“Yes,” said Quedue in a low voice. “A vitally important matter. We have a saying in my country, that a beautiful woman deserves love.”

Phresine’s expression was almost worth the ache in my hip.

“Ugly women do not?” asked the queen, as if genuinely curious.

This was not what the Pent had expected, and after a brief hesitation, he ignored her. “My king has often said it is wrong for a beautiful woman to enter a marriage of convenience.” He lingered over the words, and the queen appeared to consider them carefully.

“But he married your queen to preserve peace on the border with Gant, did he not? Surely he would not imply that she is not . . . ?”

The Pent said hastily, “Oh, my king never ceases to praise the beauty of his queen.”

“Really?” said Attolia. “I thought he called her a cow. From a land of cows.”

The conversation, which Quedue had obviously practiced in advance, was going further and further astray. “Is cow . . . not a compliment here in Attolia?”

Someone snorted, but Attolia only said very seriously, “Cow-eyed is, ambassador. It has something to do with the eyelashes and the demurely lowered gaze.”

“Well then, let me call you cow-eyed, dear queen, for your lashes are lovely and no one can rival you for low—I mean, no one can rival your demure nature.” He took the queen by the hand, trying to regain the initiative. “I think what my king meant was that true love should not be constrained, and a certain flexibility is important in a political marriage.” He was stroking his thumb across her knuckles.

Her reply was cold. “On the contrary, Ambassador. Your king may not expect his wife to be faithful. He may call his queen a cow, and I wish her joy of him. In Attolia, the most important thing in a marriage is—”

She was pulling hard enough that he was probably hurting her hand. She stopped and stared him down. Reluctantly, he released her.

“—respect,” she finished.

“Nonsense,” said the Pent. He paused to glare at the attendants all around them before he leaned in to whisper, “You are hemmed about with his spies, but I can silence them. I know what you would say, if you felt free to speak.”

Phresine stepped forward to end this fiasco. Too late. The ambassador had raised himself up on his knees, seized the queen’s face in both hands, and pressed his lips against hers.

The king, assuming the meeting with the engineers was dragging on, had, like the Pent, waived formalities. Descending the flight of stairs from the royal apartments, he’d walked down the hallway trailing his attendants behind him, to arrive in the open doorway precisely as a whole roomful of people stood by watching the queen of Attolia in the Pent ambassador’s arms.

No one paints moments like these on walls.

Seeing him pale, I understood why even Eddis had braced herself after the oath-taking ceremony when the king was told he could not fight in his own battles. That had been illness. This was rage.

The ambassador, sensing his dangerous exposure, swiveled his head. Seeing the king, he waffled over how alarmed he should be. Attolia pushed him away. She pointed to the second set of doors on the far side of the room.

“Run,” she said.

After another moment of hesitation, the ambassador jumped to his feet but failed to take her advice, only circling to the far side of the council table before he paused to look back. The king hadn’t moved, except to lift his hand to his heart, like a man slowly realizing the fatal nature of a wound. He even looked down, as if expecting to see a blade protruding from his chest.

When he lifted his head and fixed his eyes on the Pent and the ambassador saw the knife that appeared in the king’s hand, he began to flee in earnest, his hard-soled shoes rattling as he raced away. The king went after him, leapt to the top of the table in a single jump, and landed at a run on the other side. The ambassador was going so fast as he left the room that he bounced off the opposite wall of the passage outside.

The queen shouted at the guards to shut the doors. The king, without time to countermand the order, swerved to one side, reversed the knife in his hand, and hurled it through the diminishing space between them. There was a ring of metal on stone outside and a wail from the ambassador, then a slam that reverberated through the room and probably the entire palace. Slowing to a stop, the king stood with his shoulders hanging.

Then he spun in a slow circle, looking at the guards, his attendants, the queen’s attendants. Frozen in place, they might have been devotional statues at an altar.

“Get out,” he ordered.

No one protested, but no one moved, either.

“OUT!” he shouted. The guards who’d just closed the doors began furiously pulling them open again. Floor to ceiling and solid bronze, they weighed as much as ten men and it was no easy task.

Once they were open, the queen’s attendants began to file out. Phresine hesitated. Attolia waved her hand, ever so slightly, and Phresine went too. At the other doorway, Hilarion stood aside to let Xikander pass him. Then he, too, hesitated. The guards behind him were moving more cautiously than the men who’d probably saved the Pent ambassador’s life, and the doors behind him were not yet closed.

“Out, Hilarion,” said the king, his voice lower but no less intense.

Hilarion bowed and stepped back, disappearing from sight, leaving the king, the queen, and me, behind the lemon tree, too frightened to breathe.

The king swung to face the queen, looked down again at his hand held to his chest.

“It hurts,” he said. His voice breaking.

“Serves you right,” said the queen, every word as cold as ice.

“Serves me right?” said the king. Incredulous as well as angry, he said, “Serves me right?”

“You dare,” said Attolia, rising to her feet like a thundercloud. “You dare impugn me.”

“He was kissing you!”

“He was insulting me!”

“You told them to shut the doors!” the king shouted.

They stood facing each other.

“Why? Why?” wailed the king, until Attolia gritted her teeth and gave the answer that should have been obvious.

“If I cannot kill the Pent ambassador, then neither will you.”

The fire in the king flickered. His eyes fell away from her face. There was another long silence until, in a milder voice, he inquired, “Can we not kill him?”

“Do not pretend with me when you know the answer.” The queen sat, recovering her poise. “Though he will be on the next ship headed west, if I have to send him home in a rowboat.”

The king sighed heavily. He continued to look all around the room, as if for a previously unseen exit, and then said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

The queen nodded. She held out her hand, and he crossed the space between them and fell to his knees. He put his head down on her lap.

Voice muffled, he said, “It still hurts,” as if the pain should have lessened now that the cause of it was gone.

She stroked his hair. “Serves you right,” she said again, but gently.

I exhaled in relief. The king lifted his head. My mouth went dry as he fixed his eyes on the potted lemon I was hiding behind.

The king pushed back on his heels. He’d reached me in the space of a few heartbeats and had me out by the collar and stumbling toward the door in a few more. The metal cuff on his hook made a sharp tap, no more, on the solid bronze doors. After a long moment of hesitation, one began to swing open. The king stopped it with his foot, shoved me through the narrow opening, then used his weight to close it again.