The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

scroll up and tossed it back into the pile of papers, then sighed again. There were few reliable copies of Thales’s originalthoughts on the basic elements of the universe. That’s why his scroll was valuable and why he had been copying it. If it was left at the back of the desk much longer, it was likely to be completely ruined. It should have been returned to its case and reshelved in the library.
    He made himself go look for the case and found most of his books, scrolls, and other materials shifted into piles on one of the library tables. He searched through the piles until he found the case labeled with Thales’s name and the title of the work. He slid the scroll into it and slid the case back into its slot on the library’s shelves. Then he went back to his chair by the fire. He was dozing there when Galen came by. He had a small amphora of lethium, and he carefully refilled the phial on Eugenides’s desk.
    “The library’s a mess,” Eugenides said.
    “I had noticed that,” said Galen. “I went looking for the Aldmenedian drawings of the human body last week, and I couldn’t find them.”
    “So why hasn’t anyone cleaned it up?”
    “It’s your library.”
    “It isn’t. It’s the queen’s library. I just live here.”
    “Whoever’s library it is, I would say you’re the only one who’s going to set it to rights.” He started to leave.
    “Galen,” Eugenides said.
    “Yes?”
    “Get your trash off my desk. I want to use it.”
    Galen snorted. “I’ll see if I can find someone who’s not too busy.”
     
    Despite Galen’s unsympathetic words, one of his assistants showed up in the afternoon to collect the medicines, bowls, and the unused bandages. Eugenides looked at the remaining clutter but didn’t move to sort it. He turned away and stared into the fire for the rest of the afternoon. The desk sat untouched.
    In the morning he picked up the pen nibs that had been spilled. He dropped them one by one into their case, where they landed with tiny ticking sounds. When the case was full, he stirred them with one finger before he fitted the lid into place and went back to sitting in front of the fire.
    Every morning, when the sunlight forced its way around the edges of the window curtains, trimming them in light, he dragged himself out of bed and went to the desk to clear something away before he sat down in the armchair. He wasn’t used to being awake in the morning. He was used to being awake late in the night, when the rest of the palace was sleeping. He sat in front of the fire until early afternoon, then went back to bed until evening. Galen came to check on him every few days. Eddis and his father alternated in their weekly visits. Except for the servants who delivered trays of food, he was alone. He stayed in the quiet of his study, and no one bothered him.
     
    When the desk was clear of all but a small phial of lethium, a few drops of which he took every night in order to sleep, he moved on to the library. One day that, too, was tidy, and he had to think of a new reason to get out of bed in the morning. Finally he got up to collect a few scraps of paper and one of his pens and sat down to see what writing with his left hand was going to be like.
    He had to open the ink bottle with his teeth. The paper slid on the desk and needed to be held in place. If he used his stump, the bandages didn’t give him any purchase unless he pressed down quite firmly. The stump was tender, and it hurt. If he used his forearm, he not only covered up most of the paper he was trying to write on, he covered the top part of it—meaning that as he wrote, he would smear what he’d written. Sighing, he got back up and went into the library and over to the chest that held maps in wide, flat drawers. There was a deeper drawer at the top to hold map weights, but it was almost empty. Only two mismatched weights were left. There was a third he almost overlooked at the back. Eugenides put them in the pocket of his