She left soon after, and the king rolled back down to lie staring at the canopy over his head.

Chapter Five

To avoid waking the king if he still slept, Ion opened the door to the bedchamber without knocking. There was no sign of movement from the bed, so he signaled to Lamion and Dionis to very quietly bring in the king’s breakfast. Dionis opened the cross-legged stand. As Lamion bent to set the tray on top of it, the dish holding honeycomb slid forward just enough to knock the wooden bowl next to it.

Deep beneath the covers, the king’s eyes opened. He’d been dreaming and now he was awake. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t place it at first. He heard the attendants, heard the sound of the tray carrying his breakfast settling onto its stand, heard Ion, just as always, shushing Lamion. None of this was unusual, and yet something was out of the ordinary. He didn’t know what it was. He stretched his arms and legs very cautiously. He felt fine.

He felt fine.

The attendants heard the muffled sound of the king’s command. “Out!”

Ion was backing away from the bed. Dionis and Lamion abandoned the breakfast tray as the king’s voice got louder and louder. “Out! Out! OUT!” he shouted.

Ion slammed the door behind him and the king sat bolt upright in bed.

There I stood, on the wrong side of the door, staring. I could feel my scalp prickling and thought my hair might have been on end as well. Every cut, every bruise, every stitch that Petrus and Galen had fought to sew into the king’s face the day before was gone.

“I am going to be sick,” he announced. He threw off the bed linen and stumbled over to the closed stool. When he was done, he put the velvet-covered lid down and sat on it.

“I said ‘Out,’ didn’t I?” he asked me when he’d gotten his breath back.

I shrugged helplessly.

“I know, I know. Ion would have crushed you with the door.” He looked around the room. “Well,” he asked me at last, “what do you think we should do now?”

I had no idea.

Still sitting on the closed stool, he ran his fingers over the stump on his right arm, and then hesitantly touched the scar on his face as if to confirm it was still there. He looked around the room as if there were an explanation hidden in a corner or behind his writing desk.

In the end, he wrote out several messages and sent me to deliver them. I slipped through the door and he locked it behind me.

Eddis and Sounis stood and stared. Attolia gently touched his face and kissed him.

“Ask the Oracle,” said Eddis. “Let her guide you.”

So they sent Philologos up to the temple with a message, and the high priestess came down from the heights in her chair carried by its ceremonial bearers. Arriving in the waiting room, the Oracle rolled past the disconcerted attendants and guards without taking any notice of them and stood in front of the king, not in the least overawed by his transformation. “An inconvenient miracle, Your Majesty?” There was a warning in her words, not to take the gifts of the Great Goddess lightly.

Careful not to offend, the king asked, “Will people think the trial was a sham?”

The high priestess laughed. She was a big woman, and her laugh was a rumbling, infectious sound. “You should know, my king, when the gods work miracles, no one doubts them.”

It was true. Those who saw the king in the next few days stared in amazement, never in disbelief. When the high priestess of Hephestia announced that the king had been healed by the Great Goddess, a day’s holiday was declared to celebrate the miracle. Extra wine was distributed among the armies. Attolia ordered vast casks sent out on carts to be shared by the people in the city. These days, it may be commonly accepted that the trial was a necessary artifice, but no one doubted this sign of the Goddess’s approval at the time.

Relius had again left me the key to his study, and the king had warned Orutus not to add another lock to the door. Although my grandfather who was Erondites had failed in his latest grab at power, I preferred to be in the privacy of Relius’s study when I wrote in my journals. I went there whenever I could. Describing the king’s trial and its aftereffects, I concentrated on making each letter as perfectly as possible.

After the trial, the high king’s authority was supreme. Suddenly the Eddisians could not be more respectful, and the Sounisians and even the Attolians followed suit. That the king looked no more martial than he had before, that he still did not sit up straight, that he still had no experience as a military leader made no difference. Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia watched more or less impassively as the court hung on his every word. Increasingly burdened by the adoration, he reminded me of a caryatid, holding up expectations that were piling higher and higher every day.

Carefully I wrote The king told Casartus as he is not allowed into battle, his role is decorative only, imagining my tutor reading over my shoulder. When Teleus laid his hand there, I nearly jumped out of my skin. With a long streak of ink across my page, I stared at him, half frightened and half angry.

“He said to remind you not to lose yourself in your thoughts,” the captain told me.

Having successfully scared me out of my wits, Teleus might have left. Embarrassed at having forgotten Relius’s lesson and having been caught out, I wished he would. Instead, Teleus put a jug of wine on the little side table and settled in his usual chair. He filled a cup and took a sip and watched me thoughtfully over the rim of it.

“You love the king,” he said.

Warily, I agreed. I knew he did not.

“You love your brother.”

Startled, I wondered why he asked, and considered the question carefully before I answered. I realized I would not have been so grieved by Juridius’s betrayal if I had not still loved him in spite of the pain he’d already caused. Again, I nodded.

“I’m sure your mother loves her brothers as well,” the captain said. “Someday you may not only love, but be in love. The object of your affections may be worthy of your love or not. May return your love . . . or not. Remember it does not make you a traitor if you love one. Nor does loving a fool mean you must be one. We do not all have to be Legarus.”

I missed Relius even more than I had thought I would; without him, I could share my mind with no one. I wondered to whom Teleus could speak freely, reminded of the many hours he and Relius spent together. Glimpsing something in the adult world that I would not fully understand for many years, I slipped down off the stool and limped over to the bookshelf. Teleus watched me as I pointed at the empty space between two books, the only clean spot on the shelf, where the dust had not yet had time to settle.

“He took the poems with him?” Teleus asked. I nodded.

He snorted. “Idiot.”

I nodded and the captain laughed. He finished the wine in his cup, then he thumped me relatively gently on the back and left without another word.

Phresine stepped around the room lighting the lamps. Selene, who was the seniormost of the attendants who’d come down from the mountains with Eddis, was directing the setting out of the dishes. There were no more formal dinners. In the evening, the kings and queens met in Attolia’s apartments for a small meal and private discussion. During the day, food came in when it was ready and was eaten wherever it was most convenient. Those in the kitchens were run off their feet, feeding the palace in shifts at bare tables on wooden dishes. The guards’ mess hall had been taken over by the officers in the three armies. The guards ate outside or, if they had money, went into the town to spend it at taverns.