyehu. Previously, Zebian worship was based on a sacrificial system, like the Attolians and the Eddisians, and those who did not live in Irshelyehu would have to make pilgrimages to the Temple in order to worship. When it was destroyed, scholars decreed that the sacrificial system must be discontinued. Instead, synagogues have become sites of prayer, the study of sacred texts, and the observance of Shabbat—a weekly day of rest honoring God’s creation of the world. We are going to the oldest synagogue in Attolia, as a matter of fact. And that is why you must leave your slate behind: because there are certain tasks that are considered forbidden work, such as kindling or extinguishing a fire, sewing, construction, and writing. They cannot be performed by any Zebian on this day, or within a synagogue.”
Pheris nods slowly in understanding, and asks a few more brief question until they arrive. The synagogue is on the Sacred Way, but very few would know it for what it is. It is a small, two-storied wood building, a far cry from the opulent temples to the Attolian gods a stone’s throw away. There is no sign to indicate its purpose, only a brass tree on the door with an open scroll at its roots—and two letters, an ayin and a chet, discreetly worked into the branches.
Relius opens the door, and he and Pheris pause in the entryway. He has brought two small velvet caps with him—too hot to wear in the hot summer sun. They don them now, and Relius takes a moment to look around. He has not been here in a long, long time.
The synagogue is much more beautiful on the inside than the outside. The sun streams through latticed window-shades, and sitting on the cushioned benches that line the walls feels like sitting in the dappled shade of an enormous tree. There is a raised platform in the center of the room, in front of an alcove set into the far wall. Both are draped with coverings of red velvet edged in gold fridge. The curtain that covers the alcove glitters, adorned with six-pointed silver stars, hand amulets, copies of the two tablets of Moses. Offerings from grateful congregants who have survived some great peril. One of them bears his name, he thinks—unless it has already been retired, laid respectfully in a genizah with other such amulets to make space for more-recent gratitude. No matter. He will have to have another one made soon.
A sigh passes Relius’s lips. The room where he was kept in Pents had been plain plaster, little furniture, no decoration at all. The rhythm of regular prayer had kept him sane, but this room stirs his admiration much more easily.
“Relius,” a warm, throaty voice says from behind him, and he turns.
“Ah.” He sweeps into a bow. “So good to see you, Lady Thessalonika.”
Lady Thessalonika is the only Zebian baroness in the country, and she has been so for only a few scant years; the Baron Thessalonikos had petitioned the crown many times to revoke the Zebians’ permanent okloi status, in the hopes of marrying his mistress and legitimizing their children. His pleas had been ignored, until the ascension of the current queen. In truth, the queen had not needed Relius’s nudge to make the final decision. It was early in her reign, but she was still trying to control her barons and curry favor with the okloi. Since then, she has enjoyed the adoration of the Zebian populace—and the baroness has always been extremely friendly with Relius.
She is a widow now, a diminutive woman with an oversize personality. Strings of jet constrain a tower of curly hair, and she has strong features that could indicate an age anywhere between thirty-five and fifty-five. The members of this synagogue treat her with as much reverence as the queen. Relius is fond of her as well, and very amused by her sharp remarks, though not quite as fawning.
“You have made us look like quite the fools,” she scolds.
“Have I?”
“Yes. We had a lovely memorial service. And the Sefer Torah I’ve commissioned from that gentleman up the coast—there was talk of dedicating it to you. I’ve already spoken to a silversmith about a plaque, and now I will have to tell him I’ve changed my mind. I am not someone who very often changes my mind.”
“I do apologize, Lady Thessalonika,” Relius says dryly. “At least now you will be able to retain credit for your generosity.”
She makes a noise of agreement and then looks down at Pheris—in attitude if not in fact. Pheris has grown since he arrived at the palace, and while he is still small, he and the baroness are more or less eye-to-eye.
“Baron Erondites Notios,” she says gravely. Pheris nods just as gravely back, and Relius’s lips twitch as he tries to suppress a smile.
“Would you mind terribly, Lady Thessalonika, having one of the women bring down a demotic siddur for my young friend?”
“Of course.”
They say their farewells, and part. The baroness, accompanied by her maid, goes up a set of narrow stairs to the women’s balcony that spans three sides of the upper level. The maid returns a moment later with a small prayer book. The books in the men’s section are all in Ivrit, but of the women who are literate, only a handful can read both Ivrit and demotic. Thus supplied, they go through to the main sanctuary.
