There was a long pause before the ambassador responded.

“I am sure that if the king of Attolia were to refrain from behaving like a child, it would be appreciated by all,” he said.

The king seemed genuinely amused. “You really should have given me the statue.”

“The king is tired,” said Melheret, standing to end the interview, though that should have been the king’s prerogative.

When he was gone, the king put his arm across his face and mumbled into his sleeve, “The king is tired of the whole Mede empire. That’s what the king is tired of.”

Chapter Four

The next morning, the king informed his attendants that he would be getting up, and in spite of the protests I could already see were formulaic and half-hearted, a very abbreviated form of his morning rituals followed.

“Pheris,” he called when he was dressed, and the attendants, reminded of my existence, swiveled their heads, wondering where I’d got to. The king knew, waving me out from my hiding place me as I hesitantly peered around the corner of his desk.

“You are coming with me,” he said. “I don’t want anyone pitching you out a window while I’m not looking.”

In the afternoon, the king went to lie down, not in his own apartments, but in the queen’s. Attolia had moved into these rooms when she’d seized the throne. Eugenides, once he was king, might have displaced her, or might have taken the apartments directly adjacent, which had traditionally belonged to the queen. He had done neither, choosing instead to inhabit a smaller apartment, usually occupied by minor or more distant relatives of the king. It had previously belonged to Attolia’s older brother and had been empty since his death.

The queen’s apartments had a guard room to pass through before one reached the spacious waiting room set aside for visitors. There were separate sleeping spaces for each of the attendants, and closets and antechambers, audience and dressing rooms. There were two rooms for the attendants to wait in. The queen’s women had precedence in her apartments, so they gathered in the room nearer the royal bedchamber, decorated with scenes of war and statecraft. The king’s attendants kicked their heels in rooms farther away, paneled with images of pastoral beauty and domestic tranquility.

“Medander,” said Hilarion, with a look at me and then a firm shake of his head. Medander settled back into his chair, whatever he’d been planning in regard to me reconsidered. I held very still until the other attendants turned their attention to the card game that Ion and Sotis were playing. Sotis was arguing that Ion had broken some trivial rule, and when no one was looking in my direction, I slipped off my chair and sank down behind it.

“So, Ion,” I heard Xikos say, “if the king dies after all your efforts to curry his favor, how will that work out for you?”

Ion ignored him.

“Even if he lives, you’ll never get into his good graces.”

“He could have chosen new companions and he hasn’t,” Philologos pointed out.

“He’s not going to send you away, Philo. You are his darling.”

Ion said very firmly, “This is not the place, Xikos.”

“Yes, leave it, Xikos,” said Sotis. “I’m ahead and I want to finish this round.”

Just then one of the queen’s oldest attendants, Imenia, came in, interrupting the game again to announce that the king had awakened. Hilarion stood to go to him and waved at Philologos to attend as well.

Imenia shook her head. “He asked for the little Erondites.”

Startled, they all turned to find me sitting back on the chair as if I’d never left it.

“Oh, Philo, you have been replaced after all,” said Medander as I dutifully followed after Hilarion.

Medander was talking nonsense, of course. Philo was always a favorite of the king and, no matter how much they teased him, a favorite of the other attendants as well. I was merely a pawn and in the game of kings, even pawns are counted with care. I was kept under a watchful eye almost every waking moment for the next few weeks as the king made clear his unequivocal wish for my continued well-being.

As they grew resigned to my presence, the other attendants tried to set me tasks.

“Pheris,” Cleon would say, “bring me that wine.” Or Lamion might tell me, “Hang up this coat.”

Melisande had taught me well. I kept my eyes down and my face blank as an empty plate. I stared off to one side as if I hadn’t heard them, or studied the wine bottle for a leisurely count of ten before slowly delivering it. I would take whatever clothes they handed me with a puzzled look and subsequently drop them on the floor.

“We could leave it there,” said Sotis, looking at a shirt sure to be wrinkled when the king next called for it. Lamion just sighed and bent to retrieve it.

It took very little time for them to give up on me. I could not be sent to fetch a lamp, could not be asked to bring a pillow. Sooner than even I expected, I was ignored, which is not to say that I was free from all abuse, any more than I had been at home. Xikos was a man who resented his betters and mistreated his inferiors. He thought I was a suitable target to exercise his resentment on, but he was mistaken. Those same means I used in my defense at the Villa Suterpe were useful to me at the palace: the sticky fingers wiped on his sleeve, the accidental spills, and the many small mishaps in his day for which I could not possibly be blamed. Xikos soon learned to despise me, as I despised him.

I sat through the business of the court until my leg grew so stiff that walking was an agony. I walked until I was so tired that I fell asleep when we stopped, nodding off beside the king’s chair. Used to the meager diet afforded to an aging nurse and an unwanted child, I ate rich food for the first time, too much of it, and made myself sick. Hiding it better than the king, I threw up into the necessaries in the middle of the night. What I could not hide was myself. I was pointed at, laughed at, seen in a way I never had been before. I was overwhelmed, and in spite of all my efforts, my eyes were often leaking my woes to the world. Whenever we returned to the king’s apartments and he released me to the quiet of my closet, I went sobbing with relief, longing to be with my nurse in our own little outbuilding on the farm, longing for a sense of safety I would never know again.

Slowly I came to tolerate the ceaseless activity of my new home. The weight of watching eyes faded, and the people of the court began to ignore me, just as the attendants had. They talked over my head about affairs of state, and about the state of very private affairs, as I sat on the floor, arranging and rearranging the small items I collected in my pockets. Moving the coins and buttons and pebbles, I paid close, if invisible, attention to everything I heard. Studying the king, I saw how he, too, hid himself in plain sight, how his outward flamboyance helped him keep his secrets, how much he also disliked the noise and the lack of privacy.

Whenever there was an opening in his schedule, he visited the queen’s garden, the section of the palace grounds reserved for the royal family. He said the birdsong was restorative, but I knew it was the solitude he savored. Once the guards had confirmed that the garden was free of intruders, he would leave both guards and attendants behind and disappear down the graveled paths. The guards remained at attention at the top of the stairs leading from the terrace down into the garden, watching for any glimpse of the king, ready to rush to him at a moment’s notice. The attendants sat around the table where the king and queen frequently breakfasted during fine weather. Neither the guards nor the attendants would leave their places unless the king failed to return in time for his next appointment. When that happened, the attendants would have to wander through the shrubbery calling for him. It offended their dignity and they hated it.