Hilarion stepped aside and the others followed his lead. I squared my crooked shoulder as much as I was able and walked past them. When I reached the passage outside the apartments, I began to run again, back to the king, at my best speed.

Luria waited for me in the guard room. She stopped the other attendants, allowing only me to continue to the king. She did not need to tell me to go more quietly; the silence in the queen’s apartments was stricture enough.

The king looked up as I stood catching my breath in the doorway, clutching my hand to my chest.

He held out his own hand and I dropped the earrings into his palm, the ones that Heiro had given him at his investiture, with the tiny amphorae and the even tinier sprays of golden flowers.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

The other jewels weren’t his and they didn’t matter to him. These did. For Ula, who is always given corn and bread and oil, I knew they were perfect.

He dropped from the chair to his knees. Speaking words that I didn’t understand, he reached his hand so far into the fireplace that I was sure his skin was scorching in the heat. He dropped the earrings onto the coals and used his hook to cover them. Then he sat back again with his head bowed and stayed there until Petrus and Phresine came.

Petrus was cautious, he was always cautious, but his relieved smile broke through all his hedging. The crisis had passed. The queen would live.

Hilarion came after that to tell the king that Teleus was in the waiting room, and the king nodded and rubbed his eyes with his hand. Phresine had stayed after Petrus returned to the queen. “You will send for me if she wakes?” the king asked her.

“Of course,” she said, “Your Majesty.” I admired the way she could make the words sound so much like “You Idiot.”

The king smiled just a little. He waved me out of the room, and I followed Hilarion back to the waiting room, passing Teleus on the way. To my surprise, Hilarion took me by the hand.

“It has been a long night for everyone,” he said, and he walked me himself to the king’s apartments and to Ion’s room, where I had been sleeping on the floor.

“I think you’ve earned the bed tonight,” said Hilarion. “Or would you rather have your own room?”

I preferred my own little closet, so he scooped up my blankets and we went there. My mattress was still leaning against the wall. He put it on the floor and dumped my blankets. Then he helped me out of my clothes and tucked me in.

“Do you have what you need, little monster?”

I nodded. All I wanted was to lay my head down.

He patted me tentatively on the shoulder. “Rest up, then. The king will no doubt call for you tomorrow.”

No one called me. I slept all day and woke in the night. There was a tray beside me with watered wine and a roasted game bird. I gnawed the meat off and tossed the bones down the airshaft, remembering the first time I’d done that. Then I cautiously poked my nose out of the closet and made my way to the attendants’ waiting room. Hilarion had been kind to me earlier; he had never been cruel, but he’d never been particularly kind, either. Petrus had said the queen would live, but I had been blamed all my life for soured milk, and bad grain, and other people’s carelessness. Hilarion’s approval might be gone as quickly as it had come.

The attendants were talking quietly. It was only Polemus, Sotis, and Cleon. There was a three-handed game going, and Sotis was complaining about the wine. They wouldn’t have been playing cards if the queen were dead. I crept back to bed and slept again.

Lamion woke me in the morning, stepping over me to get a coat for the king.

“Rise and shine, Pheris,” he said. I blinked sleep and astonishment out of my eyes, as Lamion had always called me monster and had never used my name before.

The king stayed with the queen for the next few days. The palace was very quiet, as all state business had been postponed. There were the usual whispered speculations, but there was no official news and no official mourning for a baby that had left the world before it even came into it. The only dedications made were to thank the gods for our queen’s continued health.

People talked more openly about the arrival of the slave Kamet from the Mede empire. The palace guard was exuberant to welcome home Costis, one of their own. The Mede ambassador demanded that the slave be returned to his master, and all of Attolia heard of how his demands were rejected. The more astute took note of Kamet’s attendance at meeting after meeting, while the less so entertained each other with stories of the king’s visit to the kitchens for sweetened nuts once he was sure the queen was out of danger. That was an easier subject to make jokes about, and making jokes eased people’s fears.

Very few knew about the intense effort that was orchestrated by Relius, the former secretary of the archives, after Kamet’s unexpectedly public arrival, to isolate the Mede ambassador and intercept any attempt to warn his emperor that Kamet had arrived in Attolia and that the secret location of the Mede navy had almost certainly been revealed. All the king’s plans relied on that embargo.

“He kept them safe for you,” whispered the queen from her bed.

“He did,” said the king. “I only wish he’d done it with a little less flair. Galleys racing to a ship in the middle of the harbor, by all the gods.”

“Safe,” whispered the queen again, and he leaned over the bed to tuck the covers around her.

“Yes,” he allowed, “they are safe and your captain is a champion. Do I need to send Phresine for some lethium-laced soup?”

Her lips curled with a hint of fragile amusement, and he kissed her cheek.

A most amazing and strange thing was happening to me. Wherever I went in the palace, people greeted me. People to whom I had been invisible now nodded and smiled as we crossed paths. I was free to go anywhere I liked, with no fear of being caught alone in a stairwell or an empty room. Xikos kept his insults to himself, and even my grandfather Susa smiled grimly when we met.

“Enjoy yourself,” he said, “while you can.” I don’t know if his warning was malice or just honesty—it was hard to tell with Susa—but I took him at his word. I went directly to the stables. Not only did the master let me ride Fryst again, he said he would look for a pony to add to the royal horses.

It was many days before the king and I were alone. He was again reading reports at the writing table in his bedroom. I was laying out a triangle on the floor using pebbles from the garden, piece by piece turning it into a spiral and then slowly changing it back again.

“Pheris,” he said, and my stomach turned over. I regretted more than just my lunch.

“I lost my temper,” said the king. “I frightened you and I am sorry for that. You might otherwise have come to me when Juridius threatened you.”

I shook my head. The blame was not his.

“Pheris, look at me. I told the baron your grandfather that he must choose an heir young enough to be raised here in the palace because I badly need an Erondites that I can trust. I assumed it was you.”

My lip quivered and I bit it—accidentally too hard—and slapped my hand to my mouth. He laughed at me, smiling very briefly before he became serious again.

“I didn’t ask you, no one has asked you, if you wanted to be Erondites. I’m sorry for that, too. I am asking you now, shall we make a covenant, you and I, that I will trust you and you will trust me?” He waited, giving me time to think.