“Pheris,” he said, speaking very gently for him, “it is hardly a secret to anyone with eyes that you come here to my study every day.”

I had grown so much at ease in my new life, I did not understand what he was hinting at. I was proud to be his student.

“The slate seems small,” he said. “But there are new people in the palace, and people seeing things with new eyes. When a country goes to war, it looks for enemies everywhere, and carrying this”—he tapped the slate with one misshapen finger—“you may as well be wearing a signboard on your chest like a man in a marketplace that reminds everyone who sees you that you are an Erondites . . . and that you are listening.”

I looked down as if a chasm had opened in front of me, waiting only for me to fall in. I had stopped listening to the voice of Melisande in my head and had walked myself right to the edge of it. Seeing his point made, Relius patted me awkwardly on the shoulder.

“They have forgotten the burned wagons at Perma and your part in Erondites’s attempts to turn the people against the king and queen. You cannot remind them. They treat you like a good-fortune amulet since the queen’s illness, but an amulet is not a person, Pheris; it’s a thing. An amulet does not listen and read . . . and write.” He paused, seeing my distress. “You are just a boy,” he said. “You should not be at play in the world of men, yet you are. We cannot change that. I know that to be regarded as a thing and not a person is painful; still, the king would see that protection last for you as long as possible. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Someday we will not have the Mede attacking on one hand and your grasping grandfather on the other,” Relius promised. “And you will do more than carry a slate. For now, let us practice doing without one. Show me, please, how you indicate time and how much of it has passed.”

No sooner was the specter of my grandfather who was Erondites raised than the man himself appeared. He was the head of the house, and he had come to the capital to offer his resources to the state. I stayed scrupulously at the side of my king, not traveling the hallways on my own even to reach Relius for my lessons. Within the week, the council of the Greater Patronoi sent a delegation to the palace, carefully choosing a time when the queen had left it to make a sacrifice at Ula’s altar in the city.

Hilarion had been told that the meeting was a formality, an introduction to the sons of several barons being promoted to command in Attolia’s army. When we arrived, we found not just those barons and their sons, but all the Greater Patronoi, the heads of the most powerful houses in Attolia, waiting. They filled the large council chamber, the very one where the king had chased off the Pent. The chairs at the long table had been moved to the walls, except one pointedly left for the king. When he sat, he might have looked imperious, keeping all the men around him standing; instead, he looked like a boy about to be lectured by his tutors.

Hilarion leaned to speak in the king’s ear, but the king shook him off. Philologos would have gone to alert the queen until he realized, as I already had, that the brawniest of the barons’ sons were between us and the doors. To get past them would have required an all-out brawl, and the guards standing by would be no help; they were there to defend the king’s life, not to intervene in fights between the patronoi. Some of them were okloi, others patronoi, and it wasn’t at all clear whose side they would come in on. Hilarion was looking daggers at his own cousin, the head of his house. Philologos turned beseeching eyes on his father. They were no more use than the guards.

Erondites was there, of course, though he left it to my grandfather who was Susa to present the patronoi’s demands. Susa began by laying out the rules of diplomacy, the importance of allies, the respect due to ambassadors and the inviolable nature of their position. The king made little hurry-up motions, which had no effect. When the king tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, Susa paused in his lecture.

“Are you done?” the king lowered his head to ask.

“Only waiting for your attention, Your Majesty,” said Susa. He went on to catalog the king’s transgressions: the many examples of rudeness, the theft of the Mede ambassador’s statue, the assault on the Pent, every complaint a thread with which, loop on loop, he meant to bind the king. Susa even blamed him for the shooting of the Mede ambassador by Sounis.

Far from being humbled by this browbeating, the king progressed rapidly from impatient to resentful. One or two barons shifted anxiously and were glared at by their peers. Any weakness among their ranks put them all at risk. Erondites had convinced them that they could go back to the days when Attolia’s father was a figurehead of a king and the Greater Patronoi were an oligarchy that divided the power of the state among themselves. All they needed to do was force the king’s hand, press him in this moment to make a hasty decision from which he could not retreat.

“You have embarrassed our state as well as attacked a man who had every reason to believe he was safe from violence,” said Susa.

“I did miss,” said the king.

“That is immaterial,” Susa responded pompously.

“I could have killed him.”

“Your Majesty—”

“Could have winged him anyway,” said the king with a shrug.

“Your Majesty should not have thrown the knife. Your Majesty should not have drawn it.”

“His Majesty shouldn’t have had it if he was going to draw it,” someone muttered, loudly enough to be heard across the room.

Susa waved for silence, having arrived at his conclusion at last. “We are the Greater Patronoi of Attolia, and we say the king shall apologize to the Pents.”

The king was unimpressed. “Say anything you like,” he said, showing his teeth.

“May I remind Your Majesty that a majority vote from the full council of barons overrules even the king?”

“If I say no, you may not remind me, then what, Susa? Will you suck the words back into your mouth?”

It was Susa’s turn to shrug. “It is the law of the land, Your Majesty. In these perilous times, we must remain united. You cannot oppose your Greater Patronoi.”

That was the point of Erondites’s sword sliding in. With the Attolians facing their greatest enemy, the king was vulnerable, so the barons put to him this choice: submit to the barons’ authority and weaken his ruling power, or risk a division that would weaken the whole state. Behind Susa, the barons nodded their heads like woodcocks, some encouraging, some stern, some smug, all of them expecting the king to bow to their demands, because Attolia needed the Pent support and because Erondites had said he would. He’d said that Susa would persuade him.

Susa was not trying to persuade him. Susa, in the guise of an elder statesman, was goading him. “Come now, Your Majesty. You have behaved badly, and you know it. Admit your error like a man and apologize.”

If the king did not submit to the Greater Patronoi, then his barons, having foolishly squared themselves up against him, would have to back down themselves, or revolt. Whether they wanted to defy the king or not, Erondites had guaranteed that a few would—and with the Mede bearing down, a few was enough. Compromises would have to be made, barons bought off. To reunite his patronoi, the king would be forced to make concessions that would weaken the throne even further.