The queen’s hair and her skirts swung and then settled. Coolly she pulled the hair away from her face and used one strand of it to wrap the rest into place behind her.

The king’s brow furrowed. Spinning slowly, he looked down at the floor around him.

“Aha,” he said, and walked away, bending to pick something up. As he walked back, he tucked his hand into his sash and pulled it out again full of hairpins.

He offered them to her.

“If you will excuse me, my lord, I will retire to replace them.”

“Of course,” said the king, echoing sweetly her earlier short-tempered answers. He bowed.

The queen inclined her head and turned. She walked back up the steps, past the thrones, and through the doorway there, collecting her attendants as she went.

Gen had returned to the throne and settled onto it looking smug. Phresine, leaving with the queen, heard Elia murmur under her breath, “Well, that was revealing.”

“Only to those with eyes to see,” murmured Phresine back.

Ornon, standing nearby, silently agreed.

Costis spent the evening happily unaware of the events in the throne room, writing long-overdue letters to his father and sister. He’d written only briefly since his disgrace and received more letters than he had sent. His sister’s letters were filled with the inconsequential details of the farm. The birth of a new cousin and a new calf were announced in the same sentence. Thalia was more interested in the cow and knew Costis would be, too. He took comfort in her pretense that she was untouched by the disaster he had made of his life.

He knew she wasn’t. Thalia and his father would have Costis’s disgrace flung in their faces every day by the rest of the family, but his father also didn’t mention it. He only assured his son of his support. Costis was glad of the letters and read them over and over, but they were hard to answer.

He prepared for bed early and in a glum mood.

The glum mood didn’t leave him in the night.

“Is the eye bothering you, Costis?” asked the king the next morning.

“No, Your Majesty.”

“Perk up, then, won’t you? You’re making me feel guilty.”

After breakfast, the king declined to meet his tutors. “We have an appointment in the garden,” he said to the queen as he excused himself. It was news to Costis, but apparently not to the attendants. After kissing the queen, the king went down the steps from the terrace. The attendants started across the terrace to join him, but he paused on the steps long enough to wave them back. Only the guard accompanied him.

Below the terrace was the queen’s garden. Costis had assumed that the “queen” in its description was his own queen, but had learned from one of the other lieutenants that the garden had been for many years the private retreat of Queens of Attolia. It stretched from the edge of the terrace out to a wall that encircled it on three sides, separating it from the rest of the palace grounds. On the remaining side, a low stone railing edged the garden. No more was needed to protect the queen’s privacy. On the far side of the railing, the ground dropped in a sheer face to an open court below.

The garden was laid out with hedges that divided the garden beds. In many places, the hedges grew high enough to form leafy tunnels and the green walls of outdoor rooms. In the center of the garden, a series of these rooms, interconnected by green corridors, gave the appearance of a maze when viewed from the terrace. It wasn’t a true maze, and no one could be lost in it, but it provided privacy and at the same time security. The hedges were too thick for even a persistent assailant to break through quickly. The queen could walk there alone, leaving her guards at the arched entrances.

The king followed the path that ran along the balustrade. A summer wind twisted dust into spirals that blew against the stone wall below the garden and disintegrated as the wind was deflected upward. Some of the dust rose as high as the garden and made Costis’s eyes burn. The king turned away from the wind toward the maze. Waiting there, in the space before an arched entryway, were a squad of guardsmen, the Guard Captain, and, surrounded by the guards, Erondites the Younger.

Costis knew him on sight. Dite’s path had crossed the king’s before, and Costis had seen him often. He was much like his brother, Sejanus, though he wore his dark hair long and curled in the fashion of the elite young men of the queen’s court. He was elegantly dressed in an ornamented open coat, but he had his hands in his pockets, and looked simultaneously contemptuous and afraid.

“Hello, Dite,” said the king. Costis was behind him, and could only hear the smile in Eugenides’s voice, not see it in his face. Costis winced. The king had found someone else lower in the pecking order than Costis himself. He had needed only to ask Relius, the Secretary of the Archives and the queen’s master of spies, who wrote “The King’s Wedding Night.” Relius would have known who was responsible for publicly insulting the king.

“I thought we should talk,” said Eugenides.

Costis exchanged glances with the guard beside him, then looked away.

“About what, Your Majesty?” Dite was going to try to brazen it out. Costis wished he wouldn’t. It was only going to make a scene that promised to be very, very ugly take even longer. Dite was a fool. He might have been immune, as the heir to a powerful baron, but everyone knew he wouldn’t get any protection from his father. And if his own father wouldn’t bring a complaint to the throne about the treatment of his son, no one else could.

“Why, about that very amusing song you wrote.” Before Dite could deny it, the king turned to Teleus. “You have guards at the rest of the entrances. You’ve cleared it?”

Teleus nodded, and the king turned back.

“We can have a private talk, Dite.”

“I still don’t know what about, Your Majesty.”

“Well. The errors in your representation, for a beginning. There were a few, you know. I’m sure you’ll want to present a factual account once you hear the details.” The king paused, to be sure he had Dite’s full attention. He did. He had the undivided attention of every man around him. “She cried.”

Dite recoiled. “Your Majesty, I don’t—”

“Want to hear this? Why not, Dite? Don’t you want to put it into your song? The queen wept on her wedding night. Surely you can find rhymes for that? Walk with me, and I can tell you more.”

“Your Majesty, please,” Dite said, shaking. “I’d rather not hear more. If you would excuse me.” The whole court knew he was in love with the queen. The whole country knew it. He took a step backward, but Teleus stood directly behind him and blocked any escape.

The king slid an arm that ended in a shiny silver hook to the middle of Dite’s back and gently but firmly forced him through the archway. “Walk with me, Dite,” he insisted.

Costis was left with the rest of the guardsmen, breathing unevenly through teeth that were clenched so hard they hurt.

“Bastard,” someone behind him hissed.

“He should worry about being assassinated,” said another man.

“Steady,” said Teleus.

“Captain . . . ,” the guard protested.

“Shut up,” Teleus snarled.

No one spoke after that.