The minister of war crossed his arms and waited.

Her own household, including the captain of the guard, looked on in awe, which irritated Attolia but also amused her.

“We are evenly supported here in the megaron,” she said at last. “Let us remain for the night with our armies on the field, and I’m sure tomorrow we can find an arrangement on which we will all agree. Sounis will need to be informed of whatever accords we reach.”

The minister of war inclined his head in agreement.

Attolia turned to the seneschal. “See that the Eddisians are settled comfortably,” she said, and went away to her own chambers, leaving the seneschal to figure out how that might be done in the limited space of Ephrata.

In the darkness off the coast the Mede fleet navigated carefully. At the rail Nahuseresh watched the dark outline of the Attolian coast disappear. Kamet longed to leave him but dared not.

“Kamet,” Nahuseresh said, and the secretary reluctantly, but obediently, stepped closer.

“Master?”

“I would like very much to strangle someone. Why don’t you go away until I decide it isn’t you?”

Kamet ducked his head. “Yes, master,” he whispered in a neutral voice, and thankfully withdrew.

In the morning the Attolian army moved upriver and camped on the opposite side of the Seperchia from the Eddisians. The bulk of the mountain country’s army settled on the plain below the pass. In the afternoon, after preliminary negotiations between Eddis’s minister of war and two of Attolia’s three senior generals, the rest of the Eddisian army was divided, one part to return to Eddis to defend against any attacks by Sounis, the other to accompany their queen as she rode to Attolia’s capital.

Attolia offered to convey the queen of Eddis to the capital by boat, but Eddis, on the insistence of her minister of war, declined. Attolia sailed with her attendants and guard and a few selected barons. The rest of her retinue traveled overland. It was not a comfortable journey, being very hot and very dusty, but no one who had heard the news of Attolia’s proposed engagement was unhappy to be on the road while their queen traveled by sea.

Attolia spent the days at the ship’s rail watching the coastline of her country slide past. She spoke very little to her attendants and not at all to her barons. When Teleus stepped forward to address her, one of the attendants warned him away with a look. Teleus ducked his head in understanding and withdrew. Attolia saw but didn’t call him back. Warmed by the sun and cooled by the sea breeze, she was busy with her thoughts.

The queen’s city of Attolia sat in the sunshine like a gem in a setting of olive trees, on a hillside above the shallow Tustis River. The palace was situated on a gentle rise. There was a steeper hill behind the city, topped by the temple to the new gods. The city and megaron had originally been crowded onto the tiny plateau, but in the peaceful reign of the invaders both had moved down the hill to the slope above the harbor. The harbor was protected by a headland and a breakwater and by the shadowy bulk of Thegmis offshore, stretching up and down the coast.

The megaron in Sounis’s capital was built of unfaced yellow stones, and Eddis’s palace was small and dark, but Attolia’s palace was built of brick and faced with marble. It glowed in the sunshine, a beautiful building with graceful proportions and ranks of windows that reflected the afternoon light like jewels.

In the palace, with her retainers surrounding her, the events of Ephrata seemed to Attolia very distant and unreal. The familiar tensions returned as she immersed herself once again in the struggle to exert her will in a world conventionally run by men, where she had to be not stronger but more powerful than her opponents. Making war was easy by comparison. Rumors had already reached the capital when she informed her barons of Eugenides’s marriage proposal, and she watched the reactions carefully. There remained among her barons some who had still considered themselves probable candidates for Attolia’s hand and throne. They veered between outrage and amusement, and under all the shouting she could hear the snickering, sniping glee.

In the privacy of her rooms, she paced. Her attendants were meticulous as always in their care, but for the first time she was visibly impatient. Where she had always been brisk, she became short-tempered; where she had been even-tempered, she was waspish.

To her surprise, her attendants drew closer to support her. She looked for fear in their servility, or hate in their attention, but saw none. Their affection and their care seemed genuine even as she surged to her feet while her hair was being braided, suddenly sick of the pulling and tugging, and retreated to her bedchamber, slamming the door behind her as she hadn’t slammed a door since she was a minor princess of the king’s second wife. They surrounded her throughout the day, urging her to eat something when she didn’t want to eat, watching to see that she wasn’t disturbed when she was busy, making the arrangements for the arrival of the queen of Eddis so that there was little for her to do but affirm their decisions.

Eddis delayed in Ephrata, having summoned her aunt and her sister as well as her attendants to soften the military edge to her visit. Eddis’s aunt, a grand duchess, had insisted that she was too old to travel in anything but comfort, and had ordered out the royal carriage. She had then ridden quite cheerfully over rough ground on horseback to Ephrata while the heavy coach was hauled down the mountain road, carried by hand most of the way. Once in Ephrata, the duchess and the queen’s sister, who was also a duchess, and the attendants combined their efforts to be sure that Eddis represented their country and their court as she should. Eddis had had just this support in mind when she summoned them, and she submitted to their ministrations with equanimity.

She had invited the magus as well, but he had politely declined. He still hoped to be reconciled with his king and so preferred to maintain the formality of his captivity.

When Eddis arrived in the capital, Attolia greeted her with grace and ceremony. Never once looking at Eugenides, she welcomed them to her palace and expressed hopes that their visit would be a comfortable one. If Attolia acted as if he didn’t exist, her attending women watched the Thief of Eddis carefully and not as if they were pleased with what they saw. Eddis noted the hostility of the attendants as well as the remoteness of the Attolian queen. She worried that her Thief’s great capacity for mockery might resurface to disastrous consequences, but Eugenides only bowed politely when introduced, and his bland expression was as fixed as Attolia’s, even as she looked right through him, returning a royal half curtsy to his bow.

That evening Eugenides joined Eddis in her rooms just before supper. Eddis’s attendants wandered in and out, stopping to put earrings in her ears and then discuss among themselves whether another pair might be better. The two duchesses looked on, offering their own sharp-eyed criticisms from time to time.

Eddis bore it all patiently. Eugenides looked on, amused.

Xanthe, Eddis’s senior attendant, nudged the queen’s hand, and Eddis obediently lifted her arms so that Xanthe could fasten a belt around her waist.

“I don’t think Attolia’s attendants treat her like a prize calf, Xanthe,” she observed as the older woman patted the gold-embroidered cloth into place.

“I am sure they don’t need to,” Xanthe replied. “She is probably quite capable of choosing her own clothes and doesn’t walk like a soldier in them.”