“You bastard,” said Sounis wearily. “I don’t know why I don’t stab you here in this alley so I can be the annux over Sounis and Attolia.” They were twisting through the narrowest of passages, with Eugenides still in the lead, turning on what seemed to be a whim from one walkway to the next.

“Well, the stabbing would be unkind,” said Eugenides, “but you can have the annux part with my goodwill.”

“Not Attolia’s.”

“True,” said the king. “Better not stab me.”

“Gen,” Sounis said, and halted. Attolis, who had already lightly descended a crooked stair, turned back at the bottom and looked up at him.

“Yes?”

Sounis didn’t know what to say.

“She cut off my hand?” Gen asked.

It was exactly what Sounis was thinking, but he said, “Did you know? When she imprisoned us after you stole Hamiathes’s Gift. Did you love her then?”

Eugenides laughed and seemed so at ease that Sounis found himself laughing with him. “No,” said Gen. “I wrote down exactly what I thought for my cousin who is Eddis. I meant to send it to the magus and he might have passed it on to you, but for some reason I never did.” He looked around as if the reason for this lapse might be found in the graffiti on the nearby wall. “It may be lost by now. At any rate, the answer is no, I did not know.”

“When then?” asked Sounis, coming slowly down the stairs. He remembered meeting Eddis and the first time she had smiled. “Or do you not know?”

“I know exactly. I was hiding in a takima bush in the Queen’s Garden, watching the older son of the Baron Erondites tell Attolia that he loved her. He was trying to propose a marriage and she thought he was talking about a poem he was writing. I was laughing like a very quiet fiend, trying not to make the branches around me shake, and then, between one heartbeat and the next, and to my complete surprise, it wasn’t funny anymore.” He rubbed his chest, as if at a remembered pain. “I wanted to kill him. Once she was gone, I very nearly jumped out of the bush onto his head. Poor Dite.”

Poor Eugenides, thought Sounis, to fall in love with a woman he had already made into an enemy. “You exiled him?” He had heard of the destruction of the house of Erondites.

“Happily, not before we resolved our differences,” said Eugenides. He added more seriously, “I would have exiled him even if we hadn’t.”

“I understand,” said Sounis, and he did. “Where are we going?”

“To a nice tavern where they have no idea who I am, so pull that cloak a little tighter over your fine clothes. I don’t want them asking awkward questions. I just want a chance to have a moment without my dear companions or, gods forbid, any physicians.”

“They seemed a little unfriendly with each other,” said Sounis.

The king of Attolia sighed. “They purport to be worried about my health.”

They had left the narrow alleys and were walking along the broader Sacred Way, and Eugenides kept his voice low. Sounis suspected that everyone in the palace worried about Eugenides’s health.

“I am nothing but a bone of contention,” said the patient bitterly.

Sounis was unsympathetic. “That seems unlike Galen,” he said.

“Well, you try insinuating that he’s a mountain bumpkin with the medical knowledge of the village butcher and see how he takes it,” said Eugenides. “My oh-so-timid palace physician turns out to be quite ferocious when he thinks someone is trespassing on his medical ground.”

“That also seems unlike Galen,” said Sounis.

“My fault entirely,” Eugenides admitted. “I asked to see Galen while he was here with Eddis and touched off a bout of professional jealousy.”

Sounis snickered.

“Your time will come, puppy. You just wait,” said Eugenides. He turned again into a narrow side street. “There it is,” he said, “under the lantern.”

The tavern had a sign of painted grapes just barely illuminated by the dim lamp. Sounis went down stone steps and ducked through a low door underneath the sign. The taproom was no better lit, and he stepped carefully around scattered tables to a booth against a wall where he and Eugenides could sit opposite each other and still each have a view of the door.

By unspoken agreement they paused in their conversation until they were sitting with the high walls of the booth on either side.

“And your attendants?” Sounis asked.

“Every one another Ambiades,” said Gen, referring to the traitor who had betrayed them both when they followed the magus in pursuit of Hamiathes’s Gift. “I’d had some hope for Philologos,” Gen admitted, “but Sejanus won that hand neatly.”

Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. “He would have been a better man under different circumstances.”

Gen looked at him. “True enough,” he said. “But does a good man let his circumstances determine his character?”

Sounis couldn’t argue with that. “Perhaps you can bring out better in them?”

Eugenides shook his head. “I pulled the carpet out from under them very thoroughly. They will not cross me, but they won’t love me, either. I am not Eddis. People do not hand me their hearts.”

Sounis wondered. He would have given Eugenides his heart on a toothpick, if asked. He remembered Ion’s obvious wince at being rated somewhat less significant to Gen than his boots.

The barmaid came to the table, and Gen ordered wine.

When she was gone, Sounis asked if Attolis paid his way out of his own palace often, but he needled to no effect.

“Oh, that’s not a bribe to get out the gate. It’s compensation for the rating he’ll get from the captain of my guard. Teleus hates it when I go out, and he’s going to be sullen in the morning, but I’ve given him enough ground. The circus this morning was largely at his insistence. My father and Procivitus would have served my purposes well enough, but Teleus insisted his guard be involved. He does not like them to be ashamed of me.” Eugenides shrugged. “So. Melheret will already know I was making a fool of him, and I won’t be able to trick him again, but Teleus must be appeased.”

“Oh, poor king,” said Sounis.

The barmaid brought the wine and cups. When she was gone, Eugenides dunked a finger in his wine and flicked it at Sounis.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE long summer twilight was in the sky outside, but the lamps were lit in the small dining room, casting a warm glow over the diners reclined on their couches. The king’s attendants moved quietly through the room with platters of food and amphorae to refill wine cups.

“Why not refuse the ambassador, send him home?” Sounis asked.

He watched Attolia out of the corner of his eye. She was still cool, like a breath of winter in the warm evening air, but in the last few days he had begun to sense a subtle humor in her chilly words.

When Gen had complained earlier that evening that Petrus, the palace physician, should stop fussing over him like a worried old woman, Attolia had asked, archly, “And me as well?”

“When you stop fussing,” Gen had said, slipping to his knees beside her couch, “I will sleep with two knives under my pillow.”