I HEARD THE TUMBLERS CLICKING as the guards unlocked my cell door before opening it to wave the magus in. Without turning my head, I could see him silhouetted in the doorway with Sophos beside him. Once the door was closed and locked behind him, the cell was dark. I lay quietly and hoped that he hadn’t seen me.
“Magus?” Sophos whispered.
“Yes, I saw,” the magus answered, and my hopes sank. I heard him taking small, careful steps across the floor. When he got close to me, he squatted down and reached out with his hands. One of them brushed my leg and then my sleeve and followed it down my arm until he touched my hand very quickly, to see if I was warm and alive or cold and dead.
“He’s alive,” he told Sophos as he put his hand back over mine and squeezed it. It was meant to be comforting.
“Gen, can you hear me?” he whispered softly.
“Go away.”
In the dark he found my face and pushed the hair that had been lying across it out of the way. He was very gentle. “Gen, I owe you an apology. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t answer. Only a short time before, I had floated to the surface of the pain that had swallowed me up. I didn’t care much about his apology.
Sophos kneeled down beside me in the dark. “How did you get here?” he whispered, as if the guard were lurking outside to hear the prisoners’ conversation.
“They had a cart.”
The magus snorted. His fingers left my face, and I felt them lightly touching the front of my shirt where it was stiff with dried blood. “Don’t,” I said. My voice was wispy and thin. I tried to pull myself together and started again. “Just leave me alone. I’m fine. Go away.”
“Gen, I think the bleeding has stopped. I’ve still got my cloak. I’m going to see if I can wrap you in it.”
“No,” I said, “no, no, no.” I didn’t dare shake my head, but I desperately didn’t want the magus to try to wrap me in his cloak. I didn’t want his cloak. I didn’t want him to put his hand beneath my head and lift it to slide Sophos’s fancy folded cloak underneath, which is what he did first. When he didn’t notice the bump under my hair at the base of my skull, I gave up protesting. The pain washed back over me, and I sank into it. The last thing I heard was the magus arguing with a guard about clean water and bandages.
When I woke again, there was a gloomy light coming through the cell’s barred window, and I could see Sophos hovering. My shirt had been opened, and I was wrapped in white bandages. The magus must have won his argument.
Sophos saw me looking cross-eyed down at my chest and said, “He told the guard that you could always be killed later, but if you were dead, you couldn’t be questioned by anyone but the gods.”
That was comforting. “Where is everyone?” I asked.
He came to sit cross-legged beside me. I was lying on his cloak and wrapped in the magus’s. “They came an hour ago and took the magus away,” he said. “Pol and Ambiades are dead. The queen’s soldiers were waiting for us at the top of the cliff. Ambiades had told them about the trail.”
He waited, and when I couldn’t think of anything to say, he told me, “We saw everything from the top of the cliff.”
Hence the magus’s apology.
The captain of the Queen’s Guard and his men had been waiting on the mountainside. No doubt they had had more men stationed at the entrance to the Seperchia Pass, but the captain had gambled on the magus’s leaving Attolia the way he had come in. When Pol and the magus boosted Sophos over the lip, he’d seen their boots, but he’d been dragged onto the clifftop before he could shout a warning. There had been nothing the magus and Pol could do but follow with Ambiades. When the captain of the guard had asked where I was, the magus, still angry at me, had said, “Saving his own skin.” Stretched flat on top of the boulder, I was easy to see from above.
“He’s planning an ambush,” said one of the soldiers, and raised a crossbow.
“The queen wanted them all alive,” the captain reminded him.
“Then don’t bother to shoot him,” the magus said bitterly. “He’ll hide there until you climb down to arrest him.”
“He’s armed,” said the captain, and he cupped his hands to his mouth to shout a warning to his men but lowered them when the magus fluttered one hand in dismissal. “The only thing he can do with a sword is steal it or sell it.”
So they stood and watched me turn an orderly hunt into a knot of fallen horses and wounded men. The captain swung toward the magus, who was clearly stunned, and then changed his mind about what he was going to say. “Not what you expected?” he asked in wry tones.
The magus shook his head, watching me as I ran for cover.
“My men will cut him off,” the captain assured him as I disappeared under the olives.
“He’s done for,” said Ambiades when I was chased back into the open by the horsemen. “Good riddance,” he added as they bore down on me.
“Shut up, Ambiades,” the magus said.
“They’ll have to dismount to get him,” said the captain.
“They won’t have any trouble,” the magus had said sadly, not knowing how strongly my father had desired me to become a soldier and not a thief.
“I’ve never seen someone win against that many men,” said Sophos, sitting on the cold stone floor beside me.
“You still haven’t,” I pointed out. “Tell me about Ambiades.” I didn’t want to talk about the fight at the base of the mountains. Something unpleasant had happened. I couldn’t remember exactly what it was. I didn’t want to.
But Sophos wouldn’t be distracted. “No, I suppose not. But you wounded two of them, and I think you killed the last one.”
My eyes closed. That was what I hadn’t wanted to think about. I hadn’t intended to kill anyone, but I’d panicked when I’d seen swords on every side.
