And my conversations all seemed to go awry. Was it true that I would swear an oath of allegiance to Attolia? I said no, that I would swear to Attolis, but that made little difference to them. They didn’t like the Thief of Eddis any better as an overlord. There was nothing impossible in what I was saying. My arguments were good, but my barons would have to trust me, and they wouldn’t. They looked from me to the Mede and back again. Then they said polite things and excused themselves.

Akretenesh watched, amused.

There was no point in trying to tell the barons the things that the magus had taught me, the way the Medes had dealt with their “allies” in the past. They weren’t interested in history lessons. I knew that my uncle who was Sounis had set his barons against one another in order to keep them weak. I knew that he had used his army to threaten anyone who dared disagree with him. They hadn’t liked him, they had lived their lives wondering when he would turn on them, but that was what they expected a king to be. I wasn’t nearly intimidating enough.

I told them how things work in Eddis and tried to show them that there is a rule of law that is better than backbiting and self-interest as a means to run a state. My idealistic words made Xorcheus uncomfortable. They made the rest of the barons contemptuous.

At the end of one day, when I had worked my way through almost half the barons and was tripping over my tongue, so tired was I of talking, Nomenus came to the door of the audience room.

“I thought that was the last for now, Nomenus,” I said.

“It’s your father, Your Majesty. He has arrived from the north, and he asks an audience.”

I stood up and went to greet my father at the door. He wrapped me in a hug as fierce as the one he’d given me as I slid from the back of his horse outside Hanaktos’s megaron. I swallowed. So much depended on him. I had left him under attack by Hanaktos and gone to surrender to Attolia, and I had no idea what he thought of me.

“Won’t you come sit down?” I said, and we crossed the room together.

“Ambassador,” my father said, and reached out to take Akretenesh’s hand. “Won’t you join us?” So the three of us settled into chairs facing one another.

“This business of surrendering to Attolia. I am not at ease,” my father said.

I shrugged. “You have heard all the arguments already from the magus.”

My father nodded and rolled his eyes. “That man bent my ear mercilessly. He never stopped for an instant.” He looked at Akretenesh. “Your empire has a history of absorbing its allies the way a tide overcomes a tide pool.”

Akretenesh smiled comfortably, and I felt like a child again, watching from the corners while the adults talked. I couldn’t tell from my father’s brief comment when he had last seen the magus. I could only hope that the magus had made his way safely to meet my father after the battle near Brimedius. I didn’t dare ask.

Akretenesh was speaking. “I know how things can change their appearance when seen from a distance. Our allies have become part of our empire by their own choice because it was to their advantage. But Sounis does not lie on our borders, the way they did, and cannot be integrated so easily into our system of provinces. Your case is quite different, I assure you.”

My father nodded and looked around the room. “At any rate,” he said, “I can see that all goes well here.” To me he said, “You need have no worries. You will be king one way or another.” Then he patted me on the knee and stood up, saying that he had to see to his men.

That evening I stood at the window looking at the amphitheater in the moonlight. Nomenus was tidying the room behind me and laying out my nightclothes. The night was cool. The armies waiting for their barons’ return, on the inland side of the hills, would be baking in the heat, but Elisa, high in the hills, caught the sea breeze. I listened to the creak of the night insects and watched the leaves flutter against the white marble of the amphitheater that seemed to glow in the reflected light, and I wondered what my father thought of me.

I had no chance to speak to him again except in impersonal conversation at dinner. I had no privacy outside my own rooms. Akretenesh accompanied me at all times or handed me off to Brimedius or another obsequious rebel baron. It was Akretenesh who was with me when I saw a familiar figure ahead in a passageway, a figure just in the act of dodging down a flight of stairs.

“Basrus!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, and to my everlasting surprise, Hanaktos’s slaver stopped in his tracks.

Not so Akretenesh, who slid hastily to stand between the two of us, one hand not quite touching my chest, as if to stop me from an assault. It was unnecessary. I was unexpectedly pleased to see the familiar, ugly face.

“Your Majesty has made an error,” Akretenesh said in warning. “This is, ah—” He paused, apparently at a loss for a good lie. “This is the rat catcher,” he said firmly. To my delight, he still couldn’t come up with a name.

“Bruto,” said Basrus, with a straight face.

“Yes, that’s it. Your Majesty, Bruto.” Akretenesh, being a Mede, didn’t recognize the name from the nursery rhyme of Bruto and the rats. It didn’t help that Basrus was winking at me over his shoulder.

“We have a vermin problem, and Bruto has been clearing the compound,” Akretenesh said, perhaps revealing more than he meant. I wondered if the rats were of a human kind and if the quarry was in the compound itself or farther afield.

“I wish you success in your endeavors on my behalf, Ba–Bruto,” I said. There was little point in contesting the Mede’s story. If anyone standing there in the passage with me knew who Basrus was, he knew that I knew as well, and would understand the irony in my emphasis on “my behalf.”

“It is an honor to work for Your Majesty.” Basrus bowed. He straightened and looked me in the eye. “If I may say so, I was delighted to hear of the safe arrival of your mother and sisters in Brimedius.” He bowed again.

“Thank you, Basrus,” I said.

“Bruto,” he said.

“Yes, of course.”

Akretenesh was starting to give both of us the evil eye. He dismissed Basrus sharply, and the slaver turned back to the stairs. I went on to my rooms.

There were more meetings. Each day I thought with envy of Polystrictes. I would have preferred his goats to my barons. Every one of them seemed to come to me with questions, and I had to lay every concern to rest before I had any hope that they would listen to what I had to say. I wanted to hold my head in my hands and scream.

Instead I explained over and over that no, we wouldn’t change our oligarchy, we had always had barons elevated above patronoi and patronoi above the okloi. My father himself was one of the four dukes created by my grandfather in imitation of the courts on the Continent. I would hardly disempower him. I only meant that we would have a rule of law for everyone, king, baron, patronoi, and okloi. That I would not constantly set the barons against one another, as my uncle had, and that no man needed to fear that he must be a favorite with the king to be safe from his neighbors.

But rumor was a hydra that regrew as often as I chopped it down. I came to rely on Nomenus, who would come with my breakfast every morning and tell me what fresh crop of misdirection had grown up in the night. He passed on to me the stories that he heard passing from one servant to the next, and I used the information to brace my arguments with the next baron in the order of precedence. I was sure Akretenesh was feeding the confusion, but there was nothing I could do about it other than try to convince my barons that they could believe in me. I continued to meet with as many as I could every day, in spite of Nomenus’s asking me if I would like to have rest in the afternoons. I was battle hardened after all the meetings in Attolia.