“Yes, Nigella, and Noxe, and Omerga, and Omerxa, which you understand was easy to confuse with Omerga, and—”

“And so on,” said Sounis.

“And so on,” said Eddis. “Hundreds of goats, a new one every day, and poor Polystrictes was forever running around, calling, ‘Nigella! Nogasta! Come down from the roof!’ ‘Poppy! Promiseteus! Pausanius! Stop eating the lettuce at once!’ ‘Zenia, Zeta, and Zara, come to be milked!’ While the goats ran wild and ate through all the flowers in the courtyard and the vegetables in the garden and a great deal of the family’s laundry besides. The god brought a new goat every day, and poor Polystrictes couldn’t say no. One does not refuse the gifts of the god without a certain amount of peril. So Polystrictes stayed up all night, every night, reciting their names over so he wouldn’t forget them. Finally Ocrassus came and found him, surrounded by goats, all of them chewing through the shrubbery and some even chewing the sleeves on Polystrictes’s tunic as he sat at the edge of his fountain fast asleep.”

“And then what happened?” Sounis asked. Eddis had stopped when she realized they had reached the outer limits of the garden. Above them, Attolia’s guard passed on the palace’s outer walls. She looked over a shoulder at the tracks they had made in the long shell-covered path behind them, but Sounis, not yet ready to go back, turned to follow the wall around the garden instead.

“Ocrassus gave him a dog,” Eddis replied. “It was the first dog, and Polystrictes thought it was a wolf and ran to hide. The god had to search for him to ask, ‘Polystrictes, why are you in the well?’ Polystrictes said, ‘It’s a wolf.’ And Ocrassus said, ‘It’s a dog.’

“‘Wolf.’

“‘Dog.’

“‘Wolf.’

“‘Polystrictes,’ said Ocrassus, looking down the well, ‘which one of us is a god?’ And Polystrictes had to bite his tongue and climb out. The god showed him how the dog would follow his commands and keep his goats out of the laundry. So Polystrictes didn’t have to remember all those names anymore. He had to remember only one, the dog’s.”

“Alas,” said Sounis. “My problem is barons, not goats, and I have no dog.”

“True, but staying up all night, reciting over your difficulties, won’t help you any more than it did Polystrictes.” Eddis turned him around, and they started back toward the palace. “We will be missed,” she said. “And you will not want people who think we are deep in a discussion of the rights of the Neutral Islands to learn that we were instead talking about goats.”

“I cannot crush a rebellion with so few men,” Sounis protested.

They had met at last to discuss the army that he would lead back to Sounis. In addition to the kings of Attolia and Sounis and the queens of Attolia and Eddis, there were advisors and ministers and officers of the army. Sounis wanted to say more but was afraid to embarrass himself in front of the men he would be ordering into a war. It seemed a pitifully small number of troops that the king of Attolia was offering, much smaller than Sounis had expected. He looked at the magus to see if he, too, was surprised, but the magus was looking at his hands. Sounis looked at Attolia, and she only stared back. No doubt she had overcome her own rebels with ten men and a penknife.

Eugenides said, “These are the Eddisians who have been exerting a peaceful influence throughout Attolia since I became Attolis. They are Eddis’s best mercenaries, and we will pay Eddis the gold for them. These are the best of our Attolian forces as well. We cannot send any artillery, and you couldn’t use it anyway. It would only slow you down. We are taking it on faith that the Medes will not arrive on our doorstep while you have them with you, and that Baron Erondites won’t rise up inside our dooryard before you return them. We will need them back,” he added.

Eddis watched without speaking. She could see that Sounis was alarmed, but there was little she could say that would help. The numbers were small, and the challenge he faced was enormous.

“It is just as likely that the Medes will arrive on my doorstep,” said Sounis. “What then?”

Attolia explained. “In either case, we have an invasion that the Great Powers of the Continent cannot fail to notice, and we all have to do the best we can. It is most likely that the Medes would land on our shores, rather than sailing around us to land on yours. Moreover, any attack on their part would reveal their plans to conquer Sounis, not ally with it, and strengthen your position as king—if you have convinced your barons that you are king. You cannot risk being seen as the head of an Attolian invasion. We do not have the troops to send in any case, but as a matter of strategy, overwhelming force will make you less king, not more.”

Later Eugenides did not invite Sounis to his rooms so much as summon him there. They were to have a private discussion, or at least a conversation as private as anything could be in the overpopulated palace. Feeling as sullen as a schoolboy, Sounis followed an attendant to the appointment only to find, when he reached the guardroom of the king’s apartments, that the door to the bedchamber was closed. With rising irritation, Sounis waited. The fancy guards looked elsewhere, but the attendants watched him with what he thought was concealed amusement. He set his teeth and stared back at each of them in turn. They all found something else to look at, except Ion, who smiled and bowed and asked if the king of Sounis would like some refreshment. Sounis was hungry, but he declined when he saw that the door to Eugenides’s bedchamber was opening.

Two men strode through the open door and across the guardroom. One was Galen, the personal physician of the queen of Eddis. The other, Sounis didn’t recognize but assumed from his green sash that he served the same function for Eugenides. Both walked with the stiff-legged gait of the bitterly offended, and Sounis warily refrained from greeting Galen, though he had met him several times in Eddis.

“Your Majesty?” Hilarion spoke from the doorway, ushering Sounis into the room, where Eugenides waited. The king of Attolia was again seated on the upholstered bench. He nodded to Sounis to take a seat that had been pulled up nearby. His unapproachable expression was just the same, and Sounis decided not to ask what had upset Galen. So long as Gen maintained his impersonal role, Sounis meant to do the same.

Eugenides’s attendants moved in and out of his bedchamber while he and Sounis talked, but Gen ignored them as if they didn’t exist. Taking his cue, Sounis did the same. Hoping for some reassurance that he would be able to subdue his rebel barons, Sounis was disappointed. He and Eugenides talked about the Mede and their history, and the balance of power on the Peninsula. The conversation was stilted and awkward.

Only as the interview was ending did Eugenides say directly, “You must be king. You cannot be anyone’s puppet if we are to have a chance against the Mede.”

“I’ll do what I can,” said Sounis stiffly.

He rose to leave and was halfway to the door when Eugenides asked, “Does the wardrobe suit?”

Sounis turned back. Eugenides was looking into his wine cup, and Sounis wasn’t sure how to answer. Had he failed to thank the king appropriately? Was he supposed to admire the gifts more? He knew that Eugenides paid a great deal of attention to such things, but to Sounis they were just clothes. “The pockets are sewn on the inside,” he said. He couldn’t imagine why someone would want to keep something in a pocket he couldn’t easily reach, and these were particularly useless, too deep and too narrow to get his hand into.