“We saw you run back into the open,” Sophos went on mercilessly. “Why didn’t they ride you down?”
“Too many rocks,” I whispered. I was tired. “And they were riding farm horses. They only step on people by accident.”
Only four of the soldiers had dismounted at first. I’d chopped one of them on the forearm, then disarmed another and gotten my sword tangled in his hilt. I wouldn’t have been able to free a longer sword, but I managed to pull Sophos’s clear in time to stop a thrust from someone on my left. Training that I thought I’d forgotten turned the block into a lunge, and I’d sunk the sword into my opponent, certainly killing him. It had felt no different from stabbing a practice dummy. I was so horrified that as he fell away from me, I’d let the sword slip out of my hand. I hadn’t wanted to be a soldier. I’d become a thief instead, to avoid the killing. See where that had gotten me.
A light push from behind had forced me forward a half step. When I looked down, my shirt was lifted away from my chest like a tent, with a half inch of sword poking through a tear in the cloth. The point must have entered somewhere around the middle of my back but had slanted to come out near my armpit. I remembered very clearly that there was only a smear of blood on the steel.
“We thought you were dead,” Sophos told me.
So had I. My knees had folded. Things were muddled and awful for a long time, and when I opened my eyes again, I was lying on my back and the sky over me was perfectly blue. The blue was all I could see. I must have been on a cart, but its sides were out of my sight. There was no sign of olive trees or the mountains. If it hadn’t been for the jolting as the cartwheels turned, I could have been lying on a cloud. People still seemed to be shouting, but they were very far away. They were important people, shouting about me. I heard the king of Sounis and the queen of Eddis and other voices I couldn’t identify. I thought that they might be gods. I wanted to tell them not to fuss. I wanted to explain that I would be dead soon, and there would be nothing left to fuss over, but the cart must have hit a particularly severe bump. The blue sky above me turned to red and then to black.
Sophos dragged me out of the memory, asking, “Who taught you to fight like that?”
“My father.”
“Was he very angry when you turned out to be a thief?”
I thought of the fight when I’d torn up my enrollment papers for the army. “Yes.” Still, we’d gotten much closer once the matter was settled and done with. “But he’s used to it now.”
“You should have been a soldier,” Sophos said. “You were better than Ambiades ever was. I think that’s why he said, ‘Good riddance,’ again, and that’s when Pol—” Sophos stopped.
I opened my eyes to see that he was crying. He scrubbed his sleeve across his face to wipe away some of the snot and tears. I hadn’t wanted to think about what had happened at the bottom of the cliff, and Sophos hadn’t wanted to think about what had happened at the top.
He wiped away some more tears and, after a few deep breaths, continued quietly. “The magus told Ambiades that there was nothing to be pleased about, and the captain of the guard said yes, there was, and Ambiades just looked kind of sick at first, like the magus, but then he started to look pleased with himself. And then we all realized that he was the one who had told the Attolians about the trail up the mountain.”
I remembered the fancy tortoiseshell comb of Ambiades’s that had caught the magus’s eye. He must have wondered where Ambiades got the money to afford it. I’d guessed that Ambiades was in somebody’s pay and that from time to time he felt guilty about it, but I’d assumed he was taking money from an enemy of the magus’s in Sounis’s court. It hadn’t occurred to me, or to the magus, obviously, that he could betray his master to the Attolians.
“Ambiades started to say something, but then you screamed.”
I screamed?
“We could hear you from the top of the cliff when they pulled the sword out,” Sophos told me, his voice shaking—and I remembered. That was the muddled and awful part. I’d felt my life dragged out with the sword, but in the end my life wouldn’t go. It had stretched between me and the sword. I think that only the power of the gods could have kept me alive, but my living was at the same time an offense to them. I should have died, but instead the pain went on and on. Dying would have been so much easier.
I shuddered, and the pain returned, stopping my breath. Sophos held me by the hand until it passed.
“Everyone looked down at you,” he said. “Then we turned to look at Ambiades, and he didn’t care. I mean, we could see that he didn’t care that you were dead. I don’t think that he cared about anything anymore, not about me or the magus or Pol. And Pol, he just put out one hand and shoved Ambiades over the edge. And then—”
Sophos stopped for another deep breath before he went on. “Then he went over the cliff, too, with two of the Attolians. The magus tried to get out his sword, but the soldiers knocked him down.”
Sophos pulled his knees up to his chest and rocked back and forth as he cried.
Moving slowly, I lifted one hand to his leg to squeeze it. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had liked Pol.
“I’ve known Pol my entire life,” Sophos said unevenly. “I don’t want him to be dead,” he insisted, as if his wishes should be granted. “He has a wife, and he has two children,” he wailed, “and I am going to have to tell them.”
I shuddered and closed my eyes again. The man I’d killed could have had no clue that he was facing a skilled opponent. He’d judged me by my novice sword and my size. I had taken him by surprise and killed him. I might just as well have stabbed him in the back in an alley. Did he have a wife and two children? Who would tell them that he was dead? The pain in my chest spread, until even my fingers ached, where the backs of them touched the rough floor.
