Leaving them to their grief, I picked my way back uphill.

Men moved from body to body, checking each for signs of life. The wounded who had slept through the night, dreaming dreams they would remember for the rest of their lives, slowly blinked awake when they were shaken. Each as he was found was brought up and laid with the other wounded to be cared for as best as we could manage. Our men had brought mules packed with blankets and bandaging. Once they had found all the living, they began to bring up the dead and laid them in their orderly rows as well. Few had survived, but all those who’d made it through the day had lived through the night.

In time, the king and queen made their way back up the slope. I was just sitting, growing stiffer by the minute, not even trying to make myself useful. Though I was not physically injured, I was much damaged in spirit. The swelling pain of my abused back and my leg seemed somehow a proper balance to the pain in my heart. I had found Ion, and he lived. Motis was dead. Dionis badly wounded. He held out his hand to me when he saw me, and I knelt beside him to take it. He was deathly pale but assured me he would live. I did not believe him.

I overheard the king talking and caught the name of my uncle. I had not seen Sejanus, living or dead, that morning, and I pricked up my ears. The king said he wanted him found if he still lived. I staggered to my feet, stretched my aching leg, and went to look for him.

I looked first among the wounded, as it was faster than looking through the dead, and if he was dead, then he was beyond aid or worry. I found him carrying water. I bent near him where he crouched over a soldier, holding his flask and letting the water drop a bit at a time into the man’s mouth.

I tapped his shoulder. The king is asking for you.

“What does he say?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

I don’t know, only that he asks if you live still.

Rising to his feet, Sejanus handed me the waterskin. Then he headed up through the last strands of mist, toward the pass, without waiting to discover if the king saw him as a savior or a traitor.

I took his flask and continued from one injured man to the next, offering each a drink. I was there, the flask dangling from my hand, when they brought Sejanus back down from the pass, holding him tight by the arms.

As the pyres for our dead burned, the Mede retreated farther. Those among them who most feared their emperor’s displeasure had paid the ultimate price for their failure, and the rest were going home.

I had failed my king. Sejanus was under arrest again and the king, wild with grief, was determined to learn what would destroy him. Nothing I’d done had made a difference, and nothing I had done could have. If Sejanus had escaped entirely, if I had pushed my uncle to his death, if he’d died at the Naupent, the king would still have been determined to learn, at any cost, who had participated in Erondites’s conspiracy, who among his subjects had worked to slow our advance to the Leonyla.

Eddis tried to talk him out of his obsession. “You can’t do this.”

“I can do anything I want!” he snapped.

“Gen!” she said, very close to losing her own temper, as she too was overwhelmed with grief. She continued more quietly. “You forget that you are not the only one your grandfather taught that lesson. Unlike all the other people who hear you”—she waved expansively at the camp full of people around them—“I know the rest of what he said: if you are queen, you can do anything you want—but never everything you want. He said to choose wisely. Gen, this single-minded pursuit of yours, I cannot tell you what catastrophe might come of it; I can only tell you it is unwise. You are king—”

“Am I?” the king interrupted airily. “I do not seem to be. If I were king, my orders would be obeyed.”

With the Medes retreating, he had insisted that Attolia, heavily pregnant, should return to the safety of the capital. She’d refused to do so. He had commanded and she still had refused. He had stopped short of ordering Teleus to take the queen against her will. That Teleus wouldn’t have obeyed the order perhaps was all that stopped the king from giving it.

Eddis had had enough. She bowed her head. “You are king of kings,” she said, “and king of fools if you think you can give orders to your wife and expect her to obey.”

The pyre for the king’s father burned for three days. As its ashes cooled, the king summoned Sejanus. The walls around the council tent again were lifted and the tents on all sides had been struck to allow room for the crowd to gather. Again the fur-draped chairs were lined up, and again Sejanus was brought in chains before the rulers of the Lesser Peninsula. The high king had not slept for days, and his face was hollowed out with exhaustion, his eyes rimmed in red.

“I came to warn you,” my uncle protested.

“You knew the Medes were there because you conspired with your father. Again, Sejanus, you change sides to save yourself.”

“I—”

“You escaped and could have gone anywhere, yet you went to the Naupent. Why?”

“I didn’t go to the Naupent,” Sejanus insisted. He was hell-bent on telling the truth, though he knew he would not be believed. “I went in the opposite direction, but there was a woman in the woods. She said that if I turned around, I would meet a man with a message for me, so I did. I found one of the sentries from the pass, badly wounded. He had taken the wrong path down from the pass. When he asked me to carry the warning to you, I said I would.”

“You met a woman in the woods?” said the king in disbelief. “Who was this mystery woman?”

“She appeared to be my childhood nurse, Melisande.” Sejanus shrugged. The king hesitated, almost as if he did believe then, but he shook it off.

“And this sentry, where is he?” he asked.

Pegistus answered him. “Several of the sentries posted to the Naupent are still missing.”

“I warned you. Isn’t that the important part? I fought for you,” Sejanus said hopelessly.

“The Erondites have always been excellent at joining the winning side once they know which side that is. It doesn’t make them any less traitorous.”

“You are my king,” said Sejanus, and repeated it when the people around the tent recoiled at his audacity. “You are my king, I swear to you. I have been loyal to you since I left the villa where I was under arrest.”

“If that is so, Sejanus, tell me: who conspired with your father?”

Sejanus considered one last time. “It is not my place to decide what my king should know and not know. If you ask again, I will tell you.” He lifted his chained hands in supplication and said, “I am not begging for myself, I am begging for them. Please, don’t ask.”

I was not the only one who saw the king on the brink. Eddis and Sounis watched helplessly. But Attolia drew him back. Lightly, she laid her hand on his. “My king,” she said, “the old Erondites was dead already when someone helped Sejanus escape. Whoever did so did not act in fear of his father. Ask for that name first.” She was looking at me.

Sejanus, who had been so careful not to indict another with his eyes, was caught off guard. He followed the direction of her gaze, and so did the king.

“No.” Sejanus lunged forward and was pulled up by his chains. As he tried to take back his error, his carefully considered words turned to babbling. “It was my fault. It was all my fault. I arranged the escape and I forced Pheris to help me. Don’t blame him. In the end, he wouldn’t come with me. He came back to you. Please,” he said again and again. “Please have some mercy.”