Fortunately, I did not have to pretend that I liked him. He was content once he could see that I was willing to submit to him because I had no other choice.

One day after weeks of uninterrupted quiet and sick frustration, there was a visitor to Brimedius’s megaron. Nomenus was arranging my meal on a tray when I asked him outright who had arrived.

“It’s Baron Hanaktos,” he said pleasantly, as if it were nothing that a man who’d tried to kill me was nearby. “The Mede ambassador has asked for an appointment this evening before dinner if that will suit Your Majesty.”

This is how they maintained the polite fiction that I was not a prisoner. It was “Your Majesty, this,” and “Your Majesty, that,” and “if it would suit Your Majesty.” Listening to Akretenesh say the words made me want to bite something, but Nomenus spoke them with a gentle amusement that made it bearable, as if it were an irony shared between us.

That evening Akretenesh brought me another letter.

“Your friend has sent greetings,” he said. “Were you expecting them?”

I had no idea whom he meant. My first thought was of Hyacinth, and I had no interest in any news from him. Seeing my confusion, he held up the letter, and I recognized the seals.

“Her Majesty the queen of Eddis?” I said rigidly, and Akretenesh promptly reconsidered his wording.

“Her Majesty, yes,” he said more respectfully.

I understood better how the queen of Attolia could have led her own ambassador by the nose. The Medes seem to be very conventional thinkers, so certain of themselves that they never even entertain anyone else’s opinions. I do believe that Akretenesh saw no differences between a woman who was a queen and one who was a seamstress, though he would recognize all the differences in the world between a prince and a farmer.

I said that yes, the letter was unexpected, and no, I had made no plans for communications in case I was separated from the magus and the troops. No, I didn’t think it likely that there was a secret message, but of course I couldn’t say for certain. Akretenesh again laid the parchment out on the table between us and smoothed it with his hand while he considered. Finally, with a little sigh, he folded it again.

“I am sorry,” he said. “It’s too risky.”

I looked away while I fantasized about throwing myself across the top of the spindly table and seizing Akretenesh by the throat to choke the life out of him, surrounded by the sound of crashing crockery.

After a deep breath, I said, “I understand.”

“I am relieved Your Majesty comprehends the difficulties of my position,” said Akretenesh.

“You have my sympathy, Ambassador. What are your thoughts of Her Majesty?” I asked.

“I regret I have never had the pleasure of meeting the queen of Eddis.”

“But your brother ambassador in Attolia has, and I know you have communicated.” He’d certainly made it clear that Melheret had conveyed the news that I was heading for Brimedius. Akretenesh pretended to have heard only the most flattering things about my intelligence and maturity from the same source.

“Indeed,” said Akretenesh, “I have heard much of Her Majesty. She is by all accounts most admirable, demonstrating that character in a woman is far more important than the superficial beauty or excessive pretensions to intelligence of her counterpart in Attolia.”

I stared at him for a moment, thinking that the historian Talis once said that to be underestimated by an enemy is the greatest advantage a man can have. Presumably it is true for women as well. One part of me couldn’t let the comment pass, while another part of me knew that I must, and I stood paralyzed as they warred their way to a mutually agreed-upon truth.

“The queen of Eddis is as beautiful as the day and as brilliant as the sun in the sky,” I said.

He was a fool if he didn’t believe me, but I wouldn’t tell him so. He chuckled and quoted Praximeles about beauty being in the heart and not in the eye.

“You could retell some of what she said in her letter,” I said.

Akretenesh considered, now that he’d had his chance to condescend. “I could. She writes about the fulfillment of a dream: to marry you in the Great Temple of Sounis and to wake in a marriage bed . . . which she describes in some detail”—he flipped the page over and read it closely—“‘It will have the finest Eddisian linen and a carving of the silhouette of the Sacred Mountain on the footboard.’” He looked up from the page to see my face as I flushed deeper and deeper red. His voice grew more cloying still. “She sends her love from beneath the ripening apricots of the tree where she sits and says the dream is complete but for your presence. Is this a lover’s missive,” he asked, “or might some information be encoded there?” He watched me closely, his eyes narrow.

I said through my gritted teeth, “Perhaps it is just what women do.”

Sighing, he refolded the parchment. “That may be it. My wife would write just such a description.” He became brisk. “I am sorry I cannot allow you to return the message, but your queen is too much under the influence of her ambitious former Thief. He has stolen Attolia’s throne and has tried to steal yours. She is very foolish if she does not realize how vulnerable she is, but fortunate that she may have you to protect her from her folly, eh?”

He was still watching me, looking for some sign that there might be a message in the text, but I am an idiot, and all that showed on my face, I am sure, was that I wanted to kill him.

We were interrupted then by Baron Hanaktos, who was immediately unhappy to see the letter from Eddis in the Mede’s hand.

“I didn’t bring that here so that you could deliver it,” he said gruffly.

“Oh, why did you bring it?” I asked harshly, and the baron flushed. I almost smiled at his discomfort. No doubt I looked like a clod, putting on pretensions to cover my impotence, but the baron bowed and apologized. He insisted that his only concern was for treachery on the part of Attolia. I said that I understood completely. He said that he hoped that the sad rupture in our relationship would heal, and I pretended that I hadn’t been attacked in my own home, listened as my servants were killed, and served as a slave on his estates. In short, I acted as if my family were just then being held as hostage for my good behavior.

We all mouthed our parts in the play; then we went in to dinner.

If the baron and I were bad actors, there was an inexplicable tension between Akretenesh and the baron as well. I wondered if the baron was beginning to change his estimation of his allies. He was unhappy about something, and all through the dinner there was a conversation I couldn’t follow in obscure references and dark looks.

Hanaktos only stayed for the one night. He left again in the morning, and an exchange I overheard from an open hallway above the pronaos made me think the issue, whatever it was, was still unresolved. Akretenesh and Hanaktos were standing in the open doorway of the megaron. Their voices carried clearly.

“You will not put me aside,” said Hanaktos.

“I assure you that nothing has changed,” said Akretenesh.

He might have said more, but Nomenus was with me. I could not ask him to quiet his footsteps so that I might eavesdrop. Akretenesh and Hanaktos heard him and fell silent.

When he was gone, Akretenesh came inside to compliment me on my company manners. I suspected that the visit had been his own personal test of his control over me and that I had passed. I excused myself and spent the morning practicing with Attolia’s handgun.