The night before I was to meet with Baron Comeneus, Nomenus came to my rooms with a late meal. He had an amphora in his hand and another servant to bring in a tray with bread and cheese. He was usually able to manage this on his own, and I looked at the extra man curiously. Hesitantly, Nomenus introduced him as a friend from Tas-Elisa. He emphasized friend significantly. My hopes rising like birds on the wing, I thought at first that the magus had sent him. I asked if he brought news, but he knew nothing of the magus nor of the Eddisians and Attolians. “They say the goatfeet went back to the mountains and the Attolians with them,” he said.

I sighed, not knowing if this was good news or bad, and even though I had grown to trust Nomenus more than was warranted, I was still too wary to ask more.

“What of Comeneus?” I said. “Does he really lead these barons?” I still couldn’t imagine Comeneus in charge of anything larger than a hunting party.

“The other barons all yield to him,” Nomenus said. “They say he will be regent for you.”

“Does anyone mention Hanaktos? His army is blocking the King’s Road. Does anyone say what he will get out of his part in this?”

Nomenus and the other man shook their heads. “We’ve heard nothing of him,” the man said. “We only hear of Comeneus.”

“We will tell you if we learn anything more, My King,” Nomenus said, and I was touched that he addressed me as his King and not just as Your Majesty.

In the morning I didn’t so much meet with Comeneus as sit to be lectured by him. Relative to Xorcheus, his was a newly created barony, only a few generations old, so he was very near to the last of the barons. I had wondered why he hadn’t ridden in on an earlier baron’s back, but when he came into the room, I understood much better. He wanted me all to himself. What he lacked in precedence, he made up in bluster. He was just as I remembered him, a large man with a thick jaw, a heavy mat of hair, and narrow-set eyes. He looked down his nose at me and declined to bow. He sat without being invited and as much as dared me to comment on it. He looked over my shoulder at Akretenesh and back at me with some satisfaction.

“Thank you for meeting with me, Baron.”

“Glad to,” he said gruffly. “No point in beating about the bush. Your uncle commanded people, made ’em hop. That’s what we want in a king, but you can’t do that yet, can you? A yearling needs to grow a little more before he carries any weight. A young hawk needs to be seasoned. You must give an olive tree years before it bears fruit.”

Muse of poetry, come to his aid, I thought. Could the man produce one more metaphor of husbandry? He seemed to be trying.

“Green wood,” I suggested, but even he sensed that there was something unfortunate about a metaphor for a king in which you dry out your royalty before you set fire to it.

“You see my point, Your Majesty.” He went on, poking his finger at me with every point he made, to explain that my harebrained scheme of surrendering to Attolia was the result of my unseasoned youth. Like my uncle, I hadn’t listened to wiser heads. He’d let his temper get the better of him. He’d been mercurial and unreliable. He’d been selfish and hadn’t had the best interests of Sounis at heart, and that was the real problem. That was why the barons had oh-so-reluctantly risen against him.

I sneaked glances at Akretenesh, trying to see how Hanaktos fitted into his plans, because I could not believe that Comeneus was a partner in his schemes.

A pawn, perhaps. Akretenesh’s bland expression of approval never altered, and I wished I had his diplomatic skills. It was all I could do to keep myself from grabbing Comeneus’s finger and biting it.

Finally I interrupted him to say that I was grateful for his instruction, and even if he were not to be my regent, I would certainly consider his advice in the future with the attention it deserved. Before he could say anything else, I added that he had served Sounis as he had thought best, and he would certainly be rewarded for it. He nodded vigorously, like a big ox. He appeared to expect a very substantial reward, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the Mede ambassador.

After I had listened to Comeneus tell me the mistakes of my uncle, I quit for the day and returned to my rooms. The servants stripped off my sweaty clothes and brought me a cup of iced wine. When the others were gone, I quizzed Nomenus for all he knew. Was there any more news from Tas-Elisa? Were Hanaktos’s men still on the road to the capital? Were they moving on Elisa? Nomenus said that he’d heard nothing of the kind.

The day of the meet I dressed in my most elaborate clothes, thinking of Gen. The coat he had had made for me with the ridiculous pockets and the embroidery on top of embroidery on the outside so that I could look like a king and act like one was as stiff as a board. I felt like a box with legs. The night before, I had finally opened the lower compartment of Attolia’s pistol case, dreading what I might discover. Whatever alternative Eugenides had urged me to find, I had not, and I had waited to look until it was too late to change course. When I saw what lay under Attolia’s gun, I put my head down on the table and cried.

Dressed in my best, I went to the meet. I couldn’t slouch without putting obvious dents in the lines of my elegant coat, so I kept my shoulders well back and bobbed my head at my court like a demented hen. The barons and their supporters had been gathering since dawn.

Each baron was entitled to bring two men, usually choosing an heir and one other. The amphitheater was full, from the prestigious seats in the first rows all the way up to the benches across the top, where people had to lean to see past the branches of the bushes that grew on the slopes behind them and hung down to block their view.

I climbed up onto the stage and waited patiently through the long protocol of the ceremony, sitting in one of a row of chairs with Akretenesh and members of my late uncle’s council. The chairs, significantly, were all the same size.

It was late in the morning, and I was soaked in sweat by the time Baron Xorcheus proposed a regency. I stood up and stepped to the front of the stage. Xorcheus hesitated, unsure of what I was doing, and that gave me time to walk down the stair to the open ground in front of my barons. By the time I reached the center, the murmuring had faded away.

I can’t really remember what I said. It was idealistic and it was naive. I reminded them that we shared one peninsula with Eddis and Attolia, that we shared a language, and that the gods of our fathers were the same. I said it was stupid to think that we could ever be anything but subjects to the Mede, that my barons needed to see beyond their own self-interests to the interests of all Sounis and to the interests of Eddis and Attolia as well. United, we would all benefit. I said exactly what I had wanted to say all along, because I knew that nothing I said was going to make any difference anyway.

Xorcheus called for the vote, and one by one my barons answered my idealism. They stood and called out “regency” or “king,” and I waited in the center of the amphitheater for their judgment. A regent for even a short time would cement Akretenesh’s power and make me no more than a puppet king for the rest of my reign. Once he had installed his own allies in every position in court, once he had complete control of the army, I would have lost forever.

There were a few “kings,” but one after another, the votes for a regent came in. I looked each baron in the eye, and they were defiant, contemptuous, regretful, and in rare cases ashamed of themselves, but they voted for Comeneus and the Mede. That was the meet. When all the deal making was done, you had to cast your vote aloud for everyone to hear.