AN: Many thanks to chaila and attackfish for betaing, and to xylaria for cheerleading. Title adapted from Sappho, because I am just that cliche.
"You were the princess Irene the first time we met."
-The Queen of Attolia
Helen shrugged her shoulders, trying to make her saffron-hued dress settle less tightly around her muscular arms, then flicked her gaze right and left to see if anyone had noticed the fidget. Her guards stood impassive, as did the minister of war. She knew her uncle well enough, though, to read disapproval in his blank features.
That was no surprise. He had not wanted her here.
"Let them come to you," he had said. "Wait in the throne room. Let us welcome them." Left unspoken: let us assess their arms. Let us judge the truth of their claims of peace. "You are Eddia, now. You stand and wait for no one."
"Eddis," she corrected. It threw him off balance, and she pressed on. "I will be Eddis. But until I am crowned, I am only Helen. I have no right to sit on the throne. And I will wait in the courtyard, as I have always done for honored guests."
She knew it was a poor argument. She was no longer the third-born princess, trailing her father out of the megaron with the guest cup in her hands and holding it poised while adults did business over her head. But she also knew she must begin her reign as she intended to go on: boldly meeting her neighbors as equals, not hiding from their emissaries like a rabbit in its warren.
Which was why she was standing here, bundled into a dress that had once been her mother's, while her cousin Agape stood dutifully behind her with the guest cup and the sun beat down hotter and hotter through the thin mountain air.
Helen was just about to shift again, and damn her uncle's disapproval, when the gates to the courtyard swung open. In trooped twelve men, marching in lockstep, followed by a litter, followed by twelve more.
The litter's gilded trim shone against its russet cedar-wood panels, and red silk tassels gleamed at every corner despite the dusty road. Helen noticed none of that. She had eyes only for the delicate figure stepping out, her crimson gown brushing the courtyard.
Irene's features had sharpened in the four years since Helen had last seen her, shedding the soft flush of childhood to become all planes and angles, and she stood tall where once she would have slouched to hide her height. She was beautiful.
But then, Helen had never thought otherwise.
"Be welcome, Attolia," she said, only barely remembering to use the proper name.
She wanted to step forward, to reach for Irene, but this was her country, and it was not her role to move toward others. Attolia came to her instead and held out both hands. Her fingers were soft against Helen's callouses, as they had always been.
"I thank you for your hospitality, sister." Attolia took the cup from Agape, and, with a glance at Helen, drank deep.
"You didn't know she was coming herself," Helen told the minister of war later, in the privacy of her library. It wasn't a question, and he didn't answer it. She slouched into a chair, folds of her dress be damned, and pressed the palm of her hand to her forehead. "We need better informants in the lowlands. And here. We should have known as soon as she crossed the border."
"I am not the man for that," he said. She didn't need to look up to know that he was still standing at parade rest.
Helen sighed. "I know. I cannot rely on you for all things. Aulus, then? Or Crodes?"
"Crodes would do," he said, after a brief silence. "But Therespides would do better." She looked up, startled, aware of his animosity for Therespides. He met her eyes and grimaced. "He has connections in Attolia. And he is loyal to you."
"Yes," she said, barely pausing. A queen must be decisive. "Send word to him to come to the palace."
"And meet with you?"
She shook her head. "And meet with you."
"You will be occupied?" he asked. His tone was carefully blank, which she supposed meant he was trying to hide disapproval. It was a new dance they were learning, ruler and subject, not niece and uncle.
"I will be with Attolia."
When they were younger, Helen and Irene had played together in Attolia's inner courtyards, surrounded by exotic blooms. They were not children now, for all that only a few years had passed, but Helen chose the palace gardens for their meeting place out of sentiment. As a gesture of defiance against the duties that were about to descend on her-and all the ones she had already taken on-it was small enough. A ruler has few indulgences, she told herself, but if she took none she would break.
"I am glad you came," she told Attolia, as they strolled down crushed stone paths surrounded by lavender and thyme. "It has been too long." Her voice sounded stilted to her own ears. She did not know how to speak at ease, surrounded by attendants who matched their every step.
Attolia seemed not to notice them, never glancing back to see if they followed or cocking an ear at their laughter. Helen wondered if she would master that trick, given time. Her own part of the entourage was small; she had Xanthe, of course, and Agape was willing to play the role for company, but that was all. One more thing to address as she prepared for the coronation.
"I was grateful for the opportunity to see your kingdom," Attolia said. "Did you think I would insult your invitation by refusing it?"
"I would not have been insulted," Helen said, perhaps a shade too quickly. "Sounis sent only an ambassador. And I know you have had unrest at home."
"Did he?" Attolia murmured. There was a pause before her words, so slight that Helen thought she might have imagined it. But she continued easily enough. "We ruling queens are rare enough in history. To have two enthroned at once is unheard of, I believe."
