hi I’m not going to shut up about this because it’s maybe the easiest thing I’ve ever written in my life
One of the most vivid memories I have of my adolescence was perusing the YA section of the library and seeing the brand new copy of The King of Attolia sitting there on the shelf. I remember checking it out, and then calling my best friend and had the following conversation,
“Guess what I just found at the library.”
“What?”
“The King of Attolia.”
“You mean The Queen of Attolia?”
“No. The King of Attolia.”
Back then, I had no expectations for anything past the second book. The King of Attolia came out of nowhere for me, and by God did I love it.
Same though, except for me it was both QOA and KOA appearing at once in those new Vince Natale covers and me going “THERE’S MORE?? OF THE BRAT BOY???”
A set so mismatched it swivels back around to being matched But if I had to lay out the ones that meant the most to Baby Reader Me…
(I just realized they’re out of order. YOLO)
The Thief I first picked off the library shelf (and for years used as my mental picture of Gen?? for some reason???)
The first version of The Thief I ever owned
The first version of QOA I ever owned (secondhand, though I read the Natale version from the library again and again)
KOA, which I read back to back with QOA and didn’t have to suffer a wait but also didn’t own til much later
ACOK, the first book in my life I can ever remember preordering
The TAT galley I found in a charity thrift shop the summer before pub and almost cried because I wanted to read it *so badly* but had stopped blogging, so I didn’t know how it was ever going to happen
The internal ROTT PDF (not pictured) a forever-anonymous-but-fondly-remembered coworker dropped in my inbox as a thank you.
“Will you carry a message for me?” the queen asked. “I can hardly decline, Your Majesty,” answered the prisoner. … “Tell your queen that I will not return her Thief a second time.” The prisoner just looked up at her dully. She couldn’t know how much he understood. How hard had the lieutenant kicked him? “What remains of his life, he spends with me, do you understand, messenger?” “I believe so, Your Majesty.”
…Then he swung the kid out from under his arm and onto the table. It kicked, but he pinned it with his arm while he freed his knife. Deftly he slit its throat, and as the blood spilled across the table with no ceremonial bowl to catch it, he turned the knife and slid it into the body just below the cartilage at the top of the rib cage. Then he dropped to his knees. He rested his forehead against the bloody edge of the table and his forearms on the tabletop and waited. …
“Little Thief,” she said, “what would you give to have your hand back?”
Eugenides almost lifted his head. “Oh, no,” said the goddess. “It is beyond my power and that of the Great Goddess as well. What’s done is done, even with the gods. But if the hand could be restored, what would you give? Your eyesight?” The voice paused, and Eugenides remembered begging Galen, the physician, to let him die before he was blind. “Your freedom?” The goddess went on. “Your sanity? Think, Eugenides, before you question the gods. You have much still to lose.” Softly Eugenides asked, “Why did my gods betray me?” “Have they?” asked the goddess as softly.
“You have a choice now,” the Thief was saying. “Conscious or unconscious, you can go into the water. I have the boat pole to make certain you don’t come out again.” He nudged the pole lying at his feet. It rattled against the centerboard case, and hearing it, Attolia glanced down. The boat pole was five or six feet long and had two small hooks at the end. The hooks she could easily imagine catching in the folds of her clothes as Eugenides leaned on the pole to force her farther and farther under the surface.
She looked back at Eugenides impassively. She thought he had brought her a long way to drown her, but she knew that in his own field he was meticulous and supposed he wanted to be entirely sure of his results. He made no move but instead spoke again. “Or you can offer me something I want more than I want to hold your head underwater until the last of your air is gone.” Attolia had thought her choice was to be conscious or unconscious when she breathed in the black water that would kill her; she couldn’t imagine what Eugenides might want more than that. It was all she would have dreamed of in his place.
“I want to be king of Attolia,” he said.
Attolia blinked. She looked around the tiny harbor and had to clear her throat with a cough before she spoke. “You’ve brought me to a place rather spare of witnesses if you want me to declare you my heir before I die.”
“I wasn’t proposing to become your heir,” said the Thief. “Then what?” asked Attolia. “There’s an easier way for a man to become king,” said Eugenides, and waited for her to realize what he proposed. Attolia stared at him. “You think I would marry you?” she asked in disbelief. “If you object to marrying a man with one hand, you’ve only yourself to blame.” “And when did you grow into a man?” asked Attolia, lifting her eyebrow, her voice tinged with sarcasm. Eugenides didn’t rise to her bait.
“It’s your choice, Your Majesty,” he said quietly.
“What would I do in Ferria? I am the queen of Attolia. I cannot mend shirts for a living.” “You did a decent job with this,” he counters. He’s wearing one of the shirts Irene mended, and she breaks into a gallop so he cannot see her blush. He curses and falls behind, his horse trying to follow her lead. She smirks to herself and schools her face before slowing down and allowing him to join her again.
“And you, Eugenides? Would you guard me forever, to make sure I never go back to the Medes? Like a personal jailor?” The pause is long enough to be uncomfortable before he says, so low the wind almost drowns it, “Like a husband.”