After a long time Sophos whispered, “Gen? Are you still awake?”
“Yes.”
“The magus said that the bleeding stopped and that you would probably be all right. As long as you didn’t get a fever.”
“That’s good to know.” That way they could behead me.
The sun was setting when the guards brought the magus back. Its last light came directly in the small window and lit the opposite wall of the cell. The wall was made of the same yellow limestone as the king’s megaron on the other side of the Eddis mountains. I’d dozed on and off during the afternoon. Someone had brought food, which I’d told Sophos to eat.
“Gen, how do you feel?” the magus asked.
“Oh, fine,” I told him. My chest was filled with boiling cement, and I was hot and cold all over at the same time, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t care much about anything, so I guess I felt fine.
The magus held his hand against my forehead and looked concerned. “Did you eat anything today?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yes,” he agreed, “that was a silly question. Did you get anything to eat, Sophos?”
Sophos nodded.
“Did you save anything for me?”
“No, I’m sorry.” Sophos looked guilty.
“That’s all right,” lied the magus. “I ate upstairs, while I was talking with the captain of the Queen’s Guard. Evidently Her Majesty is on her way to hear our story for herself.”
He settled himself on the stone floor and leaned against the wall, just outside my line of sight.
“We are in a slightly difficult position,” he said, and I rolled my eyes again. “I’m afraid that Ambiades was our only reliable means of convincing the Attolians that Hamiathes’s Gift was lost. You know what happened to Ambiades?”
“Sophos told me.” It was awkward to have a conversation directed to the side of my head, but turning to look at the magus wasn’t worth the effort.
“His father’s money must have run out, and he decided he’d rather be a wealthy traitor than an impoverished apprentice. Attolia paid him, and he had arranged for someone to follow us from the time we left the king’s city in Sounis. If we moved too quickly, Ambiades was careful to slow us down.” We both thought of the food missing from the saddlebags.
“I owe you many apologies,” the magus admitted.
“They are all accepted,” I said. It wasn’t important anymore.
“The queen probably hoped to kill the rest of us quietly and send Ambiades back as a sole survivor. She is not going to be happy to have lost such a valuable spy, and with Ambiades dead, I’m afraid there’s no way to convince her that Hamiathes’s Gift fell in a stream.”
There was a pause while each of us considered the Attolians’ means of extracting reliable information.
The magus changed the subject, and I swiveled my head to look at him when he said, “Attolia’s soldiers have been to the temple in the dystopia.” He nodded. I’m not sure if he meant to affirm the truth of what he’d said or if he was pleased to have elicited a sign of life from me at last. “The temple was completely destroyed. The Aracthus had broken through the roof and washed away most of the walls. There were still signs that there had been some sort of man-made construction at the site, but that was all.”
“When?”
“I can’t be sure, but no more than a day or two after we left.”
I remembered how close the water of the Aracthus had sounded as it washed over the roof of the gods’ hall. I thought of it pouring down into the room and the maze below, washing out the doors and walls. I thought of the gods in their beautiful robes and Hephestia on her throne, gone. I turned my head back toward the ceiling of the cell and blinked water out of my eyes. The magus sensed my distress and lifted himself across the floor to console me.
“Gen, it was an old temple. The collapse of the main door was probably the first sign of the damage caused when the Aracthus forced its way through a new entrance somewhere. In the next few days the power of the water destroyed the temple entirely. It would have happened sooner or later. All the things man has made are eventually destroyed.” He stopped a tear as it rolled down toward my ear. “I wish, though, that I had gone in with you,” he said. “I’ll always wonder what you saw.” He waited a moment, hoping that I might say something.
“Won’t tell me or can’t?” he asked.
“Can’t,” I admitted. “Not that I would anyway.” I goaded him.
He laughed, then checked my forehead again for fever.
A guard brought more food. The magus and Sophos ate. The square of yellow sunlight on the wall opposite the window had dimmed when we heard more footsteps in the corridor and knew that the queen must have arrived at the castle and sent for the magus.
“I’ll do what I can for you, Gen,” the magus promised as he stood up. They took Sophos as well, and I was left alone in the cell, wondering what the magus thought he could possibly do for me.
The cell was pitch-dark when he returned. The guards carried lanterns, and I closed my eyes against their glare, assuming that they would be gone soon. When someone nudged me with his boot, I groaned a little, partly because it hurt, partly because I was offended that they were bothering me. Another fiercer nudge dug into my ribs, and I opened my eyes. Standing over me, between the magus and the captain of the guard, was the queen of Attolia.
She smiled at my surprise. Standing in the light, surrounded by the dark beyond the reach of the lanterns, she seemed lit by the aura of the gods. Her hair was black and held away from her face by an imitation of the woven gold band of Hephestia. Her robe was draped like a peplos, made from embroidered red velvet. She was as tall as the magus, and she was more beautiful than any woman I have ever seen. Everything about her brought to mind the old religion, and I knew that the resemblance was deliberate, intended to remind her subjects that as Hephestia ruled uncontested among the gods, this woman ruled Attolia. Too bad that I had seen the Great Goddess and knew how far the Attolian queen fell short of her mark.
