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

moved in closer, hovering over him with zeal. No doubt he rarely got a chance to expound to this extent and was reluctant to lose the king’s attention. The king made a few abortive attempts to escape but was ultimately forced to sit and listen.
    Over the king’s head, the counselors and the attendants exchanged glances of awed delight. When Pilades finally wound down, the king, his face blank, thanked him. He thanked the two men he’d begun the meeting with and suggested that perhaps they could finish their business at another meeting, or better—they could just give him a written summary and he would look over it sometime himself. They nodded; the king rose and escaped into the hall. Once there, with the door closed, he put his face in his hand.
    “Thank gods I didn’t ask about fertilizer,” he said.
    Costis almost laughed out loud. A glance told him that the others in the entourage were also amused, but they were smirking at the idea of the king sitting through another lecture. Only Costis shared the king’s vision of the dedicated Pilades dropping handful after handful of various animal wastes onto the tabletop and discussing their individual merits.
    The king met Costis’s eye and smiled. Costis looked away. When he looked back, the king’s smile was gone as well.
    “Gentlemen, I think I’ve suffered enough for the morning. Pelles, why don’t you tell my next appointment I’m not coming?”
    “Your Majesty is supposed to meet with Baron Meinedes before lunch,” said Sejanus.
    “Well, I am not going to,” said the king. “I’m going back to my room.”
    Pelles bowed and excused himself. The rest started down the hall. At the first intersection of passages the king spoke again. “Directly back to my room, please, gentlemen.”
    Sejanus bowed, offering the king the lead. Eugenides stepped forward. He led the way without hesitation, and Costis wondered how long the king had known that his attendants and his guards led him on a dance of unnecessary twists and turns every time they crossed the palace.
    Certainly the king stepped out confidently ahead of his entourage. When he reached the main passage, he crossed it and then turned down a narrower passage that led to an even narrower staircase. The attendants, who might have been worried that their game had been discovered, began to be amused instead. The king climbed three flights without speaking and stepped into a passage lit by small windows near the roof. There were tiny offices on either side. Startled faces looked out from the doorways, and men walking with scrolls and tablets in their hands froze and then bowedas the king passed. Costis had no idea where they were. He didn’t think the attendants knew either. They all followed the king into an office, then through it and out onto a balcony beyond, and stopped.
    They were at a dead end, looking out over what had once been an interior courtyard that was now a hall, partially roofed over, with a light well in the center. The roof above their head was supported on rafters that butted into the balcony at their feet.
    The royal quarters were somewhere on the far side of the atrium, and there was no way across except to sprout wings and fly.
    The attendants smiled.
    The king stared angrily at the railing in front of him.
    “Perhaps not the most direct route,” he said. The attendants continued to smile as he led them back to the hallways and back past the men still standing with their scrolls and tablets. They bowed again as the king passed. He went down the stairs again, just one flight, turned left and left again to circumnavigate the atrium, and then turned right to reach a passage on the far side. They were again in familiar territory, and even Costis knew which way to turn to reach the king’s rooms.
    Even after the detour, they were early and unexpected. The guards in the hall pulled themselves to attention, and the one knocked on the doorway to alert those within of the king’s arrival. The