Notes: Written for Yuletide 2015 for shusu. This is set during The Queen of Attolia, after Eugenides comes home. The engineers close the mountain pass (Eugenides steals the Magus) and then prepares to steal his queen. Warning for mild depression.
The engineers closed the pass on the Wednesday after the first frost.
It was cold and wet, but they were all used to it — in the mountains one could barely expect three months of warm weather — and the air was saturated with the smell of cedar. It did not come from the wood used as a scaffold to hold up the mountain. The cedar wood was too valuable still, and did not smell so intense. Instead, it came from the shrubbery, a sort of cypress.
The long mountain path has been sabotaged as best as they could, by diverting small rivers and leaving this or that dam to it's pitiful end among the masses of snow they were expecting.
Most of the engineers have already cleared the pass, since the last obstacle would make it completely impassable.
Despina checked the calculation a third time, the risk of the whole mountain coming crumbling down on them was still too high for her comfort. Even at the risk of dooming Eddis to massive mud slides, they were continuing. Being overrun by Attolia, Sounis and the Mede would be preferrable to being buried under rock in her opinion — but there weren't any in the upper echelons who agreed with that assessment. And so down the mountain will go.
The pass was named after her grandfather, who was the first to make it possible to cross, and amidst other minor accomplishments built a 100 feet bridge over a 1000 feet deep ravine.
He was dead now, and so was all of her family, her brother only dead six months.
She looked up at the masses of mud and stone held back by a simple wooden construction. "Clear the path!", she yelled in the deepest voice she could muster — deep voices travel clearer.
There was a scramble uphill, but most of the workers who had been loosening the dirt with little explosions were already waiting in Eddis. She was one of the last people present. The sky was clear and bright.
"Ready!", a voice shouted.
She took on last look down the edge of the ravine, and then called back: "Set!"
The rope anchoring her pulled tight. Should anything happen contrary to the plan, this was her life-line. She wasn't holding out hope, her against the mud and dirt of a whole mountain.
"Go!"
It's scary, how easily the beam pulls out, and then the whole construction fell down under the weight of the pass.
And then the mountain crumbled down. So did she.
[...]
She had been a wreck well before she was buried under a mountain, but now she also had to deal with a lame leg. The leg was not the problem, other people were.
(Other people had always been the problem.)
She was no longer able to pull her weight at the construction sites, on the other hand the Queen knew her name. Gave her a recommendation even. It was useless because she did not have her family's company anymore, but the thought counted, right?
She was seeing the court's doctor, a man named Galen, who described her saffron for her issues, tutted, and said she was healing well. She might even walk without pain one day!
(It was hard to get exited about that when the furthest she could walk was barely ten stadia.)
The waiting game they were playing concerning the war worried her. The possibility of the mountains collapsing on her, even here in the capital worried her.
She was prescribed lethium for the pain. The pain was not what worried her. It was how she could not sleep without feeling suffocated by mud. And her boss, who treated her like a fresh apprentice not a woman who had built clock towers that lasted sieges, tore down a megaron and razed a mountain top. But there was much less she could do about that.
Back in Eddis, back the capital with all the trappings thereof, and she still saw a sliding wall of mud everywhere. It was there when she was sleeping, it was there when she was awake.
The man under whom she now worked (because a single woman cannot head a company, and to be honest, she did not think she would be able to, much as she would like to prove her boss wrong) did not like bathing, and covers his stink in a manly odour of cedar. It just made him smell like a moving mountain, dirt and all. Often she had to remind herself she was not yet buried in the mud and safe — for certain parameters of safe — in the capital.
They were still at war. Her family remained dead.
She continued to work, although her duties had changed from engineering to convincing people who knew nothing about mathematics that their senseless ideas did not make sense. There was talk of building an underground passage to the sea.
[...]
Then, the messenger of the Queen arrived in the death of the night.
She was needed for an urgent consultation in a secret matter. Not sure if the message really was for her, she made her way to the palace.
The Queen apparently needed somebody to talk the Thief out of something, probably committing suicide if rumour had it right. Why not send for the next best cripple of noble blood?
(Rumour had it right very seldom. And if the Thief was set on anything, it won't be her to talk him out of it. She had heard however, of the folly of going to prison and bringing home the Hamiathes' gift; and well. There was something to be said for underdogs. If she could do something, she would.)
[...]
The palace was set in twilight. The queen was busy and instead she was lead to the library. On the way there, it continued getting darker, even though sunrise was upon them.
The guard, who had exchanged places with the messenger at the minister for commerce and foundry's office, motioned her to go in. "I'll wait for you here, Madam," he said, and she almost hit him with her walking stick. She was not even thirty. (But ugly from hard work, and construction accidents.)
The air was stale and smells faintly of saffron. It reminded her of home.