She spoke, and her voice was quiet and lovely. “The magus of Sounis informs me that you are a thief of unsurpassed skills.” She smiled gently.
“I am,” I answered, truthfully.
“He suggests, however, that your loyalty to your own country is not strong.”
I winced. “I have no particular loyalty to the king of Sounis, Your Majesty.”
“How fortunate for you. I don’t believe he holds you in high regard.”
“No, Your Majesty. He probably doesn’t.”
She smiled again. Her perfect teeth showed. “Then there’s nothing to prevent you from remaining in Attolia to be my thief.” I looked over at the magus. This was the favor he had done me: convinced the queen that I was too valuable to throw away.
“Uh,” I said, “there is one thing, Your Majesty.”
The queen’s eyebrows rose in delicate arches of astonishment. “What would that be?”
I had to think of something quickly. Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn’t force me to enter her service. As I searched for something safer to say, I remembered the magus’s comment on the banks of the Aracthus. “I have a sweetheart,” I said with complete conviction. “Your Majesty, I’ve promised to return to her.”
The queen was amused. The magus was consternated. He couldn’t guess why I would throw away a chance to save myself. There were certainly no love affairs written up in my record at the king’s prison. I was sure because I had written the record myself. It had been an easy way to turn a lot of boasting into a solid reputation, and it hadn’t been difficult to slip it in among the real records. Anyone who can steal the king’s seal ring can manage the locks on his record room.
“You are promised to someone?” said the queen, in disbelief.
“I am, Your Majesty,” I said firmly.
“And you will not break your promise?” She shook her head sadly.
“I couldn’t, Your Majesty.”
“Surely I am a better mistress to serve?”
“You are more beautiful, Your Majesty.” The queen smiled again before I finished. “But she is more kind.”
So much for discretion. The smile disappeared. You could have heard a pin drop onto the stone floor as her alabaster cheeks flushed red. No one could ever accuse the queen of Attolia of being kind.
She smiled again at me, a different, thinner smile, and inclined her head in acceptance of a point scored. I smiled back, pleased with myself in a bitter way, until she turned to the captain of her guard.
“Take him upstairs and fetch a doctor,” she ordered. “We will give him an opportunity to change his mind.” Her red peplos swept across the back of my hand as she turned to leave, and I winced. The velvet was soft, but the embroidery scratched.
In a room several floors above the dungeon, I lay in bed while my fever climbed. I raved, and in a distant way I knew that I was raving. Moira came to sit by my bed. She assured me that I wasn’t dying. I told her that I wished I were. Then Eugenides came out of the dark, and Moira was gone. Eugenides was patient at first. He reminded me that lives are things to be stolen sometimes, just like any possession. He asked me if I would prefer to be dead myself. I said I would, and he asked what then would have become of my plans for fame and my name carved in stone. And would I then leave my companions to die as well?
I didn’t like to think of the magus as a companion. But if he wasn’t, why had I risked my life once for him already? I sighed. And then there was Sophos to worry over as well. I said that if only I could have died when the soldier pulled the sword out, I wouldn’t be bothered by my conscience. The god beside me was silent, and the silence stretched out from my bedside through the castle and, it seemed, throughout the world as I remembered that Lyopidus had burned and died while Eugenides had not.
After countless empty heartbeats, Eugenides spoke again from a distance. “His wife died in the winter. His three children live with their aunt in Eia.”
When I dared to lower my arm, he was gone. I slept again, and when I woke, I was more clearheaded. Leaving Sophos and the magus to certain death wouldn’t do anything for my conscience, even if I died myself soon after. And there was fame and fortune to consider. I dragged myself out of bed and started to look around the room.
The bolts in the door of the cell turned over and the door swung open. The lamps in the hallway weren’t burning, and neither the magus nor Sophos could see who stood in the doorway.
“It’s me,” I hissed, before they could make a noise that might carry to the guardroom. I heard them moving toward my voice and backed away so that they wouldn’t bump into me. Once they were in the passage, I asked Sophos if he still had his overshirt on.
“Why?”
“I want you to give it to me.”
“Why?”
“Because all I’m wearing is bandages. They took my clothes.” Sophos pulled the shirt off and held it out in my direction, nearly poking me in the eye.
“Do you want my shoes, too?” he offered.
“No, I’m better off barefoot.”
“Gen,” said the magus, “you shouldn’t do this.”
“Get dressed?”
“You know what I mean.” At least he had the sense to whisper. “I thank you for opening the door, but the best thing you can do now is forget all about us. Climb back up where you came from and pretend you never left your bed.”
“And how will you get yourselves the rest of the way out of here? Through the front door?”
“We’ll manage.”
I snorted very quietly. “You will not.”
“If we’re caught, we can claim that we bribed a guard.”
I dismissed him with a wave of my hand, which he couldn’t see. “We should get moving,” I said, making herding motions with my good hand, which he also couldn’t see.
“Gen, it’s only been two days. Three since we were arrested. You can’t manage.”
“I think,” I said stiffly, “that I am more of an asset than a liability.”