The cantor is already standing at the platform and leading the small group in prayers, but near every man stops to greet Relius as he walks through. He responds very graciously, forcing himself not to think of the first time he had visited the synagogue after his release from prison, when these same men could hardly restrain their fury enough to look at him, let alone bow and murmur a polite “Shabbat Shalom.” He did not exactly blame them. The Zebians in Attolia had been fortunate, on the whole. They had escaped the violence that occasionally erupted against their fellows in the Mede Empire and the Greater Peninsula, and they had done so by remaining invisible. From the beginning, they had been uneasy at having a Zebian advise the queen so publicly, and Relius was in many ways their worst nightmare. A bastard, a master of spies, a man who was indiscreet about his many love affairs. His success and his wealth—and, he liked to think, his personal charm—had won them over, until he had proved right every nasty whisper about Zebians and betrayed the queen to the Medes. It did not matter that most Zebians hated the occupiers of their beloved Three Cities even more than the Attolians did. It did not matter that his betrayal had been an accident. The entire community had locked themselves indoors and braced themselves for riots.
They reach the end of the bench, closest to the alcove on one side. Relius removes his prayer shawl from the small velvet bag he has been carrying and drapes it over his shoulders with a muttered blessing. When he sits, he sees that Pheris is still standing, touching the small plaque on the end of the bench with a curious expression.
“It says ‘in honor of Batya daughter of Yosefus and Sarai, of blessed memory,’” Relius says in an undertone. “Sit down.”
Pheris sits. The prayer book he holds has Ivrit and demotic on facing pages. Relius bends over the book and gives a brief, whispered grammatical lesson, simply because he knows Pheris will be interested, and then he turns his attention to the prayers. The early part of the service is nearing its end. One of the older members of the synagogue has been leading the prayers in a creaking, off-key voice, but he finishes and is escorted back to his seat by his son.
The chazzan steps up to the platform, dressed in elegant robes and a velvet cap, puffed up on piety and self-importance. But no one can fault him for it. His voice rises and falls like the craggy mountains of Eddis in the distance—strong, assured, familiar. Beautiful. Relius’s voice falters beneath his. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. The sunlight filters through his eyelids. The room smells of books and wool and the faint, lingering scent of different colognes, and the very wood of the building seems to hum with the melody.
He drifts, in and out, through the service. His eyes skate over the page without reading the words, but his voice never stumbles, even if his attention is elsewhere. He stands when he ought to stand, dragging Pheris up by the elbow, and sits, and over and over again he curls the fringes of his prayer shawl through the fingers of his good hand. Occasionally other men, later arrivals, approach him to whisper a greeting, but he doesn’t let his gaze stray far from the chazzan, and they soon go away again.
One of the men, serving as gabbai, is constantly roving the room, greeting the new arrivals, holding whispered conversations. He lingers for only a moment at Relius’s row.
“An aliyah?” he mutters. Relius nods silently. “Slishli.”
Pheris tugs on his sleeve.
What does that mean?
“It means they will read from the holy scroll in my honor, and I will be third.” He smiles crookedly. “Ivrit does not use our numeral system,” he adds, bending closer so as not to disturb the other attendees. “Instead, each letter of the alphabet also has a numerical value. Some scholars thus make arguments about the meaning of words based on their numeric value and vice versa. For example, the number eighteen is said to be lucky because the letters valued as eight and ten, chet and yud, spell the word ‘life.’”
A terrible system, Pheris critiques, his face glowing. I love it.
Relius chuckles.
Soon after, the prayer leader calls out his Ivrit name, and he steps up to the platform. The scroll is the largest he has ever seen, and kept always in a decorative box that requires two men to lift. As Relius approaches, the chazzan helps the reader tilt the scroll back in its case so that he can roll it out to a new page. They consult briefly with a third man, waiting with a book to catch any errors in the reading. He confirms the beginning of the proper passage, and the reader indicates to the first word with a silver stick, carved with a pointing hand. Relius touches the fringes of his prayer shawl to the proper word and kisses them, and recites blessing. He is worried, at first, that he might get it wrong—he has not spoken these particular words, nor heard them spoken, in a year at least. But they tumble out of his mouth of their own accord, and he grasps the wooden handle of the immense scroll as the reader begins. His voice scales up and down, not in song but musical nonetheless.
After a few minutes, he finishes his recitation. He shakes Relius’s hand and steps aside so that Relius might take his place on the other side of the platform, but before he can move, a hand closes around his forearm. It is the rabbi. Relius knows him well; he is a young man, whose parents had been prepared to beggar themselves to pay for his education, before the queen expanded the indenture system. Relius met him first in the palace, and has done him a few small favors, here and there.
