My uncle had told the truth when he knew no one would believe him. I would not let him lie for me. I had done what I thought was right and I would not deceive my king. I stepped before the king.

I drugged the guards. I freed my uncle. Break this pot first.

I watched for the blood to drain from his face.

Instead, after a moment of astonishment, the king laughed. His amusement laced with bitterness, he shook his head.

“My dear,” he said to the queen, acknowledging a point scored. “How neatly you chain them together.”

“Turnabout is fair play,” murmured Attolia.

The king dropped his chin to his chest and seemed lost in thought, as a breeze blew through the quiet tent, kicking up the colorful silk streamers hanging from corner poles, making the ends of them dance and sending a shiver down the backs of our necks. “Pheris,” he said when he lifted his head. “You freed Sejanus and you helped him to escape.” Instead of enraged, he appeared only exhausted.

I thought he would ask me why I had betrayed him, and I was ready.

“Shall I pardon him, then?”

That was a question I was unprepared to answer. I stood blinking, utterly at a loss, as Sejanus and the king waited for my answer. I thought back over all I knew of him, and over all I knew of myself, too.

I don’t know.

“We never know, Pheris,” said the king. “Decide anyway. For me.”

That made it easier. For him, the answer was obvious. Yes.

“Will he betray me again?”

The hair rose at the back of my neck.

Never.

Eddis’s eyes narrowed. Sounis tilted his head as if listening for a sound in the silent tent. Attolia looked away, as if uninterested.

The king announced, “The Erondites’s patrimony will be divided. One part to you, Pheris, one to Dite, and one to you, Sejanus. None of you will inherit from the others, all will return to the crown if you have no heirs.”

Sejanus was staring as if he doubted his ears.

The king looked at him with dislike. Then he stood and left the low dais without another word, stalking off to the tent he shared with the queen and pulling the fabric over the doorway with finality. The queen instructed the guards to unchain Sejanus, and they hesitantly complied. Everything felt off-kilter and uncertain.

“Pheris?” said the queen.

Sejanus had come to kneel at my feet.

“You are the head of his house,” said the queen gently.

I had no idea what to do.

“Perhaps Sejanus should join your kinsmen. The guards can escort him to their tents.”

I nodded, my head bobbing like a fisher bird’s, and the guards led Sejanus away. When he was gone, the queen said to me, “Where the king gives his heart, he gives it completely.”

The king slept all afternoon. When he woke and saw me sitting nearby, he said, “I trusted you.” I thought it was an accusation at first, and then I understood. He sent me to fetch Eddis, and when she came to his tent, he asked her point-blank how to make Attolia return to the palace.

“Eugenides,” she said, thoroughly exasperated. “You never ask for anything. My garnet earrings. The rubies from the Attolian Crown.”

“They weren’t from—” He started to argue, but Eddis scowled so fiercely, he subsided.

“Ask her,” said Eddis.

After she left, the king washed his face and combed his hair, put on his parade suit, now repaired to its former glory, and went to meet Attolia as she was leaving the council tent. He approached and took her hand. She frowned warily, but declined to draw it back. The king dropped to his knees, and then she did try to pull back, but it was too late; he wouldn’t let go.

“My queen,” he said with every appearance of humility. “No man, not even a king, should think he can command his wife, so I have come to ask you, please, will you return to the capital?”

The men filtering out the door of the council tent saw the tableau and hesitated. Unwilling to intrude, they stepped aside, but they didn’t go on about their business. They waited to see what would happen. Those passing the council tent paused. Anyone within sight of it began to draw near, and seeing them moving, people farther away did the same.

As the crowd grew, Attolia searched it for Eddis and found her smiling serenely next to Sounis.

“I see that we all have our hands on each other’s hearts,” Attolia said acidly.

“You have defeated the enemy,” said the king. “Pick your generals. I will go with them to drive the last of the Medes from our shores, and you can go safely home. I am not ordering, I am merely asking.”

Attolia tried to pull him up.

“You were merely asking,” she pointed out.

“And will go on asking, from right here, in the mud, until you agree.”

The crowd of onlookers was growing.

“You do not know a wagon from a wheelbarrow,” Attolia said.

“That is so,” agreed the king earnestly. “I will let your generals guide me, I swear.”

“You make more promises than the moon,” said Attolia.

“A man may do many strange things and not feel he has broken a promise if he keeps his faith with the one to whom he made it.” Very briefly, he glanced at me.

Attolia, looking away, appeared to be listening to something only she could hear. “So, so, so,” she said at last. “It is time for me to turn to woman’s work. I will go, my king.”

“Thank you,” the king said in relief, climbing back to his feet and trying to wipe the mud off his knees. “Take Eddis with you.”

Eddis made a small choking sound, and Attolia’s eyebrows rose in speculation.

The king said, “Forgive me. I misspoke. What I meant to say was, would you please take Eddis with you?”

“Helen?” Sounis asked uncertainly.

“He’s slow,” the king said in a stage whisper to Attolia. “He does eventually catch on.”

“Yes,” Eddis said, her cheeks reddening. She stepped out from the crowd to join Attolia. “Yes,” she said as they stood arm in arm. “We will both go, not that you were asking,” she said to the king.

Nudges were followed by smiles, and as the news was passed back through the ranks of those gathering to hear it, there were cheers. Once they’d quieted a little, the king said, “Take Sounis, too.”

“What?” Sounis was not sure he’d heard properly.

“Yes,” said the king. “All three of you. Go confer with your barons, your patronoi lesser and greater, your okloi, your townspeople and their mayors.” He spoke to Eddis and Sounis and Attolia, but he addressed everyone around him, his joking demeanor gone. “The Medes will return, and if not the Medes, others who want to control the Lesser Peninsula, this land of Hephestia’s making. The treaty between Sounis and Eddis and Attolia cannot be fixed in one person, in one life as ephemeral as the rain in summer. There must be a charter of one law for everyone, with one council drawn from all three countries so that in future they may select a new high king, as they do in Sounis. We need an unbreakable union, and only you three can make it.”

To Attolia, he added hesitantly, “The right to be high king cannot be passed to our child.”

The queen nodded. “To be king or queen of Attolia is enough,” she said.