Earlier in the evening, Fordad had asked the king’s permission to accompany the army on its march north and join in the fight against the Medes. When the king accepted, the Braeling had dropped to one knee in respect and made a flowery speech about the replacement of the three crowned heads with the one, the divinely appointed high king. The king had been visibly embarrassed. Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis had been stone-faced. None of them wished to dispute the high king’s sovereignty, but the Braeling’s speech made all of them uncomfortable, and if not for their very high regard for each other, it might have stirred ill will.

In the small dining room, the four of them picked at their food, almost too tired to eat. The king tried to look at the bright side. “I could use my newfound authority to insist on going into battle,” he suggested.

Three heads turned, three sets of eyes locked on him, three frowns with varying indications of warning, exasperation, and irritation.

“Marvelous,” said Attolia waspishly. “You run the campaign and I’ll stay home.”

Sounis reproved him more gently. “Gen, you know it serves no purpose for you to risk yourself on the battlefield.” Trying to ease the tensions in the room, he teased, “Are you worried you’ll be taken for a wineglass warrior. Is that it?”

“That is it, Sophos; you have hit on my greatest fear,” said the king. “Someone who named himself Bunny is going to outshine me on the battlefield.”

“If I get too popular,” Sounis assured him, “you can always poison me later.” No sooner had the words come out of his mouth than he winced at his thoughtlessness. He turned to Attolia, an apology on his lips.

Already regretting her own harsh words, Attolia leaned toward the king and said in a carrying whisper, “I can show you how.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the others burst out laughing. Attolia bit back a smile.

It was Cleon the Eddisian who brought up the issue of the king’s tattoos. Having achieved his dream, he tried to persuade the king that he should have the appropriate tattoos to commemorate the trial.

“It will please the Eddisians, Your Majesty,” Cleon insisted.

“Cleon, if I have to survive anything else to please the Eddisians, I am going to throw the entire population into the sacred fire.”

Cleon, never one to give up on a bad idea, approached the queen of Eddis privately.

“He has passed his trial,” he insisted. “Those who fear that he has become too Attolian will see how he respects our traditions. Is it wrong to reassure them that they have an Eddisian king?”

“Cleon, he is not king of Eddis. I am Eddis.” She said it even as she doubted it was still true. “Do you imagine that there is another man born in Eddis whom I would accept as high king?”

She named a few cousins and the king’s brothers, both of whom were older than he was. “Should I accept Temenus or Stenides as king?” Even Cleon could see her point. She spoke slowly, trying to make him understand. “No tattooed member of my court over whom I have ruled could ever be high king over me. No Attolian could be high king over Irene, no Sounisian over Sophos.”

“Still, now that he has actually earned his tattoos—”

“Earned his tattoos, Cleon?” Eddis had lost all patience. “He killed his man before he left the boys’ house!”

Cleon opened his mouth and then stopped to think, possibly for the first time in his life. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know who Gen had killed. “Lader?” he asked, suddenly hesitant.

“Lader,” Eddis confirmed.

“He went hunting and never came back. We thought a lion got him, or a jealous husband,” said Cleon.

Eddis had always known what precipitated the horrendous shouting match between Gen and his father when the minister of war had tried to force his enrollment as a soldier. She knew why he hated the business of killing so much.

“But Lader was twice his age,” Cleon pointed out. “Gen wasn’t even the Thief then.”

“He was sacred to his god and we all knew it, Cleon. Bumps and bruises were one thing. Lader deliberately breaking bones was another.”

Cleon remembered his own part in that ugly episode and had the grace to be ashamed. “Why am I not dead, too?”

“Because I got down on my knees to the old Thief and begged for your life. You should stop making me regret it.”

Cleon sat, taking it in. “It was an accident,” he said hoarsely. “He wouldn’t let go of the earrings. I didn’t mean to hurt him so badly.”

“I know,” said Eddis, more gently. “I have always known that.”

“You didn’t beg for Lader.”

“No,” said Eddis sadly. “If I’d known the old man would make Gen do the killing himself, I would have begged to spare him that. But no, Cleon, I did not beg for Lader.”

“So, so, so,” said Cleon at last. “No tattoos.”

Eddis snorted. “No, no tattoos.”

Trokides, general of Sounis’s armies, was posturing at the council meeting when he said, “We cannot wait any longer for the guns from Eddis. Even if they arrived today, we cannot afford to move at the slower speed of artillery.”

Trenches were already being dug and the defensive walls reinforced in the narrowest part of the Leonyla Pass, but the longer the Peninsular army had to settle in, the better its chances of holding the Medes until the allied ships arrived at Stinos with the Gant and the Brael reinforcements. The longer they waited, the higher the risk that the Medes would beat them to the pass.

Trokides’s arguments were sound, but he had just criticized what he called inefficiency in the Attolian army’s “rolling bureaucracy,” and the Attolians were loath to agree with him.

Piloxides, general of Attolia’s armies, asserted, “We can certainly march the guns at any speed the Sounisians set.”

One of the junior officers pointed out that the Eddisians marching from their mountains would reach the Leonyla first. “Can they not hold until we arrive?”

“The Eddisians are not fodder to be fed to the Medes so the lowlanders may show up at their leisure,” one of the Eddisians said bitterly.

“Your Majesties,” said Pegistus, speaking up before another argument could start. “We can march at speed, we’ve shown it to be true, even with the artillery.” He began to lay out the pages with his calculations on the table and walked us through them.

Pegistus knew there was a measurable decrease in speed with each additional man on the march and each additional gun. He knew the ground it covered affected the army’s speed as well. He had a measure for the elevation and quality of the roads. An abundance, a wealth of numbers. He calculated the speed of men and wagons and multiplied it out in his equations, all of his solutions reinforcing his argument.

My head spun. I felt ill.

Attolia said, “You’re using the speed of a grain wagon for the guns, Pegistus. The guns will not move as easily through the fords as a wagon would.”

“I do not think the variance will be significant, Your Majesty.”

Someone must have turned the question, as they turned every question now, back to the king. I saw him shrug and heard him say, “I’ve only worked with wooden ones.” He was waiting for someone else to speak up, but no one did. Sick of Trokides’s arrogance, they wanted to believe whatever Pegistus promised.