A bronze cannon costs ten solids to the ton. Eddis’s iron cannons cost less but are too heavy to move. Even a bronze cannon, at six thousand pounds, takes twelve horses or fifty men to shift. The horses cost a subit a head and have to eat. The men expect wages, and they also eat. The horses have harnesses and iron shoes that need to be replaced at three octari apiece, while the men must have weapons and uniforms, and all of them paid for out of the treasury. I learned that my uncle who was Sounis had run through his ready gold and was in debt to the number of twenty-five thousand solids to moneylenders on the Peninsula. He had promised the Hephestia Diamond as security. He had already sold the Soli Diamond and a number of lesser stones from the treasury to purchase the ships to replace those that Eugenides had blown up. He had then tried to squeeze still more money out of his barons, and that, the magus thought, had been the sun that ripened the rebellion. The patronoi were sick of paying the costs of the king’s wars.

When Eugenides married the queen of Attolia and made peace between Eddis and Attolia, the Mede ambassador had offered my uncle a treaty of protection from his now far more dangerous neighbors. Sounis had taken Mede money and hired men to assassinate Eugenides, but he had stopped short of accepting an alliance, refusing to cede any power to the Mede. He still insisted that he could defeat both his enemies, but his barons no longer agreed. They wanted the security of the alliance with the Mede, and my father wanted it as well. Though my father and uncle had argued, his loyalty was unfailing. Not so the barons’, evidently.

By the time we reached Attolia, I understood better the wonders that had been achieved in Eddis with so small a treasury, and I was even more impressed with Attolia for squeezing so much gold out of the Mede emperor when he thought he was buying her sovereignty. Attolia still had that gold, and if she let me use it, the magus warned me, it would be a loan, not a gift, and there would be costs attached. The magus was very clear about the dangers of my decision, but he never questioned it.

“Have you and my father discussed something like this?”

“Never,” said the magus. “It isn’t a decision either of us could make. Only you, My King.”

The magus, unless we could be overheard, addressed me formally. As if being addressed as King was something else I needed to be prepared for before I reached Attolia.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“WHERE is it?” the burly man shouted, with his hand still in my left boot, as he searched it for some valuable that hadn’t fallen out when he’d turned it upside down.

“Where’s what?” asked the magus, mightily confused. The robbers had already stolen away our purses, and neither the magus nor I had any guess what more they could want.

We both had been asleep. There had been no sign of Hanaktos’s men, and we’d taken no precautions except to check that the road behind and ahead of us was empty before we retreated into the woods to camp each night. We’d been taken by surprise when we were tossed from our blankets like seed scattered on the ground and found ourselves on our backs with daggers at our throats. The robbers had searched our bags, throwing our spare clothes every which way, checking the seams, and pulling the bags themselves to pieces as the horses we had purchased only the day before stood by whickering anxiously at all the fuss. The magus and I watched bemused.

Their leader had tipped the contents of the magus’s purse into his hand and thrown the little leather pocket contemptuously to the ground.

“Whatever it is that you are carrying so carefully, with an eye on every man you meet. We’ve watched you these last two days. What are you carrying? Gold? Silver? Where is it?”

I almost waved a hand and said, “Here. Me.” But I didn’t. The man was too frustrated, and I was very afraid that when he found his careful hunt had yielded nothing, he would spit us both. I looked over at the magus. He looked back, bone dry of ideas.

“It was gemstones,” I said, “matched garnets the size of your thumb, but they’re gone already. We handed them off.”

“Handed them off?”

“At the inn, last night. The, uh, man was there. He was the merchant we were bringing the gems for.” I racked my brains to remember some specific man from the roomful we’d eaten with the night before.

“The man in the booth,” suggested the magus.

“Near the door?” snarled the man.

“Ye–es,” said the magus, as if reluctant, trying hard not to sound like someone scrambling for a safe lie. His hand waved in a vague gesture.

The bandit looked thoughtful. “The second booth? Blond, with rings in his ears?”

“That’s him,” I piped. “He was to take the garnets on to the baron.”

“What baron?”

Suddenly I couldn’t remember the name of a single Attolian baron and couldn’t guess, even if I’d been able to come up with one, who might be a plausible recipient of a matched set of large garnets. What a time to have my mind go all to pear. Only by a god’s will did I remember a crossroads we had passed the day before. “He was taking the road for Pirrhea,” I said. Gen had stolen us chickens in Pirrhea, which was why the sign at the crossroads had caught my eye.

Without another word, the robbers left us, taking our spare clothes and our horses with them and heading through the woods toward the road, back to the crossroads and Pirrhea. We watched them without saying anything until they were long gone. Even then we didn’t speak, only stuffed our feet into our boots, which they hadn’t taken, and legged it ourselves in the opposite direction, as fast as we could go. We cut back toward the road to reach it some ways ahead of where we had been traveling. When we did, we ran, not sure if someone had followed. We jogged steadily until we were in sight of the next town. By then the sky was light, and the sun was near rising. The gates in front of us were open, and the merchants would soon be doing business.

“Garnets,” said the magus.

“The size of your thumb,” I assured him.

Both of us silently hoped the blond man was on his way anywhere but on the road to Pirrhea.

CHAPTER TWELVE

WE were in the city of Attolia three days later, after catching a ride in the back of a wagon from a farmer delivering olive oil to the capital. We were starving. The magus had spent our last lone coin, found stuck in the seam of his purse, on bread. In the city we tried to bluster our way into an inn but were turned away on the first two tries when the landlord, spooked by our lack of traveling bags, asked to see our coin before he showed us a room. Finally we found a shabbier hostel, where the magus’s easy confidence carried the day. We got a room and some food and considered our strategy. The magus was afraid to approach the palace. There was every chance that the Mede agents whom we had escaped so far would be lurking, waiting to catch us as we approached.

“It’s what I would do,” said the magus, “were I the Mede. They know by now that you are not with your father.”

“We could send a message,” I said. “If we promised payment on delivery, we could send it by messenger, but would any message sent by a common carrier and delivered to the gates be carried to the king?”

What a quandary!

We tried approaching Baron Susa, but we were turned away, even from his back door. We thought we might contact a merchant who would pass our message to a patronoi, who might deliver it to the palace, but that failed as well. I picked up a job unloading a cart and earned us enough coins to buy food, but not enough to make a bribe of any significance, and without a bribe we could not seem to contact anyone of any importance in the city. The public day in the royal courts wasn’t to be held for weeks. While there were people the magus could contact outside the city, that would mean more traveling. We didn’t have the time.