Despina stepped forward hesitantly, then continued much surer. She had a purpose here, and who cared if the Queen's Thief was in mourning and half mad. (So was she.) She would built on the ramblings of madmen and made them see sense.
When a tall man emerged out of the corner, she almost ran into one of the shelves filled with scrolls.
"I presume you are the engineer?" he asked, and something about him rubbed her wrong. It might have been the height, or the way he eyed her head filled with dark curly locks, or maybe how he waited in the dark corners of a deserted library for unsuspecting women.
"Yes," she answered, "my name is Despina and I was sent to discuss a secret project. With Eugenides." Not whoever you are, she added silently.
"He's indisposed," the man said with a quiet dignified voice. He sounded like a courtier, and that did not endear him further.
"I am here because the minister of commerce asked me too. Are you in the habit of ignoring the minister of commerce's wishes?"
There was a waft of saffron, and then a raspy voice said, "The minister of commerce said he would send the general secretary of engineers." The Queen's Thief emerged out of the dark.
As she squinted, she could see the faint outline of a door behind a shadow, but it was too dark to see anything else. The shadow was almost smaller than she was, and certainly thinner — rumours certainly hadn't exaggerated the state of the Thief.
"I wasn't aware of that, Eugenides. He sent me in his stead," she says, reduces a complex matter into a few words. Her boss did not like to be awake before sunrise. She was the secretary's gopher, sent for in the middle of the night when healthy people were asleep. Barely useful for that, they told her when they hired her. She would be mad, if she had not been so tired.
Hearsay is, the Thief is volatile. Unpredictable. Mad.
"Did he." Eugenides said intently, and gone was the tired silhouette. He held the lamp up, changed his posture, and there he was: the thief who stole from the gods.
She stood straight and didn't waver. Why should she? She brought down mountains. "He said all business addressed to the company between sunset and sunrise was my responsibility."
"Heh," Eugenides made a sound that was probably supposed to be laughter. "what a nice coincidence." He moves back and holds the door open. "We need somebody with not a lot of obligations and an intimate knowledge of the geographical lay of the land with a practical application in mind later on."
"Excuse me," Despina said, "but it seems to me as if you are looking for a librarian. I'm not qualified for that." She was so focused on the Thief — remembering him from parades and the occasional day at court with her parents — and she remembered him more lively. Less like a contained explosion.
"It seems we have a problem, then." The other guy joins the conversation, but it's useless. It's already decided she's going to join Eugenides on his quest, whatever it might be. He's broken, but it's left him with a much sharper edge, and one could call the terror of the court dull by any meaning of the word.
"All the other librarians are unsuitable."
"And who are you?" She asks, looking at his ink-stained fingers.
"The Magus of Sounis"
"Oh," she said, and even that comes out embarrassed. Every scholar of any worth has heard of the magus of Sounis who revolutionised how they interact with historic buildings. (And that is not even his main field of study.)
She looks back at Eugenides, who watches her with a peculiar expression. "So you weren't aware that he's an esteemed guest of the Queen?"
"Oh… no. Not at all. I am sorry, Sir.", she looks to the Magus. "There weren't any rumours of any kind."
"Good.", the thief says. "Here's what I need to know in a month."
[...]
They are not going to have a way through the diaspora worked out in a month, not if the Magus and Eugenides continue to derail points by making it about the theory behind.
Currently they are up in their eyeballs about the theory of logic. It's not even about who's right anymore (she caught them switching arguments midway through), and she has had enough.
"Will you shut up about a priori! This is a map, and by definition, it shows the landscape! It's also wrong, because the river doesn't follow the road, because the river was there first. Also, what you might have forgotten, is that I do have extensional amounts of blue-prints for the original road construction at home, so we may rebuilt them again." She plants the entire stack of collected scrolls in front of them.
They both flinched. (So predictable.) Those scrolls were delicate, yes, but she didn't care anymore, because she was tired of company and her head ached, and those were sadly common enough that it's not reason enough to quit — not when the life of hundreds is on the scale.
"It's probably a good thing we didn't find a librarian.", the Magus admitted after a short silence.
Eugenides let her go not to long after, and asked if she would open her home's library to them occasionally.
[...]
Ironically, it was the Magus who visited first.
He apologised for intruding, apologised for Eugenides absence, and inquired after the familiar smell of Saffron.
"It's used against the desolation of the spirit. It's supposed to be good for comfort and recovery." She shrugged. "Sometimes it helps better than others."
The Magus looked faintly embarrassed for a minute, then he asked after the plants near the window. "I hope to finish a compendium of herbs and plants during my stay here.", he justified his inquiries.
Despina brought scrolls and maps her family has collected over the years. (Those she hadn't sold yet. She was thinking about keeping them, now that the consulting fee from Eddis' coffers was going to come in.) When he does not lurk in corners, the Magus is nice, quiet company.
He did not ridicule her, nor was he interested in her cat naps over books, and it was refreshing to have someone in the house who was not her.
