The room was quiet, the others flicking glances at me. I ignored them. After years in Sounis's palaces being eyed with disgust by my uncle and my own father and courtier after courtier, I assure you I am unrivaled at pretending not to notice other people's glances.
Megan Whalen TurnerThe clear light of the library was slanting in through the glass-paneled doorway to my right, falling on the table between my tutor and me and on dust motes hung in the air. The tiny flecks drew my eye, and I watched as they dipped and swirled in invisible currents.
"They are beautiful in the light, are they not?" my tutor asked. They were, catching the sun and shining like tiny stars themselves.
"You know, there are just as many outside the sun's rays that are invisible," she said. Then, in the way of dreams, she lifted her hand into the air and moved a single dust mote into the light. "And you?" she asked. She lifted her hand again, just beyond the edge of the light, and I knew she held another mote and could move it as easily into the way of the sun, and I said, "No, thank you. I am content where I am.
Sophos, you sleep with a knife under your pillow? I'm hurt."
"I'm sorry," said Sounis, afraid that he had made contact with his wild swing.
"I was joking. Wake up the rest of the way, would you?"
"Gen, it's the middle of the night."
"I know," said the king of Attolia.
Sounis tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. He was sitting up in his bed. The sky was still entirely dark, and he couldn't have been asleep for long. He suspected that he had just dropped off. The bare knife was still in his hand, he realized, and he rooted under his pillow for the sheath.
"Don't you trust my palace security?"
"Yes, of course," Sounis said, trying to think of some other reason besides mistrust to sleep with a knife. He heard Eugenides laugh.
"My queen and I sleep with a matched set under our pillows, as well as handguns in pockets on the bedposts. Don't be embarrassed.
...I asked Ochto what in the name of all that was sacred he thought he was doing.
"Helping you," said Dirnes.
"Why?"
They put the soldier down, and Ochto straightened to look me in the eye. "Because I know nothing about kings and princes, but I know men.
One cannot toss ambassadors back like bad fish," said Eugenides. "You treat them with care, or you'll find you've committed an act of war.
Megan Whalen TurnerTag: diplomacy
Ridiculous to think what indignities I would suffer in silence, if I knew that I was to be rewarded with an oversize bucket of hot water," the magus said as he settled into the bath the servants had filled for him.
Megan Whalen TurnerSounis had been thinking of Ambiades. "He would have been a better man under different circumstances."
Gen looked at him. "True enough," he said. "But does a good man let his circumstances determine his character?
The flat top of the hill was scattered with the bodies of dead men in the uniforms of Sounis and Eddis. The outposts of both armies had met here. As I stood staring, I thought, These are my dead. All of them. The battle hadn't been unanticipated or forced on me, as the raid in the villa had been. I had chosen it. These men, Eddisian and Sounisian alike, had died for my decisions.
When the magus stepped from the bushes toward the back part of the hill, I was more than horrified. I was perilously close to distraught.
...
When he pulled away and looked into my face, I knew that he would tell me that I was Sounis and that I needed to pull myself together.
"Your uncle," he said, "in all the years I saw him rule, never had a moment of self-doubt. Never a regret for a single life lost. Do you understand?"
I understood that I didn't want to be my uncle.
Ten thousand!" I shouted at the walls, back in the room with the wooden shutters, now open, so that anyone could hear me, on the porch or probably across the compound. "That arrogant bastard landed ten thousand men at Tas-Elisa. In my port! Mine!" When I was a child and playmates snatched my toys out of my hands, I tended to smile weakly and give in. Years later I was acting the way I should have as a child. Probably not the most mature behavior for a king, but I was still cursing as I swung around to find a delegation of barons in the doorway behind me. My father, Baron Comeneus, and Baron Xorcheus among them.
They thought it was how a king behaved.
I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to pursue a more reasonable line of thought, but more reasonable thoughts made me angry again.
I am an ambassador," Akretenesh warned me, anger bringing his confidence back. "You cannot shoot."
"I don't mean to," I reassured him, still smiling. I adopted his soothing tones. "Indeed, you are the only man I won't shoot. But if I aimed at anyone else, it might give others a dangerously mistaken sense of their own safety." I raised my voice a trifle, though it wasn't really necessary. "We will have another vote, Xorcheus."
They elected me Sounis. It was unanimous.
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