The clouds were lighter gray against the black night sky. All the birds were asleep, and insects in the bushes were singing songs to their gods. Eddis was not surprised when the king arrived at her shoulder, and she didn’t look in his direction. She’d heard his attendants approaching on the gravel paths, and she was well aware how much it distressed him to be announced wherever he went by their noise. She’d come to the garden to sit in the quiet and the moonlight, and she was relieved to hear the attendants’ footsteps receding when Gen directed them back to the terrace to wait. The guards stayed. Teleus had been adamant that security be tightened.

When Eugenides sat beside her, she leaned against him.

“They have to support you,” she said.

“They will,” he reassured her. “They love a war.”

“You don’t know what they’ve been like.”

“I do, actually,” he said. If anyone knew the temper of the Eddisians, it was the Thief.

“And afterward?” she asked.

“Let’s survive this, Helen, before we worry about that.”

They were quiet, she worrying, he waiting.

Finally she said, “I know what you’re thinking, and we cannot risk losing you, Gen.”

“Helen, today should have made it abundantly clear to all of you what I realized staring into a fireplace full of coals praying for my wife. I cannot lose Irene. I cannot lose you and I cannot lose Sophos. Rid yourself of this notion that I alone am indispensable.”

Chapter Two

There was no more talk of Emipopolitus. On estates all over the Peninsula, the barons were gathering their men and equipping them for war. Every industry was directed toward the effort. Armorers were busy night and day. There were uniforms to be made, belts and boots and shoes. Carts. Saddles. Harnesses. The demands of war were endless and their fulfillment had to be recorded in exact detail, every coin spent accounted for. The queen’s indentured set aside their tax records and moved into the war offices. The palace errand boys were run off their feet. Sounis and Eddis returned to the mountains, Sounis continuing on to his capital, both of them intent on rallying their people.

Perminder of Sounis remained to join the king’s attendants. Eddis didn’t even ask if Cleon’s apology had been accepted. He returned to the mountains with her.

The ambassador from Roa was not seen again. The Attolian, Sounisian, and Eddisian ambassadors to Roa and Kimmer and Zaboar were recalled. Protests were sent to those courts and to the Greater Powers of the Continent, who were also in treaties with our treacherous allies. Attolia sent an envoy to the emperor, demanding that he withdraw his armies.

The king thought this was silly.

“The rules of the civilized world must be followed,” said Fordad, mocking sincerity. He and the king were alone and he could speak freely.

The king snorted as he sipped at the liquor Fordad shared with him when the king dropped by his apartment late in the night. “If the rules of the civilized world were followed, the Mede and the Brael empires would both be the size of Attolia.”

“Not true, Your Majesty,” protested Fordad, still mocking. “Remember the Melian dialogues.”

“Oh yes, of course,” said Eugenides bitterly. “If you have the might to do it, you have the right to do it. The most important rule of all.”

Kimmer demanded the safe return of their ambassador from Attolia, and the Attolians certainly didn’t mind seeing him go. His leave-taking was not what the Mede’s had been, with the king interrupting the ambassador’s obsequious, exculpatory farewells to say, “I don’t care what you knew or didn’t know or when you didn’t know it. You will be escorted to the harbor. Goodbye.”

To Teleus the king added, “Be sure he’s provided a closed carriage.” Teleus bowed and conducted the stunned ambassador out.

I did not see Teleus return to the palace, but I heard about it that evening when he came to grouse over a bottle of wine shared with Relius. I had lately begun to review my lessons in my tutor’s rooms when there were no formal dinners, and I listened to Teleus’s complaints instead of reading the text Relius had set in front of me. The Kimmeran ambassador had been safe behind a carriage door when the citizens began pelting him with rotten food, but Teleus and his guards had not been so lucky. Though they had not been the intended target of the people’s rage, a fair amount of diffusion in the fusillade was only to be expected. Teleus seemed to hold it as much against the king as against the ambassador.

“I don’t think the king encouraged it,” Relius told him, laughing. Teleus grunted. I knew he disapproved of the king, and the king disapproved of him. He was taciturn by nature, intimidating even as he relaxed over a cup of wine. The king had once called the captain of the guard stodgy to his face.

The remaining members of the diplomatic party from Roa had been arrested and were returned to their border under lock and key, a process I am sure was humiliating and uncomfortable. Still, like the Kimmeran ambassador, they were kept from any harm. One of their servants had spit at me once, and I was glad to see them gone.

It was Yorn Fordad’s unhappy responsibility, as ambassador of the Braelings and also temporary representative of the Pents, to remind Attolia that the Pents had cut all diplomatic ties until there was a full and free apology from the king for attempting to murder their ambassador. The Braelings would offer the Little Peninsula their support, but the Pents would not.

“Your Majesties, I must assume that this precludes providing any ships to aid in a blockade of the Roan ports. The allied navy could be sent to your aid, but the admiral in charge of the fleet, Admiral Rullo . . .”

“Is a Pent,” said the queen.

“Yes. Therefore, I cannot guarantee the allied navy’s timely arrival. Not without an apology.”

“Which is not going to happen,” said the king sullenly, crossing his arms, slumping down in his chair.

Having grown comfortable at last in the palace, I found I was again on perilous ground when the king held out his hand to me and said, “What is that?” He was dressed and just about to leave the apartments. Lamion, Dionis, and I were to follow him that morning to his appointments.

Puzzled, I offered him the slate Relius had given me. Before he left for Sounis, the magus of Sounis had set several problems for me. I had one of them on the slate: a circle, quartered, with the endpoints of two of the radii connected to make a triangle. I thought the king was interested in the math—the magus had told me to find an equation to describe the triangle, and I’d brought the slate with chalk to make my notes during what I knew would be interminable meetings.

The king took my slate, tipped it back and forth to look at both sides, showing no interest in the figures. He handed it to Lamion. “Get rid of that,” he said, and left the apartments without another word. Then he ignored me for the rest of the day—so pointedly that I was sick that night in the necessaries. I had not been sick in months: I was eating my fill instead of living on table scraps with Melisande; I had been sleeping better, as Petrus’s tonics and hot baths and his exercises, much as I mocked them, had made me more comfortable. And I had not been afraid.

The next morning, I went to Relius, unsure what I would tell him if he asked where the slate was and why I didn’t have it. He didn’t ask, and the slate, or one just like it, was sitting on the worktable when I arrived. Instead of standing behind me as he usually did, giving me directions and watching my work, he dragged over the other stool and sat beside me.