“Gen, that’s not what I meant.” He put out one hand in the dark to touch my shoulder, but I shifted away. “Gen, we can’t ask you to risk yourself again.”
“This is a change from your earlier position,” I pointed out.
“I was wrong before.”
“You’re wrong now, too.”
“Gen, the queen of Attolia doesn’t bear you any ill will.”
I thought about her parting smile. “I think she does,” I said.
“All she wants from you is a promise of your service.”
“Well, she isn’t going to get it.” I’d heard too many stories about the things that happened to people who worked for her. “Can we stop discussing this just now?” I started to move away as I spoke, and they followed me in the darkness. With my feet bare, I stepped gingerly, and it was easy to remember to favor my bad shoulder.
“How did you get the keys? Where are the guards?” Sophos wouldn’t stop talking as we moved through the pitch-dark. “And why are all the lanterns out?”
I sighed. “I didn’t get the keys. They took my clothes and probably burnt them. They left my lock openers and the other things from my pockets on a table in my room.” I’d left the magus’s cloak pin and Ambiades’s comb behind. I’d brought the penknife in case I needed it again. We came to a corner, and I felt my way around it, then reached back to take Sophos by the hand.
“Be quiet,” I whispered, “and try not to pull on me.” I was a little unsteady on my feet and afraid that he would pull me right over if he stumbled.
“What about the guards,” he persisted, “and the lanterns?”
The guards, I told him, were at the end of the corridor guarding a deck of cards, and the lanterns were out because I blew them out. “This way,” I hissed, “when they hear us chatting like happy sparrows in our nest, they won’t immediately be able to find us.”
“But where are we going?”
“Would you shut up?”
My left hand, the bad one, brushed along the wall until it bumped against a door handle. The pain stopped me in my tracks, and I squeezed Sophos’s hand hard to prevent him from bumping me. “Hold on,” I whispered. They stood quietly while I worked the lock on the door. Fortunately I had a key that fit closely enough and could turn it with one hand. “Watch the door,” I said as I pulled it open. It rumbled, but the hinges didn’t squeak. “Don’t bang your head,” I warned the magus.
We walked down a tunnel only as wide as the door. The walls arched into the ceiling just a few inches over my head. There was a stone door at the end that had a simple crossbar fastening on the inside. Once through it, we were outside the castle on a narrow footing of stone that ran under its walls. In the silence we could hear waves lapping against the stone under our feet, and in the river there were ghosts of reflections from torches set in sconces along the sentry walk above our heads.
“What is this?” Sophos asked.
“It’s the Seperchia,” said the magus. “Remember this stronghold sits in the middle of the river and defends the bridge to either side.”
“I meant, what is this?” Sophos said, and stamped his foot on the stone under him.
“This is a ledge that runs around the entire castle,” I explained, “so that they can maintain the foundation. We’re going to follow it to the bridge into town. Keep your voices down. There are guards.”
“Why is there a door?”
I left it to the magus to answer.
“They dispose of bodies by throwing them in the river.”
“Oh.”
“Sometimes the guards will sell a body back to the family if they wait here in a boat,” he said.
Sophos finally kept his mouth shut as we crabbed our way around the castle. There was no moon. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, so I kept it on the castle wall and checked with my forward foot to make sure there was always ground underneath me. The magus put himself between me and Sophos, and he was careful not to bump. We crept around one corner, and then another. There were no torches burning on the bridge, and if there were guards watching, they were posted on the towers, not on the bridge itself. The three of us snuck across.
Getting through town proved to be trickier than leaving the castle. Without the moon we had to pick our way carefully, and I had a difficult time leading the way I wanted to go. The fires in the houses had been banked hours ago, and there was no glow through the windows to help us. Dogs barked as we passed, but no watch came to check on them. The road from the castle led away from the river. We left it, hoping to cut back to the water, and got lost in narrow streets. Twice I almost walked headlong into the invisible walls of houses before we finally came to another road that ran along the riverbank and passed a bridge.
“We stay on this side,” I said, and the magus didn’t argue. We moved very slowly past dark houses. I was happier without moonlight because I didn’t have to worry about hiding, and going slowly, I had time as I took each step to favor my shoulder.
“Gen,” the magus asked, “how are you?”
“Good enough.” I answered, a little surprised at how capable I was feeling. I was weak but clearheaded. My shoulder hurt, but in a distant way. The pain was only sharp when I stumbled, and I didn’t stumble often. I felt as if I were floating very gently down the road, buoyed by an invisible cloud. The night all around was filled with the usual noise of bugs and jumping fish and distant dogs howling, but there seemed to be a bubble of silence that surrounded us.
The moon eventually came up, and the going was easier, but the magus didn’t try to hurry me. He and Sophos were both patient, but Sophos kept wanting to chatter as we walked. I realized that he was frightened and that talking helped him, but I needed to concentrate all my energy on my feet. The magus talked with him. We kept moving until just before dawn.
