Work Text:
After Eugenides' decision to keep the Attolian army on its own side of the River Lusimina, routines in the war camp changed but did not end. The army would march no further; but its men still had to be fed, housed, and kept busy. The king's soldiers stopped training for war and set about clearing land for a fort.
As far as I knew, nobody in the Attolian camp had crossed the river. But as days turned into weeks and plans for the fort became more detailed, a steady trickle of people began to come over from the Roan side. There were the envoys, of course, sent as spokesmen for the Roan king and each of them more obnoxious than the last. But they were not our only visitors. Some were Roan civilians: people who lived, or claimed to have lived, in the area before the Mede army had churned through it. Others were Mede deserters: soldiers, and a few slaves, who preferred to ask for Attolian mercy rather than endure the long, uncertain journey home.
“Some of them are probably spies,” said Kamet, bluntly.
The king tilted his head.
“The Roans, or the Medes?”
Kamet shrugged.
“Either. Both. It’s an easy way to play for sympathy.”
The king was sitting in his council tent with his generals and advisors. I was there too, with Ion, sitting a little out of the way. I wished I had brought my slate. The Magus of Sounis had left me a series of mathematical problems to solve, and I thought those would be more interesting than the king’s strategy discussion.
“Just so,” said Pegistus, with a thin smile in Kamet’s direction. “My king, we cannot allow—”
“Any farmer or villager returning to his own home must be allowed to pass through,” said Eugenides, in a tone that brooked no discussion. “Call it my whim, if you must. It’s not like there are very many of them.”
I wondered whether the Roan farmers whose land we were on paid taxes, and to whom; from now on, I supposed, those taxes would go to Attolia.
“And the Mede deserters?” asked Trokides.
The king let out a harried breath.
“Hold them for now. Find out if any of the soldiers have families who will pay a ransom,” he said. “Those who can’t, send them back across. Maybe they will have better luck petitioning the king of Roa. I am sure his next envoy will tell us all about it.”
There was a brief silence, as the king’s advisors all tried to avoid looking at Kamet.
“And men who claim to be escaped slaves?” asked Pegistus. He had the grace to hesitate before he added, "They could be ransomed, too, could they not?
The king tried to catch Kamet’s eye—but Kamet was looking doggedly at his own toes.
Hemmed in by advisor-generals, whose tactical advice he had promised his wife he would take seriously, the king sighed.
“Let's start by finding out who they are."
***
I was much older, in many ways, than I had been before the war. I was also more noticeable. Ever since the night when I warned the king not to cross the river, his advisors had begun to sometimes, inconsistently, take me seriously. The attention made me uncomfortable; worse, it made it harder for me to slip under the table.
Despite all this, I had not lost my habit of spying on others. A little after the king’s council meeting, I was sitting outside the tent I shared with Ion, struggling with an equation from the Magus—not because it was so very difficult, but because I could not read his handwriting. When I heard raised voices coming from one of the other tents, I ducked further into the shade, and pricked up my ears.
For a moment, I couldn’t understand why the voices were speaking so indistinctly; then, as my brain caught up with the sounds, I realized they were speaking Mede. I recognized the cadence of the language, even though I didn’t understand it well enough to make out more than a few scattered words. At first, I wondered if someone was interviewing the Mede deserters who had been the subject of the king’s earlier discussion. But that couldn’t be right; they wouldn't do that here. Finally, I recognized the voices. It was Kamet and his friend, Costis.
They had been in the war camp for less than a week. Kamet attended the king's official meetings, but beyond that, his role in the camp was poorly defined. Costis, meanwhile, had rejoined the guard. He had been on duty, standing silently near the tent entrance, during the king’s council meeting.
Tongues had wagged when Kamet and Costis returned, and not just friendly ones. Costis was popular among the men of the king's guard, who knew him. But the soldiers who did not know him—most of the army—had not quite made up their minds if Costis was a hero, or something more like a deserter, who had remembered his duty and rejoined the Attolian army only when the war was practically won.
On his own, I suppose Costis could have gone unrecognized in most parts of the camp. But with Kamet Kingnamer by his side, the pair of them were instantly recognizable, and they prompted speculation and whispers everywhere they went.
Out of sight for now, they were not out of earshot. Kamet's voice had a low, ragged edge I hadn't heard before. I wished I had paid better attention during the king's occasional Mede lessons, but it probably wouldn’t have helped; he was speaking very fast. Costis interjected a few times, the rumble of his voice a deeper contrast to Kamet's lighter tenor—but Kamet spoke right over him, his voice growing louder with each interruption until he was practically shouting.