A scant three weeks after Relius’s first release from prison, the rabbi visited him in the palace and asked if he would lead part of the service on the Day of Atonement. It would require him to lead the congregation in the confession of communal sins—of which he had committed much more than any of them. Relius had warned him it would be an unpopular decision.
“The ones who had the lowest expectations of you recover soonest,” the rabbi said. “The ones who have been disappointed are slower to forgive—but their forgiveness means more.”
Wise words, from one so young. Today he merely asks if Relius knows by heart the words of the Birkat Hagomel, the prayer of gratitude for those who have been released from prison or survived some other such danger. Relius nods, and the rabbi pats his back and leaves him to it.
“Baruch atah HaShem Elokeinu melech ha-olam, ha-gomel l’chayavim tovot she-g’malani kol tov.”
Blessed are You, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who rewards the undeserving with goodness and who has rewarded me with goodness.
There is a rumble as the congregation responds. Pheris looks around, and frowns at his unhelpful prayer book.
“Mi she-g’malcha kol tov, hu yi-g’malcha kol tov selah.”
May he who rewarded you with all goodness reward you with all goodness forever.
The service goes quickly, after that. To Pheris’s delight, the rabbi’s d’var Torah includes a few points of Ivrit numerology. When he is finished, Relius is inundated with well-wishers, no longer restrained by the propriety of services. There is a cold luncheon set out, but he and Pheris stay for only a little while. He does have many friends among the community here, but it is wearying to be constantly pulled away from them by mere acquaintances, and Pheris is uncomfortable. Everyone in the room knows that he is not a Zebian; a handful of people are too lowborn or uninformed to know that he is the Baron Erondites and that they should check their stares. They remain long enough for Relius to greet everyone he wants to greet, and slip out a side door with pockets loaded with savory pastries and sweet oranges.
They sit on the edge of a public fountain to eat their stolen lunch. Pheris thoroughly approves of the potato pastries, and a few bold city pigeons strut over to peck at the sesame seeds that spill on the ground in front of him. When he is finishes, he rocks back and asks Does it bother you that the prayers are wrong?
Relius’s eyebrows lift.
“Oh? What is so wrong about them?”
There is no god but you, you are all-powerful… Pheris flaps his hand in an et cetera sort of gesture. It’s the Eddisian gods that are real.
“How do you know that?”
I’ve seen them.
“Can you prove it?”
I’m not a liar.
“That is hardly proof, Pheris. You claim you saw the gods dancing on the roof, yes? Well, Teleus was there, too, and he saw no such thing. Neither did many of the other people who were there that night.”
Not everyone can see them, Pheris shrugs, unconcerned. I can.
“How very convenient for you. But maybe you are lying, or playing a trick on me, or maybe that day you had a fever or were drunk or drugged or dreaming, or maybe you have an overactive imagination.”
How do you explain my grandfather’s death?
“I don’t. I wasn’t there—I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if there was indeed a lightning storm, or some sort of bomb with a long fuse, or whatever else it might be. Tell me, do you think Kamet is a liar?” he asks, and Pheris is taken aback by the sudden change in topics. He shakes his head. “Ah, then we have a problem. You claim to have seen your gods, and say that is proof that no others exist. But Kamet, too, claims to have seen his gods. Or demigods, or something.”
It’s different.
“How?”
Pheris considers for a moment.
The Eddisian gods are from the peninsula, he says. They are here. Maybe the Mede gods are there.
“Ah, so you are willing to accept other gods, but not mine.”
You are the one who won’t accept other gods, Pheris signs forcefully. The prayers all say so.
“I won’t worship other gods, Pheris. I won’t acknowledge their authority over mine. But that is not quite the same thing. Our texts acknowledge the existence of other, lesser beings—demons and spirits, and angels sent to do the bidding of God but without free will of their own. Perhaps your gods are some of those messengers—or maybe they are all my God, bearing a different face.”
Pheris shakes his head. There is a stubborn set to his jaw.
But—
“Pheris!” Relius says, exasperated. “Will you not be satisfied unless I blaspheme on a holy day?”
Pheris is abashed. Sorry, he signs. It is a brief gesture, to the point. That and the sheepish look on his face are a more effective apology than ten pretty court speeches put together, and Relius is mollified.
“Never mind. I will find some books on theology so that we can both refresh ourselves on the topic, and we will argue over it some other day.”
