“SHUT THAT DOOR!” Costis roared above the din, but had to point to make his meaning clear. Two guards went to work swinging the twelve-foot-high doors to seal off the palace from the hunting court.

Next Costis checked the other exits. There were only four: two large gateways and two small arched doorways. One of the large gates was open, and led back into the kennels and the stables. In normal circumstances, the animals would have been brought through that gate to gather in the court before leaving with the royal hunt. The other gate led through the outer wall of the palace to the hunting road into the royal preserves. It was safely shut, but stairs on either side of it led up to the palace walls. Costis was glad to see guards already blocking the top as well as the bottom of the stairs. With more waving and pointing, Costis sent men to block the entrances into the palace gardens. Shouting at the top of his lungs, he sent men to the stables to fetch pitchforks, rakes, and brooms. There was little hope of dragging the dogs one by one back to their runs before the king arrived. They would have to drive the entire wild, barking mess through to the stable yards and deal with the problem there.

There was no way to know how much time they had, but Costis assumed the king must be scheduled to pass through soon, or the dogs wouldn’t have been released.

Two dogs snapping and snarling at each other threw themselves against his knees, and he almost went down. The Master of Hounds caught him by the elbow and steadied him. Costis explained his plan, and the two men separated to gather the kennel keepers and soldiers into a circle around the dogs. With brooms and rakes they stood shoulder to shoulder and began to force the dogs through the gates and into the yard beyond. More guards had come from the palace to join them. Looking to his left, Costis was surprised to see Aristogiton, sword in hand, prodding the dogs.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted.

“What?”

Slowly the tenor of the barking changed as the dogs moved together. Costis tried again. “I thought you were on duty?”

“I am,” answered Aris.

“Where’s the king?”

“In the garden. He was supposed to meet the Secretary of the Navy, but he canceled. We left him in the garden to come help here,” Aris shouted, and nodded over his shoulder toward the small arched doorways behind them.

The noise had lessened, and they could hear each other without shouting, though they still had to raise their voices.

“The king canceled?”

“No, the secretary.”

If the king hadn’t been scheduled to pass through the hunting court, then why had the dogs been released? Someone had to have known in advance that the secretary was going to cancel his appointment. Costis’s knees understood before his head did. They felt suddenly weak, and his stomach roiled. Costis looked up at the palace wall, where the guards still stood blocking the route to any stray hound, looking down into the courtyard and not into the garden. His hands were shaking.

“Oh my god,” he prayed to Miras. “Oh my god, oh my god.”

“What?” Aris still didn’t understand.

Costis dropped his rake and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where did you leave the king?”

“In an alley, just beyond the naiad fountain and the reflecting pool. What is the matter? I left Legarus at the entrance.”

“And at the other end?”

“There’s a gate. It’s locked. Costis, for god’s sake, it’s locked and it’s not fifteen feet from the guards on the palace wall.”

Costis reached for hope. “Do they know the king is in the garden? Did you send a message up to the wall?”

No, Aris hadn’t.

“Get your men. Give me your sword.” Costis grabbed at the buckle and stripped belt, sheath, and sword from Aris and began to look wildly through the crowded court for Teleus. He had to have come with the guards.

Teleus looked up at his shout. His eyes met Costis’s for a moment, then turned to look at the guards on the wall above him, taking in the situation at a glance. Costis was already running, naked blade in hand and sheath in the other, for the nearest entrance to the garden.

This was not the relatively small queen’s garden. This was the much more expansive palace ground. It had never seemed so large and so full of pointless obstacles—shrubs, fountains, paths that curved in serpentine courses between waist-high banks of flowers that made it impossible to move as fast as he desperately needed to go.

If he choked on a bone and died, I wouldn’t care. It wasn’t true.

Costis prayed as he ran. To Miras, his own god, and to Philia, goddess of mercy, that she would preserve the king from harm. “Oh, Goddess, please let the little bastard be all right,” he prayed. “Oh, please let there be nothing wrong. Let this be a mistake. Let me look like a fool, but keep him safe, ten gold cups on your altar if he is safe.”

The gods above knew that the king could be laid out by a toddler with a toasting fork. What hope had he against an assassin, trained as a sword is sharpened, honed to one purpose, to murder? Costis could only pray that he would not be too late.

Blood on the flowers, blood on the green grass, blood blossoming like a rose in the still waters of a fountain. In his mind Costis saw it all. What would the king think when the assassins came? He would call his Guard to protect him, and there was no one there but Legarus.

Costis’s feet pounded on the path. When it dropped down a set of stairs to run beside a long rectangular reflecting pool, Costis leapt from the top of the steps to the bottom and at the far end of the pool went up more steps in a stride. Behind him he heard someone stumble. There was a grunt, and a splash.

At last he rounded a hedge and came face-to-face with Legarus, who had heard running feet and had been drawn away from the entranceway in the hedge. He had his sword out, and Costis was lucky not to run right onto it.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY!” he roared, and Legarus fell back in confusion.

“Attolia! Attolia!” Costis shouted in warning as he ran beside the hedge. Out of breath, he reached the opening and hurtled through it.

The king sat on a stone bench in an open space at the far end of the alley between tall hedges and flower beds. There was a fountain, with a shallow pool underneath. His legs were stretched out, crossed at the ankle and resting on the tiled lip of the pool. No doubt he had been contemplating reflections of the clouds in the water or watching the fish. Costis could see the amused smile he had prayed for, the lift of one eyebrow. It was for nothing, all the panic, and the running. There was no one there but the king, quietly sitting by a fountain, and Costis, standing in the gap between the hedges with a naked weapon in hand, looking like an idiot frightened by shadows.

The king was safe and, as usual, laughing at Costis. Costis didn’t care. He hunched forward in relief, gasping for breath. His sword still in his hand and his hands on his knees, he smiled back at the king as the assassins stepped into view.

They must have been concealed by the bushes, but to Costis they appeared as if by magic. One minute they were not there, the next they towered over the slight figure on the bench. Costis screamed an inarticulate warning and stumbled forward, but he might just as well have stayed in the hunting court. It was hopeless before he had taken his first step and over before he’d crossed half the length of the long, narrow alley between the high hedges. There was nothing for him to do.