The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner Read Free Book Online

attendants stepped forward to say that it was time for the king to return to his apartment to eat. The king’s instructors thanked the king with every appearance of sincerity.
    In the hallway, the king dropped back to walk behind his attendants and beside Costis.
    “So, Costis,” he said, “have you learned all you need to know of Mede?”
    “No, sir,” said Costis, judging that to be the safest answer.
    The king yawned, covering his mouth with his hand. “Me neither,” he said.
    They had reached a corner. The attendants who had been in front of them had politely slowed until the king was once more even with his retinue. Sejanus murmured a direction.
    The king looked around. “I thought it was that way.” He pointed.
    “No, Your Majesty,” the attendants patiently chorused.
     
    The entrance to the king’s apartments, like the queen’s, was always guarded. The king nodded at the guards and passed through the door from the corridor. Costis hesitated, unsure if he should wait in the hall or pass through himself. A hand between his shoulder blades impelled him forward. Through the door, he found a guardroom, elegantly paneled in wood, lit by deep windows in the far wall. It was the entrance room to the king’s private chambers, and it held more soldiers and one of Teleus’s lieutenants. Costis himself, he remembered with a shock, was also one of the captain’s lieutenants.
    The guards standing around the room at attention must moments before have been occupying the benches that lined the walls. The king waved, a gesture of simultaneous recognition and dismissal, and the guards settled from the rigor of attention to a slightly more relaxed but respectful posture. A guard opened a door to the king’s right, and he passed through, followed by his attendants. Costis knew from palace rumor and from Sejanus that the room beyond must be the king’s bedroom. There was no other anteroom.
    These were not the royal apartments with layers and layers of social defense, anterooms, audience rooms,and more anterooms, between the guardroom and the queen’s most private space. The queen had not vacated the king’s apartments, and Eugenides had evidently declined to move into what were traditionally the queen’s rooms. If he had, his rooms would have connected through interior doors to the king’s suite and nighttime traffic between the rooms would have been a matter for speculation and not public record. As it was, the king could not visit the queen without an embarrassing trek through a roomful of his guards and attendants, down a corridor, and along the same public path past the queen’s guards and her attendants. It was well known that this had never happened. The king rarely visited the queen’s apartments and only during the day. The queen had never been in these apartments.
    “You may go if you like, Costis,” the king called from the inner room. “But don’t be late getting back for the afternoon court.”
    The door closed and Costis was left standing. He looked helplessly at the lieutenant, who stared back with an appraising look. He looked over Costis’s shoulders at the veterans in the squad behind him. The hair on Costis’s neck crawled as the veterans offered their silent report. It may have been positive; the lieutenant smiled and told Costis that he was off duty.
    “Then I just leave?”
    “That is so. Be sure to get back in time to escort him from here to the afternoon court. I’ll make sure one ofthe men on duty in the afternoon tells you where to stand in the Audience Hall.”
    Only as Costis stepped into the passage outside the king’s apartment did he realize he had no idea how to get out of the palace. He looked over his shoulder at the guards outside the king’s door. They looked blandly back, and Costis wasn’t fool enough to ask directions. Taking a deep breath, he decided to retrace his steps to the main part of the palace. Once there he would be on familiar ground.
    He found that he had