Under the table, the king poked Sounis in the thigh with his hook. Sounis moved his leg away, and the king dug the point of the hook in harder.
Sounis passed the problem on. “What do you think?” he asked the magus.
The magus did not reward his faith. “I would agree that artillery would be more difficult to transport. . . .” He was guessing like a student caught out by his tutor.
The king turned to his father. “Could you move an army of this size that quickly?” he asked bluntly.
The minister of war would not be baited into nationalistic boasting. He said he was quite certain how long it would take to move a smaller group of soldiers but admitted he was out of his depth when it came to moving this many men with artillery. “I must defer to Pegistus to know his own army’s best speed,” he said.
As the others around the table began to nod their heads, Eugenides finally, reluctantly, said, “Pegistus, your equations are beautiful, but your calculations, as I’m sure my brother Sounis is too polite to point out, are wrong.”
I sighed with relief.
“Multiply them out again and you’ll see the Medes would be in Stinos, never mind the Leonyla, by the time we arrived.”
Once the king had pointed it out, the error was obvious. The magus in particular looked very embarrassed. Pegistus hemmed and hawed and apologized. “I must check my notes, Your Majesty.”
“By all means,” said the king. “But this meeting is over. We march on Trokides’s direction.”
As the meeting adjourned, the king asked Orutus to remain.
The queen of Attolia raised an eyebrow.
“I just wanted to ask the secretary of the archives if he thought Pegistus’s mistake was an understandable error or a deliberate attempt to slow our army.”
“I will look into it, Your Majesty,” Orutus promised.
Attolia and the king sat quietly together after he had excused himself.
“I miss Relius,” said Attolia.
“As do I,” said the king with a sigh.
While they were eating dinner that evening Sophos teased the king. “You made that pretty speech at the beginning of the meeting,” he said, “telling the council to look to wiser heads than yours for decisions.”
“What was I supposed to do?” wailed the king. “Let him go on thinking that you can multiply a number by eight and get a number smaller than the one you started with? You were no help.”
“Well, we can’t all have the insight . . . nay, the wisdom, of the high k—”
The king pitched a grape at him, and Sounis batted it away.
It was Xikos, of all people, who gave the king an opportunity to shrug off a little of the weight of his responsibilities. The king and his attendants were trudging toward his apartments. Trokides had set the date of departure for the next day, and the final attempts to organize the march had run late into the night. Everyone was exhausted and also keyed tight as harp strings.
“Your Majesty,” said Xikos as we walked back through the dark where the lamps were few and far between.
“What is it, Xikos?” asked the king.
“Is it true that your cousins used to chase you through the palace of Eddis?”
The king slowed, eyeing Xikos warily.
“That they were never able to catch you?”
“We caught him sometimes,” one of the larger Eddisians protested. Aulus, the one I’d thrown up on. “Unlike the Attolians, who never did.”
None of the Attolians dared to say that the Attolians had indeed caught him.
“Without cheating,” Aulus finished.
“Where are you going with this, Xikos?” the king asked outright.
“Two cities says we could catch you,” said Xikos. He showed the gold coins resting in his palm. The other attendants stared in confusion. Ignoring them, Xikos said to the Eddisians, “If each of you will put up that much, each of us will.”
“What?” cried the rest of the attendants immediately, no part of this plan.
“Deal!” the Eddisians shouted as fast.
None of them were as quick as the king, who had already slammed Xikos against the wall, pinning him in place.
“Xikos.” His soft voice curled around Xikos like the hook around the attendant’s neck. “Since when do you have two cities to rub together?”
Xikos, eyes white all the way around, stared over the king’s shoulder.
“Aulus?” prompted the king, not taking his eyes off Xikos’s face.
Aulus blew out his breath in disappointment. “Boagus and I gave him the money,” he admitted.
Xikos sagged against the wall in relief.
“Why, Aulus?” the king asked.
Aulus looked at his slightly smaller partner and then back at the king.
“Come on, Gen,” Boagus said. “Be a sport.”
“We march tomorrow and you want to fleece my poor naive Attolians?” said the king.
While Aulus and Boagus insisted it was an entirely straightforward bet, the Attolians bridled at being labeled naive, though, in retrospect, it was clear they only partially understood the role of betting in the Eddisian court and the nature of their games.
“They don’t have to bet,” Aulus pointed out.
The king considered his people’s traditions. The temptation was evidently too much.
“They do now,” he said, “and the best is for ten barrels of the best aposta—for the guards whose competence has been mocked.” To his attendants he said, “If you catch me, my fine cousins will pay for the liquor. If you do not, then you will pay for it. Is that clear? Good. Xikos, give Aulus back his money and we’ll set some ground rules.”
Hilarion and Ion were still protesting, Xikos was reluctantly passing over the two cities, and suddenly the king was gone. He went so fast the Attolians were left flat-footed and the Eddisians all laughing. “There are no rules!” they shouted at the Attolians. “Go! Go!”
The attendants and all the guards raced after the king, the attendants shouting for him to stop, the guards in a panic that the man they were supposed to protect was getting farther and farther away with every step. By then the king had reached the nearby light well and leapt onto its stone railing. He jumped into the open space, landing on the chandelier in its center. The wheel of iron tilted under his weight, and candles dropped down from their sockets into the rainwater cache below.
The king checked to be sure he was pursued, then used his hook to slice a rope. As one side of the chandelier dropped, he swung by his hand, building the momentum to carry him to the side of the light well, where he dropped to the balcony on the floor below. The Attolians pounding after him had to go around the edges of the well to the staircase, and by the time they started down it, the king was already going up a different one.
He kept always just ahead of his pursuers, leading them on, letting them think that with only a little bit more effort they might catch him. The guards had no choice but to stay as close as they could. The attendants, even Hilarion and Ion, had been drawn in by the thrill of the chase. The Eddisians, mostly just looking on, shouted advice. People who’d been quietly preparing to sleep got back into their clothes and left their apartments to see what the noise was about.
Not everyone was running after the king; the rest of us moved more slowly in his wake. At one point, the tail of his pursuers grew so long that he came up on it from behind, tapped the last person in the line on the shoulder, and then sped away. After that, it was less a line of pursuers and more of a mob as the Attolians moved in every direction, hoping to intercept the king.