[...]
In the intervening period the Magus continued to visit her. Eugenides dropped by occasionally like a prowling cat. Sometime he brought books, and sometimes he only wanted to be scratched on the back for being such a good thief. When he stayed for a while, he was almost always writing.
The third time she noticed Eugenides grabbing the ink pot with his non-existent hand, and his resulting look of horror, shame and guilt, she began that conversation she hated, "My physician has me doing exercises."
Both the Magus and Eugenides look up. The Magus asks, "Why?"
"My hip was wreaked while we brought down the mountain pass of the Seperchia, and I cannot move my knee."
The Magus looked astonished, probably not because of her leg — it was obvious — but as if he did not know the Eddisians had been closing the terrain. He was rather intelligent, but he did not seem to grasp other people going just as far (if not further) to safe their countries.
"I thought your cane was a fashion statement," Eugenides told her.
She laughed bitterly. "You must not know very many women."
"I do my best." He replied. "But you always look very well put together."
"On average it takes me two hours," she admitted. "I am too anxious to leave my bed otherwise."
"That must be uncomfortable."
"It certainly is a pain," she agreed. "but my physician gave me lessons. Steps I should celebrate."
"I imagine that was very helpful," Eugenides muttered sardonically. "Is your physicians name Galen by the way?"
"Yes, how do you know?"
"He's a quack." Eugenides sulked for the rest of the day, and not even the Magus arguing about the Axiom of Archimedes (with false premises) could bring him to reply.
She was not going to bring up their respective lack of health again.
[...]
The rainfall of spring started, and the two of them were still visiting often. Despina was designing a lift, tentatively working with water-power, to bridge the cliffs to the sea. It was of strategical importance to have an independent trading route.
"Eddis had me go visit the invalids some days ago.", Eugenides said into the silence.
"Ah." Despina said, because there was not much to say that was innocuous. "Did it help?"
There was silence again. Despina looked up to see the Magus shaking his head. Was not innocuous, then. Eugenides face was stony.
"There will not be many more. You are going to steal peace."
"I'm wondering if it will be worth it," he replied his face still a mask, "you weren't crippled in a war. You also weren't the cause of the war."
She wasn't going to comment on the last part, because she was crippled as a direct consequence of the war. "Sure it will be worth it. Either you win, then you've won, or you'll be dead, and then you have won also."
The Magus choked, and when his throat was clear again, said: "That's a fallacy, since it implies there are only two possible outcomes."
"Are there more?", Eugenides asked.
"So you don't dream of her dungeons. I must have imagined it then." The Magus stared at Eugenides, and the same looked back grimly. Despina could have vanished and they would not have noticed her.
"Are you saying I can't do it?", Eugenides said quietly, but there was steel behind every word.
"I'm saying, the Eugenides I know would jump first, then see if his god catches him."
The tension was so thick, it could have been cut by a knife. It was not the first time she wondered what kind of relationship they had, and how they met. During the quest for Hamiathes' gift — but was that all? She could not begin to understand them.
Eugenides snorted. "I don't believe in gods."
"You're giving up then," the Magus responded and then sighs, "I thought so."
Eugenides stood up suddenly, and the desk almost tipped over with him. "I know exactly what you are doing."
"Is it working?", the Magus asked mildly.
"Damn you." He sat down again.
Despina moved the desk back, and started a question about the Aracthus river. By the stillness of the thief, he already knew how to steal himself a queen.
What kind of self-destructing tendencies do you need to have to love the person that hurt you so much? Her mind flashed back to a wall of mud coming down on her, and she had to laugh. It is either that, or cry. Her tears were worth more.
The next day, neither the magus nor Eugenides blackened her doorstep. She heard he had left on a ten day mission when the Magus came back to look at her trees.
[...]
It took a month until she saw him again. Of course, the Queen's Thief and now a thief of queens, comes back triumphant.
She had hoped, but to see it happening is uplifting, to say the least. When the court has cleared, and Eugenides comes back to the library, she asked him how it went.
"We're all cripples in the service of our queen," Eugenides said, mockingly. "I almost drowned, almost hanged, and almost did not become the king."
Despina grinned. "And some of us even deserved it. The magus should cut off his nose to spite his face, so that he can finally belong and be free from the trappings of Sounis."
Eugenides grimaced. "That's a terrible saying."
"You would think so," the magus said.
"You would cut off your nose." Despina added. "You are aware that you just helped broker a peace you did not want that is ultimately going to lead to an alliance against your country?"
"Sounis is a strong country. It will not fall easily. And the Mede are coming. What will you be doing next week? Wallow in your own self-pity?"
"That's a low blow." Despina says after quite awhile in which she processed how much that had hurt, "But since all my friends are writing books, I might go into academia myself. There's plenty to occupy myself."
[...]
Ten years after, she has blown up her second mountain. This time, she is allowed to keep her leg.