“If a man can expiate his debts in bruises, Your Majesty, there are others who would clear their accounts.”

“I think not, Teleus,” said the king, and started to step around him. Teleus moved to block him.

“You won’t get out from under your debt so easily, Teleus,” said the king, “and you have little to gain by trying.”

“And little to offer Your Majesty,” Teleus agreed. “Except a challenge.”

He flicked a glance at Costis, and the implication was obvious.

The king shook his head, still not rising to the bait. “If I were to beat you, Teleus, your Guard would only think that you had let me. There’s little point in that.”

“What, then, if I beat you, Your Majesty?”

“The day hasn’t come, Teleus, that I would let you beat me.”

“I think you wouldn’t have to, my lord.”

The king warned him, “Teleus, I can have your head off.”

“Of course you can, Your Majesty.” He ducked his head in submission, and the king had started away when Teleus added under his breath, “With a word.”

The king stopped and his head went up. “I can do it with a sword, too, Teleus.”

Teleus stepped back and into a guard position.

“Very well,” said the king, and he raised his own sword. “But I won’t have you accused of not trying your hardest. I know that it is worth my while. How shall we make it worth yours? Shall we make a bet, Teleus? I beat you, and the queen reduces the Guard by half. You win, and she doesn’t.”

The guards standing around them looked at each other in horror.

Teleus thrust his chin forward. “I know that you have badgered her to weaken the Guard,” said Teleus. “I will die before I let you do it.”

“You don’t have to die, Teleus. Just beat me.”

Feeling that all his good work had been undone, Costis could do nothing but leave them to it. He turned and was walking toward a bench along the wall where he could sit and nurse his bruises when he heard the wooden swords clack and the king yell. He whirled in time to see the king still in the air, both feet off the ground, the sky suddenly blue, the morning mist gone, the sunshine glowing in the sky and on the stones and on the king, and everything frozen for a moment like the carved frieze in a temple, as the flat side of the king’s extended sword smashed against Teleus’s undefended neck.

Teleus went down like bricks falling. He dropped his sword on the way and clutched at his neck with both hands, digging his face into the ground, struggling to hold the pain and trying to breathe. Half-controlled impulses made his legs twitch, and he shuddered.

The king looked him over and said impassively to the nearest barracks boy, “Ice.”

The boy ran, and the soldiers parted to let him through. The king went to Teleus, first squatting down, and then sitting beside him.

“You didn’t know I could do that, did you?” he asked, conversationally.

“I did not, Your Majesty,” Teleus gasped.

“My grandfather killed a man that way once, using the edge of the wooden sword.”

“I hadn’t realized the Thieves of Eddis were so warlike.”

“They aren’t, mostly. But like all men, Teleus, I have two grandfathers.” Teleus rolled his eyes to look up at him, and the king said, “One of mine was Eddis.”

“Ah,” said Teleus.

“Ah, indeed,” said the king. “Here is the ice.” He took a canvas bag from the barracks boy and felt the lumps of ice through it. Then he laid the bag on the hard ground and used the metal cuff at the end of his arm to crush the ice into smaller pieces and then lifted the bag onto Teleus’s neck.

“Does that feel better?” he asked.

“Not really,” said Teleus.

“Well, Costis will hold it for you. I see I have business with Aristogiton.”

He got to his feet and walked away. Costis stayed with Teleus, holding the ice on his neck until he took it himself and got to his feet. Teleus looked around. Costis did as well. The king was in the center of the courtyard circling warily around one of the men in Aris’s squad.

Costis asked, “Where’s Aris?”

One of the guards turned to look at them in surprise. “He already whacked Aris on the head. Let him off lightly,” he added, looking significantly at the captain holding the ice to his neck. “Now he’s working on Meron.”

Costis protested, “He can’t fight all of them.”

Aris arrived beside them, and Costis turned on him. “What were you thinking?”

Aris shrugged. Obviously hoping that the captain would take no notice, Aris said quietly, “Nobody minded seeing you knocked down. It was good fun. But they started to get angry again when he knocked down the captain. I thought if he did to me what he did to you, they’d relax again. But he didn’t. He just knocked my sword out of my hand after about three exchanges and tapped me on the cheek.”

If Aristogiton had hoped the captain wasn’t listening, his hopes were dashed. Teleus turned around. “And then?” he said harshly.

“Then he waved Meron out. I swear I didn’t mean for him to take on the whole squad, sir.”

Costis said in a worried voice, “I think he hurt himself, fighting the captain. That jump must have taken everything he had.”

“I think he did, too. He’ll have to stop after Meron. What is it, Aris?”

“It’s Laecdomon, sir. I haven’t told you, sir, and I didn’t know who else to tell, but it was Laecdomon who wanted us to go help pen the dogs. He suggested it. And when we were arrested, he wasn’t with us in the cell, sir. He said he was kept in a different cell, but I never saw him until after the queen pardoned us.”

“I see,” said Teleus grimly. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe he isn’t here this morning,” said Costis hopefully.

“No,” said Aris, “I saw him earlier.”

“And you think he’ll come out to challenge the king?”

“I think he’s Erondites’s man, Captain. He’s not landed, and his family is from the baron’s demesne. Everyone knows how the baron feels.”

“You can kill a man with a wooden sword,” Costis said, echoing the king’s words.

“If you don’t care what happens to you afterward,” said Teleus. “Would Laecdomon care?”

“I don’t know,” said Aris. “The baron would reward his family.”

“The king can’t beat a fresh opponent,” Costis warned, “and he won’t know that it isn’t just sparring for Laecdomon.”

“Don’t worry,” said Teleus. “As much as I would like to see it, I am not going to stand here and watch him get knocked down dead by a zealot with a wooden club. Find Laecdomon and get him out of here.”

Aris and Costis moved away through the crowd. The king finished his opponent. Meron rubbed his chest where the point of the king’s sword had struck and smiled. The king looked through the crowd for the next man in the squad. Searching the crowd himself, Teleus was too late to signal the man to hang back. Teleus, from behind the king’s back, waved to get his attention and then mouthed silent instructions.