"Rare, at least," Helen said. There was a tale they told in Eddis about a time when two queens had reigned, but she wanted to tell stories to Attolia, not to an audience of half a dozen strangers.
Attolia inclined her head. "And so I thought I ought to come and offer advice, as one queen to another. One unexpected queen to another, for it is rarer and harder to take a throne you have not been raised to."
"It is," Helen said, a lump in her throat. She had not mastered Attolia's porcelain expressions, and she was sure her grief must show. "But I am not queen yet. The coronation will be in three days."
"You are brave, to wait so long."
"There were funerals to attend to," Helen said stiffly. Attolia's attendants had fallen back, though Attolia had given them no visible cue, and behind her Helen could hear them exclaiming over some flower while Agape murmured a response.
"All the same. To leave power unclaimed lets others dream of grasping it." Attolia met her eyes, and for the first time Helen saw heat there, a flash of the old Irene who could with patience be coaxed into shedding her armor of icy courtesy. It was less comforting than she had expected. "You must think of these things, when you are queen."
"I welcome your advice," Helen said. "I told you, I am glad you came."
For that and other reasons, she wanted to say, but the attendants were sweeping toward them again in a swirl of colored skirts that outshone the flowers. Helen glanced away, distracted, and when she turned back to Attolia the smile that she thought she had seen building was gone.
With the coronation at hand, Helen's every moment was accounted for. She dictated documents appointing advisors and officials while Xanthe fitted her for dresses with a mouthful of pins, met with cousins she had not seen in years as she watched the servants rearrange the throne room. The ambassadors from Sounis and Melenze filled her ears at supper, and afterward, in her rooms, she signed paper after paper until her lamps ran low on oil.
She did not want to share her time with Attolia with others, even her attendants. Instead, she invited the queen to breakfast in her rooms, where the table sat only two. The women following her would have leaned against the walls, but Xanthe ushered them out once the table was set, muttering something about the stitching still required on the coronation dress and how many hands might make light work of it.
"It is not entirely proper of me to press your attendants into service, I know," Helen said. "But I have so few of my own." She spread honey on a slice of bread, but her eyes were on Attolia. "You offered advice, yesterday. Have you any on selecting attendants? Because I admit I have very little time for it. I tried to press the task on my minister of war, but he only laughed."
Attolia's expression remained unchanged. She did reach for a fig. "Their numbers will grow quickly enough. I had only Phresine myself, when I took the throne. I told my barons each to send me a suitable young woman, a daughter or a sister, to attend the palace."
"I have need for only three or four, truly," Helen said, abandoning levity for directness. Attolia had appreciated that in her, once, even when she also found it appalling. "I worry about insulting the families of those I do not choose."
Attolia shrugged. "They do not all serve me directly. Some are scribes or stewards. Some merely stay at court and plot. It is the ones sent by my enemies that I keep close. If you do not wish to worry about finding tasks for all of them, demand attendants from only those."
"From my enemies," Helen said blankly. There was still bread in her hand. She set it on her plate. "My barons are not my enemies."
"No?" Attolia murmured.
She bit into her fig, letting the silence linger, then turned the talk to trivialities-the latest in fashion in Attolia, come from the Continent and not yet crept up the mountains into Eddis. Helen countered with a story of her newest, and most recalcitrant, pony, and Attolia admitted that she had begun the riding lessons her father had always forbidden her.
"Though my horse still wins more contests of will than I, for the moment, so do not expect a demonstration. A queen cannot be seen to lose." There was the hint of a smile on Attolia's face, despite her warning tone, and Helen returned it. She let her fingers brush Attolia's as she reached across the table for her own fig, and Attolia did not pull away.
But when they stood up to clasp hands in farewell at the end of the meal, Attolia took a step back before Helen could lean forward. Helen recovered easily enough, turning the gesture into a shallow bow. When she rose, she saw that the attendants had returned and were clustered in the doorway.
Helen told herself that was the cause of Attolia's hesitation, and turned her attention to the nearly finished dress that Xanthe carried. But the disquieting beginning to their conversation lingered, and she caught herself glancing from attendant to attendant, wondering what their families had done to earn Attolia's displeasure.
Everything had been simpler when they were young.
By the morning of her coronation, Helen had almost banished Attolia's words from her mind. There was no shortage of other things to occupy it. She let Xanthe bundle her into her dress without a word of complaint about the way its shoulders still pulled when she swung her arms. Helen was prepared to forgive the flaw if it reminded her that a queen had better posture, better poise, than the girl she had been.
Standing on the throne room's dais helped. She remembered her father there, remembered how regal he had looked, and straightened, drawing as much height as she could. The throne room was empty, save for the guards at the door. She took a breath and gestured for them to open it.
