Work Text:
“Costis has gone mad,” Aristogiton announced mournfully.
“What did he do?”
“First he yelled ‘boots,’” Aris explained, “and then he punched the King.”
--
It wasn’t that Costis was stupid. And he wasn’t mad either, beyond the temperamental sense. He’d known better than to do an idiotic thing like befriend the secretary of a foreign ambassador. And maybe he should have known better than to befriend a servant boy who inadvertently introduced him to that same secretary, but, well, no reasonable person could have anticipated this outcome.
--
“I hate you,” Costis told the man who held his life and death in his hands. “I hope you die somewhere cold and lonely. I hope the Mede come back for you. I hope your mother-”
“From your lips to the gods’ ears,” the bastard cautioned him. “And besides- you know my mother’s dead.”
“Do I know that? Do I know anything about you? You lying little ass-“
“You knew I was lying about who I was,” he objected. “You said my stories were nonsense all the time!”
“Oh fuck off.”
“Look,” he said, “do you want to be executed or not? I’d prefer not, and I’d wager Kamet would too.”
“Don’t say his name.”
“Costis,” he said, “don’t make this situation worse than it needs to be.”
Costis hit him a second time for good measure before they came to an agreement.
--
The first he knew of the boy was that someone in the kitchens had bitten Onarkus. It was a fine reference as to his character. Everybody disliked Onarkus. Beet-red with fury, Onarkus had thrashed the culprit, and then, before the eyes of all his delighted underlings, had been bitten again. After this second incident, he’d demanded a guardsman be sent to deliver a properly unforgettable beating – and perhaps a night or two in the cells for good measure.
“He does know he can’t give us orders,” the Captain had been heard to say, but he’d still nodded his head at Costis, message clear – make Onarkus go away.
And so Costis had been sent down to listen to the boy’s rambling tall tales about why he was justified, really, and solemnly declare that he’d have a beating the likes of which he’d never forget, and then let him go.
But that hadn’t been the end. After that, they’d begun running into each other all over the palace, the boy always avoiding work, and Costis, begrudgingly, enabling it. And once or twice, Costis had run into him in the company of the Mede ambassador’s secretary.
--
“You should tell a story,” Costis said.
I was still furious with him then, and so I said nothing, but he looked at me, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before I did. We had all told each other stories, you see, him and Boots and I. Boots had started it – everything he said was one tall tale, it sometimes seemed. Costis would point them out, that he couldn’t possibly be indentured, that he couldn’t possibly be from the family he said he was, that he couldn’t possibly have run away before, and Boots’s stories just kept getting bigger. He might have said he was a foreign prince by the end.
And so I’d started telling stories too. There wasn’t time for many before Boots did run away that last time, apparently successfully, but I did tell them. And Costis told a story or two of his own. True ones, from him. He was simple, Costis. He wouldn’t have survived five minutes longer in a proper court.
Somewhat against my will, I liked that about him.
We kept telling stories after Boots ran away, sometimes, in the gardens where we’d been friends with him. But it wasn’t the same without him.
--
My guilt rose every day that the shores of Attolia grew closer. I had known, that day we reunited, that I was choosing between his life and my own. If we stayed, I would die, and if we returned to Attolia, he would, for his treason in abandoning his duty to follow the orders of a sandal-polishing boy. When at last we came to land, and we were taken to the dungeons, I was more certain than anything that I was right, and I’d killed him.
I should have convinced him to stay in Mede, with or without me. A defector could live there like a king lived anywhere else, as one of the finest imperial amusements. I should have convinced him to run away with me, even though he didn’t want to listen, even though he was convinced the borders of Attolia would be our finest protection.
But you know my mistake already, I think. I didn’t realize until I saw him with my own eyes. We were called into a royal audience and it was only then that I learned, when I approached him and looked closely upon him, that it was not our friend’s pleas that had brought Costis to me. It was the order of his king.
--
“I really thought you had killed him,” Costis said. “I was furious when Kamet finally told me everything.”
“You know Kamet as well as I do. You know he needed-"
“Forget Kamet,” said Costis. “I couldn’t believe you didn’t let me help.”
--
I couldn’t speak a word to him in front of the Braeling, of course, and so it was only much later that we managed to speak to each other in full honesty.
“I did mean my apology,” he said to me, “I know Attolia isn’t what you wanted. But I hope there are things here in which you might find some joy.”
I was forthright with him. “I would have preferred it if you had sent Costis to me to keep, rather than sending him to fetch me like a dog with a bird.”
“And what do you prefer now?”
