“We are at war,” the magus reminded him.

Sophos looked at the cliff on their right and the steep drop to the river on their left. “Where do you imagine the party of Mede assassins is going to leap from, Magus?”

The magus frowned and savaged him, as only the magus could, for his self-indulgence. “If the Medes are in Eddis and have murdered the queen”—he saw the king flinch and went inexorably on—“no warning would have had time to reach us. If she is lying this moment in her throne room . . . with her throat cut . . . in a pool of blood . . . we would not know it until the Mede assassins rode down the trail toward us to—”

“—be spitted by a small army of Sounisians,” interrupted Sophos, angry at what he knew was a reprimand he deserved.

“—to spit the idiot king who keeps riding ahead of his men in the van,” said the magus.

Sophos glowered, but he reined in his horse.

“Why must armies move so slowly?” he complained.

“You know why,” said the magus, more gently.

Eddis and her party waited by the bridge across the narrow chasm of the Seperchia River. The lower part of the bridge was stone, three levels of arches that reached all the way down to the water below. The uppermost level of the bridge was made of wood. The mountain wind blowing all around, never from the same direction for very long, made every loose thing flap and jingle, tossed the horses’ manes, and narrowed everyone’s eyes to slits. They appeared a grim company until the Sounisians arrived and Eddis kicked her sturdy mountain pony into motion. Sounis’s advance guard politely drew aside to let their king ahead of them to greet his queen. Their horses’ hooves thudding on the boards, the king and queen met in the middle of the bridge. Sophos dismounted first and stepped to catch Helen as she swung from the saddle. She hung an arm around his neck and kissed him as she dropped. He had to bend to keep his lips on hers until she reached the ground. Arm in arm, they led their horses toward Eddis’s company.

The men from Sounis were a day behind schedule, and Sophos apologized. “Everything took longer than expected. We started late and I could not march the men in the dark.”

“The pass always slows people down,” Helen reassured him. “Irene and I have taken it into account.”

The bulk of Eddis’s army had marched from the Aracthus Pass. Only Eddis’s minister of war and her personal guard and her hardier attendants were with her. Sounis greeted those he knew by name and the rest introduced themselves, comfortable addressing him as “Your Majesty.” If it still made him feel awkward to have hardened warriors bow their heads to him, he didn’t let it show.

Armies, even small ones, move slowly enough that Helen and Sophos could walk together, talking quietly and bringing each other up-to-date. Their horses followed behind them, occasionally nuzzling the backs of their heads or pulling sharply on the reins to snatch at whatever they thought might be edible and within reach.

“How many trips does your father think it will take to move your men to Attolia?” Helen asked.

“Too many,” said Sophos. “He doesn’t think he can get them there before they need to march north.” Thinking of the men who had so graciously accepted him as their king, he asked if tensions had eased in Helen’s court. She shook her head.

“Gen and Attolia both asked why I didn’t take Cleon out and shoot him. I think Gen was joking.”

“Not Attolia,” hazarded Sophos. He’d recognized Cleon among Eddis’s men.

“I wasn’t sure what trouble Cleon might get into, so I am keeping him with me. I wanted him well away from Therespides, as I’m sure it’s Therespides encouraging him, and frankly . . .” She hesitated.

“Oh, do be frank,” said Sounis, earning the smile that still made his heart seize.

Away from listening ears, with the wind blowing their words to pieces, she did not worry about being overheard. “Frankly, Cleon is too stupid to have stuck to this business so long. Frankly, it is Therespides I would like to shoot, and frankly, it would not solve the problem. There are just too many who think a Thief should not be high king over Eddis.” She waved a hand at the men walking ahead of them, the honor guard behind, and lifted it in a gesture of defeat. “I cannot shoot them all.”

“They were happy to have him be king of Attolia.”

“He’d brought me the Gift. He’d ended the war. Most important of all, he’d be in Attolia,” she emphasized.

Sounis kicked a rock down the road and had to pause to reassure his horse, who’d shied at the sound. When he caught up to Eddis, he asked hesitantly, “Gen does know the details of the marriage proposal, doesn’t he?”

“That your uncle threatened to give Hamiathes’s Gift to Gen, making him king, if I didn’t accept Sounis’s offer? Gen didn’t know at the time—he must by now.” Eddis glanced back at the magus riding and chatting with Gen’s father a little ways behind them. Sounis did too. They both knew the mastermind of his uncle’s plan.

“Gen would just have passed it on to you.”

“The council would not believe it.”

“They underestimated his loyalty.”

“So did the magus. A rare error on his part, but—”

“Catastrophic,” finished Eddis just as Sounis said, “Fortuitous,” and both blushed.

“Gen has always supported you,” Sounis pointed out. “And me.”

Eddis hesitated. Sophos recognized her reservations and dismissed them. “Yes, I might have won over my barons in Sounis without him, but it was Gen who gave me the courage to end a civil war with almost no bloodshed, and because of him, we entered our treaty on an equal footing with Attolia. Can Cleon truly not understand that?”

Eddis shrugged. “Cleon has never been what you would call astute. The people listening to Cleon, they think Gen has always been much too close to the throne for anyone’s comfort. You cannot imagine the outrage when his father, the son of the king, married the daughter of the Thief. And if it’s old news that my mother preferred my uncle but married my father to become queen, Cleon has raked it all back up again—all of the rumors about my mother’s infidelity and Gen’s mother’s revenge. Seducing other people’s lovers is a wintertime sport in Eddis. My father who was Eddis and Gen’s father paid a fortune to the temple priests that year to ensure their sons’ naming ceremonies were uncontested.” She did not say, did not need to say, that years later those same people saw her brothers dying one by one of fever and did not think a woman could rule Eddis. “His grandfather insisted on naming Gen for his god, and people who’d thought the Thieves of Eddis were just a remnant of ancient history suddenly assumed the worst.”

“Gen brought you the Gift. He made you queen,” insisted Sounis.

“And I destroyed it,” said Eddis. “Which made me what?”

“Queen,” said Sounis firmly.

Eddis smiled at him again, but it was a sadder smile. “Even those who were grateful to Gen were worried by his popularity. When he lost his hand, they hoped the Thief in him was gone for good, and when it wasn’t, sending him somewhere else to be king seemed like an excellent idea.”