—
AS FOR THE MAN Eirini resembled, he asked to see the child just once—he’d never been more curious about anybody in his life, he said—but his request was denied and the tyrant had him drowned, as had been the case with all other enemies of the tyrant’s state. All any citizen had to say was, “The last king was better,” and somehow or other Eirini’s father got to hear of it and then you were drowned in the gray marshlands deep in the heart of the country, far from even the most remote farmhouse. The air was noxious where the drowned were. The water took their bones and muscle tissue but bubbles of skin rose from the depths, none of them frail, some ready for flight, brazen leather balloons. Houses throughout the country stood empty because the tyrant had eliminated their inhabitants; the swamp of bone and weights and plasma also had house keys mixed into it, since many had been drowned fully clothed along with the contents of their pockets. Eirini the Fair was aware of the keys. She visited the marshlands as often as she dared, crossing narrow stone bridges with a lantern in her hand. She went there to thank the man she resembled for what he had done, but he couldn’t be separated from the rest of the drowned; Eirini the Fair swung her lantern around her in a circle and when her tears met the water they told their own meaning as they flowed from eye socket to eye socket.
Among those the tyrant hadn’t had drowned yet there was a great eagerness to be rid of him, and Arkady knew that if he went through with his plan to kidnap the tyrant’s daughter he would not be without support. The tyrant had started off as an ordinary king, no better or worse than any other, until it had occurred to him to test the extent of his power. And once he found out how much power he really had, he took steps to maintain it. A ration system was in place, not because resources were scarce or because it was necessary to conserve them, but because the tyrant wished to covertly observe the black market and see what exchanges people were willing and able to make. Not just goods, but time . . . How much time could his subjects bear to spend queuing for butter? What about medicine? This was the sort of thing that made life for his subjects harder than life was for citizens of neighboring countries.
—
EIRINI THE FAIR was sure that her father was detested. He was a man who only laughed when he was about to give some command that was going to cause widespread panic. She didn’t doubt that if anybody saw a way to annoy her father by harming her, they might well do it. But she was well guarded, and it escaped her notice that she was being intensely observed by the kind of person who would melt a key.
—
THE TYRANT had orphaned him, had had Arkady’s mother and father drowned in the middle of the night, so that the boy woke up in an empty house wondering why nobody was there to give him breakfast. Young Arkady prepared his own breakfast that day and continued to do so until there was no more food, and then he went out onto the street and stayed there, leaving the front door open in case anybody else had a use for his family home.