At breakfast the queen spoke to the king.

“Baron Artadorus sent me a message asking to see me before breakfast. He has asked to be excused from court.”

“Has he?” The king feigned lack of interest.

“He said he had business to oversee at his home.”

“Oh?”

“Something to do with his accounts.”

“Hmm.”

She warned him with a look.

“Did he fall on his sword?” the king asked.

“Not physically.”

“Ah,” said the king.

She crossed her arms and refused to speak to him again.

“The baron met with the queen this morning. He has been excused from court.” Sejanus, meeting his father briefly in an out-of-the-way courtyard, relayed the news.

“Has he?” said his father, mildly surprised but not distressed. “No doubt he is heading home to edit his accounts. It doesn’t matter. The error has been recorded, and correcting it won’t erase the crime.”

“And if he confessed to the queen already?”

“If he had confessed to the queen, we would all know. Surely you remember what happened to the last person who attempted to defraud the royal treasury?”

There were no more snakes in the king’s bed and no more sand in his food. The Captain of the Guard and the Secretary of the Archives had taken steps to ensure that. Palace misbehavior became more subtle. The food that arrived for the king’s lunch, which he ate alone, except for the oppressive company of his attendants, was always unsuited for consumption by a one-handed man. As the king made every effort to conceal his handicap, the attendants made every effort to emphasize it. If the king wanted his bread sliced, he had to ask. If he stubbornly declined to ask, then Sejanus, or Hilarion, would make a show of distress that they had forgotten to slice it for him. Twice more the king locked himself in his rooms. Both times he allowed Costis and only Costis to stay with him.

The attendants, as careless as they appeared, spent their time exiled in the outer corridor, sweating at the thought that the queen might pass by. She surely knew that the king ousted his attendants from his presence, but she seemed willing to turn a blind eye, so long as she was not faced with the pack of them kicking their heels in the passage.

“Her Majesty must appear to support the king,” Sejanus reminded his peers. “Otherwise, I am sure she wouldn’t care how much we irritated the king.”

On a rare evening when Costis was neither on duty nor asleep, he talked with Aris in his quarters.

“Until I die, I think,” Costis said. Aris had asked how long Costis thought he would serve as lieutenant. “Probably of boredom.” Lying in a pose of intense apathy, with his feet on his pillow and his head hanging a little over the edge of the short cot, he stared at the ceiling. His expression of distaste was the one he had to be careful to keep off his face when on duty.

“So you think the promotion is permanent?”

Costis reconsidered. “No. He can’t really mean to leave me as a lieutenant. It’s all pretend and mockery, not a real promotion. I suppose he will get tired of this eventually and I will be demoted back to squad leader. Or line soldier.”

“Or dismissed from the Guard.”

Costis rolled his eyes to look at his friend. Aris had said aloud what Costis had been trying not to think.

Costis shrugged, not an easy thing to do when partly upside down. “If he’s going to do that, I wish he’d do it and get it over with instead of leaving me halfway to nothing, waiting and waiting for the fatal blow. Maybe he’s waiting until boredom kills me . . . or I kill ex-Lieutenant Sejanus.”

“What? Kill our brave and clever and beautiful Sejanus?”

“With my bare hands,” said Costis. “If he points out one more tarnished buckle or loose thread on my uniform to the king, I am going to pop his eyeballs out with my thumbs, and I don’t care how beautiful he is or how clever.”

Aris chuckled. “Careful . . . remember, he’s an idol to us all.” Sejanus was wealthy and influential, and generous with his spending money. As lieutenant, he had had the admiration and envy of most of the Guard.

Costis lifted his head to drink the last of the wine out of the cup he’d been dangling over the edge of the bed, the rim pinched in his fingers. When the wine was gone, he lowered his arm to set the cup on the floor. “He’s funny,” Costis admitted. “He can make you laugh so hard it hurts.” He yawned suddenly and rubbed his face with the heels of his hands, pushing his fingers into his hair and pulling on the curls until his scalp protested. Gods, he was tired. “But underneath the jokes and the gibes and the playacting, there’s nothing there but . . . spite. There isn’t anything he won’t laugh at.”

He looked at Aris. “Did you know that already?” he asked.

“I admire him,” said Aris. “I haven’t ever liked him.” Aris shrugged. “That might be sour grapes. I am sure he doesn’t like me.”

“Sour grapes for me, too, then,” said Costis. “You, me, and the king.”

Aris made a face at the company he was in.

Costis smiled. “You do have to admire him. Sejanus, I mean. Not the king, of course. He tells Hilarion, who supports the queen, that any attack on the king, even so much as a mismatched stocking, is a blow for the queen. The next day, he might tell Dionis, whose family has never supported the queen, that to ridicule the king will shame the queen as well, and somehow he is perfectly convincing.”

“They don’t notice that he has no loyalty to either side?”

“They don’t care.” Costis stopped to think. “Or they are afraid of the wrong side of his tongue. He can make anyone who crosses him sorry. Philologos doesn’t like all these pranks. He’s his father’s heir, not some wild younger son, but Sejanus pulls everyone’s strings like a puppet master.”

“Does he pull the king’s strings?”

“The king?” Costis yawned again. “Well, he fights more than the others. He is always trying to balk Sejanus, but I swear half the time he doesn’t realize he’s doing exactly what Sejanus wants. And when he does spike him, it is by accident. Sejanus spent all night setting up some prank in the music room, and the king chose that day to walk in the garden.”

“How angry was Sejanus?”

“Oh, he laughed. He always laughs, even when the joke is on him.”

“What does the king do, when the joke is on him?”

Costis put one hand over his eyes. “First he pretends not to notice, but you can tell how angry he is because his face gives away everything. Then he summons the poor stupid guard Costis Ormentiedes and makes him wish he’d never been born.”

“Poor Costis,” said Aris.

“Poor Costis indeed. Do you know what is most difficult?”

“Tell me,” said Aris.

Costis smiled at his friend’s dry tone. “Remembering that he is the king and that I can’t wring his neck.”

“Maybe he’ll go after Sejanus’s brother and leave you alone.”

“I wish he would,” said Costis fervently.

Sejanus’s brother was Erondites the Younger, called Dite. He was their father’s heir. Where their father was one of the queen’s oldest enemies, Dite was one of her most fervent supporters.