We weren’t many miles from town, but the road we followed ran up against a rise and turned inland. In order to stay with the river, we needed to follow a narrower path that climbed through the rocks along the bank. We stopped to rest. I leaned against a convenient stone pile and slid to the ground. I tucked Sophos’s overshirt, which was fortunately a long one, underneath me and closed my eyes. My feet were cold. I ignored them and slept for a while. When I opened my eyes again, there was enough light to see the color of the world. The magus’s overshirt was wrapped around my feet, and the magus was gone.
I jerked my head around to look for him, and wished I hadn’t. My body had stiffened while I slept. Sophos was still asleep beside me, curled up on the ground. The magus was standing a little way away, looking down through the rocks at the river. I called him, and when he turned to look at me, his face was bleak. Little birds began to peck in my stomach.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him.
“The river is running the wrong way.”
Let the gods into your life and you rapidly lose faith in the natural laws. The little birds stopped pecking, and they all fell over dead. I had a stomach full of dead birds for a moment as I thought that he meant the river had truly reversed its direction. He only meant that he had been mistaken during the night about which way it was flowing.
The magus sat down and put his head in his hands. “I lost my sense of direction in the town,” he said. “We haven’t been following the river downstream toward the pass. We’ve been going upstream. The ground was rising gradually, but I didn’t notice until we reached this steeper part. I have no idea where we are.”
Sophos sat up blinking just then, so no one noticed my sigh of relief. “What’s the matter?” he asked, looking at the magus, who explained. All he knew was that we were on the far side of the dystopia from the Sea of Olives. That was why the road we were following had turned. Upriver there was no more arable land. There was no way of knowing how far the track we were on might lead us up the river. The ground would rise and get rockier and more difficult to cover. As far as the magus knew, there might be no bridges at all before the dystopia ran into the foot of the mountains, where we would be trapped.
“There’s a trade route on the far side of the river, and I’m sure there are some villages, but I don’t know why any of them would want a bridge to the dystopia.”
“What about this road we’ve been on?” I asked, although I knew the answer.
“It’s been getting narrower,” the magus said, “and beyond here it turns into a track and probably dead-ends at the next farm. I went to look.”
“So what do we do?” Sophos asked the magus.
“We keep going,” I said. “We can’t go back without running into a search party.” I rested my head against the stone for another moment. “We’ll stick to the river and hope that there are enough rocks to slow down any horses. There’s no reason for us to have gone this way, and they’ll probably concentrate their searching in the other direction.”
“We could hide in the dystopia for a while,” suggested Sophos. “We could cross it and go back through the Sea of Olives.”
The magus looked sideways at me. “We couldn’t get across the Aracthus.”
“We could wait until Gen is better.”
“What about food?”
Not being at all hungry, I had forgotten about food. “At least we have plenty of water,” I said optimistically, and started to get up. I felt like one of the damaged clocks that my brother sometimes worked on. The magus bent down to give me a hand. Sophos turned to help as well.
“Do you really think that they’ll search for us? Won’t beheading us start a war?” he asked.
I considered the prestige value of cutting the head off one of your enemy’s premier advisors and compared it to the drawbacks of an all-out war. “She might let you two go”—I nodded—“to avoid a war or to delay one until she’s ready.”
“What about you?” Sophos asked.
“She might let me go as well. But she’d probably like best to catch me and let you two slip away.” No one was going to start a war over me, and I could be tremendously useful if I could be induced to work for her. I shivered, and something that wanted to be a groan came out of my mouth as a sigh. We had to stay close to the river because if we were going to be caught, I planned to throw myself in.
Once I was on my feet, momentum carried me forward. We followed a goat track that ran across the rocks right beside the river. The crumbled stones on the path rubbed the skin off the bottom of my feet, but I could see better, and we moved a little faster than before.
As we walked, mostly single file, Sophos continued to talk. “Gen?” he asked. “If you could be anywhere you wanted right now, where would it be?”
I sighed. “In bed,” I said. “In a big bed, with a carved footboard, in a warm room with a lot of windows. And sheets,” I added after I’d taken a few more steps, thinking of them rubbing against my sore feet, “as nice as the ones they sell on the Sacred Way. And a fireplace,” I added, expanding the daydream. “And books.”
“Books?” he asked, surprised.
“Books,” I said firmly, not caring if the magus thought it was odd. “Lots of books. Where would you be?”
“Under the apricot tree in my mother’s garden at the villa. I’d be watching my little sisters play, and anytime I wanted one, I’d reach up and pick another apricot.”
“They aren’t ripe this time of year.”
“Well, say you can be any place any time you like. Where would you be, magus?”
The magus was quiet so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer.
“I’d be in the main temple,” he said at last.
“Urgh,” I said, still associating the temple with boredom—a lot of people chanting and incense everywhere. My new, vehement belief in the gods had made me no more tolerant of the empty mumbling I’d seen in temples all my life.
The magus wasn’t finished. “Watching the marriage of Sounis and Eddis.”
I made a face. “Why are you so keen on this marriage?”
“The king needs an heir, and that heir needs to inherit Eddis as well as Sounis.”
“He does have a nephew,” Sophos pointed out.
“I’m sorry, of course he has an heir,” said the magus. “But he needs a son of his own for the throne to be secure. Which means he needs to have a wife.”
