“No, thank you, Hilarion, there’s no reason you should go to the trouble.”

Hilarion went anyway.

Eugenides read and sipped his wine. Sometime after that, Susa appeared in the doorway of the porch, announcing himself, humming like a wasp with outrage. “Your Majesty,” he said deliberately.

“No, no, Susa,” said the king, without looking up. “Not Majesty. Highness, maybe. ‘Eugenides’ is always appropriate.”

“Enough of this, you lying, irresponsible whelp.”

“Whelp. That’s new. People usually say viper. Or bastard. My cousins liked to throw that at me.”

“You took an oath before the gods, new and old,” Susa reminded him. “Your gods, and you play at abandoning it?”

“I assure you, I am in earnest, Susa,” said Eugenides.

“And what of the people your games endanger?”

“You still have a queen. I am confident that she will manage,” said Eugenides.

“Attolia says she leaves with you.”

Eugenides’s face went from a studied carelessness to utterly blank, as a slate is wiped clean. Watching from my stool, I thought to myself he had been bluffing. But Susa’s moment of satisfaction was short-lived.

“She will leave with me?” Eugenides repeated.

Susa had made a mistake, perhaps a fatal one, in thinking to shame the king. Eugenides looked at him in wonder. “You ran to the queen for comfort, didn’t you? You expected her to put everything right, yet again, and she refused. Tell me, did you try to order her to apologize to the Pents?”

The barons’ nerves had failed long before anyone could suggest that out loud. They’d gone to the queen assuming she would somehow rein in her runaway husband. To the barons’ horror, she had risen to her feet and, much like her husband, swept from the room, leaving her own ring of office teetering on the arm of her ornately carved chair.

If the barons had been surprised by the king’s reaction, they were panicked by the queen’s. Attolia did not threaten where she did not mean to act.

Susa was shaking with rage. “You see how you have corrupted her,” he said. “It is not enough that you threaten our treaty with Eddis and Sounis, you deprive us of our queen.”

“I have certainly tried to do so,” Eugenides admitted calmly, laying his book on his chest and looking out over the railings at the view. “I asked her to leave with me on our wedding night.”

“What?” my grandfather said, his composure further weakened. He too had believed this was all a childish bluff and suddenly felt the ground shifting under his feet.

“Oh, yes. We could have been in the Epidi Islands by now, or Mur. I would have taken her anywhere she wanted,” Eugenides assured him. “She wouldn’t abandon her people—she knew how Erondites would rule if she did.” He shrugged. “Now, I suppose the acid from your tongue has finally eaten away at the ties that bound her here.”

“And you?” asked Susa contemptuously. “Where is your loyalty to your people? The ones who made you king of Attolia?”

With a gravity I’d never seen before, Eugenides eyed Susa. “You talk about loyalty and call me to task for my oaths. What about yours, Susa? Have I not heard you swear yourself my man, my needs your needs, my honor your honor, my law your law? I was sure I did.”

There was a hiccup in the baron’s righteousness, just a flicker, a hand twitching in protest.

Eugenides returned to his poetry, saying dismissively, “You let Erondites push you into this, Susa. If you want him to be your king, have him.”

“I do not want him to be my king, Your Majesty.”

“One would never guess,” said Eugenides, still looking at the page in front of him.

“We all have constraints that govern us. None of us is free to act as we choose,” said Susa, battling on.

“Except me,” said Eugenides. “I can do anything I want.” He showed his teeth again. “Susa and Erondites, the Laimonides, all the greater barons have always flipped from side to side with every shift in power, always putting their own interests first. Now the Medes are marching, Susa, and you are all still serving yourselves. Well, I cannot rein you in. Nor, it seems, can my queen. We cannot fight the Medes and you at the same time, so we may as well go. Let Erondites be your king.”

“Erondites will be the death of us all,” said Susa. “The Medes—”

“Will sweep over you like the tide,” Eugenides said. “In a generation,” he added prophetically, “nothing will be left of Attolia but a name on an out-of-date map.”

“You will not leave us to that,” said Susa.

“I am not king of the Bructs,” said Eugenides. “Look to Sophos for that kind of sacrifice.” He cursed mildly. “I’ve lost my place.” Holding the book open with his hand, he tried to slip the hook between the pages. Afraid he would tear them, I came from my stool to turn the pages myself, deliberately stopping at Perse’s poem imploring her faithless lover to return.

Hilarion was still standing in the doorway, agony in his face.

Susa saw a ray of hope. “There are those who are loyal to you, Eugenides. Will you abandon them?”

“I cannot save them.”

“You could.”

Eugenides shook his head. “It is not in my power,” he said. With a reproving glance at me, he said to Susa, “I told you, we cannot fight the Medes and disloyal barons too.”

“Let me bring you loyal ones, then, Your Majesty,” said Susa. “You know there are many who would willingly abandon Erondites.”

“You, Susa? You will lead people away from Erondites? How, when he holds your leash so tight?”

“I will let the Susa land above the Pomea go,” my grandfather said. “All of it. If you will stop this nonsense now.”

He meant my home. The Villa Suterpe was on the Susa land above the Pomea. Though it had long been in Susa’s possession, Erondites had a better claim to it and had held that over Susa’s head for years. In offering to give up that land and all the wealth it brought him, Susa was doing more than rejecting Erondites’s influence. He was offering to break publicly with him.

“And you think others will follow suit? You and I both know how Erondites keeps them cowed. How many loyal barons, truly free of him, can you promise? Tell me honestly. I will know if you lie.”

Susa bowed his head. “One,” he said.

“That’s the sweet taste of truth on your tongue, probably for the first time. One isn’t enough.”

“It’s a beginning,” argued Susa.

Eugenides shook his head.

“It’s the one that matters in this farce of yours.”

The king flicked a glance at him from the corner of his eye. “One,” he said, “but a lion?”

Hilarion was holding his breath. So was I. Susa dropped to his knees.

“I am an old man, Your Majesty, but I am your man in every particular,” he swore.

Eugenides snorted. “So, so, so,” he said dismissively. “That’s a vow for a fireside story, Susa. Was the taste of truth on your tongue too sweet?”

Susa had to agree. He said, “In Hephestia’s name I swear, and may lightning strike me if I lie: I am your man, Your Majesty, in every particular, so long as you are high king and the Medes threaten us.”