He sounded beside himself with anger. I wondered what Costis had done to deserve it.
"That’s not fair," said Costis, very loudly, in Attolian. "Kamet—"
"You disagree?" said Kamet, viciously. "I thought even you would admit that your countrymen—"
"FOR GODS' SAKE, WILL YOU SHUT UP?"
There was a brief, echoing silence. I held my breath.
"I know you are upset—" continued Costis, in a slightly quieter but still furious tone.
"Upset?" said Kamet. “You think I am upset?”
"—but that doesn't mean you can say whatever horrible things come into your head—"
"I can say whatever I want." Kamet's voice cracked. "How dare you suggest otherwise? Get out."
Before I could think of somewhere else to be, the tent flap opened and Costis stalked out. He looked murderously angry. His hands were balled into fists at his side, and his teeth were clenched so tight that his jaw was twitching.
As Costis passed by me, I flinched. That made him flinch, which was such an odd response I almost laughed.
With an obvious effort, some of the tension went out of his shoulders.
"I beg your pardon, Pheris," said Costis. "I didn't see you. Excuse me."
He sounded ashamed of himself. I knew it was nothing to do with me, but I glared at him anyway. If Costis had quarreled with Kamet, I knew whose side I was on.
When I saw how Costis withered under my glare, I almost relented. But that would have ruined it.
"Sorry," he muttered again, and fled.
***
Costis wanted to go sparring.
"I am off duty," grumbled Aristogiton. "For some of us, that actually means something. While you stand around guarding the king all day, I am hard at work chopping down trees for that blasted new fort."
"Do you want to trade?" asked Costis. "Your poker face is better than mine. I don't know what is harder—trying not to roll my eyes when that snake Vladislav pretends his king isn't a lying traitor, or trying not to laugh when our king insults him.”
Aris rolled his own eyes. He would have enjoyed eavesdropping on meetings with the Roan spokesman. But he was certain the king would never let them trade places—partly because of Costis’ bad poker face, which he knew the king enjoyed.
“What I really want to do is hit him,” continued Costis, savagely. “But I know that's—”
“A bad idea,” agreed Aris. “On the bright side, if you slip up, Eugenides will probably cheer you on. I doubt even the Roan king would mind very much. If I broke a treaty so blatantly, I think I would send someone expendable to do my cleanup.”
“That’s what Kamet said,” said Costis.
Aris rolled his eyes again.
"That's what Kamet said," he mimicked, pitching his voice to match Costis’ slightly deeper timbre.
Costis flushed. Gods, he was such an easy target. Aris had missed him.
“If you can't take my teasing, I have bad news for you about the other things people in this camp are saying about the two of you.”
Aris expected Costis to laugh, or protest—he usually took Aris’s jibes in good humor—but he didn’t.
Now it was Aris’s turn to frown. He crossed his arms and waited.
“We had a fight,” said Costis, in his lowest voice. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I see,” said Aris. He sighed. “Let's go sparring, then.”
***
I hesitated at the tent flap. Costis had left it open.
I didn't want Kamet to be annoyed with me for intruding, but my curiosity won out, and I slipped inside the tent.
Kamet was sitting on a low folding stool, his head in his hands.
He looked up when I entered—it was hard for me to move quietly—and although he quickly moved to wipe his face, I could see he had been crying.
He looked much less ragged than when he and Costis had first arrived at the camp. Ion had helped him even out his hair a few days ago, and he was wearing a faded overcoat that I thought I had once seen on the king. He smelled faintly of perfume, not sheep dung, and—except for the tearstains—he looked almost like the tidy scholar I remembered from the palace.
"You overheard?" he asked, in Attolian.
I shrugged. I hadn't been able to understand the conversation, but it wasn't for lack of trying.
Kamet wrapped his arms around himself, still looking quite miserable.
“You must not blame Costis,” he said. “He was only trying to help. I am the one who lost my temper.”
Only one side of my slate was covered in equations. I flipped it over, and wrote: Sometimes the king and queen throw inkpots at each other.
“So I have heard.” His smile was lopsided. “You should know that doesn’t work for everyone, Pheris.”
I tried to think of other couples I knew. It was so long since I had been welcome in the main house of the Villa Suterpe, and so long since I had seen my father at all, that I couldn't remember how my parents resolved their differences.