“And why should his heir be entitled to Eddis?” I asked.
He thought I deserved a complete answer, which shows more than anything how much his opinion of me had changed. “Entitled not just to Eddis but to Attolia as well,” he said. “You would have no way of knowing, Gen, but these three countries are free only by a rare combination of circumstances. The earliest invaders overran our country because they wanted us to pay them tribute. They were slowly replaced by the Merchant Empire, which mostly wanted our trade, and those overlords we eventually drove away. We could do that only because the Merchant Empire was busy fighting a greater threat elsewhere, the Medes. The Medes have been trying for a hundred years to expand their empire to span the middle sea. Soon they will want not only our land but to drive us off of it. For years and years they have fought what remains of the Merchant Empire, and while they fight, we are free. But when they are done fighting, Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia must be united to fight the winner or we will be subjugated as we never were before. There will be no Sounis, no Attolia, no Eddis, only Mede.”
“You’re sure the Medes will win?”
“I’m sure.”
It was something to think about while we trudged along. We were rising above the river; the bank grew steeper until it was dropping straight down six or eight feet into the water. We walked on a narrow trail of dirt packed on top of stones. To the left of the trail the stones were piled even higher. The river was narrower and deeper the further we went upstream. I could hear it churning as it forced its way through its narrow channel. The opposite bank was only a few hundred yards away, and once we passed a tiny, empty village. There were no trees, and the sun grew hotter. On our left the stones rose higher, cutting off our line of sight at every twist in the path.
When we came to another rise in the path, the magus helped Sophos climb onto a rock to look downriver.
“Do you see anyone?” we both asked him.
He said no and began to scramble down.
“Wait,” I said. “Do you see any dust?”
“You mean, in the air? Yes, there’s a cloud.”
“That’s horses on the road,” I said to the magus.
He agreed as he helped Sophos down. We tried to hurry, but while I wasn’t in much pain, I didn’t have the strength to move any faster. The next time Sophos looked he could see a glimpse of the horses as they came single file between the rocks. We walked on, until I caught my foot on a stone and stumbled forward. The magus was ahead of me. He heard me catch my breath and turned to help, but by that time I’d hit the ground. He tried to help me up but reached for the wrong shoulder. I could only flutter a hand in distress. My grandfather would have been proud of his training. A thief never makes a noise by accident. I bit my lip.
“Gen? Gen, don’t faint. We’ll leave the path and try to hide somewhere in the rocks. They may go past.”
“No,” I said. That was a hopeless plan, and we both knew it. If he and Sophos left me, they might get away, but there was a better alternative. Between breaths, I said, “There’s a bridge.” Upriver, islands of rock divided the flow of water. Debris had been swept down the river when it was in flood and had lodged against the rocks. One tree trunk stretched from our bank to a pile of rock in the center of the river.
The magus looked over his shoulder and saw the makeshift bridge. “Do you think we can get across?”
“Yes.” There was a second collection of branches that crossed to the far bank. It was more fragile, but it would bear my weight and probably the magus’s.
The bridge, such as it was, was still several hundred yards away. The horsemen were only twice that distance behind us. It was a race between the tortoise and the hare, but the tortoise had just enough head start, and he had the magus to drag him along. We reached the makeshift crossing with the pursuers just behind. They’d left their horses. They couldn’t manage the many pitfalls in the trail, and the men moved faster on foot.
“Sophos, you go first,” said the magus. “Then I’ll help Gen across.”
“No,” I said.
“Should I try to walk?” asked Sophos.
“No!” I insisted that he get on his hands and knees and creep across. One slip and he would be sucked into the river and probably never seen again. A river runs fastest at its narrowest point, and all of the water of the Seperchia had to squeeze between these banks. It was deceptively smooth, but it had the strength to drag a man under in a heartbeat. Sophos safely crawled to the island in the center of the river.
“We’ll go together, Gen,” the magus said.
“No.”
“Gen, I won’t leave you again.”
He looked over my shoulder at the men coming behind and tried to pull my good hand. By then I think he was fairly sure that the guards would let him and Sophos slip away. “Gen—”
“You have to tell Sophos that if the branches on the second bridge sag underneath him, he has to jump to the riverbank. If he tries to cross with his feet in the water, he’ll drown.”
The magus checked on Sophos, who was beginning to cross the second, more fragile bridge. It was made of small tree branches bundled together by the water and held in place where those branches had caught in crevices between the rocks. The wood was brittle, and as branches broke, the bridge dropped closer to the water. The magus knew Archimedes’s principle as well as I did.
“Gen?” He turned back to me.
“I can manage. I promise,” I told him.
Reluctantly he went. He crawled as carefully as Sophos.
Once he reached the island, I slithered down the bank to where the tree trunk was lodged and walked across. The wood had been washed smooth by the water and was a comfort to my bare feet. If it had been half as wide, I would have had no trouble.
The magus grinned as I landed on the rocks beside him and I turned to give him what help I could dislodging the bridge. There was a man starting to cross, but he jumped back to safety before the log came free. The current sucked it away. Over the drumming of water we could hear cursing.