When they return to the palace, he sends Pheris back to the king and, as promised, spends some time browsing in the library. There are few enough scholarly treatises on the subject—he can hardly expect Pheris to read the entire Talmud—but he commits a few titles to memory before returning to his room for a nap.
That evening, he has an early supper with the king and queen. He still tires too easily to enjoy the large public dinners, but the three of them have a very comfortable meal in the queen’s quarters. They talk of court gossip. The queen is scrupulous about steering the topic away from anything that might be deemed intrigue—anything that might tempt a former spymaster to perform labor—but the king is uniquely knowledgeable concerning the more trivial scandals that lurk around every corner of the palace. He is also brimming over with stories of interactions between him and the would-be Pentish ambassador that make his relationship with Melheret seem downright amiable in comparison.
“He’s not a terrible choice for ambassador,” Relius says mildly. “I got to know him quite well on the journey. Certainly he’s nothing like the last one.”
“Oh yes, I’m sure he’s a fine fellow. But the monetary gifts he arrived with were not sufficient to pay off the kidnapping-my-friends tax, and I am not inclined to forgive the debt.”
Relius does not like the Pentish official enough to keep himself from laughing. He helps himself to another roll.
A few minutes later, a nanny enters with the prince and princess, both fussing. Phresine brings forth a low screen, for privacy, and the queen begins to nurse Hector. Eugenia squirms, not content in the care of her weary nanny. The queen offers her to Relius, but he declines. The royal infants, like any infants, are very wriggly and seem easily droppable—not to mention prone to spitting and drooling and less savory functions.
“Coward,” the king teases him, taking hold of his daughter.
“Kamet wouldn’t hold Eugenia for two months,” the queen says dryly. “And Hector for another month after that.”
“Why Eugenia first?” Relius asks, puzzled.
“Because my husband keeps insisting that if we drop her, she’ll bounce.”
They all have a good chuckle at that. A question occurs to Relius suddenly, and he asks whether the children were presented at the temples of the old gods or the new. There is a tense pause, and he senses that he has stumbled into an argument, but the king dismisses his swift apologies when he tries to backtrack.
“It was a headache at the time. Eugenia will be the Thief—by sacred law, she can owe allegiance to no gods except the Eddisian gods. Hector will be King of Attolia, and Attolia officially still worships the Invaders’ gods. He was presented to both.”
“It was easier for your ancestors,” Relius says to the queen, with a hint of wry humor. “They took on the Invaders’ gods within a single generation.”
“Yes, the threat of death was quite persuasive.”
Maybe to some, he thinks but is far too polite to say. He tells them, instead, about Pheris’s thoughts on monotheism and monolatry, to great amusement.
“He ought to talk to Costis,” the king says, jerking his head at the door behind which the long-suffering lieutenant stands. “He has three sets of gods trying to foist responsibility for his safety on each other—or tussling over credit for his daring deeds.”
“Well, that seems excessive.”
“Does it ever give you pause?” the queen asks curiously. The prince finishes nursing. There is a sort of passing game of babies as she hands him to Phresine for burping, who then relinquishes him a few moments later as the king gives the princess to his wife. “The Hephestian gods have been… rather restive, of late.”
Relius shrugs.
“Once or twice, perhaps. I have heard too often, from too many people whose judgement I respect, that the gods of the peninsula have played a hand in some plot. But at the same time… when I think of all that I have endured, all that my people have endured… either a benevolent god has bestowed us with protection, or we are the luckiest people to have ever walked the earth. And if it is the latter—well, the true gods have not begrudged us our devotion to our God, so I see no reason to forsake Him. It does no one any harm for me to take a day of rest once a week and recite a few prayers each morning.”
“That was how I felt, before I stole Hamiathes’s gift,” the king agrees. “My grandfather’s superstition seemed quaint, but often inconvenient. And now…” He bounces Hector congenially. “Now I will be the most pious, superstitious, irritating mentor any Thief will ever have.”
“L’dor v’dor,” Relius smiles.
“Hm?”
“From generation to generation. My people believe that passing on our culture is a duty we owe to both our ancestors and our descendants. They thank us for it, in time. Mostly.”
His gaze rests on the young prince. He has more his mother’s coloring—his father’s dark eyes, but his chubby cheeks are pale beneath the content flush. His mouth is stretched in a toothless grin as he rubs his legs back and forth.
“On second thought—” Relius says impulsively. “If I may…”
“Of course.”
