The king, after his first mocking smile, addressed himself to the practice as if it held his whole attention. His concentration was worse than the mockery had been. If he had laughed, Costis could have been angry and his anger would have given him strength, but Eugenides was almost preternatural in his calmness as he moved his sword for a thrust, back to a ready position, to the block, marked by the quiet tack as the swords hit, to the thrust, and to ready again. Tack, thrust, ready, tack, thrust, ready.

Costis wanted to throw back his head and howl. This was the king the gods had given Attolia?

At last, the men around them began to break off their exercise and move away. Costis expected every repetition to be the last, but the king seemed oblivious and only remarked, “Again?” after each.

The other soldiers had left. The only people on the open ground between the palace walls and the barracks were Costis, the king, Teleus, and the king’s attendants lounging near the entryway. One of the king’s attendants approached. He was taller than the king, about as tall as Costis, expensively dressed and heavily built.

“Your Majesty?” he said, in cool, arrogant tones.

Eugenides lowered his sword and stepped back from Costis to look around at the empty field. He looked up at the position of the sun.

“I see the day is passing,” he said mildly. “Thank you, Costis.” He nodded dismissal. Costis stepped back and almost stumbled. The king saw the hesitation and raised an eyebrow. Costis had no doubt that his concern concealed malicious delight. He bowed and strode away. Behind him he heard the king speaking to Teleus, but he didn’t listen.

He went from the training ground to the mess hall, hesitating for a moment in the doorway. No one greeted him. No one even looked at him. He looked, but didn’t see Aristogiton. Costis hoped that it was because he was on duty, but suspected Aris had avoided a situation where he must either throw in his lot with Costis or publicly ignore him. Costis headed toward the kitchen, and the line of men gathered there melted out of his way. He collected a bowl of ground cereal and a dish of yogurt and a handful of dried fruit. He sat at a long table at the side of the room.

He looked at the food and couldn’t bring himself to eat.

He was too proud to get up and leave.

A bowl dropped, not lightly, onto the table beside him. The wooden bowl hitting the wooden table announced like a knock on the temple door that someone had come to sit beside him.

“Aris, don’t be a fool.”

“Too late to change now,” said Aris as he stepped over the bench and sat beside Costis. He looked around the room, daring anyone to object. Instead, after a moment, one of the other squad captains, senior to both of them, stood up from his table and crossed the room to join them.

“It isn’t,” he said as he dropped onto the bench, “as if we weren’t, every one of us, happy to see him knocked flat on his back.”

One by one, the other squad leaders joined the group, and Costis passed from one kind of embarrassment to another, less painful but no less acute, as they teased him about his practice session with the king. Costis put his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hands, pointedly ignoring the rest of the table, but knowing privately that the weak feeling in his knees was relief. He no longer had a squad, but he was still a member of the Guard, not a disgraced outcast.

The other squad leaders ate and moved on. Aris stayed a little longer. “You should eat,” he pointed out to Costis.

“I will,” Costis promised. He’d been too sick and then too embarrassed to get on with his breakfast. “Why do you think they did it?” he asked, grateful but puzzled to have been brought back from exile.

“They like you,” said Aris. “They respect you.”

“Why?” asked Costis, unaware that he might be admirable in any way.

Aris put his head in his hands, an image of despair at such naiveté. “That, Costis, is the difference between you and, say, someone like Lieutenant Enkelis. You didn’t think you deserved to be promoted after Thegmis; you said you were just doing your duty. Enkelis never lets a good job go by without taking credit for it. He wants to be captain someday, so he makes sure he is better than anyone else. You just want to be better, and that’s why everyone thought you’d make centurion and lieutenant and maybe captain, someday. They wanted you to be captain. They’ll never want Enkelis.” Aris drained his cup and stood. “I’m on duty soon. You should eat.”

Costis didn’t take his advice immediately. He was thinking. Too soon he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Wash and dress,” Teleus said. “The king wants to see you.”

Costis looked at him in bewilderment.

“Hurry,” Teleus prompted.

After one regretful look at his breakfast, for which he had finally acquired an appetite, Costis went. With Teleus standing there, he couldn’t even snatch a fig. He hurried to his room to collect his gear and carried it in his arms down the stairs and across the courtyard to the baths.

The Guard’s baths were in a building as big as one of the barracks. It had a domed top as elegant as anything designed for the patriarchs of the court, though its insides were fairly utilitarian. There was no time for the steam room and the strigil afterward. Costis dumped his clothes onto a bench and hurried to the tepidarium to scoop a bucket of hot water out and dumped it over his head. There was a hard lump of soap sitting in a stone dish that he used to scrub himself. There was no lather. Aris said that the lumps provided in the bathhouse weren’t soap at all, but stone, and that they cleaned by abrading the dirt from the skin, not soaping it away. He scooped more water out to rinse himself, and stepped back across the slate floors, careful that he didn’t slip.

A valet appeared with a scrap of cloth to dry him and helped Costis into the clothes. Once the breastplate was buckled in place, the valet stepped back, and Costis shrugged his hands helplessly. “I haven’t got a coin. I’m sorry.” All of his money had disappeared. There would be no more until the next payday.

The valet waved a hand in forgiveness and Costis hurried away.

Teleus led the way up to the palace. Following his captain, Costis worried and wondered what the next stage of his fate might be. The captain had said only that the king wanted to see him and expected him at breakfast. Nervously, he followed Teleus through the many hallways and rooms of the palace, at first familiar then increasingly less so. As a member of the Eighth Century, Costis had never been in the inner palace. Some of the doorways were guarded, and at each, the guards saluted Teleus and he nodded as they passed. Finally they crossed a narrow courtyard and went through an arched tunnel that led to a terrace overlooking the queen’s garden. Waiting there were the queen’s attendants, a table laid with dishes and breakfast, and, sitting alone at the table, the queen.

She glanced up at Teleus, but didn’t speak. Teleus took a position near the entrance to the archway and waited. Costis did the same.

The king arrived, preceded by his own squad of soldiers and his attendants. His hair was damp and unoiled. His skin looked freshly scrubbed. He noted Costis as he passed him and turned his head to give him a brief smile as if acknowledging a point that Costis had scored in arriving first.

“You’re late,” said Attolia to her husband.