“We keep Her Majesty safe,” Teleus said, pain in his voice. “We have always kept her safe.”

“Guard my back, Teleus, and I will keep her safe.”

Moving more easily, but favoring his left leg, he went through the door, leaving the Guard and returning to his attendants, no doubt waiting outside.

“Will he keep her safe? Phokis could break him in half with one hand.”

“If Phokis could lay a hand on him.”

“Do you doubt him?”

The guards shook their heads.

“Basileus,” someone hidden in the steam whispered. Others echoed the praise. “Basileus.”

Only Teleus shook his head. Costis watched him, not surprised. “The Basileus was a prince of his people, what we call a king now,” Teleus explained. “That one”—he nodded toward the closed door—“will rule more than just Attolia before he is done. He is an Annux, a king of kings.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As ever, the stories about Attolia, Sounis, and Eddis are fiction. There is no history here. This does not mean that representations of people and events from the real world have not crept in, but even those have been subject to fictionalization. There was a poet named Archilochus in the seventh century BC. We still have fragments of his poems, but the verse quoted in the book is not his. There was a playwright named Aristophanes who wrote comedies with titles like The Birds and The Frogs. I don’t know that he ever wrote one entirely about farmers, but if he had, it would have been very funny indeed. The gods I describe aren’t real, either. I made them up. The landscapes that surround the stories are based on the actual landscape of modern Greece and on what I imagine ancient Greece to have looked like. But the setting isn’t Greece, and it isn’t meant to be ancient. With firearms and pocket watches, window glass and printed books, I hope it is more Byzantine than Archaic.

MAP

SOME PERSONS OF SIGNIFICANCE: A LIST OF CHARACTERS IN

 THE QUEEN’S THIEF NOVELS

  Agape: Youngest daughter of the Eddisian baron Phoros. She is a cousin to the queen of Eddis and to Eugenides the thief. She is nicer than her sister Hegite.

Aglaia: One of Attolia’s attendants.

Alenia: A duchess in Eddis who was incensed when Eugenides stole her emerald earrings.

Ambiades: The Magus’s apprentice. His grandfather was executed for conspiring against the king of Sounis. Gen calls him Useless the Elder.

Anacritus: An Attolian baron and supporter of the Queen of Attolia.

Anet: The sky god in the Mede pantheon.

Ansel: Free servant of Melheret, the Mede ambassador to Attolia.

Aracthus: An Eddisian god. Associated with the River Aracthus.

Aristogiton: A friend of Costis and a soldier in the Attolian guard. Costis borrows his name when he needs an alias.

Artadorus: An Attolian baron enmeshed in the schemes of Baron Erondites. At the baron’s suggestion, he misreports the kind of grain he grows in order to pay less in taxes.

Attolia: Irene, queen of Attolia.

Aulus: An Eddisian soldier and minor prince of Eddis enlisted as an ad hoc nanny for the king of Attolia.

Benno: A guard hired by Roamanj to accompany his caravan.

Boagus: An Eddisian soldier and babysitter of Eugenides.

Brinna: The head cook in Attolia’s kitchens.

Cassa: Owner of the honeyed hives in the Mede epic of Immakuk and Ennikar.

Chloe: A younger attendant of Attolia.

Cleon: One of Eugenides’s attendants.

Cleon (the other Cleon): Gen and Eddis’s cousin.

Cletus: An Attolian baron, supporter of the queen.

Costis: Costis Ormentiedes, a soldier in the Attolian guard. He is unwillingly embroiled in the politics of the court by Eugenides.

Crodes: A soldier of Eddis. Cousin to the queen and to Eugenides.

Death: Lord of the Underworld. Brother of the Queen of the Night.

Dionis: One of Eugenides’s attendants.

Diurnes: A member of Costis’s squad in the Attolian guard.

Earth: The origin goddess in the Eddisian creation stories.

Eddis: Helen, queen of Eddis.

Efkis: An Attolian baron. Because of Eugenides’s schemes, he was thought to have betrayed the Queen of Attolia.

Elia: One of the queen of Attolia’s attendants.

Enkelis: An ambitious lieutenant in the Attolian guard, briefly promoted to captain by the queen of Attolia.

Ennikar: One of the heroes in the Mede epic of Immakuk and Ennikar.

Ephrata: An Attolian baron.

Erondites: An Attolian baron, one of Attolia’s oldest enemies. Father of Erondites the Younger and Sejanus.

Erondites the Younger, called Dite: Baron Erondites’s son and one of Attolia’s most fervent supporters.

Eugenides: An Eddisian who served as the queen’s thief of Eddis before becoming king of Attolia. Also called Gen.

Eugenides: The Eddisians’ god of thieves.

Galen: Eddis’s palace physician.

Ghasnuvidas: Emperor of the Mede. He has been diagnosed with an incurable disease that leaves lesions on the skin, and he has passed over his own sons in order to name his nephew as his heir.

Godekker: An escaped slave living in hiding in Zaboar. He agrees to hide Kamet and Costis.

Hamiathes: A mythological king of Eddis. To reward him, he was given Hamiathes’s Gift, which conferred immortality and the throne of Eddis.

Hegite: Daughter of the Eddisian baron Phoros. Older sister of Agape.

Heiro: Daughter of one of the barons in the Attolian court. Eugenides dances with her but not with her older sister, Themis.

Hemke: A shepherd on the salt flats of the Mede empire.

Hephestia: The Great Goddess. Head of the Eddisian pantheon. Goddess of volcanoes. She is the daughter of Earth and Sky. They have given her the power of their lightning bolts and earthquakes.

Hespira: In the Eddisian story of Hespira and Horreon, she was lured to the underworld by the goddess Meridite, who wanted her to marry Horreon, Meridite’s son.

Hilarion: The oldest of Eugenides’s attendants.

Hippias: An Attolian baron. He becomes the secretary of the archives after Relius is arrested for treason.

Horreon: An Eddisian god, the son of the goddess Meridite. He was a blacksmith who made magical armor forged in the fire of the Hephestial Mountain.

Ileia: One of Attolia’s younger attendants.

Imenia: Among the most senior of Attolia’s attendants.