“I like it here,” said the king. They both knew being out on the island of Thegmis would limit his ability to roam Attolia’s capital city on his own.

The queen asked, “Why don’t you have tattoos?”

The king looked down at his arm, bare except for a heavy, figured silver band just above his elbow. “It’s very difficult to pass yourself off as an Attolian—or a Sounisian, for that matter—while decorated with Eddisian tattoos.”

“No need to pass yourself off as anything now. Except king,” she said meaningfully.

If that was bait, he didn’t rise to it. “If you are suggesting our contentious Eddisian guests might like me better with tattoos, you are mistaken. One gets them at specific times and for very specific reasons. The one that goes here,” he said as he raked the point of his hook lightly across the skin above the armband, “is inked when a boy enters the training house with the other boys his age. As my grandfather had spirited me away the night before, I joined a few months later, without the initiation ceremony and without a tattoo.”

“And the one higher on the shoulder?”

“That is to honor the first man an Eddisian kills.”

“And have you not killed a man?” she asked, knowing that he had.

He conceded those deaths with a tip of his head. “The tattoo is only for the first, and I didn’t get one at the time.”

She raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

“My grandfather didn’t have them either,” he said.

The queen knew that, and also knew he was changing ground. She was well aware of the fine line walked by Eddis’s Thieves. They were granted a great deal of leeway, and occasionally severely punished for taking too much of it. The absence of tattoos made them outsiders in their own communities, and that alienation was a deliberate check on their otherwise dangerous power. A Thief could threaten the throne of Eddis but never take it, could depose a king but never be one. The question of whether one could become annux—not king, but high king over the ruler of Eddis—was the one tearing the volatile, often violent, court of Eddis apart.

If she wondered whether there was another reason the king had not gotten a tattoo on his upper arm, if perhaps no one was supposed to know about the first man the Thief of Eddis had killed, Attolia let that question lie.

“I came to ask again about your attendants,” she said, as the door to the bedchamber reopened and Ion returned carrying a small table, Lamion following after with a cloth for it.

“Have they misbehaved?” Eugenides looked over his shoulder at Philologos coming in with a tray. Philo, still easily flustered, went wide-eyed and only barely stopped himself from shaking his head.

“About choosing two new companions at the Festival of Moira,” said the queen.

“And sending two home?” The king looked thoughtful. “Weren’t we supposed to be fostering goodwill with their families?”

“I think the palace budget would allow two more.”

“They’ll be stacked like kindling in their apartments.” They would. The attendants’ quarters were uncomfortable already. I had the space where I slept to myself because no one wanted to share a closet with me. I was quite content, but it was still a closet.

“If you will not change apartments, let us consider rotation again. They need not reside all the time with you.”

The king looked relieved. “Indeed, they need not. They can have some nice rooms on Thegmis.”

The queen continued on as if he had not spoken. “A new attendant from Eddis and one from Sounis to calm the waters.”

“Ah,” said the king. “You mean Cleon.”

“And Sophos has recommended Perminder of Nilos.”

“Sophos’s track record for picking companions is not the best,” the king pointed out.

Ion, standing behind him, looked pained.

“I meant Ion Nomenus,” said the king, his wounded innocence deeply insincere.

“So, we are agreed,” said the queen firmly. “You will invite them at the festival tonight.”

The king demurred. “It would be better to do it in private. Something to eat?” He waved at Philo’s tray.

Attolia made a face, not interested in the very food she had asked the attendants to bring. “Perhaps later.” She stood and straightened her skirts and kissed him lightly on the forehead before leaving.

Sounis and Eddis had come again for the Festival of Moira. The judges were more circumspect, and that year’s plays mocked safer targets. One of them was Relius: the lascivious character in the most popular play was obviously modeled on the former secretary of the archives. Another target was the former ambassador of the Mede. His character needed no pseudonym. The plays were amusing, but all the talk was still about Cenna’s play from the year before. Foolish Emipopolitus’s fearmongering was at the forefront of every conversation, right up until the moment the king officially invited Perminder and Cleon of Eddis to join him as attendants.

“That was a misstep,” said the queen of Attolia to the queen of Eddis, after the banquet was over. They had retired together to discuss Cleon’s outrageous behavior.

Eddis pulled the delicate silver crown from her head and ran her fingers through her hair, picking up small gold flecks on her hands as she did so. She began wiping them off on her skirts and then stopped, seeing that this was a poor solution to the problem. One of Attolia’s attendants brought a cloth, and Eddis took it with a smile.

Ruefully she said, “I was sure Cleon would be unable to resist the chance to swan about as an attendant. He longs for respect and is just smart enough to know he’ll never get it in Eddis.”

Perminder, when invited to join the attendants to the king of Attolia, had stood and made a very pretty speech thanking him. Cleon had not only refused the invitation; he’d thrown it back in the king’s face. “Since when does a Thief need attendants?” he had asked. “Perhaps to carry the crown you’ve stolen to the altar of your god?”

Eddis said, “If I take him home now, he’ll have the old men thumping him on the back and praising him to the high heavens. They are as stubborn as goats,” she complained.

“You could send them to colonize the moon,” Attolia suggested.

Eddis laughed briefly. “It would be easier! They’d rather leap into the Sacred Mountain than accept Gen as high king. If only he would not needle them,” she said plaintively. “He burns through the last vestiges of any goodwill.”

“If he were more kinglike,” Attolia responded, “we both know he wouldn’t be king.”

“But he distances himself . . . with his fancy clothes and his Attolian accent.”

“He distances himself from you,” said Attolia, “so that you are still queen.”

“I know that.”

“I know you know that.”

Eddis threw up her hands, was surprised by the towel, which she’d forgotten she held. “Cleon’s too stupid to come up with the things he says. Now that he has said them, though, he is the one I must get out of my court.”

“There are a number of ways to accomplish that,” Attolia said, not for the first time.

Not for the first time, Eddis refused. “If I silence him with too heavy a hand, there are others who will clamor even louder. He is a thorn to be drawn out very carefully, which is why I’d so hoped to foist him off on Gen.” She sighed. “Gen can only put up with so much.”