The king leans across the table and deposits the baby in Relius’s grasp with almost no warning. Alarm spikes in him for a moment, but it is not necessary. Hector curls into his chest as though he has no doubt whatsoever that he will be secure. Relius feels satisfaction overcome him, deep into his bones. He glances at the queen across the table and knows that she understands. Twelve years they have worked together to seek peace and stability for Attolia. Here it is, in his arms. Cooing at him. He smiles down at the baby and brushes his fingers back and forth over the soft muslin of his wrappings.
“I suspect I will long dead by the time he takes the throne, but at least I can say that I once held the future King of Attolia.”
“It’s not as impressive as it sounds,” Eugenides said dismissively. “They’ll let anyone become king these days.”
When Relius returns to his rooms, he finds Kamet waiting. He invites him inside, curious as to his purpose. Kamet does not keep him in suspense; as soon as he sits down, he announces that he has a gift for Relius, and places it on the desk between them. It is a small silver pomegranate. Three garnet seeds dot the lid, along four small holes, and there is an Ivrit inscription. It’s a havdalah box—meant to hold the fragrant spices for the end-of-Shabbat ceremony. Relius doesn’t bother to conceal his surprise and Kamet smiles, very pleased with himself.
“My friend Laela is a Zebian,” he says. “She had a little box just like this one.” He reaches among the cluster of possessions on the desk and extracts a small, worn wooden box with holes in the lid. It is painted with a design of vines and grapes and pomegranates, but the paint is more chipped than not. The smell of cloves and cardamom and myrtle berries has seeped into the wood, and the air is stirred by the fragrance. “Sometimes we would talk about what silly little luxuries we would indulge in if we ever became rich. I wanted the smoothest, most expensive paper available, with gilt edges. Laela wanted a gold pomegranate spice box studded with rubies. This one is silver and garnets,” he says dryly. “As I am but a humble scholar in service to the queen, and not the right-hand man of an emperor.”
“I will cherish it all the same,” Relius promises. “It is lovely, Kamet, thank you.”
He sets the pomegranate down and removes the lid, then takes the wooden box. He lingers over it for a moment, letting the scent tickle his nose, rubbing a finger over a patch as smooth as velvet. Kamet watches.
“You’ve had that a long time?” he asks.
Relius wonders what it must be like to own no possessions for longer than a year at best—and, for many years before that, to own nothing that could not be taken away at a whim.
“It was my mother’s.”
“I’m sorry,” Kamet says, suddenly chagrined. “I can take it back—of course you prefer the old one.”
“No, no,” Relius reassures him. He pours the spices into the new box and affixes the lid. “I’m sure my mother also dreamed of a day when she could have a ruby-and-gold pomegranate, and would have been content with silver and garnets.”
He is striving to keep his voice light, but Kamet watches him keenly.
“Gifts from mothers are important,” he says seriously. “That’s why I am still Kamet, and not Ashnadnechnamharr.”
“Pity. You look like an Ashnadnechnamharr.” Kamet chuckles, and he adds impulsively, “Eliyas would have been my name, if my mother had her way. It’s still the name I use in the synagogue. Relius came from my father. What—you’re surprised I knew him?”
“A little. Then again, I don’t remember mine at all,” Kamet shrugs. “I’m not entirely sure if I was legitimate or not. It’s not considered important for slaves.”
“I never received much more than a name. My father was the steward on Baron Niceratus’s estate. Baron Niceratus had nearly a dozen bastard children himself, much to his wife’s displeasure—he had promised to show some restraint soon before I was born, so he was unwilling to take the blame for my father’s indiscretion. An old family name was enough to placate them both. Although…”
“What?” Kamet prompts when Relius falls silent.
“Nothing. I suppose I’m being melodramatic. I have spent a lot of time thinking, lately—since I landed myself in the queen’s prisons. I have been musing on the source of ambition, and I wonder if I might have been better off with no acknowledgement at all. Nothing to give me… false hope. I spent much of my youth competing with my betters, rather than heeding my mother’s plea for humility, piety, and good sense. If the idea had not been put in my head, I might have had a much simpler life.”
“I doubt it.” Relius raises his eyebrows, and Kamet smiles wryly. “I have also been contemplating ambition. Bastards, slaves, cripples, younger sons and daughters never meant to become kings and queens… I don’t know if it is our own intention or some intervention of the gods—or God—but we seem inclined to turn the world upside down.”
