CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE room was Attolia’s library.

“You have not seen it before,” said Eddis.

“No,” whispered Sounis.

“I did not think you had, or you would have recognized it. Gen made sure no meetings were held here.”

It was a long room lined with books. High windows let in light all day, but none that would reach to damage the delicate contents of the shelves. The glass-paneled doors on the opposite side of the room faced north, not toward a view of snowcapped mountains but toward a perfectly ordinary view of the city of Attolia. The ceiling above was coffered and white; the cases along the walls were carved with familiar figures. Sounis recognized a lion and then a rabbit. He looked for the fox and found it. He moved to touch its pointed ears with a hesitant finger.

“Who made this place?” he said in a choked voice.

Eddis hesitated. “The architect was Iktenos, Gen’s great-great-grandfather and the Thief of Eddis, though that is not well known in Attolia, even now.”

“He dreamed of my library.”

“It would seem so.”

Slowly, Sounis turned away from the carving of the fox. He reached for a tabletop and ran his hands over it, clutching the edge until his knuckles turned white.

He wanted to know that it was solid. Eddis knew that all the world would seem to him insubstantial, as if it might tear away and reveal something else infinitely larger and more terrifying.

“I broke the truce at Elisa,” he said, wild-eyed.

“Pay your fine,” she said reassuringly. “Had you offended them you would know by now.”

“My tutor?”

“Moira, I think. She is nearest to mortals.”

“They are real?”

Eddis said nothing.

“Do they appear only in dreams? Or do they have physical properties? Can you touch them? Can they—” He looked up. “Can they bring bolts of lightning?”

Eddis shrugged.

“Tell me!” cried Sounis.

“Answer your own questions!” Eddis shouted back, and he blinked.

“You don’t know?”

Eddis shook her head.

Sounis sat.

“Write it down,” Eddis said. “It will grow less clear. First, it will begin to seem that it really was just a dream and a mere coincidence that this library is so familiar. Then it will be a memory you have of a dream you can’t quite remember, and then even that will be gone.”

Sounis considered the authority in her voice. “What have you dreamed?” he asked.

“I dreamed of you,” Eddis said, her eyes bright. “In the library, talking to your tutor.” She wrapped her arms around herself and turned away as he rose from his chair. “And I dream of the Sacred Mountain exploding and see people clutch their throats and fall to the ground and fire fall out of the air and everything begin to burn. A river of fire washes down the slopes of the mountain, and the reservoir explodes in a huge cloud of steam, but the fire doesn’t stop until it has devoured the city of Eddis entirely.”

Horrified, Sounis didn’t know what to do, or say. Then he remembered his father in the forecourt of Eddis’s megaron in the mountains, and he put a hand on Eddis’s shoulder. He did not take her in his arms so much as he offered them to her, and when she moved into this embrace, he held her tightly.

“I need to empty the city of Eddis,” she said, laying her head on his chest. “I need to give every man and woman and child a reason to think that life would be better for them away from the mountain, down in the lowlands, out on the islands. Anywhere but Eddis.”

“You need to marry me,” he said.

“Yes,” said Eddis.

“And I am a pig, like my uncle.”

Eddis laughed. Her head fit just under his chin, and Sounis could feel the chuckle in his chest. “No, you are not, or I would not love you as I do.”

“I loved you the first time I saw you.”

Eddis laughed again. “You were four,” she said, without lifting her head.

Startled, Sounis said, “I was?”

“My father who was Eddis paid a visit to the court of Sounis. My brothers and I accompanied him.”

“I don’t remember,” said Sounis. “Unless, perhaps, I do,” he added, wincing, as hazy recollections grew clearer.

Eddis confirmed the worst of them. “My brothers made you cry.”

Sounis tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “Are you certain that you want to be my wife?”

“Absolutely,” said Eddis, quietly. “Eternally certain.”

Holding her tight, Sounis looked around the library. “Does Gen know?” he wondered aloud, and he felt Eddis pull away slightly. He looked into her face. “What does he dream?” he asked, afraid to hear the answer.

“They aren’t dreams to him, Sophos,” said Eddis, feeling his arms tighten again around her at the implication. “I believe that the veil for him is always thin, and that he walks through the world gingerly.”

“Can he answer my questions, then?”

Eddis was amused by his persistence, but shook her head. “In my experience, the more you know of the gods, the more you know what you cannot understand.”

“There is a great deal I don’t know,” he said, seriously. “And not just about the gods.”

Looking into his unsmiling face, Eddis knew it was as close as he would ever come to an accusation. He had been saved by the men Eugenides sent, though he did not yet know the ferocity with which the king of Attolia had stripped those men from other posts, the capital he had expended, the secrets that had been revealed in order to send help to Sounis. But Sophos had to know that she and Eugenides had let him ride away with an Attolian army at his back, believing he needed it. With more faith in himself, and his father’s army, he could have retaken his throne without Attolia’s aid. He might not have followed that bloodier and more costly path, but Eddis and Attolis hadn’t offered him the choice.

“Yes,” Eddis admitted, praying that he would not ask for an apology she could not give.

“But you will tell me everything now?”

“Now and forever,” Eddis promised.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE king of Attolia reclined in a chair in a loggia high up in the palace. His feet were braced on a footstool, and he had a robe around his shoulders. The sun was setting somewhere out of sight, but its light still filled the corner of the stone porch where he sat. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t open them before he spoke.

“Have you convinced him?” he asked.

“Gen,” said Sounis.

Eugenides started violently and knocked the wine cup on the arm of his chair. He made a halfhearted effort to catch it but only added a spin that flung the wine farther. The cup broke on the ceramic tiles.

“Gods damn it,” he said.

“You can say that?” Sounis asked, approaching the back of his chair.

Attolis considered the younger king of Sounis over his shoulder. “There has been no objection so far. I take care not to link anyone specific to the word damn, though.”

Sounis said, “I broke the truce at Elisa.”