I suspected Relius was capable of throwing inkpots. Perhaps not at Teleus, but certainly at some of the lovers who came and went in the early mornings before my lessons.
I missed him more every day—so much I almost didn’t want to bring him up. But I thought it might amuse Kamet, so I scratched on my slate.
As I expected, Kamet did laugh, but his eyes were still sad.
“I miss him, too,” he muttered. “If Relius were here, there would be somebody else to tell the king—”
He broke off without continuing his thought, glancing at me apologetically.
I had noticed already that Kamet was one of the few people who watched what he said around me. It wasn’t that he thought I was a monster, or untrustworthy; Kamet watched what he said around everyone. I think he also sometimes remembered I was a child, and wished he could protect me.
But I didn’t want protection. I wanted him to talk to me. I thought back to the conversation in the king’s tent.
On my slate, I scratched a question mark.
Kamet sighed.
“If Relius were here, he could tell your king hard truths, and I wouldn’t have to. Eugenides can hardly free every slave he meets. What would his barons say?”
There were no slaves on Erondites lands, but in those days, a baron’s word was still law on his own land. I knew the barons Anacritus, Cletus, and Meinedes all kept slaves, and I thought it likely that they always would.
I wasn’t sure that had anything to do with the Mede deserters, though.
“If your king’s wife were here,” Kamet continued, “she would sell those men back to their masters, no question, and send the rest to Thracia.”
He said the words so matter-of-factly that I almost nodded along. But I didn’t think the queen of Attolia could be so cruel.
I needed a new piece of chalk; I had worn it down so small that my fingers were starting to cramp.
Is that what you told Costis?
“Something like that. Then I said . . . worse things.”
He looked as ashamed of himself as Costis had.
What do you think the king should do?
Kamet hesitated.
“He hasn’t asked.”
I rolled my eyes. The king had obviously wanted to ask, earlier; and I knew he wasn’t easily put off.
“I am not sure I want him to,” said Kamet, softly.
***
“You don’t lower your point in third anymore,” observed Aris. “Congratulations. But when you are in a bad mood, it is still very easy to provoke you.”
He lowered the point of his own practice sword, which had been hovering over Costis’s heart, and offered a hand to yank his friend up off the ground.
Costis’s face was red from exertion—and embarrassment at having lost so badly. Aris grinned at him.
“Best of three?”
They began again. Aris was touched to see how seriously Costis took his advice, but the effect was annoying; it was much harder to draw him out this time. Attack, parry, counter-attack, parry. Some of the men from Costis’s old squad were watching from the sidelines of the camp training ground, cheering him on. Aris had his share of supporters, too—men from his own squad and century. He knew some of his current men better than others. Many of the losses at the cairn had been from the Third, and even more of his men had fallen at the Leonyla.
Aristogiton had broken the news to Costis as gently as he could. Costis had listened to the list of names very quietly: Legarus, Trulo, and the others. Men who had joined the guard when they did, who had come up with them. Men who were dead, yet might have lived—if only Aris had done something slightly differently.
Costis sword flashed under Aris’ guard and tapped him on the ribs.
“Distracted?” asked Costis, obviously glad to get a little of his own back.
Costis won that second round; but Aris won the third, and their little bet. Privately, he knew he could not take too much credit. Costis was a good swordsman. He had once been unquestionably better than Aris. But he was clearly out of shape after hiding out for months in a shepherd’s hut in the wilderness.
Better keep that criticism to yourself, Aris thought.
Out loud, he said, “You owe me a drink.”
***
“It’s hard to believe Sejanus is dead,” said Costis, a little later. Alcohol was rationed in the camp, or at least it was supposed to be. Some things never changed: Aris had had to teach Costis where to buy the wine.
Then they had snuck out of the camp and into the woods.
“Sejanus Erondites, the traitor, whom you and I both despised?” said Aris. “That Sejanus?”
Costis shrugged.
“I heard he redeemed himself, in the end.”
“Hm,” said Aris.
In Aristogiton’s opinion, whatever good Sejanus Erondites had done in his last week of life could not cancel out his career of awfulness. If Sejanus had been okloi, men would be pissing on his grave, redemption or no.
He sipped some of the wine.
“You still haven’t told me what you and Kamet are fighting about.”
Costis held out his hand; Aris passed him the wineskin.
Costis drank.
“Do you remember how I used to hit people?”
Aris snorted.
“Famously, yes.”