Nobles and ambassadors flowed in, filling the room with color and sound. Behind them, a handful of enterprising farmers pushed through, determined to see their new monarch for themselves. She did her best to note their faces, but it was hard to watch anyone for long in the constantly shifting crowd. Even Attolia, in the brilliant red she favored, was difficult to pick out.
Her uncle was a constant near the dais, clad in sober brown that blended with his sword's leather sheath. As the guards clashed their weapons for silence, he stepped forward and bowed to her. When he straightened, it was to face the crowd and begin proclaiming the lineage of their shared ancestors, from the first Eddis to her father.
The high priest of Hephestia took his place when the recitation was over, singing praises to the Gods and calling for their blessing. His flanking acolytes joined their voices to his as they swung censers back and forth. The coiling smoke made Helen feel heady and a little dizzy, but she planted her feet and bowed her head in prayer. Great Goddess, let my reign find favor with you. Let me serve my people well. And do not let me fall.
Then the priest was stepping forward, and the silver crown, so thin to look at, was heavy on her brow.
"Eddis!" the crowd cheered, and if there was any hesitation, any cries of "Eddia!," she was too tired to pick them out.
Tired or not, she had duties to perform. There was a feast to preside over, and dancing afterward, though she did as little as she could. It had never been her greatest skill. A turn around the floor with each of her uncles-and then, because she could find no good way to decline, with her impudent young cousin Gen-and she was ready to retire back to her dais and merely watch her court celebrate.
Attolia, she saw, had retired as well, though earlier she had been dancing gracefully with the Sounisian ambassador. She sat at the far side of the room, surrounded by her attendants, and seemed to be listening to their chatter without comment. Helen tried to catch her eye and beckon her toward the dais, but though she watched for several minutes, the other queen never turned.
Helen woke the next morning and thought, I am Eddis, letting the words roll through her mind. Eddis, not Helen. She wondered if she would ever find the name as natural as her father seemed to have. She felt different, but could not have described how.
The sturdy wooden furniture in her room was the same, though, as was the early morning light streaming through the window and Xanthe's knock on her door. She set aside her musing and went to answer it.
"Phresine, that is, Attolia's oldest attendant, came to call," Xanthe said as she helped Eddis into another lace-trimmed affair. Eddis suspected the name would settle comfortably on her before the dresses did. "She said Attolia wanted to know if she could join you for breakfast again."
"Of course," Eddis said, though she knew it was irregular, that Attolia should have waited for her to make the invitation unprompted. It seemed promising. She was tired of masks and propriety.
"I'll let her know, then, and send a tray up," Xanthe said.
The tray arrived before Attolia, though Eddis, still full from the feast, felt no temptation to eat.
"Congratulations, sister," Attolia said, while Xanthe shepherded her attendants out. "Eddis."
"It hasn't sunk in yet," Eddis confessed. "I still find myself thinking Helen. And looking for my father."
"That is one difficulty I have not had," Attolia said. "But it was a wise choice, I think, to keep your father's name. It reminds them that you are as strong as he, not merely a woman."
"I'm glad you can supply me with a practical reason for the choice," Eddis said drily. "A great many people seem to think a command from the gods themselves is no reason to interfere with tradition. Even my uncle finds it hard to name me Eddis, not Eddia."
"Ah," said Attolia. She had made no move toward the food. "Your uncle. The man who spoke before the priest?"
"I have several uncles, but yes, that one. I should introduce you formally. He was my father's minister of war-and will be mine."
"He is too powerful," Attolia said flatly. The earlier coolness was gone from her tone, and her eyes were bright. "You say you have no enemies, but you must see that."
"He is my uncle," Eddis protested, after a moment's blank pause. "He is my strongest supporter. I would not be on the throne if not for him."
"And that is why he is dangerous," Attolia said, leaning forward. "He has made himself a lynchpin of your reign, made himself the arbiter of your qualification to sit on the throne. What he has given, he can take away."
"He would not."
"No? The boy you danced with at the feast, the only one-that was his son, was it not?"
"Gen?" Eddis asked, mystified. "Yes."
"Do you think I am alone in noting he was the only one you danced with? Your uncle saw-and smiled. The boy is young, yes, but boys grow." Attolia looked to Eddis for comprehension but seemed disappointed in what she found. "Your uncle seeks to wed you to his son," she said, each word distinct. "And once he does, he will no longer need you on the throne."
Eddis stared at Attolia, groping for words. "That's absurd," she settled on.
"Is it?" Attolia murmured.
"Yes!" Eddis shoved her chair back and stood. "You are seeing conspiracies in every shadowed corner. My barons are not plotting, my family does not seek to replace me, and all my corners hide is dust." She saw Attolia's lips begin to move, but spoke over her. "I know how you came to power, Attolia. I've heard the rumors. I knew you would be changed. But I never thought you would be changed beyond recognition. Irene. Why did you come here?"
