The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner Page B

moved into the Ceremonial Hall, where dinner would be served at the queen’s pleasure and a little earlier than the kitchen had planned. Cursing under his breath, the chef rose to the occasion.
    Eugenides sat between a baroness and a duchess, thequeen’s younger sister. The loudest sounds in the room were the footsteps of servers bringing the food. People tended to look in sequence at Eugenides, then at the queen, and then at the plates in front of them. Someone coughed or cleared his throat. Someone at the far end of the table mentioned the harvest, which had been good, and the duchess to his right picked up the thread of the conversation. She chatted about the weather, which was cold. It was winter, so that wasn’t surprising. When the food came, Eugenides ate the vegetables. He left the meat, because he couldn’t cut it, and ate a small piece of bread without spreading cheese on it, because he couldn’t do that either.
    Wine was served with dinner, and when he finished his first serving, his cup was refilled. It was a ceramic cup with a tall, narrow stem and a flared top. Eugenides admired the design painted around the inner rim as he drank from it. Centaurs chased each other in a circle, their bows drawn and arrows notched. Two hands, Eugenides thought to himself, and put the cup down empty.
    When dinner was over and the queen stood, Eugenides stood with the rest of the court. Three fingers splayed unobtrusively on the table, with the knuckles turning white, kept him from swaying. He stayed at his place while his dinner partners excused themselves and drifted off. His father came to slide a hand under Eugenides’s good arm, and Eugenides thankfully shiftedhis balance to lean against him.
    “Did they not water the wine tonight?” he asked.
    “Same mix as usual, I think. Two parts water.” That was only civilized.
    When the room was empty, his father helped Eugenides away from the table and then upstairs to his room.
    “I won’t need the lethium tonight anyway,” Eugenides said as they reached the door. “Wine’s a pleasant substitute.” He felt his father stiffen. “I was joking,” he said, not sure that he had been.
     
    The second dinner was much the same. Eugenides’s food arrived in front of him cut into bite-sized pieces, and every diner had a small bowl of olive oil to dip the bread into instead of cheese. Except that he had to reach across his plate to get the bread into the olive oil, everything went well. The conversation was the same. The harvest and the weather. The rest of the table spoke in hushed tones, difficult to overhear. Eugenides drank less and stared at his plate, unwilling to watch the queen carefully not watching him.
    The third night he didn’t appear. His place sat empty at the table. When dinner was over and his father went upstairs to look for him, Eugenides was waiting, dressed in his formal clothes, sitting on his bed. He was leaning against the headboard and had his boots up on the spread. The fabric for his sling lay in a limp bundleacross his lap. He looked up at his father, his face bleak.
    “I couldn’t face it again,” he said.
    He dropped his gaze to the toes of his boots. “I already know the harvest was good, and the weather’s still cold. I could try again in the spring.”
    “Tomorrow,” said his father, and left.
    Eugenides tilted over until his face was buried in a pillow.
     
    When he fell asleep, he dreamed the queen of Attolia was dancing in her garden in a green dress with white flowers embroidered around the collar. It started to snow, dogs hunted him through the darkness, and the sword, red in the firelight, was above him, and falling. The queen stopped dancing to watch. He woke with his throat raw from screaming, still in his clothes, lying on top of the bedcovers.
    He stumbled into the library and sat there in front of the empty fireplace. The room was cold. If it had been a month before, one of Galen’s assistants would have been sleeping in the