He knew us both too well, I think. I wondered suddenly how much time they had spent speaking of me, and whether it was more than Costis and I had spoken of the sandal-polisher during his long months of absence, whose cause I at last knew.
“I should prefer some time in the gardens,” I said, at last, and he nodded.
It brought me more sorrow than I had anticipated to know that I would be separating we three friends once more.
--
Costis’s arrival had brought the worst of all news upon the palace, and his departure – save for the events I have previously described – was comparatively quiet.
At the time, I recall, I was more attentive to Relius’s leaving. It was only some years later that I heard from a friend that, the night of his departure, Costis had been seen on his own, walking through the palace gardens.
--
“I have to say,” Costis said, “I thought I’d done more than enough for you to avoid being forcibly retired.”
The King had insisted on gathering a party to go riding in the country, which everyone had agreed from the moment he’d announced it was immensely suspicious. The Queen only let him ride the elephants during certain festivals, or if the mood struck the pair of them, and normally it was as easy as pulling teeth to get him on a horse. Given this out-of-character choice, a party had been easily assembled, though it had taken several days for the king to trim it down to acceptable numbers – and, more pressingly, to the desired individuals.
“I’m not ‘forcibly retiring’ you,” he objected. “You forcibly retired yourself. More than once.”
I couldn’t entirely restrain a snort, and the King shot me a look. I told him that I was on his side, though in truth, it was less Costis’s retirement that I was concerned about than Kamet’s. He didn’t like being the centre of attention in the palace, and he always was. Particularly when foreign mercenaries still tried half-heartedly to assassinate him once or twice a year.
“It’s very generous,” said Kamet, his tone of skepticism ill-disguised. “Annux-”
The King took pity on him. “You find it horribly rural and you hate it,” he agreed. “But let me at least show you two things before you decide.”
He showed us the library first. It was a well-lit and well-appointed room, with fine lecterns and an already well-appointed writing desk. And, on one of the lecterns, a particular novelty that we see much more of in Attolia to-day, though I personally prefer the true artistry of a scribe’s craft, and Kamet has always agreed with me.
“A recent component of our apology from the Pents,” the King said, showing off his bribe, the way the letters and carvings had been pressed hard onto the page. “Our friend who is Sounis has already got half a dozen men trying to replicate the machine that made it.”
The Pentish letters were strangely shaped, and of a very even size, but I could not yet read them well.
“Why always bribery?” Kamet asked him.
“Sometimes also kidnapping,” said Costis, which made the King laugh.
“One more thing,” said the King, and brought us to the gardens. He had sent the palace gardeners here himself a year ago, not long after the closest any attempt ever came to killing Kamet. One or two had stayed on to prepare this surprise, and I could see, even with my inexpert gaze, that their labours were more than successful. I took in its recipients’ reactions now, looking at it. Kamet adjusted the frame of his spectacles.
“It’s beautiful,” Costis said. Indeed it was. And no small cost either.
We explored a little in relative silence and solitude. There were a number of guards around – and all the neighbouring estates were themselves Attolian veterans, trusted and vetted – but with the estate surrounded, none joined us there.
Eventually Kamet and I sat on on a stone bench, which would someday be beneath a tree, but was not yet. The King sat on the ground, boyish, and said, “have you a story then, Kamet?”
Kamet regarded him with a fond exasperation, and then said to me, “have I told you of Immakuk and Ennikar and the Song of Reeds?”
He had not, and so we sat there and listened as he told us of how Ennikar had won a reed flute in a contest of strength, and had thought his prize useless until Immakuk discovered how to play it, and then, having listened to Immakuk play and learned from him, Ennikar used it to woo a storm's daughter. Kamet was very good at recitation, and all three of us were captivated. It occurred to me only later to wonder if the flute had the same meaning for the author of the poem that it had for certain young men in Attolia, and whether or not Kamet knew.
When his recitation was done, the King’s eyes were closed, sunlight burnishing his face like copper, bringing out all the warmth in him.
Kamet said, “there’s a reference in those verses to Immakuk and Ennikar visiting a river of time, but if such a story was ever written anywhere, I have never seen it.”
And the King said, “Eugenides stole a fistful of time, once,” but he did not tell the story.
Costis, less subtle said, “it isn’t about the garden, Boots.”
And the King nodded again. His eyes were still closed.
Kamet said, “it can wait. We know what you mean. But it can wait.”
It was only his choice that mattered, really.
The King leaned forward and pressed his forehead against Kamet’s leg, and Kamet reached down and very gently touched his hair. Costis knelt beside his king.
I turned carefully away.