A/N: All the characters and much of the plot contained herein are the creation and property of the marvelous Megan Whalen Turner. It is with utmost regret that I must admit to having no part in them.
(This first vignette is not my favorite. I humbly request that you leave a review anywhere along the way letting me know what you think, and deign to read the later ones even if you think this first one is dull. Many thanks!)
I: One Side Dreaming
Spoilers for The Thief and the first few chapters of The Queen of Attolia.
The rust-fringed iron of the cell door stood firm between them, but it did not shut out the sound from the other side.
The thief was weeping. Or was it not weeping, so much as muttering? The old tongue of Eddis, it must be; she knew the boy had a scholarly bent, but he sounded delirious, mumbling the same words over and over.
A prayer?
The Eddisians tended to be devout compared with the peoples of Attolia or Sounis. The ambassador had warned her; it was not only politics and custom for them. Even so, the little goatfoot Thief seemed to have an even deeper sense of the divine than anyone else. He spoke as if he expected a reply. A chill settled on her skin, goosebumps prickling until she ran her palms over her arms to smooth them.
It was late. She had a council meeting early the next morning; she should be resting. Why was she even in this part of her palace? Exacting justice for crimes committed against her, especially by a foreigner, was not a usual source of insomnia.
Yet here she was, listening to the ravings of a fevered boy in her prison, instead of sleeping.
She did not know how much longer she stood, hands clammy at her side, ingesting his voice. She knew it was dark, dark enough for the quarter-moon to be well past the apex of its arc across the cloudless sky, when she finally went back up the stairs and made her way to her chambers. Her feet were heavy, and her limbs wanted to do little more than shuffle, but still she forced herself to move with her same trademark grace. In this palace, there was always someone watching.
Phresine, napping at her door, leapt up to attend her queen, but one look at Attolia's face and she pulled back, murmuring a "Goodnight, Your Majesty."
Irene slipped easily from her evening gown into a nightgown, but even as she slipped beneath her heavy down quilts, her exhausted eyes would not close.
She had the Thief of Eddis in her prison.
Have I exceeded the restraints of tradition? Have I offended the gods?
No, Your Majesty.
She recalled the glimmer of the blade against the firelight. She thought of how he'd appealed for mercy, pulled a please, please from a dry throat with abandon, begged as if his heart were breaking. His voice ran around in her mind, niggling at old wounds, poking at something unidentifiable—some part of herself she must have buried long ago, not to recognize it—like a careless child poking at a wasp's nest with a pointed stick.
The image of his bloodless face, lips stained blue, wouldn't leave her. Her muscles were rigid, and she realized her teeth were clamping anxiously. Sleep and peace were as evasive as the Thief had been, but not so easily caught, in the end.
She was nothing. She had taken away his livelihood; his ability to be himself, be a Thief; and yet he still stole from her: stole her unshakable self-assurance, stole away tiny flakes of the stone she had unwittingly molded around her heart. No matter what she did or did not do to him, he made her nothing.