That afternoon I had nothing new to read and no patience for rereading. Idly I picked over a plate of food. I paced. I hummed the chorus’s opening song from Prolemeleus’s City of Reason and stood looking out the window for a long time. As I considered the landscape, it finally occurred to me that it would be an odd apricot tree that would be producing fruit in Eddis so far out of season.

I was lucky to be alone as I subsequently recalled the time when Eugenides, the magus, and I were escaping Attolia. Eugenides had been growing more and more distant as the blood leaked through his bandages, staining the shirt I had loaned him. I had been desperate to hold his attention, afraid he would fade away altogether.

I remembered asking him if he could be anywhere at that moment where it would be and he’d predictably said in his own bed. He had described with longing the soft linens and the carved image of the Sacred Mountain on the footboard with such loving detail that it came to mind easily. The magus had wished to see the king of Sounis marry the queen of Eddis, and I, not unlike Gen, had longed to be home, under a ripening apricot tree, with my sisters.

If I hadn’t been such an idiot, and so angry at Akretenesh, he would have known, I am sure, that he had erred in teasing me with the letter. I would have perceived the message suggested by the text, and my face would have given me away.

There was no sign of my mother and sisters in Brimedius. I had circumnavigated the megaron for what felt like a thousand times, searching for a sign of their presence, and had seen nothing. I had begun to wonder if they had been moved elsewhere. Akretenesh insisted that he saw them each day, even bringing me verbal messages that did seem like Ina, but if he had lost his hostages, he would hardly want me to know.

I all but hooted with delight.

Was it wishful thinking? I had to ask myself. It might have been only that, but I had watched Akretenesh underestimate the queens of Attolia and Eddis, and I wouldn’t do the same to Ina. And whether my mother and sisters were safe in Eddis or not, there was nothing more I could do in Brimedius. I chose to believe that I had come to rescue my mother and sisters, and they had already rescued themselves.

I waited four long days before suggesting to Akretenesh that if it was true that the Medes would make me king, I would be pleased to see some sign of it. He accepted my capitulation with typical arrogance, and within the week, we were riding toward Elisa to the Barons’ Meet, where I would face my barons and they would vote whether I was going to be king or not.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IN Sounis only the barons hold the power to confirm a candidate as king. Of course their meetings have happened in all sorts of places, including on a battlefield surrounded by corpses in the case of Sounis Peliteus, but the official, dedicated, and sacred space is Elisa, on the coast, not far from the capital city.

The barons meet under truce. This is supposed to have something to do with the blessing of the gods and such, but I think it’s more likely to be a matter of practicality. If every time they came together to name a king, the barons brought their armies, there wouldn’t be a place big enough to hold the horses, much less all the men. When a group of Mede soldiers materialized around us as we traveled, I piously mentioned to Akretenesh the very sacred nature of the truce and the risk of angering the gods.

I wasn’t surprised that he had brought a small army to Sounis. It was just what I expected of him, but I didn’t want them tramping through the sacred precinct of Elisa. He assured me that we would leave his soldiers in Tas-Elisa, the nearby port town that served the sacred site. That, too, was just what I expected of him. On the one hand, he wanted to do nothing that would compromise my legitimacy as king, and on the other, the road from the port was one of only two serviceable roads to Elisa. I wondered how he would close off the other.

Once Akretenesh was confident that I understood that my only hope of becoming king was through his intervention, he had sent a message to Baron Brimedius, who in turn sent word to one and all to come to the sacred meeting. Akretenesh could have installed me by force, but he wanted no messy disagreements about legality to arise later. He wanted me legitimated by the council of the barons, so that all authority would rest in me, and I would rest securely in the palm of his hand.

He seemed confident of success. To be confirmed, I needed a golden majority, two-thirds of those present, plus one more baron. Akretenesh controlled the rebel votes, though we continued to maintain the pretense that he was a neutral mediator. As the magus and my father had lost ground in the spring campaign, their allies had parted company with them, but that still left more than a third of the barons not directly under Akretenesh’s sway. My father’s loyalists could still disrupt the vote, but the ambassador didn’t seem worried.

He had to believe that my father would support me, no matter how clear it was that I was to be a puppet of the Mede. He probably had good reason. Given my father’s opinion of me, he might prefer the arrangement.

On the road Akretenesh brought up the subject of a regent. I was very young, and I had been in seclusion on Letnos for some time, he said; my barons did not know me well and would be more comfortable if a reliable man were to serve as my guide. I was not surprised. Arrangements have always been made before the meets to secure votes. A new king will promise a minister’s position to a baron or offer a smaller office to the baron’s nephew or son. It’s done all the time. Akretenesh had been informing me delicately of who my ministers would be, and I was listening for the name Hanaktos. It hadn’t come up yet. When he raised the issue of a regent, I thought I knew why.

“Baron Comeneus, Your Majesty, would be a fine man for the office.”

I was surprised. Akretenesh thought I was reacting to the idea of a regent and was prepared to soothe my ruffled feathers. When soothing, Akretenesh was at his most infuriating. It was better to ignore him, and I did, concentrating my thoughts on Hanaktos. Had I overestimated his importance to the Medes? Was Comeneus truly the leader of this rebellion, and Hanaktos only a follower? It was Hanaktos’s man who had carried out my abduction, it was done at his orders, and I was taken to Hanaktos afterward. How could he not be one of the rebellion’s leaders? But why wasn’t he in line for some repayment, a minister’s position, if not prime minister? Perhaps Akretenesh had set him aside.

Akretenesh went on assuring me that I would be a fine and powerful king someday, and I went on ignoring him as I turned this idea over and over in my head.

There are five roads into the sacred city of Elisa, which sits high in the hills above the sea. Three come from inland and two from the coast. Of the coast roads, only one is of any use. It runs between the port of Tas-Elisa and the sacred site. The other coast road ends in Oneia, which is just a scatter of houses on an exposed cliff top with a narrow slice of stony beach at its foot.

Of the inland routes, the widest is the King’s Road, which leads to the city of Sounis. It comes into the sacred site from the opposite direction of the Tas-Elisa Road, so if one wants to go by land from Tas-Elisa to the city of Sounis, one must first climb all the way up to the valley in the hills and then go down along the King’s Road from there.

The other two routes come over the hills from behind Elisa and are mere tracks. They might be as wide as a wagon, but you couldn’t move one on them. No doubt, on the inland side of the hills where they were wider, they were lined with the camps of armies that had been left there by the barons as they came to the meet.