“I don’t just mean the king,” said Costis. “I mean you, and other people. People who didn’t deserve it.”
“I deserved it sometimes,” said Aris, lightly. “Besides, I always hit you back.”
He shoved Costis’s arm to make his point, and Costis retaliated by kneeing him in the stomach. Aris wrestled the wineskin out of his hand. When they pulled apart they were both grinning.
Aris took a swig from the wineskin.
“I tried to give him some advice,” said Costis, quietly. “He didn’t want to hear it. Then he started yelling at me about every single thing I’ve done wrong since I turned around and went back to Roa.”
“A long list, I bet.”
Costis huffed. For a moment, he looked for all the world like the new recruit he had once been, three years Aris’s junior, lonely and homesick. Some things never changed: Costis was telling his own story badly, all out of order, but Aris could guess what he was driving at.
“Kamet isn’t the kind of man you can hit,” observed Aris.
“No,” said Costis, miserably. “Of course not. But that means I lose all our arguments.”
Aris considered shoving him again. Instead, he put a hand on Costis’s shoulder instead, squeezing gently.
“What was the advice?”
“What?”
“The advice you gave him, what was it about?”
Costis hesitated.
“On my honor,” said Aris, “I know it is none of my business. I promise not to tell a soul.”
"I told him he needs to talk to the king," said Costis.
***
There was a lamp still burning in Kamet’s borrowed tent. The intruder slipped inside like a shadow.
He wasn’t expecting Kamet to pull a knife on him.
“Arguably, that’s treason,” said Gen, dancing out of reach. He was grinning. “Costis must be so proud. Where is he, anyway?”
"You could have been anyone, your majesty," said Kamet, not sounding sorry at all. He sheathed the knife. "I don't know where Costis is."
“I see,” said Eugenides. “We should talk. I need your advice about how to handle Pegistus. And I think maybe you need relationship advice.”
***
“Do you remember when we were first squad leaders, what an ass I made of myself?” asked Aris. “Picking on Legarus, and so desperate to ignore Laecdomon that I didn’t realize he was a would-be assassin?”
“Nobody liked Laecdomon,” said Costis. “You couldn’t have known.”
“Maybe not. But that wasn’t why I hated him. I hated Laecdomon because he was okloi, like me—and worse, we were both Erondites’s okloi. I was afraid people wouldn’t be able to tell us apart.”
“You couldn’t be more different,” said Costis.
“Not the point,” said Aris. “I was so anxious about my status that I didn’t even try to be his friend.”
The wine was almost gone. Aris offered the wineskin halfheartedly to Costis; when his friend shook his head, he downed it himself.
“I am not saying that is what Kamet is doing," said Aris. "You love him, so I am sure he is much more honorable and self-sacrificing than the rest of us. But I think it must be hard to be so favored by the king, when others like him are not."
"I just wish he would ask the king for what he wants," said Costis, frustrated. "It's what Gen wants to do too, I'm certain of it."
"Maybe he shouldn't have to ask," said Aris.
***
Kamet lay awake, listening for Costis’s footfall. The king had gone back to his own tent to sleep.
At last he heard the sound of the tent flap opening, and the click of metal as Costis removed his sword belt and unbuckled his armor.
Very quietly, Costis lay down beside him—not quite touching him, and not quite taking his share of the blankets.
Kamet turned sideways to face him. Tentatively, he brushed a hand over Costis's cheek.
"I'm sorry for screaming at you," he said.
"I'm sorry, too," said Costis. He put his arm around Kamet's waist.
"While you were drinking in the woods," said Kamet, "your king told me that his wife, his cousin, and the king of Sounis are all working on a new charter. He says it will unite the peninsula under one ruler, more binding than the current treaties.”
Smugly, he added: “He told me it was a shame I did not get back in time to help them draft it.”
Costis snorted.
“A central charter inevitably takes power away from the barons,” said Kamet. “It will take a few generations. But eventually the only law will be the king’s law.”
“Or the queen’s,” said Costis.
“Or the queen’s,” agreed Kamet. "Whenever it happens, let's hope she isn't a despot."
"Did the king say what he will do about the runaways?"
"He will question them," said Kamet. "He agrees that if Relius were here, he would see a spy in every corner. But he plans to free them anyway."
"Good," said Costis.
"He asked if I would go with him, tomorrow, to help translate.”
“Will you?”
“Of course." Kamet's voice was muffled. "It’s the least I can do.”