The men in uniform were obviously the king’s guards. The others were like Hilarion, Sounis assumed, more of the king’s companions. They were attractive in the way only the very well heeled can be. Trained in all the arts of riding, shooting, fighting, dancing, and clever court dialogue, their kind had intimidated him for years, and Sophos, now Sounis, quailed at the idea of surrounding himself with such companions. He wondered how Gen got along with them.

Eugenides waited for him in the bedchamber, sitting on an upholstered bench. He indicated the seat beside him. Sounis stood for a moment looking down at him before taking the seat. He was looking for some sign of the friend he had traveled with through Eddis and across Attolia in pursuit of a mythical relic and saw none. The king of Attolia’s expression showed no sense of irony or humor, just a blank courtesy. Sounis sat beside him and looked straight ahead.

Everyone else in the room, including the magus, remained standing. Neither the queen of Eddis nor the queen of Attolia attended.

The king of Attolia nodded agreeably but made no personal comment. He asked if Sounis would give his oath of loyalty.

“If Attolis can make it worth the sacrifice,” Sounis answered.

“And if not?” Attolis inquired politely.

Sounis crossed his legs, as if at ease, and offered his intention to go to Melenze and use their resources to fight Attolia and to delay the encroaching Medes. “Better to be king of some part of Sounis than of none of it.”

“The oath of loyalty would pertain to all of Sounis, not part,” Attolis said.

“You would have my loyalty, but no right to interfere in the internal management of my state.”

“That is acceptable,” said Attolis.

“Then we are in agreement,” said Sounis.

After a dry and formal parting, Sounis was led back to his own rooms, the magus beside him. Sounis was thinking over his decision. A hallway, filled with various members of the court, was no place to discuss such private thoughts. “The king’s rooms are very plain,” he observed instead.

Attolis’s attendant, walking just ahead, turned to speak over his shoulder. “They are not the royal apartments. His Majesty chose these rooms in preference and has arranged for the queen to remain in the royal apartments, as it suits them both.” He managed to convey that they had rooms every bit as nice as any in Sounis and also that it wasn’t anyone’s business but theirs where their king slept.

Sounis straightened up, and when the attendant turned away, he made a face at the magus. Gen was welcome to his attendants. “They looked familiar, didn’t you think? Just like—”

“Yes,” the magus replied.

The attendant’s ears were all but standing out from his head as he strained to hear what the king’s rooms looked like, but Sounis left the rest of his sentence unsaid. The magus had also seen the resemblance in the plain walls and plain paneling, and in the king’s desk with its careful arrangement of papers and pens, to the library of the queen of Eddis, where Eugenides had lived as her Thief.

When they were back in Sounis’s own bedchamber and the attendant was gone, Sounis spoke more freely.

“I thought he would be more like the Gen I know once we were in private.”

“You were never in private,” said the magus.

“Still,” said Sounis.

“My King,” said the magus hesitantly, and Sounis waved him to speak. “I believe we must go forward with the understanding that Attolis’s responsibility as king will outweigh his affections as a man. But that does not mean that I doubt his friendship. Or that I believe his friendship is unimportant. On the contrary, no treaty, no matter how cleverly worded, will hold without it.”

Sounis threw up his hands. “Tell him that,” he said.

In the ways of accommodation between nations, many viewpoints were exchanged in the process of moving from an agreement in principle to one locked in words. Sounis had no supporting barons with him, and so he and the magus wore themselves hoarse in one meeting after another. They talked long into the night, so that Sounis could make informed decisions and the magus could carry Sounis’s words back to more meetings the next day. Sounis was ferried from appointment to appointment by one or another of the king of Attolia’s companions. They took it in turn to be available at all times, waiting in his anteroom with a brace of honorary guards, ready to lead him up and down the endless corridors of Attolia’s palace.

In his meetings, Sounis was careful to keep to words he had discussed in advance with the magus, well aware that each one was a link in a chain that would bind him and his country to Attolia. He was determined that his agreements would engender no unforeseen consequences and that the ties between Attolia and Sounis would not be all at the expense of Sounis.

In the evenings, after a day of meetings, he sometimes walked in the queen’s garden, with the king and queen of Attolia and a crowd of others or, more rarely, with the queen of Eddis. She had not yet returned to her own home and had announced that she would remain until negotiations were complete.

The queen’s garden lay behind the palace. Large and walled for privacy, it was a miniature world of alleys and outdoor rooms. There were fountains and reflecting pools with benches beside them and expansive lawns around them, and there were smaller benches discreetly tucked into alcoves between high hedges.

Attolia remained as intimidating as ever, cool and beautiful, with never a word that was unkind or one that was kind, either. She was a wellspring of information that had, as far as Sounis ever found, no end. She spoke freely about the organization of her army, and her creation of a separate branch of it specifically for her artillery. She offered ready information on how she moved her cannons, how she supplied her ships, and how she circumvented the destructive traditions of the patronoi by making the best use of her okloi, offering promotions and land grants for twenty-year veterans and receiving in return their uncorrupted loyalty. It was information too important not to have, and Sounis steeled himself to continue asking questions as often as she would answer.

Eugenides remained as distant as his queen. His mask of formality seemed unassailable, and Sounis continued to search without success for some sign of his friend in the king’s remote expression.

For many reasons, Sounis preferred his quieter walks with Eddis. These were more lightly companioned, with her ladies and one of the king’s attendants following some distance behind. At first the discussions were much the same as those with Attolia. Eddis was a welcome anchor in his unsure navigation of the political seas, and he turned to her for advice to supplement the magus’s. On occasion the magus walked with them, though as the days passed, he excused himself more often than not, leaving Sounis and Eddis alone in each other’s company.

It seemed to Sounis that if he was not in a meeting discussing an interest rate or a trade of goods or if he was not walking in the garden, he was reluctantly standing in the light of a window while being fitted for clothes. He wouldn’t have minded the never-ending measurements if he could have eaten during the process, but the tailors insisted that raising his arms would spoil their work. If the measurements were irksome, the clothes themselves, when they began to arrive, appeared disturbingly expensive.

After the third suit of the day, he called for the magus. Leaning down from where he was posed on a felted wooden block, he said quietly into the magus’s ear, “Do I need this much lace? And how are we paying for it?”