Shocked at his own words, Costis lifted his hand for another swallow from his cup and paused, looking into it. It was empty. He rolled it in his fingertips and tried to think. How many times had the king filled it? Have you eaten? the king had asked before he sent for food that still hadn’t come, that he had known wouldn’t come soon. How many cups of unwatered wine had there been? Enough that his joints felt watery and his head was light. Enough that his tongue was loose in his head. He looked up to meet a mild, inquiring look from the king.

He wasn’t an idiot, whatever Sejanus said. He was a conniving bastard.

“Who put you up to it?” the king asked quietly.

“No one,” snapped Costis.

“Teleus?” the king prompted softly. “Tell me it was Teleus and I’ll see you pardoned.”

“No!” Costis shouted. He jumped to his feet, and his hands balled into fists. The cup in his hand fell unheeded to the floor and smashed. He could feel the heat of the rage and the wine in his face. The curtain in the doorway was swept aside.

The queen had arrived.

Costis gaped, as breathless as if the air had been driven out of him by a blow. He hadn’t heard the sounds of her arrival. He looked at Eugenides, still sitting on the stool. The king hadn’t been distracted by the noise Costis was making. He must have heard the footsteps in the hall. He’d spoken softly so that those approaching wouldn’t hear him. But they had certainly heard Costis. They had heard him shouting at the king. Smashing wine cups. Now they could see him standing over the king like a threat.

Costis took a ragged breath. He wanted to kill the king. He wanted to cry. He dropped to his knees before his queen and lowered his head almost to the floor, covering his face with his hands, still balled into fists, tightening knots of rage and bitter, bitter shame.

CHAPTER TWO

COSTIS heard the queen’s voice over his head. “Do tell me why I should come to the barracks to speak to my guard?”

And Eugenides answered, as calmly, “You could have summoned him.”

“You would have come, too? Following like the tail behind the dog?”

“Am I insufficiently kinglike? Costis has been telling me so.”

“Unkingly, in so many ways, My King. Not the least of which is listening to your guard tell you so.”

Eugenides accepted the rebuke without a word.

“You haven’t ordered a hanging,” said the queen.

Costis fought with the desire to throw himself onto his stomach and crawl toward the queen. He’d never been so helpless. Like a fly in a web, the more he struggled, the sooner he would be lost.

“No,” said the king. Costis hoped silently. “I don’t want to hang him.” Costis’s hopes fell and shattered. He cursed himself for believing even in the smallest corner of his heart that the king might try to prevent the loss of his family’s farm.

“You will not meddle with the machinery of justice,” the queen warned.

“Very well, then,” said the king casually. “Hang them both.”

“Him and which other of my most loyal servants, My King?” Her voice never rose, every word was cool and precise, and her anger made Costis, still on his knees, shake.

“Teleus,” said the king with a shrug, and the queen was silenced.

“It was premeditated, then,” she said at last.

Gods defend them both, it wasn’t premeditated. Costis pushed himself up from the floor.

“My Queen.” He spoke as calmly as he could and looked up at her face as she turned to look down at him. He would rather have done anything than draw her attention.

“You have something to say?” She spoke as if her dog had suddenly sat up and begged to be heard.

He shouldn’t have addressed her as His Queen. He should have said Your Majesty. She was always “Your Majesty” no matter who addressed her, but if he was a traitor, she was no longer His Queen. The thought brought a twisting pain in his chest. He’d served her with the unrelenting loyalty of every member of her Guard, from the day he was recruited. Teleus himself had selected him, younger than most trainees, for service, and after a year of training had selected him again for the Queen’s Guard. He didn’t look away from her gaze as he spoke.

“Your Majesty, please, it was stupidity, not treason. Let me prove it, if I can. Please don’t hang my Captain for something that was only my fault.” He was too afraid even to speak of the farm.

“Do you know what you offer?” asked the queen.

“No, Your Majesty,” Costis admitted in a whisper. He didn’t know the details and didn’t think he should try to guess at them now. He was scared white already. “But I will do anything.”

“Oh, very well,” said the king petulantly, as if he were losing a game of chess. “Don’t hang Teleus. But I don’t see how you can hang Costis if you won’t hang his superior officer.”

The queen turned back to face him. “I could hang you,” she said.

Eugenides looked up at her. “You missed your chance for that,” he said.

The queen lifted a hand to briefly cover her eyes. “It is remarkable how you cloud my otherwise clear vision,” she said. “What is it you propose?”

“I propose that you let me trade him to Teleus. His life in return for Teleus’s good behavior.”

“Go on,” prompted the queen.

“Teleus thinks well of him. He performed well at the Battle of Thegmis, and his name was mentioned to you when he was promoted to squad leader.”

Costis winced, having dreamed that he might someday hear that his name had been mentioned to the queen. Not like this.

“I am willing to offer Teleus Costis’s life if Teleus is willing to guarantee my continued well-being.”

“He is the Captain of your Guard. Your well-being is the object of his employment,” said the queen.

“Your Guard,” said the king.

“Your Guard,” insisted the queen.

“Then how do you explain the sand in my food? The snakes in my bed? The persistent little shoves between my shoulder blades whenever I am at the top of a long flight of stairs?”

“A snake,” repeated the queen.

“A black one. A friendly one.”

Costis had never heard anything like the silence that followed. It went on and on, as if he had suddenly been struck deaf, like the ritual silence of a temple, only much, much worse.

“Teleus.” When the queen finally spoke, it was only in a whisper, hissing the final sibilant.

Costis heard the curtain rings slide on the rod. Teleus would have been standing just outside in the passage. Costis could have looked up to see the captain’s face, but Costis’s head had moments before sunk slowly back toward the floor into his hands.

Sejanus had related stories of the pranks played on the king by his attendants. They had seemed riotously funny when retold around the table in the mess hall. They seemed less funny now. If someone could put sand in the king’s food, who could not put poison there as well? If someone put a black snake in his bed, why not a viper? If they succeeded in pushing him downstairs . . . There were Eddisian soldiers, just a few, here and there, all over Attolia. No one doubted the damage they could do if the war with Eddis recommenced. And begin again it would if the king died suspiciously in the first few months of his reign.