“Indeed.” He sighs. “Although not me—not today. I have been very peaceful all day, at my God’s command.” He looks out the window. The sun has sunk below the horizon, but it is not all the way dark yet. Three stars will mark the end of Shabbat. “Will you join me for havdalah?”
“I would,” Kamet says apologetically. “Except—Costis had a few days’ leave, so he and Aris went hunting. And his watch is ending soon...”
“Oh, be off with you then.”
“Maybe next week?”
“No, no, I know when I’m not wanted.”
“Teleus’s watch is ending, too. I doubt you’ll be lonely for long.”
He squeezes Relius’s shoulder, an unthinking touch he would not have made a year ago, and departs, leaving Relius to sit at his desk and stare out the window.
He is still for a long time. The sky continues to dim. A pale glimmer in the distance becomes a star. Then a second. Then a third. A tear drips down Relius’s cheek. It startles him. He inhales sharply to get control over himself, but his breath catches on a sob and all control is lost. His elbow hits against the desk hard, dislodging the spice box, and cloves spill over his papers. He covers his face with his hands and weeps.
He doesn’t hear Teleus enter. A warm hand grasps his shoulder. He turns, seeking without knowing what, and is pulled into a tight embrace. He is rattling to pieces. Teleus is holding him together.
“Sh,” Teleus says. “Shh. It’s all right. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”
He continues in this vein, murmuring soothing platitudes, and he only becomes more determined when Relius shakes his head. Relius is trying to explain that he knows everything is all right. He is crying because Kamet is wrong, because he is not lonely and has not been for a single moment of the day. This is a foolish reason to weep, so he does not try to explain again. He cries until until he finally tires himself out.
Teleus is still holding him, one hand pawing at his hair. Relius hides his face in Teleus’s chest for another moment, and then turns his head with a heavy sigh.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Have you lit the monstrosity yet?”
“No.”
He draws back and sniffs, patting down his pockets for a handkerchief. Teleus very gently takes his face in his hands and wipes away the tears with his calloused thumbs. Relius can only imagine the look of stupid adoration on his own face, because Teleus kisses him tenderly before he draws back. He sits in the second chair.
Relius rifles through his desk and produces his matches, the silver cup, the candlestick, the havdalah candle with its six strands of intertwining beeswax, its six bent and blackened wicks. Teleus has brought wine—sweet red wine, taken from the stash set aside for Relius, the wine from which no libations to the gods have been taken. He pours a generous serving. All the while his voice rises and falls in a lilting melody. It is a minor scale, bittersweet but not sad, uniquely suited to the coming of the night.
The pomegranate sits in the palm of his hand as he inhales the scent of the spices. The acrid smell of the match and the burning wicks banishes it, and he feels the warmth against his face as the flames grow and meld with each other.
Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who separates between sacred and profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, between the seventh day and the six days of labor. Blessed are you, Lord our God, who separates between sacred and profane.
He drinks deeply from the wine cup and then passes it to Teleus. He watches the candlelight play against his skin as he drinks. Is it possible, he wonders, that Teleus has gotten more handsome in the months Relius has been gone? Has his memory been failing him? Or is he becoming foolish and sentimental in his middle age? Teleus has always been a handsome man, albeit one who scowls too often and laughs too little. The corners of his eyes wrinkle and there are faint lines on his forehead cast into relief by the candle, but they suit him. He looks… distinguished. By some soldier’s miracle, his nose has never been broken—he has a sharp nose and a strong jaw, indicative of his character, and a strong neck, too. Relius is very fond of his neck. There is a small, reddish-brown mark just beneath the line of his beard from Relius’s attentions, an indulgence Teleus rarely allows.
But it is an indulgence no one else is ever permitted. No one else kisses Teleus, curls up in his arms, banishes their nightmares by burying their face in his broad back. No one else forces him to sit through strange foreign ceremonies or compels him to deliver quite so many lectures, inspires self-consciousness or the urge to read, memorize, and copy romantic poetry. Teleus loves him. Still, anyway, always, completely. Relius feels warmth spreading through him, warmth that has nothing to do with the summer night or the burning candle.
Teleus sets the cup down and looks at him. He does not admonish Relius for staring. Relius does not offer an apology.
“Shavua tov,” he says, surprised by the faintness of his own voice. “A good week.”
“A good week,” Teleus echoes. He takes both of Relius’s hands in his and urges him to stand. “My beloved. My friend. Come to bed.”
“Yes.”
Relius stands. He takes hold of the candle and turns it over, extinguishing it in the last dregs of the wine. There is a soft hiss, and they make their way to the bedroom in darkness.