He grabbed me and held me tight. I had to pull myself away before I began to blubber like a baby. Fortunately he deferred to my dignity and let me go. He turned to my father. “Thank the heavens you have rescued him.”

“Backward to the facts, as usual,” my father said as he swept the magus and me into the tent ahead of him. “He has rescued us and brought us safely out of Hanaktos’s trap.”

“It was a trap.”

My father said testily, “I told you that we had little choice but to try. Hanaktos holds the bargaining power. Melenze is Ferria’s dog, and their fee for aiding us will be the Melenze–Sounis pass, which they are filling as we speak.”

From which I gathered that Melenze was assembling its army on our northern border and offering to come to save us from Attolia. No doubt they wanted the port of Haptia back as well, to be the final link in their trade route from the center of the Continent to the Middle Sea.

“And what cost doing business with Hanaktos?” snapped the magus. “Even if he hadn’t spitted you? Our entire country the lapdog of the Medes?”

“Always yapping about the Medes. What have they to do with Hanaktos?” responded my father. “I have said already, the Medes are too far away to rule over us with any attention. Let them have their tribute, and they will leave us to ourselves.”

“I have told you, the Medes will wipe us out of existence!” insisted the magus. “As they have every other nation with which they have ‘allied.’”

Clearly Father and the magus had had no rapprochement in my absence.

“Hanaktos held my wife and my daughters and my son,” my father said. “Tell me, then, how shall I not deal with him?”

“H-he didn’t have me,” I stuttered. “I was under his nose, but he didn’t know it.” My mind raced. Perhaps help had arrived after Basrus carried me off. Perhaps the fire had been put out before it was too late. “My mother and sisters are not dead?”

“They are hostage,” said my father heavily, “held by rebels who have some connection with Hanaktos, who claimed that he wants no more part in this rebellion, only the settling of it. He offered a mediation and restoration of Sounis.”

“He is in league with the Medes,” said the magus.

“You have no proof,” my father countered while I was still reeling at the idea that Eurydice and Ina and my mother were somewhere living and not dead in the destruction of the villa on Letnos. It was a moment before I paid more attention to the exchange of fire between my father and the magus. They were deep into what was obviously a familiar rut.

“Surely this is my uncle’s decision,” I pointed out. Their argument cut off more sharply than I anticipated.

My father said, “Your uncle is dead.”

The magus said, “You are Sounis.”

CHAPTER TEN

I should have stayed in Hanaktos and built walls. “More than a month ago,” the magus said when I asked him how long it had been since the death of my uncle. “Sounis had a fever before a day of hard riding and died that night.”

The magus and my father had told no one except a few officers. To the men in the army they had said the king was elsewhere, raising more forces.

“Your Majesty”—the magus addressed me, and I flinched—“we are near to being overwhelmed by Eddis and Attolia. They only wait for us to be at our weakest. We have lost the navy and most of the islands. Eddis has fortified the ground at the base of the Irkes pass. The Mede emperor and the prince of Melenze are also waiting. There is a chance that if Melenze knew your uncle who was Sounis had died, they would not wait to make an alliance with us; they would attack.”

“Attolia and Melenze will tear us apart between them,” said my father, and got a glare for it from the magus.

“We need to make an alliance with Melenze before the news gets out,” said the magus while I stared at him like a pilchard.

“We need to make an alliance with the Medes before war breaks out between Melenze and Attolia with us in the middle,” my father said more forcefully.

“The Medes,” the magus countered, trying to keep his temper, “started this rebellion, direct this rebellion, and nearly saw you dead tonight!” He pinched his nose and drew a deep breath. He said to my father, “Hanaktos will be on your heels.”

“Hanaktos, thanks to my son, doesn’t know where we are.” He told the magus of our trip through the dark.

“Thanks to His Majesty,” the magus said, and my father seemed startled at the correction but not displeased. On the contrary, he suddenly looked much like Ina when she has all her embroidery threads arranged to her satisfaction. He looked so pleased that I checked over my shoulder to see if there might be someone else behind me who had drawn his attention.

“Your Majesty,” said the magus deferentially, trying to restart the conversation. “I am sorry to put you in this position, but I believe Hanaktos might still attack.”

“He has no idea where we are!” my father argued.

“The Mede will have told him!” said the magus.

“The Mede again!” my father said, throwing up his hands.

“The Mede what?” said a voice behind me. “What will I have told whom?”

I spun around to see a man standing in the open doorway of the tent. Only the lack of reaction from my father and the magus stopped me from jumping at his throat. He was clearly a Mede.

“Aah,” he said in theatrical delight. “The rumors running around the camp are true: Your lost lamb has been found.”

Then he looked at the magus and said pointedly, “Won’t you please present me to your king?,” confirming that he’d been listening outside the tent and had heard everything that had been said within. Which is a reason you should not discuss important business in a tent or at least should keep your voices down if you do, as my father and the magus emphatically had not. The Mede was pleased at the magus’s discomfort, and his saturnine smile showed it.

The magus stiffly said, “Your Majesty, permit me to present the ambassador Akretenesh from His most Excellent and Sovereign Majesty Ghaznuvidas, emperor of the Mede.”

Good thing that I hadn’t strangled him, I thought.

“I am most honored, Your Majesty,” said Akretenesh, with a deep bow.

“You are welcome, Your Excellency,” I said, tilting my head, probably a little too far. “I am of course gratified, though very surprised, to receive you in such”—I couldn’t think of a diplomatic word and settled for—“unusual circumstances.”

“Allow me to say, and to speak for my master when I do, how pleased we are to be introduced to you in any circumstances. We are delighted that you are found safe and returned to your anxious parent.”

He turned to my father then. “And your wife and daughters are as well, I trust?”

“No,” said my father. “It was a trap.” He told him of Hanaktos’s treachery.

The Mede was horrified, stopping just short of saying that it was the sort of thing one could expect from barbarians like us. He asked how my father intended to free my mother and sisters, and my father had no answer except, “They do not matter. Only Sounis is important.”