The queen looked him over impassively and spoke to the point. “What is the king doing when he retires to his room without his attendants?”

Costis wished the queen had asked him her question the day before, when he hadn’t just told the king he wouldn’t stoop to distribute gossip. He could almost hear what Aris called his ideals crashing to the ground like a pile of sticks. This wasn’t gossiping; this was his queen asking him a direct question, or alternatively, asking him to betray the privacy of the king, who was his sovereign, or alternatively, a goat-footed throne-stealing interloper. Costis thanked the gods he could keep his conscience clear and answer, “I don’t know, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t know, Lieutenant, or won’t tell?”

“I don’t know, Your Majesty. I am sorry.”

The queen looked thoughtful. “Nothing?”

Costis swallowed.

“Do you mean to say that as far as you are aware, he spends the entire time sitting and looking out the window and nothing else?”

“That’s correct, Your Majesty,” Costis said, relieved that it was the truth.

“You may go.”

Costis stepped backward through the door and retraced his steps to the guardroom. The attendant who had brought him was nowhere to be seen. Costis held up his head but he couldn’t shake the sensation of creeping away from the majesty of the queen. That, he told himself, was what a sovereign should be.

One morning in the Guards’ bath, the valet was buckling on Costis’s greaves when he spoke. “I have a friend,” he said quietly, “who heard something the other day.”

Costis, warned by the tone of his voice, kept his own low. “What did he hear?”

“Two men talking. You know how it is in the plunges, people think they are going on too quietly to be heard, but suddenly every word they say seems to be going directly into your ear.”

“Yes,” said Costis. Everyone knew that the curved roofs of the baths sometimes caused strange echoes to carry unexpected distances. “I’ve had that happen to me. But usually it’s a vet talking about the girls he’s left behind.”

“These two weren’t talking about girls.”

“Go on,” said Costis.

“Well, I will,” said the valet, “because it’s been worrying me and I’d like to pass it on and then forget it. The one asked the other if things were going well, and the other said yes, just as planned, he thought he would be successful in a few more weeks. He said he thought the first man would be very pleased with the results. Those were his words, ‘very pleased with the results.’”

“So?” said Costis. “They could be talking about anything, managing a farm, training a horse.”

“I don’t think so,” said the valet. He finished with the greaves and stood, face to face with Costis. “It was the Baron Erondites and Sejanus.”

Of course, it would be Sejanus, Costis thought. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that Baron Erondites served in the Guard under the old king, and as Sejanus was still a guard until he became the king’s attendant, they both have privileges to use the Guards’ baths . . . if they didn’t want anyone else in the court to see them talking.”

“Exactly,” said the valet. “And now I am going to forget I ever heard anything.” He stepped back. Thinking hard, Costis left for the palace.

Dite had been cut off in every way from his family, though the baron had stopped short of disinheriting him. People thought he still held out hope that Dite might come to his senses. In contrast, the baron was publicly fond of Sejanus, providing him with an allowance and keeping his town house open for Sejanus’s use. It was Sejanus who made it clear that he was a loyal member of the Guard, and kept his distance from his father. People might have thought that his loyalty was more to the Guard itself, and to his career in it, than personally to the queen, but having your greatest loyalty be to your own career wasn’t a crime, really, or there would be more people in the queen’s prisons. Sejanus certainly shared his father’s opinion of his brother, Dite, and Dite returned the favor. They made it abundantly clear whenever they chanced to meet. Sejanus called Dite a fop and a coward. Dite sneered at Sejanus and referred to him as a sweaty uncultured pig, but he had been forced to watch in helpless rage one evening as Sejanus cruelly cut through his lyre strings one by one, while their friends looked on in amusement or discomfort, depending on where their sympathies lay. Because Sejanus would be heir if Dite were disinherited, his animosity was not surprising and didn’t suggest any disloyalty to Attolia.

But a murmured conversation in an out-of-the-way corner did. It sounded like a conspiracy, and no conspiracy that had Baron Erondites as a member could be good for the queen.

The question was what to do with the information. It had obviously worried the valet, so he had passed it on to Costis, which made some sort of sense, though he wished the valet had chosen someone else. Now that Costis was the possessor of the information, what was he going to do with it?

Tell Relius. Costis’s lip curled in distaste at the idea, but telling the queen’s master of spies was the obvious course of action. Relius knew everything about every palace intrigue. Perhaps he already knew about this one and it was old news. At any rate, this was not gossip, and no gentlemanly rules applied. Loyalty to the throne was all that was needed to guide Costis’s actions, that and a sense of self-preservation. Like the valet, Costis would pass on the information and then try to forget as quickly as he could that he had ever known it.

He watched Sejanus more closely that day. Suspecting his motives, Costis found everything about Sejanus even less amusing. He resolved to speak to Relius as soon as he was dismissed by the king.

In the afternoon, the king and queen sat to hear the business of their kingdom. At least, the queen sat to hear the business; Costis was still not sure what the king was doing. Costis paid more attention than Eugenides seemed to. He found many things surprisingly interesting, some things distasteful, and some horrifying.

The king, on the other hand, seemed to find everything boring. He slumped back on the throne and stared at his feet or at the ceiling. He never appeared to be listening and at times appeared to be asleep, though Costis suspected him of feigning the sleep just to be provoking. If so, the queen remained unprovoked. She coolly administered the court as if the king were not there.

Only once had the king seemed alert, when one of Relius’s men reported the first rumors that the barons of Sounis had risen in revolt against him and that his heir, Sophos, had disappeared, probably having been abducted by the rebels. Even then the king had had no comment to make. He had spoken in court only once, and that was only because he had been blatantly nudged by the Eddisian advisors.

That day a discussion had been going on for some time about where to garrison Eddisian troops. The barons who hosted the troops paid for their upkeep, and several had complained of the unfair distribution of the burden. One of the assistants to the Ambassador from Eddis had turned to the king and asked point-blank, “What does Your Majesty think?”

“What?” Eugenides had to shake himself out of a daydream. He glowered at the Eddisians, angry at being disturbed.

Ornon cleared his throat. “Baron Anacritus would like to be relieved of the burden of supporting our garrison. We are discussing where else they might be stationed.”