“So good to see you again, Eugenides,” said the queen.

“A pleasure to see you—always, Your Majesty,” he said, but he turned his head slowly away and closed his eyes as if the light from the torches around her was too strong.

“Teleus,” said Attolia to the captain of her personal guard, “see that our guest is locked up very carefully.” She turned her horse and rode back to her gate and through the city to her palace. In her private chambers her attendants waited to undress her and comb out her long hair. When they were done, she dismissed them and sat for a moment before the hearth. It was summertime, and the fireplace was empty. Behind her, she heard a woman’s voice.

“You have caught him.”

“Oh, yes,” said the queen without turning her head. “I have caught him.”

“Be cautious,” said the other. “Do not offend the gods.”

Left by the guardsmen in a cell at the end of a hallway at the bottom of a narrow stair below the palace, surrounded by stone walls, the Thief dropped as gently as he could to all fours and immediately lifted a hand in disgust. The floor was wet. He turned his head to look across the cell. The dim light coming through a barred window in the door behind him reflected off the stone floor with little variation in its pattern. The floor was wet all over.

Turning his head had been a mistake. He crawled to a corner and retched until what was left of his dinner was gone. Then he crawled to the opposite corner of the cell and lay down on the damp stones. He prayed to the God of Thieves. There was no answer, and he slept.

CHAPTER TWO

DAYS PASSED BEFORE NEWS OF the arrest reached the valleys high in the Hephestial Mountains. A man from a wineshop raced the other talebearers and reached the palace of the queen of Eddis just as her court had gathered in the ceremonial hall for dinner. The queen stood talking with several of her ministers. Behind her was the elaborate ceremonial throne. In front of her the dishes were gold, and by her plate was the gold, figured cup the kings and queens of Eddis had drunk from for centuries.

As the queen took her place at the table and the members of the royal family, followed by the barons in residence at the palace and various ambassadors, did the same, one of Eddis’s guardsmen crossed the hall to stand behind her chair. The court watched while he bent to speak to her quietly. The queen listened without moving, except to glance down the long table at her uncle, who was also her minister of war. The queen spoke to the guardsman and dismissed him, then turned back to the table.

“If my ministers will join me, I’m sure we will return shortly. Do please enjoy your dinner,” she announced calmly. Then she stood and crossed the room with a decisive step that didn’t match her finery. She moved toward a narrow doorway that led to a smaller throne room, the original megaron of her ancestors’ stronghold. Her ministers collected around her, following as she led down the three shallow steps through the doorway and across the painted floor to the dais. The original throne room of Eddis was smaller, the original throne simpler than the ceremonial throne in the dining hall. Carved from stone and softened by embroidered cushions, the old throne was quite plain. Being a plain person, Eddis preferred it to the gilded glory of the new throne. She ruled her country from the smaller throne room, and saved the glories of the Greater Hall for banquets.

Pulling impatiently at her long skirts, she seated herself. “Eugenides has been arrested in Attolia,” she said to her ministers. “A tradesman has come with the news from the capital city. I asked the guard to bring him here.” She didn’t look at her minister of war as she spoke. Her counselors exchanged worried glances but waited patiently without speaking.

Eddis’s guard, as they escorted the Attolian in, watched him carefully in case he was less harmless than he appeared, but he only stood before the throne, nervously twisting the collar of his shirt. It was bad news that he’d brought, and he knew it. Having come so far to deliver it, hoping to be well paid, he was afraid of his reception.

“What do you know about the arrest of my Thief?” the queen asked, and the tradesman cleared his throat a few times before he spoke.

“They found him in the palace and drove him out through the town. He was outside the city walls before they caught him.”

“They arrested him outside the city? Was he injured?”

“They used dogs, Your Majesty.”

“I see,” said the queen, and the tradesman shuffled his feet nervously. “And how do you know it was my Thief?”

“The members of the guard said so in the wineshop. We all saw him arrested, at least I and my wife did, but it was the middle of the night, and we didn’t know who it might be, but the guards were talking the next day in the shop. They said it was the Thief of Eddis that the queen had caught and that…” The tradesman tapered off into embarrassed throat-clearing noises.

“Go on,” said the queen, quietly, struggling to appear nonthreatening when she wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled.

“They said she’s going to make him pay for taunting her, leaving things in the palace so she knows he’s been there.”

The queen’s eyes closed and opened slowly. It was Eugenides she wanted to shake until his teeth rattled.

She said, “You’ve come a long way in a short time.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Hoping no doubt to be paid for it.”

The tradesman was silent. He’d ridden his horse to exhaustion and climbed a narrow mountain trail on foot, hurrying every step in order to be the first one to reach Eddis with the news.

“Give him a double weight in silver,” the queen directed the lieutenant of her guard. “And feed him before he goes home. Give a silver griffin to anyone else who brings the news today,” she added, “and I want to speak to anyone who brings fresh news.”

When the tradesman was gone, she sat staring into space and frowning. Her ministers waited while she thought.

“I was wrong to send him,” she said at last. The admission was as much concession as she could make to the horror she felt at her mistake. Eugenides had hinted that the risks would be greater if he returned to Attolia so soon after his last visit. She hadn’t listened. She needed the information only he could get, and the Thief had so easily outwitted his opponents in the past, Eddis had assumed he would do so again. She had sent him, and he hadn’t hesitated to go. She turned to her minister of war. It was his son who would die for her error in judgment.

“I am sorry,” she said. “She won’t take a ransom.”

With a small shake of his head, Eugenides’s father concurred.

Eddis continued. “He’s too valuable to us and could be much too dangerous to her if she let him go. She won’t be inclined to do anything in a hurry, and if he’s been taunting her, and she’s lost face in front of her court…whatever she eventually decides to do is going to be unpleasant. We will have to see,” she said. “We will have to see what we can do.”

Eugenides lay in his cell. When the pain in his head woke him, he opened his eyes briefly, then slept again. He should have tried to stay awake, but he hardly cared. Sometimes, in his deepest sleep, he thought he heard someone calling his name, and he struggled back to consciousness to find himself alone in the dark. He woke when food and water were pushed through a slot in the bottom of the door and sometimes crawled across the floor to drink the stale water. Other times the effort required was too great, and he left it.