“And the rest of your prisoners?” the Mede inquired.

“Your prisoners, Nahuseresh. What would you like to do with them?”

“Hand them all over to you.”

“Then we will send them off to be locked up until we hear from their queen. Except the Thief,” she added. “I don’t believe I trust him enough to leave him with his fellows, and I would like him to be nearer to hand.” She directed her guards to lock him in one of the upper rooms of the megaron, several of which had been altered for the purpose of securing the prisoners of a former baron of Ephrata.

For the rest of the day Attolia remained in her own chamber, pleading tiredness after her forced journey. She joined Nahuseresh for dinner. The main hall was the only one large enough to hold the queen, the Mede, and those barons still lingering in the megaron. She hadn’t tried to order them back to their commands and supposed that Nahuseresh hadn’t either. She didn’t want them interfering with the soldiers, and Nahuseresh must have wanted to keep a close eye on them for reasons of his own. Her attendants, moving freely through the megaron, had brought her news of the Mede’s messengers sent and returning, no doubt carrying orders for the Attolian army that the Mede expected to be followed in the absence of the barons.

Attolia knew that he found the presence of non-noble generals in her army ridiculous and repellent. He’d warned her that they would be loyal only to the money they made. At least they were loyal to something, Attolia thought. Her least favorite barons were those whose loyalties seemed to change directions the way a pennant blew in a shifting wind. Even a steadfast enemy was better than a waffler, and her new-model army and navy had never waffled. They would, she supposed, desert wholesale if she were dethroned or utterly bankrupt, but on the whole they waited very patiently for their pay. They earned it with their victories, and they seemed to trust her to deliver it. Their faith in their pay was often a comfort to the embattled queen. She tried not to test it unnecessarily.

She had altered the command structure frequently, promoting those who drew her favorable attention and redeploying them to keep their expectations from growing entrenched. The captain of her private guard she picked most carefully and changed from time to time before he could be corrupted by her enemies. If she was not happy to leave her fate entirely in Teleus’s hands, she was at least content. She chatted with her barons and flirted a bit with Nahuseresh. He was smug, like a cat. She smiled and listened carefully as he explained how he had deployed his army in the best possible way to aid hers in case of an attack by Eddis.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

JUST INSIDE THE PASS THE queen of Eddis sat on a rock surrounded by her council. She looked to her minister of war. “What do you advise?” she asked.

“Attack,” he said.

“Why?”

“Eugenides said to,” he answered.

“While I have a great deal of faith in my Thief and in his advice, I could wish, under the circumstances, that I had more information than that on which to base my decision,” Eddis said, and waited for her minister.

Calmly he shrugged. “We drive the Medes out now, or never, Your Majesty.”

Eddis sighed. He had stated the crux of the matter. He had already told her everything he knew and had no more information to offer. The decision was hers.

She was silent while she considered. Eugenides waited in the megaron at Ephrata. To fail to attack was to leave him and the other prisoners to whatever mercy Attolia and the Mede might show. Attolia would exact a hideous revenge either for herself or to prove herself to her allies. On the other hand, Eddis couldn’t cast an entire army to destruction trying to save one prisoner or the handful of prisoners Attolia held. But if it cost the lives of every last man in her army to drive out the Mede, she as queen must not hesitate.

“Very well,” she said. “We attack at the seventh hour.”

Attolia was awake in the dark waiting for dawn. Her rooms were at the back of the megaron, looking over the sea, and she watched the constellations move slowly, finally fading just as they set. The sun had risen over the mountains and the sky was changing from gray to blue. The armies would have begun to move on the plain at the base of the pass. How many times had she sat before a battle, wondering how it would end? She wished herself at the plain. She would have liked to be there to direct the army herself, though she knew her limitations and didn’t pretend to be a soldier. She always remained at a safe distance with her personal guard to protect her. She envied Eddis, who could fight in her own battles if she chose. Not perhaps as dangerous as a soldier; still, she was trained and had been trained since she was a child.

“I have always envied Eddis,” she said to herself as she stood up to pace. It was true. Eddis and she had both been the younger sisters of crown princes, but always it seemed to Attolia that Eddis was running wild in the mountains while she was carefully kept and groomed in the king’s palace of Attolia. News had traveled with the merchants and the entertainers who came before both courts. Eddis was learning to ride a pony, Eddis was learning to use a sword with her male cousins, Eddis was hunting at the summer retreat, while Attolia was dressing in velvets that stifled even in the winter, learning to ape the costume and courtly manners of the continent, and learning to salute just so when entering the main temple. Eddis had gone on the winter hunts, and Attolia had been sitting, awkward and miserable, in the court of her future father-in-law, listening to his plans to rule her kingdom and hating the princess who would become the heir to Eddis when her older brothers died. Died of sickness, Attolia thought, not assassinated as her own brother had certainly been.

At Eddis’s coronation Attolia had poured her advice like vitriol into the ear of the new queen, watching her face whiten, viciously satisfied to be the one to tell the girl what the world was like when you were a queen. And then none of that advice had been needed. Eddis had gone on as free in her mountains as Attolia had ever been enslaved. Eddis, with her loyal ministers, her counselors, her army, and her Thief to serve her.

“At any rate she won’t have her Thief back,” Attolia murmured, wrapping herself in her robe and sitting back down.

There was a knock at the chamber door, and a hesitant attendant stepped in. “Forgive me for disturbing you, Your Majesty, but the Mede ambassador has requested you to attend him.”

“Me attend him?” Attolia raised her eyebrow. “Oh, he does grow bold. Tell him I will be with him shortly.”

“He is in the outer chamber now, Your Majesty.”

Attolia sat up. “How fortunate that I do not have to receive him in my nightdress. By all means show him in.”

The Mede, when he entered, was fitted in the light armor for which the Medes were famous. He wore a curving sword at his belt. His beard was freshly oiled, and Attolia could smell the perfume from across the room even with the open window behind her.

“Your ad hoc messenger has not returned,” he said.

“No.”

“But my messengers report that Eddis is moving her army out onto the plain below the pass.”

“My messengers have not yet told me so.” She knew Nahuseresh was intercepting her messages.

“I thought to bring the news to you myself.”