He held out his hand, the king’s ring on his palm. “Please,” he said.

Eugenides laid his book back on his chest and looked at it.

“I will settle for one, for now,” he said. “But one is not enough, Susa.” He took the ring. Not taking his eyes off Susa, he held it toward me, and using my good hand, I pushed it over his knuckle, back into place.

“I will bring you more supporters, Your Majesty,” promised Susa. “No one wants Erondites for their king.”

The barons, rattled by the outcome of their attempt to intimidate the king, greeted Susa’s announcement that he had returned the ring to His Majesty with relief. Most blamed Susa for mishandling the whole business, claiming they’d only ever wanted what was best for Attolia. Those actually motivated by Attolia’s desperate need for the Pents’ support raged in private. The Baron Casartus threw his lover out of his apartments for merely suggesting that everything would probably work out all right in the end.

“Thank you.” Eugenides bent to kiss the back of his wife’s neck.

“You lost your temper,” she said.

“I did,” he conceded, settling on the bench beside her.

“You know how upset they get at the least hint that you are ill, that we might lose you.”

“I do.”

Attolia’s barons needed a king, but they wanted one they could manipulate, each to their own ends, so that one house might have the upper hand and sometimes another, in a genteel, underhanded, secretive sort of oligarchy.

“They wanted power,” said Eugenides with a shrug. “I gave it to them.”

“You didn’t give it to them, you threw it in their faces. You opened a contest for the throne that would have left them all fighting each other like weasels in a hole.”

“I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” he admitted.

“I thought of any number of other—much more sensible—things to do,” said Attolia.

“And?”

“Threw caution to the winds,” she told him, and kissed him on the lips.

“Atté, Atté,” a little later he murmured in her ear, the battle cry of the Attolians.

“You have created a monster,” Erondites said, leaning forward in his chair to reach for the bottle of wine on the table. He poured himself a cup full to brimming. “There is no one now to rein him in. We know how that has gone in the past.”

“We’ll just have to hope this time it will be different,” said Susa.

“Why would it be different? When the power of the throne increases, we see our own rights and privileges trampled.”

“It’s not just our privileges that are about to be trampled, Pheris,” said Susa.

“What does it benefit us to be subdued by our king instead of by the Medes?”

“We might think of others besides ourselves. Occasionally.”

Erondites snorted. “You might be satisfied,” he said. “Don’t expect me to be.”

He left the court the next day, ostensibly to muster the men he would send to support the king’s army. He would not travel with the army, only send his men under the command of one of his least favorite nephews.

Costis left as well. Orutus had initially refused to let him return to Roa and had even gone so far as to order Costis confined to his barracks. He should have known better. Instead of returning to his quarters, Costis had gone directly to the king, where he had accused Orutus of abandoning Kamet to die. Orutus, following on Costis’s heels into the audience room, had in turn appealed to the queen.

“If Costis is followed back to Roa, what then?”

To his surprise, Relius had supported him. “The risk is too great that both will be killed, Your Majesty.”

The king would have spoken, but the queen laid a hand on his arm. “Kamet has served his purpose,” she said and even Orutus winced at her pragmatism. Costis blinked as he stared straight ahead and the muscles in his jaw jumped. But the queen wasn’t finished. “To risk Costis as well as Kamet is poor tactics, I agree. However, we must consider that if we order him to remain with the guard, his heart is unlikely to be in his work.” She looked at him, standing so upright before them. “And how embarrassing for us all if he were to take a lesson from a poor role model and abandon his responsibilities altogether.”

We all looked at the king, who looked at his toes.

The queen said to Costis, “I cannot in good conscience risk the men to ensure your safety. If you go alone, you may lead to Kamet the very thing you fear. Do you wish to take that chance?”

“I do,” said Costis.

“Then go,” said the queen. “And be blessed in your endeavors.”

The next day, Relius too departed. I arrived in the doorway to his apartments just as he and Teleus were saying their farewells. Relius laughed at my expression, and Teleus turned to frown at me.

“He does not approve of adult goings-on,” said Relius.

“I think it’s your goings-on he does not approve of,” said Teleus.

He was correct.

“That’s two of you, then,” said Relius airily. He didn’t like being criticized, and I think Teleus had been lecturing. Teleus was a great believer in lectures.

Sternly, he said to Relius, “You be careful.”

“I am not the one going to war,” Relius pointed out.

“No,” said Teleus, “you are the one poking your nose into other people’s business.”

Relius rolled his eyes at the rebuke, but when Teleus continued to browbeat him, he gave that quick lift of his chin that was as much of a concession as Teleus was likely to get. Evidently it was enough, for Teleus kissed him again and left.

“You,” said Relius to me, “keep your opinions to yourself. Someday you will be in love, and all your mocking of poor Philologos will come back to haunt you.”

I had been his student for too long, and I just rolled my eyes as he had rolled his at Teleus.

He laughed and waved at the table. “Come see what I have for you.”

It was a set of four leather-covered notebooks, plain but perfectly made.

“I want to know what you see while I am gone and what you think it means. I know, I know, your handwriting is still terrible. Make notes. Then go back and write more neatly when you can. Write enough that you will remember later what happened, and I will ask you questions when I return.”

What if people see me writing?

“Erondites has played his hand and lost again. He cannot even crow about the return of Susa’s land, as the rents are going to Marina. Erondites will not see a single copper coin while Juridius is in exile. Once the army is on the march, people will have more important things on their minds than what you are scribbling in a book.”

Those were my first journals and the beginning of my histories of the life of the great king.

Chapter Three

The day was bright and the sun’s warmth appreciated. The riders making their way in a narrow stream up the pass from Sounis into Eddis were already high in the mountains, and whenever they moved into the shade, it sent a chill down their necks that made them shiver as if whole armies were marching over their graves.

The king of Sounis rode with his magus near the front of his forces. There’d been some disagreement about his safety there. But once before, when the woman he meant to marry had waited for him in Eddis, he’d won an argument about whether he should ride more slowly and allow half his army to march ahead of him. Now the woman was his queen, and he was even less inclined to make her wait while he inched up the winding route above the Seperchia River. The magus had to tell him quite sternly not to advance ahead of all his men.