Costis wished he could call the men back. He was rattled by the fall of Relius. Their presence would have deflected anything Susa wanted to say, but it was too late. Susa was waiting for an answer.

“No, sir. I wouldn’t say so, sir,” Costis said carefully. Just as Aris had been hesitant to cross Sejanus, Costis would be very careful not to offend Susa. As landowners, Costis’s family was not as vulnerable as Aris’s. Susa couldn’t raise the taxes on the land, or seize any of it, and an Attolian landowner, no matter how small his holding, held the rule of law on his own land, but Susa could still make things uncomfortable for the Ormentiedes.

“I understand that he has requested you for special service, even allowing you to attend him privately?”

“The king is—” Costis paused to look down at the ground, hoping that he radiated embarrassment. “The king is exercising his sense of humor, sir.”

“Ah?” prompted Susa.

“I’ve been doing nothing but basic exercises on the training ground since I . . . came to his attention.” Costis was afraid he might be overdoing the shamefaced act, so he lifted his head and pulled himself to something like attention, in the process managing to look even more harassed. “I am on the walls at night regularly, sir, and at the court in the afternoon. The extra watches are . . .”

“Capricious?” asked Susa.

Costis’s expression hardened. “I would never say so, sir.” To call the king capricious was a step too far even for Susa.

“And the private audience for a dishonored squad leader?”

“His Majesty chose to dismiss his attendants, and when they protested leaving him entirely alone, he selected me as a replacement. I don’t believe, sir, that that was a compliment to myself but rather a reflection of the king’s relative pleasure with his attendants, sir, which was at the time low.” Were there too many “sirs” in that answer? he wondered.

“I see,” said Susa. “Nonetheless, you have absorbed a certain amount of information you would be glad to relay, I am sure, Lieutenant.”

Costis hoped his expression didn’t give away his horror at the proposition. However the Undersecretary of Naval Provisions had gotten his information, more than just the king assumed it came from Costis, probably because of the scene he had made on the training ground. He wanted to turn on his heel and walk away, but he couldn’t. Neither, he knew, could he offer Susa what he wanted.

“Not much, really, sir,” said Costis. He remembered his audience with the queen. “Nothing beyond that he spends the time alone looking out the window.” He shrugged an apology for the insignificance of his information.

Susa’s eyebrows went up. He didn’t think it was insignificant. It was apparent Costis had revealed something very important indeed. “Thank you, Squad Leader.” He offered a coin, which Costis took after a moment’s hesitation, not knowing how to refuse it, and then Susa went away.

Costis walked on through the palace and down to the Guard’s barracks, knowing himself entirely guilty of what the king had not condescended to accuse him of.

CHAPTER SIX

THE stool hit the wall with a satisfying crash.

“I was going to sit on that,” Aris pointed out mildly. He was lying on the bed, where he had been waiting for Costis. “Anyway, I planned to sit there once you showed up. What has happened now?”

“Only that I have done something stupid. STUPID.”

“You told the king you aren’t a gossipmonger?”

“No,” said Costis. “I mean, yes, I told the king. That’s not the stupid thing I did.”

“You’re sure?”

Another time Costis might have laughed. “I told the king I would not sink so low that I would reveal private information about him.”

“And?”

“The queen summoned me at noon to ask what the king did when he was alone in his rooms.”

“Ah.”

“How could I not tell the queen anything she asked?”

“You are still here—and breathing—so I assume you did tell her?”

“She wanted to know if he did anything besides looking out the window the whole time. I said not that I knew of. I thought I wasn’t telling her anything new and I wasn’t refusing to answer her because I don’t know anything anyway.” He held up his hands, begging Aris to tell him this answer had not been unreasonable.

“So?” Aris was reserving his judgment. He knew that there was more coming.

“So Susa just asked me the same thing.”

“Ah.”

“Stop saying that!”

“Did you tell him?”

“I thought it was meaningless, only now I think it wasn’t. It was important. I just didn’t know it.”

“But you said the queen already knew.”

“No,” said Costis, “the queen guessed it. Then she asked me in a way that I would confirm it if it was true.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “I am so sick of people who all seem to be smarter than I am and know more than I do. I want to go back to the farm. These people make my family look easy to get along with.”

“Well, at least no one knows, this time,” said Aris. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Well, because I have to tell him, don’t I?”

Aristogiton didn’t agree. He and Costis argued back and forth as he tried to convince his friend not to expose himself to further difficulties. What difference, after all, could it make if the king spent time looking out the window? What of interest could he possibly be looking at?

Costis didn’t know and couldn’t guess. “But it is important, Aris. You have to see that. And if it’s important to the queen and to Susa, it means that it will be something used against him.”

“Then tell him that you told the queen. You can’t be blamed for that, and if Susa throws it in his face, the king will think it came from the queen. He’ll never learn otherwise.”

Costis shook his head. “If Susa is going to attack him, he should know.”

“Why?” demanded Aris. “You don’t care if he gets poisoned tomorrow.”

“I don’t care if he gets poisoned as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Aris looked at him in speculation. “You do care if he gets poisoned,” he said.

Costis admitted the point with a sigh. “If he choked on a bone and died, I wouldn’t care. But I can’t . . . I sound like a sanctimonious old philosopher, but I can’t stand by and watch people get murdered, Aris. I never meant to have anything to do with people like this. I wanted to be a soldier.”

“You wanted to be Captain of the Guard someday,” observed Aris.

“That was before I realized what it meant.”

“So what do you want now?”

“I want to retrieve some grain of self-respect. That’s about the total of my ambition at this point. I’ll tell him about Susa and I’ll tell him about Sejanus while I’m at it, and maybe if I’m blessed by the gods, he’ll have me exiled to a nice penal colony in Thracia.”