Everyone understood.

Pegistus didn’t expect to buy food from the local farms. He’d put most of the supplies into the advance caches because he’d calculated that even if the Medes were repelled, in the very best possible outcome, only one in ten of the men who marched north could be expected to return. Attolia took advantage of this moment when no one was arguing to end the meeting.

She stood up, and everyone else followed suit. Unfortunately, as they did so, Casartus asked one last question.

“Your Majesty, what of the cannon from the mountain foundry?”

“Stenides is still waiting on the iron to cast the last of them,” said Eddis.

A junior naval officer on her left, a younger son of an insignificant baron, having seen her mildness and mistaken it for meekness, said condescendingly, “The Pent ships are of little use without cannon.”

Boagus immediately kicked him so hard in the back of the leg that the man dropped to his knees.

As the naval officer looked up at the queen, much astonished, Eddis said, in the same pleasant voice she’d used all day, “Now you don’t have to talk down to me.”

The whole room played statues as he looked from Eddis to his own queen, still seated at the end of the table.

Eddisian, Attolian, and Sounisian alike remained frozen, bent over their papers or halfway out of their chairs, unwilling to so much as shift their weight until they saw what would happen next. Was Attolia, in her own palace, to demur as her men were abused? Was Eddis to be insulted by a minor naval officer? Only Sounis and the high king appeared unconcerned. One was yawning, hand over his mouth; the other was trying to brush the wrinkles out of his silk coat as Eddis and Attolia smiled at each other like wolves recognizing members of their own pack. Attolia waved her hand, a hostess offering up her junior naval officer as a canapé.

Eddis graciously offered him a hand to rise, and the young man, who’d had plenty of time to see his life as well as his career pass before his eyes, bowed and apologized to her, to his queen, to the whole room. He even apologized to Boagus.

“That was not helpful,” Eddis said later to Boagus as they passed through the antechamber to the apartments she and Sounis shared in Attolia’s palace, where her attendants and his were waiting to dress them for dinner.

“Didn’t hurt.” Boagus corrected himself: “Didn’t hurt anyone but that preening boatman.”

“We are striving here for cooperation, you useless, uncivilized lout.”

“Who’s uncivilized?” Boagus said, mocking outrage.

“You are. You are an embarrassment to your country and your queen. Get out.”

Boagus laughed. “I will await Your Majesty’s pleasure—”

“In the hall!”

“In the hall.” He bowed and left.

Sounis had already passed through the antechamber and was pulling off his boots, having successfully waved off his attendants. He agreed with Boagus. “That idiot’s sheer terror did more to unify the council than anything else in that meeting. They’ll follow either of you to the ends of the Earth now.”

“They won’t follow Gen, though,” said Eddis, frustrated either with the greater situation or the fact that her attendant, Selene, was pulling her hair as she removed its pins. She tried to pull one out herself, and the older woman impatiently brushed her hand away. “Helen? What is it?” Sounis asked.

“Cleon,” she said with a sigh. “I should have shot him. I should have shot Therespides too, while I had the chance. He’s not only called for a trial again, he’s telling people that if we follow an untried king into battle, we will lose.” Eddis stood and began to pace, rubbing her arms as if chilled and eluding Selene, who followed her back and forth, still trying to remove her earrings and unbind her hair. “And that has put the fear of the gods into them. Crodes, of all people, has asked if orders will come through me for fear that we’ll be cursed if they accidentally take any direction from Gen.”

Sounis considered the chaos of a battlefield. “That would be . . . unwieldy.”

“It would be catastrophic.”

“But they’re following you. And you’re following him . . . surely?”

“This isn’t a problem good sense can solve,” Eddis told him. “A good thumping would, but it would have to be by one of Gen’s brothers. Unfortunately, I sent Temenus to march with Xenophon, and Stenides is overseeing the foundry.”

Sounis put his arms around his wife, halting her, giving Selene her opportunity. The attendant started to work in earnest on the queen’s hairpins. “I’m sure Gen has a plan,” Sounis said as he held Eddis in place.

“If that doesn’t frighten you, it should,” said Eddis, glowering.

Chapter Four

The next morning the king appeared to be deep in thought as he sat with his feet hooked around a stool and his head tipped forward to let Ion clip his hair. His attendants were no longer willing to let him go even to the practice field without a nicer pair of pants, an embroidered shirt, an earring in his ear. They would have powdered his hair with gold every day if he had let them. The magus watched with amusement, having come to the bedchamber to see the king prepared for the day.

Ion stepped back to study his work. “I still say it would be handsome if you let it grow long, Your Majesty.”

Ion’s careless remark caught the king’s wayward attention. His head came up. He snapped, “Teach me how to braid it with one hand, Ion, and I will grow it to my knees.”

Ion flushed and apologized.

Waving the apology and his attendants away, the king stood to leave. As he went, the magus, immune to protocol, walked along beside him. Once they were in the passageway, he said, “Still wishing for your lost hand back, Gen?”

The king, having taken Ion’s comment so badly, was unoffended by the magus’s disapproval. He shrugged. “I miss it. I’m sure everyone has something about themselves they’d like to change—to dance better, sing better, be stronger or taller.”

Xikos snickered. The king’s occasional touchiness about his height was well-known.

The king must have heard, because he said, “In Xikos’s case, be smarter than a burnt stick.” Everyone else snickered. As he started down the stairs, the king continued, saying, “But if I hadn’t lost the hand, I’d be another person entirely by now. Wishing for the hand back would be like wishing the man I already am to be replaced by some stranger. It would be wishing my own self out of existence, and who would want that?”

“Nicely reasoned,” said the magus critically. “Now tell me why you’re still snapping at your attendants.” He halted, midstep. “Oh, Gen,” he said ruthlessly. “It’s vanity.”

The king had also stopped. He hung his head. The magus laughed and laughed.

“How unfair to blame poor Ion,” he pointed out.

To everyone’s amazement, the king conceded. He said to Ion, standing above him, “Ion, I’m sorry. I was an ass and I apologize.”

Startling both the magus and the king, Ion practically leapt down the stairs. He put his arms out to blockade the way.

“Your Majesty, are you ill?” he demanded.