“I warned you,” said the king, in a level voice.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“And I told you to warn your brother.”

“I know, Your Majesty. I did warn him. Even though I didn’t believe what you told me, but why would my brother try to poison you?”

“He didn’t,” said the king, and when Dite stared at him at a loss, he explained, “He confessed to protect you. He thought you put the quinalums in the lethium.”

“I didn’t!” Dite protested.

“No,” said the king. “I did.”

“Why?” Dite asked, helplessly. “Why?”

“I didn’t drink any of the filthy stuff,” the king snapped. “Dite, I don’t need quinalums to give me nightmares; they come on their own. The gods send them to keep me humble.”

There was no stroke of humility about him, and if Costis had ever wished to see him look more like a king, his wish was answered. He found the prospect was unsettling.

“Then my brother is guilty of no crime?”

“Oh, he’s guilty of a crime, Dite. Just not guilty of the one he confessed to. He’s guilty of leading, cajoling, and bullying every single one of my attendants into criminal misbehavior.” He swept his eye over the attendants. “And conspiring with your father to have them all dismissed, excepting himself, so that I could choose new attendants more to the liking of the Baron Erondites. With Sejanus’s help, of course, and the help of the mistress the baron had picked out for me—only I kept dancing with her sister—who, by the way, has lovely earrings.”

“I see,” said Dite, hesitantly.

“No, you don’t. Neither did I. Because Sejanus, in the process of corrupting my attendants, was supposed to be making himself indispensable to me, which he dramatically and inarguably failed to do. Your father wanted me neatly snared. Your brother wanted me dead. He was on a balcony overlooking the garden directing the assassins to where they would find me.”

“But you had no proof?”

“None that I wanted to bring into the light of day.”

“So you put quinalums in the lethium and got him to confess to that.”

“I did. Would you prefer, now that I have had him arrested, that I extract a confession for the crime he did commit?”

Dite lifted his hands hopelessly. “You will execute him?”

The king shook his head. “No.”

“Thank you,” Dite gasped. “Oh, thank you.”

“Don’t,” said the king, holding up his hand. “Don’t thank me. Your father will be somewhat more tractable so long as he thinks there is some hope of Sejanus’s release. That is the only reason Sejanus lives. Unfortunately, it eliminates any chance that your father will support you in your exile, Dite, and is no favor to you.”

Dite dropped his eyes, but didn’t complain. Painfully, the king leaned to his right, reaching with his left hand to flick open the drawer in the table beside the bed. Catching it by its strings, he pulled out a purse, then reached back for a folded document. Sitting back up, he tossed the purse to the edge of the bed and handed the document to Dite.

“You can use some of the money in the purse to address . . . family matters. The rest should get you to the Peninsula. The paper is a letter of introduction to the Duke of Ferria. He is holding the position of court music master open for you.”

Dite turned the packet over in his hands. “Ferria,” he said in wonder.

“I’m sorry, Dite.”

Dite shrugged away the apology. “You have spared my brother when you could have killed him and you have offered me an escape from the cesspit of my family and this court. You know what it means to me, to make music in the court of Ferria. You’ve put a purse and an impossible dream in my hand. I don’t know why you should apologize.”

“Because I am exiling you, Dite. I intend to raze your patrimony and salt its earth. You emphatically do not need to thank me.”

Dite got to his feet to take his leave of the king. Still looking at the paper and the purse in his hand, he said, “You never said why Sejanus would want you dead.”

The king looked sad then, and answered gently, “For your sake, Dite.”

Dite’s head came up.

“Brotherly love.” The king shrugged.

“And you let us live, and give me this.” He held up the paper and the purse.

“I think we have cleared the difficulties between you and me, Dite.”

Dite nodded. “Fortunately so, for me. I did warn him, as you asked me to.”

“It isn’t your fault he didn’t believe you,” said the king. “Nor that he is as fond of you as you are of him. It may save him someday, when I no longer need him alive.”

Dite looked at him. “I hope so. I beg so, Your Majesty. He is very dear to me.”

“You need to be on ship by nightfall.”

“I will be,” Dite assured him. He glanced at the embroidered screen before the fireplace and then back at the king. Then he said, with a bow and a smile, “Be blessed in your endeavors.”

The king chuckled. “Good-bye, Dite.”

When Dite had left, the queen stepped from behind the screen, speaking as she came. She said, “If he considers my court a cesspit, I wonder why he has remained here so long.”

“He was in love,” the king explained.

“With whom?” Attolia asked.

The king laughed. “You.”

She said nothing, but her cheeks grew pink as she sat in a chair near the bed. “That is a joke?” she asked at last.

The entire court knew that Erondites’s older son was in love with the queen. The entire country knew it. Costis suspected it was common knowledge as far as Sounis.

“That is ridiculous,” she said.

The king agreed. “Like falling in love with a landslide. Only you could fail to notice.”

She shook her head in disbelief and started to speak. But before she did, she looked from face to face at the other people in the room and observed the truth reflected there. Her cheeks grew pinker. She turned back to the king.

He said, “Sejanus and his brother pretended to dislike each other. It kept Sejanus in his father’s good graces, and Dite above suspicion and therefore able to be close to you, at least until I stepped in to claim you. Sejanus was jealous of me on his brother’s behalf. He hoped that if I were dead, you might come to accept Dite’s love for you.”

“The difficulty with Dite that you two have settled,” she said thoughtfully, disbelieving the conclusion she had reached. “You were jealous . . . of Dite?”

The king, the master of the fates of men, before their eyes was reduced to a man, very young himself, and in love. Picking again at the coverlet, he answered, with his eyes cast down, “Wildly.”

The queen’s lips thinned, and her eyes narrowed, but even her control was not equal to the task, and she had to lift her hand to cover her smile and then duck her head. Her shoulders shook slightly as she laughed.

“I shall throw something at you,” the king warned loftily. “You are embarrassing me in front of my attendants.”

The queen lifted her head, but kept her hand in place a moment more. When she lowered it, she was almost serene. “As if you cared,” said the queen. With an observing eye, she added, “You’re tired.”