When the vote came around to my father, I held my breath. He stood and looked down at me for so long, I thought the sun had stopped in the sky. When he said “king,” he said it so firmly that the people nearby him winced. I swallowed a lump in my throat and looked to the next man.

I watched Baron Comeneus as the voting drew near him. The barons voted in the same order of precedence in which they had come to meet with me. By the time Comeneus voted it was already clear what the outcome would be, and he called “regent” with radiating self-importance. He never looked anywhere except at me, but at his right hand sat his heir, a much-younger brother. He never looked at me at all.

When the vote was over, the amphitheater was silent. I heard Akretenesh speak just behind me. He must have come down the steps without my realizing it.

“Did you think they would make you king?” he said, contemptuously. His voice was quiet, but he’d forgotten, or perhaps never knew about, the acoustics. His every word was audible even to the men in the highest seats and I watched them, as a single organism, recoil.

“No,” I said, turning. “Not on the first vote.”

I put my left hand into the open front of my coat to the pockets sewn inside. Narrow and three times as deep as they were wide, they were almost useless; anything you put into them would slip to the bottom and be out of reach, anything except the long-barreled handgun that Attolia had given me. It fit perfectly. I lifted it out of the pocket, directed it almost without looking, fixed my eyes on Akretenesh, and shot Hanaktos dead.

If Akretenesh’s voice had been audible to the back row, the report of the gun was deafening.

In the shocked, silent aftermath, I said, “We’ll give them a second chance.”

With my right hand, I reached to the other pocket. I had known as soon as I lifted the false bottom in the gun case and looked underneath what it meant. I had tried without ceasing to find some alternative to Attolia’s ruthless advice, and I had failed. Gen’s gift reassured me that I had not failed for lack of trying. He had seen no other solution himself.

I lifted out the matching gun and read its archaic inscription. Realisa onum. Not “The queen made me,” but “I make the king.”

Looking at Akretenesh’s startled face down the long barrel of the handgun, I smiled until I felt the scar tissue tighten. That one expression, I’d never showed him. My face gave away my humiliation, my rage, my surprise, and my embarrassment, but I had never let him see what I looked like when I smiled: my uncle.

His diplomatic mask dissolved, and he backed away.

In Attolia, I had been in front of a mirror at last, and I had understood what made Oreus back in Hanaktos ask me if my expression was a happy one or not. The smile rumpled the scar tissue under my skin, and dragged my face askew, giving me the leer of a man who’d never had a moment of self-doubt, who’d never regretted a life lost. I’d worried that I wouldn’t have the nerve to carry this off, but in the moment, it was easy. Seeing Akretenesh recoil, I laughed out loud.

I’d fired on Hanaktos with my left hand. I had known exactly where he was, and I’d had all morning to prepare my shot. My aim was more reliable with my right, and Akretenesh was much closer than Hanaktos had been.

I had wanted to find a better way than shooting an unarmed man. I had wanted my barons to choose me as king because they believed in me and because they believed in my ideals as I did. But that wasn’t the choice I had before me, and I had already decided that I would make them follow me any way I could. I would not stand by and let them be lost to the Mede or to Melenze or to an endless civil war where they would never be free of bloodshed until the whole country was stripped to the bare bones. If I couldn’t be Eddis, I would be Attolia. If they needed to see my uncle in me, then I would show him to them. And I would take Attolia’s advice, because if I identified my enemy and destroyed him, Sounis would be safe.

My enemy wasn’t Comeneus, though I was fairly certain he didn’t know it. His brother did. As one baron after another had voted for a regent, Comeneus had watched me, but his brother had looked to Hanaktos, and Hanaktos had looked to the Mede.

Staring at me over the barrel of my gun, Akretenesh said, “Did you not just days ago lecture me about the sacred truce?”

With my finger still through the trigger guard of the spent pistol, I lifted my left palm upward to the sky to see if lightning struck me down.

When none did, I smiled again. “We will have to assume that the gods are on my side.”

“I am an ambassador,” Akretenesh warned me, anger bringing his confidence back. “You cannot shoot.”

“I don’t mean to,” I reassured him, still smiling. I adopted his soothing tones. “Indeed, you are the only man I won’t shoot. But if I aimed at anyone else, it might give others a dangerously mistaken sense of their own safety.” I raised my voice a trifle, though it wasn’t really necessary. “We will have another vote, Xorcheus.”

They elected me Sounis. It was unanimous.

When the voting was done, I told Akretenesh to collect his men and get out of my country. “You can get back on a boat at Tas-Elisa,” I said.

He smiled his superior smile, his composure much restored during the slow process of casting votes. “How will you make me?”

“I don’t have to,” I said. “Your emperor isn’t prepared for war with the Continent, or he would be attacking already. You are trying to sneak a foothold here in Sounis to steal my country by sleight of hand. The Continental Powers dither, but they won’t stand for an unprovoked assault, and your emperor is not yet ready for one. The Continent would come to my aid before he was ready for war and spoil all his plans.”

“You think so? You bank on that?” Akretenesh asked. He’d been backing away and almost reached the double doors that led under the stage.

“I do.”

“Well,” said the ambassador, “we will see, then, won’t we?” He threw open the doors, revealing soldiers armed with crossbows.

He turned back to me, shouting, “Ki—”

I shot him, too.

Had he been aware, Akretenesh would have been disappointed to see his assassins spitted with quarrels fired from behind me, before they themselves could get off a single shot. It seemed there was no end of people breaking sacred truces at Elisa that day.

I whirled around, but the arbalests must have been hidden in the bushes on the slopes above the amphitheater. I saw no one.

Someone shouted from the terraced seats, “Long live the Lion of Sounis,” and the amphitheater roared with approval. There was a great deal of backslapping and shouting, as if it were just what my barons had planned on all along.

I wasn’t cheering. I was considering the ambassador. Dead ambassadors are a very bad business, and I approached his body with some trepidation.

Thank the gods, though I do aim better with my right than my left, the new gun threw to one side. I’d never practiced with it, and I’d only winged Akretenesh. His eyes were already open. I leaned down to look at him closely. I didn’t think I’d even hit the bone in his upper arm, but there was no way to be sure. There was a crowd forming around me, my father and his men and other barons drawing close.

“The magus?” I asked urgently.