"To give you advice," Attolia bit out, hands white-knuckled in her lap. "To give you advice so you can throw it away. What did you expect, Helen? That I would meet you in the garden and quote Sappho to you, as I did when we were girls?"
"Yes," Eddis said, a little distantly. "Yes, I suppose I did." She sat down again, and stared at her hands. She could hear Attolia's chair scrape against the floor, but the older queen's soft slippers made no noise. Eddis startled when she felt Attolia brush her shoulders.
"Oh, Helen," Irene said. "You always were naive." She gathered Eddis's hair in one hand and gently turned Eddis's head with the other, forcing her to meet her eyes. "We are no longer children, you and I. We are queens. We do not have the luxury to play those games."
"Even in the privacy of our own gardens?" Eddis asked. She knew the answer; she knew the gardens would never be private for her again.
"Even then." Attolia leaned forward, and Eddis let her chin tilt up. It had been four years, and the gesture still came as naturally as breathing. Attolia's lips were very soft, smoothed by cosmetics Eddis had never worn. Eddis kept her eyes closed, and she did not know what expression Attolia's face held when she pulled away and released Eddis's hair. "Especially then. And that is more advice that you do not want to hear."
Attolia did not wait for Xanthe or her attendants. She left alone, letting the door click quietly shut behind her.
The next morning, Attolia announced that she had been away from her own country for too long. She informed Eddis through the new queen's secretary, who deposited two notes from Attolia along with the rest of the day's stack of papers to sign and missives to study. The smaller scrap of parchment, which was the only one to bear Attolia's formal seal, simply thanked Eddis for her hospitality and gave the hour of her departure in dry, formal words.
Eddis met her in the courtyard, of course, in another uncomfortable dress, with Agape at her side. The rituals for bidding a guest farewell were shorter than those for greeting one. Eddis and Attolia knew their lines and said them, letter-perfect, never quite meeting each other's eyes.
Custom called for them to clasp hands. Attolia, despite the heat, wore gloves.
When the courtyard's gate had closed on the last of Attolia's guards, Eddis asked Agape to summon her minister of war to the library.
He came faster than she had expected, still dripping in sweat from the practice yards, a grimace on his face. Three days ago, he would have left her waiting while he changed and collected his thoughts, but no one kept a queen waiting. It was an uncomfortable thought.
She handed him Attolia's second unsigned note without comment, and watched his grimace tighten as he read it. When he finished, he met her eyes.
"Should I offer you my sword?"
"Don't be ridiculous," she said.
"The allegations are serious," he observed. "That I knowingly advised you to take a man already in Attolia's pay into your confidence as a master of spies."
"Did you?"
"I advised you make use of Therespides."
"Did you know," Eddis ground out, giving her minister of war a warning glance.
His shoulders twitched. "No. But I have no way to prove it."
"You don't need to," Eddis said. "I trust you."
"'Trust will be your downfall,'" he quoted from the note in his hands as he offered it to her.
"Attolia," Eddis said, taking it. The minister of war blinked, grimace replaced by a look of inquiry. "The letter is from Attolia," she clarified.
"Ah." His mouth drew down again. "It might be to her advantage to provoke unrest, though I see no immediate gain."
"No." Eddis sighed. "I believe she's genuinely trying to help."
"Help." He said the word slowly, tasting it on his tongue.
"Her rule has never been secure," Eddis said slowly, "and she sees disaster everywhere. I suppose I have you to thank that mine has begun on steadier ground." She caught him glancing at the note in her hands. "Yes, even despite this. We all make mistakes in judgment. I do know all the work you've done, persuading your brothers that I was fit to rule."
"I was trying to be discreet."
"I would be a very poor queen if I didn't know what was happening in my own palace. It's bad enough that I don't know what's happening in Attolia. Find another candidate, and shuttle Therespides off somewhere he can do no harm."
After she dismissed her minister of war, Eddis sat in the library alone, turning the note over in her hands. What came to mind was not Attolia as she had last seen her, the doors of her litter sliding closed behind her, nor Attolia's mouth on hers the day before, nor even the kisses they had shared four years ago, in Attolia's gardens.
No. It was Irene she saw, Irene as she had first met her, a too-solemn child unwilling to speak above a whisper, though Helen saw fire flash in her eyes when Irene thought no one of consequence watched.
"A dull excuse for a princess," she remembered her brother Lias saying with a laugh. "No steel there. She's nothing like you, Helen."
"She is," Helen had insisted. "She is. And we're going to be the best of friends."
We all make mistakes in judgment, she thought, and held the note over the lamp until there was nothing left but ash.