I sent the magus across the second bridge. He went without protest; then I started across. Many of the small branches that held the bridge in place had broken under the magus’s weight, and it sagged dangerously near the water. If it dropped any lower, it would be swept away by the current, but the branches that had held the magus’s weight held mine as well. Halfway across, I saw the length of rope, twisted in the branches. I crept through the tangle of branches onto the rocks beside the magus, just as the men behind me began firing their handheld guns. I wasn’t very worried. The new guns will stop an infantry charge, but they can’t be aimed well enough to allow the rifleman to pick his target. Crossbows would have been much more dangerous, but the queen of Attolia liked to have her personal guard carry the rifles because she thought they were more impressive.
I pointed out the rope to the magus and asked if he could reach it. I had to shout above the sound of the river.
“They might be able to find another tree trunk on their bank. It would be better to get rid of both bridges.”
The magus nodded his head and grabbed on to a rock as he swung out over the river. He picked free a strand of the frayed rope and pulled on it. It broke in his hand. The men on the opposite bank fired again. The magus moved more slowly and picked three or four of the rope ends out of the tangle of the branches before he pulled. This time they held, and the whole bridge twitched and bent. The brittle branches broke off, the bridge shortened a few inches, and the far end dropped into the water. The current swept everything away.
Just then a bullet hit the rock near the magus’s hand. His hand slipped, and he fell forward with his left arm and shoulder in the river. He managed to keep his head up, but even so, the Seperchia nearly dragged him down. Sophos and I both grabbed him by the waistband, Sophos with both hands, I with only one. We pulled with all our strength. The magus kicked his feet, looking for a foothold and, with our help, backed himself out of the water. The riflemen fired again as we all sank behind large rocks, out of their sight. We picked our way between the rocks, up the steep bank of the river. It rose steeply about ten feet, and then the ground dropped away a little. We were safe from any more stray bullets, and we stopped to rest. Only then did I notice the blood dripping down my shirtfront. I touched my fingers gingerly to my cheek.
“One of the bullets must have knocked loose a shard of rock,” the magus said. “It’s taken a divot out of your face, I’m afraid.”
“All my beauty gone.” I sighed.
“It might heal clean,” the magus reassured me, although he could see that I was joking.
“I don’t think so,” I said, feeling the shape of the hole in the skin with my finger. I was quite certain I’d have a feather-shaped white scar. Getting across the makeshift bridge had been well done, and the god of thieves agreed, although some might not recognize his sign of approval.
“What if they sent a party up this side of the river as well?” Sophos asked.
The magus looked at me, and I shrugged with one shoulder. “We can look,” I said. We had left the dystopia behind on the far side of the river. There were rocks along the bank on this side, but the ground quickly flattened out into rolling fields broken by lines of scrub and trees. A road ran between the fields and the river. There were no houses as far as we could see, and no sign of anyone on the road.
“I think we can hope for the best,” I said. “But those men might ride back downstream, cross the bridge, and come up this side. We should keep moving.”
“Moving where?” the magus asked.
I shrugged again and waved my good hand upriver. “That way.” Away from the people who might be pursuing us.
We slid down the bank to the road and walked up it. The road was a cart track of powdered dirt. My feet were happier, and with fewer jolts my shoulder was happier as well. The reassuring sensation of floating down the road returned. As we walked, the fields on our right disappeared and were replaced with land that had been cleared once but not farmed for a long time. Wild grasses grew, and there were bushes, but we were the tallest thing in the landscape. I felt very exposed.
I felt much better when the sun dropped behind the hills and night fell, but then the cold came. A half hour after the sun was gone, a chill wind blew down the back of my neck. The magus and Sophos didn’t seem bothered by it. I pushed myself a little faster to warm up and breathed with my mouth open to keep my teeth from chattering. I couldn’t dismiss the crawling sensation in the middle of my back. I was thinking that the Attolian queen wanted at least one of her prisoners back very badly.
The mountains were ahead of us, and we continued toward them in the dark. On this side of the range they rose very steeply, directly out of the Attolian plain, just as they had risen out of the Sea of Olives. We kept to the road by feel. When my bare feet stepped into the stubble, I knew that we had wandered from the track. Even with the breeze pushing me down the road, we walked very slowly. I was tired. I could still hear the roar of the river in its chasm, and I longed for a drink of clean water. When I began to stumble, the magus took my arm, but he was too tall. Sophos slipped under my good shoulder and supported me. Thoughts of the riders that might be behind kept us moving.
After a long time the moon rose, and the Seperchia, which had curved away from the road, began to curve back. The ground we were on had been rising, and the river ran beside us through a chasm thirty or forty feet deep. Its far bank was a cliff face that lifted straight up to the shoulders of the mountains. If we hadn’t crossed at the makeshift bridge, the trail we had been following would have dumped us into the water.
Our road ended in a bridge, and without discussion we started across it. Just before we reached the top of its stone arch, the magus stopped and then turned around. If he’d had ears like a horse, he would have swiveled them forward.
“What do you hear?” I asked.
“Hoofbeats.”
We crossed over the bridge and walked directly into the arms of the soldiers waiting there.