“Indeed,” said Akretenesh, “I have heard much of Her Majesty. She is by all accounts most admirable, demonstrating that character in a woman is far more important than the superficial beauty or excessive pretensions to intelligence of her counterpart in Attolia.”

I stared at him for a moment, thinking that the historian Talis once said that to be underestimated by an enemy is the greatest advantage a man can have. Presumably it is true for women as well. One part of me couldn’t let the comment pass, while another part of me knew that I must, and I stood paralyzed as they warred their way to a mutually agreed-upon truth.

“The queen of Eddis is as beautiful as the day and as brilliant as the sun in the sky,” I said.

He was a fool if he didn’t believe me, but I wouldn’t tell him so. He chuckled and quoted Praximeles about beauty being in the heart and not in the eye.

“You could retell some of what she said in her letter,” I said.

Akretenesh considered, now that he’d had his chance to condescend. “I could. She writes about the fulfillment of a dream: to marry you in the Great Temple of Sounis and to wake in a marriage bed…which she describes in some detail”—he flipped the page over and read it closely—“‘It will have the finest Eddisian linen and a carving of the silhouette of the Sacred Mountain on the footboard.’” He looked up from the page to see my face as I flushed deeper and deeper red. His voice grew more cloying still. “She sends her love from beneath the ripening apricots of the tree where she sits and says the dream is complete but for your presence. Is this a lover’s missive,” he asked, “or might some information be encoded there?” He watched me closely, his eyes narrow.

I said through my gritted teeth, “Perhaps it is just what women do.”

Sighing, he refolded the parchment. “That may be it. My wife would write just such a description.” He became brisk. “I am sorry I cannot allow you to return the message, but your queen is too much under the influence of her ambitious former Thief. He has stolen Attolia’s throne and has tried to steal yours. She is very foolish if she does not realize how vulnerable she is, but fortunate that she may have you to protect her from her folly, eh?”

He was still watching me, looking for some sign that there might be a message in the text, but I am an idiot, and all that showed on my face, I am sure, was that I wanted to kill him.

We were interrupted then by Baron Hanaktos, who was immediately unhappy to see the letter from Eddis in the Mede’s hand.

“I didn’t bring that here so that you could deliver it,” he said gruffly.

“Oh, why did you bring it?” I asked harshly, and the baron flushed. I almost smiled at his discomfort. No doubt I looked like a clod, putting on pretensions to cover my impotence, but the baron bowed and apologized. He insisted that his only concern was for treachery on the part of Attolia. I said that I understood completely. He said that he hoped that the sad rupture in our relationship would heal, and I pretended that I hadn’t been attacked in my own home, listened as my servants were killed, and served as a slave on his estates. In short, I acted as if my family were just then being held as hostage for my good behavior.

We all mouthed our parts in the play; then we went in to dinner.

If the baron and I were bad actors, there was an inexplicable tension between Akretenesh and the baron as well. I wondered if the baron was beginning to change his estimation of his allies. He was unhappy about something, and all through the dinner there was a conversation I couldn’t follow in obscure references and dark looks.

Hanaktos only stayed for the one night. He left again in the morning, and an exchange I overheard from an open hallway above the pronaos made me think the issue, whatever it was, was still unresolved. Akretenesh and Hanaktos were standing in the open doorway of the megaron. Their voices carried clearly.

“You will not put me aside,” said Hanaktos.

“I assure you that nothing has changed,” said Akretenesh.

He might have said more, but Nomenus was with me. I could not ask him to quiet his footsteps so that I might eavesdrop. Akretenesh and Hanaktos heard him and fell silent.

When he was gone, Akretenesh came inside to compliment me on my company manners. I suspected that the visit had been his own personal test of his control over me and that I had passed. I excused myself and spent the morning practicing with Attolia’s handgun.

That afternoon I had nothing new to read and no patience for rereading. Idly I picked over a plate of food. I paced. I hummed the chorus’s opening song from Prolemeleus’s City of Reason and stood looking out the window for a long time. As I considered the landscape, it finally occurred to me that it would be an odd apricot tree that would be producing fruit in Eddis so far out of season.

I was lucky to be alone as I subsequently recalled the time when Eugenides, the magus, and I were escaping Attolia. Eugenides had been growing more and more distant as the blood leaked through his bandages, staining the shirt I had loaned him. I had been desperate to hold his attention, afraid he would fade away altogether.

I remembered asking him if he could be anywhere at that moment where it would be and he’d predictably said in his own bed. He had described with longing the soft linens and the carved image of the Sacred Mountain on the footboard with such loving detail that it came to mind easily. The magus had wished to see the king of Sounis marry the queen of Eddis, and I, not unlike Gen, had longed to be home, under a ripening apricot tree, with my sisters.

If I hadn’t been such an idiot, and so angry at Akretenesh, he would have known, I am sure, that he had erred in teasing me with the letter. I would have perceived the message suggested by the text, and my face would have given me away.

There was no sign of my mother and sisters in Brimedius. I had circumnavigated the megaron for what felt like a thousand times, searching for a sign of their presence, and had seen nothing. I had begun to wonder if they had been moved elsewhere. Akretenesh insisted that he saw them each day, even bringing me verbal messages that did seem like Ina, but if he had lost his hostages, he would hardly want me to know.

I all but hooted with delight.

Was it wishful thinking? I had to ask myself. It might have been only that, but I had watched Akretenesh underestimate the queens of Attolia and Eddis, and I wouldn’t do the same to Ina. And whether my mother and sisters were safe in Eddis or not, there was nothing more I could do in Brimedius. I chose to believe that I had come to rescue my mother and sisters, and they had already rescued themselves.

I waited four long days before suggesting to Akretenesh that if it was true that the Medes would make me king, I would be pleased to see some sign of it. He accepted my capitulation with typical arrogance, and within the week, we were riding toward Elisa to the Barons’ Meet, where I would face my barons and they would vote whether I was going to be king or not.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IN Sounis only the barons hold the power to confirm a candidate as king. Of course their meetings have happened in all sorts of places, including on a battlefield surrounded by corpses in the case of Sounis Peliteus, but the official, dedicated, and sacred space is Elisa, on the coast, not far from the capital city.

The barons meet under truce. This is supposed to have something to do with the blessing of the gods and such, but I think it’s more likely to be a matter of practicality. If every time they came together to name a king, the barons brought their armies, there wouldn’t be a place big enough to hold the horses, much less all the men. When a group of Mede soldiers materialized around us as we traveled, I piously mentioned to Akretenesh the very sacred nature of the truce and the risk of angering the gods.