Page 89 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

the tyrant that he and Eirini the First were as good as strangers, but the tyrant

waved him away and signaled his executioners to prepare themselves, at which
point the man Eirini the Fair resembled ran into the center of the amphitheatre
where Eirini the First stood alone with her arms forming a meager shield for her
face and chest. The man Eirini the Fair resembled stood before her with his back
to the executioners and the tyrant and told her to look at him, just to keep
looking only at him, and that it would be all right. It seemed he intended to
protect her from the stones until he couldn’t anymore. This was intolerable to the

tyrant; he could not allow these two to exit together. There was also a sense of
having just witnessed the first words they’d ever said to each other. The tyrant
feared a man who had no qualms about involving himself in a matter such as
this, so instead of going ahead with the execution he had his wife returned to the
palace.

—

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