Chapter VII

A Letter to the King

Soryne read poetry all night, and began to attempt to write it all the next day. She nearly missed her morning prayers, and completely skipped the midday meal in order to spend it practicing. Though her attempts did not reach anywhere near the beauty of Fornia’s, Soryne saw it as halfway there and knew that it would get better. All her life she had been surrounded by poets and verses; and being a thoughtful creature already, she did not fare too badly compared to how others might.

During the noon hour, Soryne strolled the gardens with a book in one hand and a pen in the other; and when words struck, she took out some papyrus from her girdle and jotted them down.

It must have been just her luck, then, that she met the prince there; and he was glad to see her, for it seemed that he had a plan.

“I have decided to write to my Uncle Monepothes, who is the king of Lacedae, and tell him–”

“Is that not the name you gave me when we first met?” Soryne scoffed.

Prince Epnotides reddened. “It was the first that came to my head. Anyway, I will ask him to come here to Agamenia. It is my hope that he will be able to greet my father and stall his arrival, so that the ceremony will pass without his presence. Then he will not order for my mother’s death when he hears the poem.”

Soryne knit her brow. “But that does not solve the problem of the people being angered against him,” she said, looking at the young man in confusion.

The prince looked down. “Well, yes. I know. But I will think of something soon enough.”

Soryne held out Fornia’s book to him to see. “I have thought of something: I will write a poem and substitute it for Fornia’s on the day of the reading. It is my hope to insert a passage into her original script so that she will not recognize it until she is already reading. That way she will not condemn the king, but rather the queen.”

Prince Epnotides looked at her in awe for a moment, and Soryne clutched the book closer to her side once more. “But I speak too loudly. You must write to your uncle, and arrange everything that you mentioned.”

The prince nodded numbly for a moment, and then asked: “You are good enough at poetry, I suppose, because you are a muse?”

Soryne smiled softly, and gave reply quickly. “No, but I am going to learn.”

Prince Epnotides raised a hand to his brow. “I feel that my plan is inferior, and that I am not doing as much as I should,” he mumbled.

“No, you must not think that. Your correspondence with your uncle is key to the whole operation,” Soryne assured him. “What was he like in the war? Will he prove a good ally?”

“He is easy to anger, but he is of strong morals and good to have on your side. Many a time he has saved my life during battle.”

“You have faced death more times than this, then.” Soryne thought that this was good; he was not as afraid as she was, then.

The prince looked away. “It is not something I wish to speak about.”

Soryne averted her eyes, and mumbled something about needing to go; and since they had agreed on their plan, they parted ways.

Prince Epnotides slipped carefully down the corridors of the palace, trying to avoid being seen by his mother or sister. The past few weeks that he had been home, his female relations had been overly clingy– or perhaps he was used to soldiers trying to get away from others as often as possible. Life at home was far different from what he remembered, but the warfront was so unique that maybe he no longer knew what it was to live a normal life. One thing remained the same no matter where he was, though: he was constantly on his guard.

When he arrived in his chambers, which overlooked the gardens and the path to the temple (this was how he knew when Soryne was praying or walking), he began on the letter to his uncle.

While he wrote, it occurred to him that perhaps the King of Lacedae would feel angered about the queen’s actions and wish to kill her rather than keep the whole affair quiet.

It had not occurred to Epnotides what would happen after the kingdom was made aware of the queen’s treason. For obvious reasons, she would be exiled or at least confined to the palace for the rest of her life; and if his father did not withhold his rage from Kechria, she would be subject to the same fate.

Epnotides wondered if perhaps he could not save her from this; but he knew that from childhood she had been a sneaky child, and always attached to his mother at the hip. There would be no changing her mind.

But it would devastate him completely if they put his mother to death; he could not let this happen. So in his letter he addressed this, and hoped that he presented a worthy case to a rather choleric uncle.

It was good that he had been training with the soldiers for so long: they trusted him completely, and doubted not his strength. If the queen managed to kill the king, however, they may expect him to avenge his father’s death by killing the queen: he did not know what he would do then.

Soryne could not listen to the orations that day. The poetry was getting increasingly suspicious, and the crowds increased their stirring with every word that came out of Fornia’s mouth. Indeed Soryne did not know how the lady bore it: it was treason of the highest form, and even Soryne’s usually guarded emotions began to shudder when she looked at Fornia, so that she could not face her. To think that she was disobeying the Gods’ orders of purity and strength of mind was a great injury to Soryne.

Not because Soryne yet felt any duty to her kingdom through this, but because she had begun to see what Epnotides had been through for his country. It was clear that he was passionate for it, and since she had come to care for him and his innocence (despite ten years at war, he was still childlike), the only duty she felt was for his sake. They often met to discuss the plan and how the poetry was coming along, and he was slowly beginning to share some of his war stories.

They were gruesome and vastly exaggerated, but they made Soryne smile at the display of valor and loyalty within them.

“It was a wooden horse that finally gave us the defeat of Priam,” said Epnotides, illustrating a great figure by waving his hands about; Soryne laughed. “We all hid inside it, and it was fortunate that everyone had bathed in a river the day before; otherwise it would have been very smelly and the enemy would have known the ploy immediately. When we finally made it within the walls, we were about to burst with laughter (we learn to laugh at almost anything, in war, because it is all so dire). They finally stopped us and opened the doors, and the battle raged for days and nights afterwards; but our spirit was strong and Priam’s walls were too high. We beat them from within.”

Soryne leaned back against the warm stones as she listened. “I wonder how I could have ignored the war for so long. It has been going on for half my lifetime.”

“My stories make it sound far more glamorous than it actually was,” Epnotides sighed, sitting down and lowering his voice. “There was much sickness and death, and often I cannot sleep at night because of my memories. You are lucky that you did not have to go.”

Soryne looked at him, leaning her chin on her palm. “I wonder who I will say is lucky after this whole affair is over.”

Epnotides shook his head. “You do not speak like that until you are out of the war. You must be the most cheerful man on the field while you are still there, or else the others will resent you.” He grinned, and then changed the subject. “How is your poetry coming along?”

Soryne took some paper out of her girdle. “There is not much that I consider presentable, but I thought I could read this to you today.”

And she cleared her throat, looking at Epnotides expectantly. The prince nodded, waiting for her to begin.

“On every rose, there is a thorn;
For every sunset, a storm.
After every wave, a crash
And with each thunder-clap
There is lightning, white and wild
Sinister as death
And striking those who least deserve it.
Thus, there is a traitor in our midst:
Thus, there is a snake that trails behind
Waiting to strike when the moment is right.
Death can be good, when you are remembered well:
But this traitor, this snake,
Will have no tapestry but cinders
Will have no memory but ash
Will have no friends but the flames
That burn and lick at her treasonous bones.
The king has done sin in his time,
As all of us have;
We all have struck the heedless dog
And kicked an innocent cat.
We all have given money that is not ours
And picked flowers from another’s garden.
But listen well to what I tell,
And make no mistake as I say this:
The queen has done worse than these,
For she takes what lives the gods have given her
She does not trust Myphotos with his own principles
She plans to murder her husband
Out of revenge.
For as I said, the king has sinned in his time
As we all have.
But treason is unbearable.
It poisons the soul:
And Queen Ponyria wears this poison as a crown.”

Soryne looked up quickly, perspiration on her brow and her heart beating strenuously. “What do you think?” Asked she, her voice higher than usual.

The prince said nothing, and Soryne finally dared to look at him; but he was looking at her intently, and seemed so confused that Soryne did not know how to bear it.

“It is terrible,” she mumbled, and put it away.

“No,” said Epnotides, and took her hand. “It– it was beautiful.”

Soryne knit her brow and looked with great anxiety at his hand clasping hers; and then he whispered, “You wrote that?”

Soryne nodded. “I– I slandered your mother pretty terribly, and I must apologize…”

“No. She is a wicked woman, Soryne. And yet I do not know what to do about the whole situation. My father did something just as terrible; and to me it is all blurred within lines of war, tarnished between the murders I have endured. Do you understand? I could not bear to see my father dead– the only one whom I relied on, even more than my uncle or my brother.”

Soryne listened intently to his words, and wondered what he was doing as his face drew nearer to hers; but then they heard a pebble skip across the path behind them, and they jumped apart.

“What are you speaking so quietly about?” Asked Thysia, appearing from behind a large bush.

Soryne’s heart stopped for a moment, but Epnotides spoke up and she recovered.

“I’m telling her about the war. It’s tormenting to think about all that death, and she’s promised to pray for me.”

Thysia looked slowly between the both of them, and in case she needed any more convincing, Soryne nodded.

“You shouldn’t talk about all that sad stuff all the time, you know. I tell Moina that every day, but she won’t stop. You ought to talk to her and leave these gardens for the happy people.”

Epnotides raised his eyebrows and looked at Soryne, who shrugged. “Thysia, Moina’s busy enough with her tragedies. We didn’t want to bother her. And anyway, he needs prayer, not more tragedy.”

Thysia giggled. “Well, I still think it’s funny that you’re always hiding around talking. But if it’s about that, it makes sense.”

The young girl looked towards the balcony, about twenty feet away, and she began skipping to it; Soryne and Epnotides looked at each other, and then grimaced.

“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Asked Epnotides, and Soryne knew that he did not mean with the plot to undermine the queen, but rather with each other.

Shaking her head, Soryne looked away and said, “I should be getting back to the temple. I have forsaken my duty long enough.”

But as they both went their separate ways, Soryne wondered at how she did not feel so guilty for ignoring her prayers: and she realized that the prince had become her duty. His passion had become hers. Indeed, the gods’ will seemed to say that they should work together; and Soryne found that she had no complaints.