“No,” said Berrone firmly.

I was puzzled. “No?”

“That’s what men say to girls they don’t want to marry, and I know because Sylvie told me—” She was getting upset again.

“Men will tell you that they’ll find Sylvie?” I asked quickly, and she was distracted.

“Noo,” she said slowly. “Sylvie said they’ll promise me pretty dresses.”

“Well, I won’t promise you pretty dresses. But I will get you Sylvie back. Tell me again, who said you were going to be queen?”

“My mother, she—” I stopped her before she repeated the entire scene again.

“That’s all I needed to know, Berrone. Thank you.”

I handed Berrone out the door at the same time that I waved to Hanaktos’s widow.

“A word, Lady Hanaktia.”

I summoned my victims to the largest room and had them wait for me. One by one, I called them away, but these weren’t the strained and circuitous interviews I’d sat through before. As each baron entered the room, he saw Basrus sitting to one side of me and Hanaktia on the other, as terrifying as any sphinx from a fireside story. By the time I received word that Akretenesh wanted to see me, I was well on my way to knowing what to do with my barons, and they were well on their way toward full cooperation.

All in all, it was not a profitable discussion with the Mede ambassador. He refused to tell me anything that I didn’t already know about his plans. I suggested that he might like to be sent down to the port by litter to see his own doctors, because I wanted him out of the way. He declined. He told me he would prefer to wait until his army came to him.

“It might not,” I said.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” he answered.

“In the morning we will run for Oneia,” I said to my private council, hastily selected.

They had wanted me—my father most strenuously—to take what horse we had and to try to cross through Hanaktos’s army on the capital road. If they could get me safely away, either by convincing Hanaktos’s cousin, who commanded the men, to let me pass, or by fighting our way through, I could ride for the city of Sounis to try to hold it against the Medes. Unfortunately, I would leave most of my barons behind to change sides yet again. Those who didn’t change sides would bear the brunt of the Medes’ revenge, as would the Attolians and the Eddisians I would be abandoning. I refused.

I waited for someone to say the obvious. We didn’t have enough men to stand against ten thousand Medes. We’d be cut to pieces when we reached the dead end that was Oneia. No one said a word.

“The magus, with his remaining men, will slow the Medes. They won’t reach Elisa until noontime, and we will have time to arrange the men on the Oneia Road. Then, when we reach Oneia and turn to fight on the open ground, most of the Medes will still be stuck on the roadway. If we fight well, they will still be there when our armies make it across the hills behind Elisa and come down on them from the rear.”

It was a plan that might see most of them dead by nightfall of the next day, and they nodded agreeably and went to inform their men. They didn’t ask, and I couldn’t say, why I thought we should make our stand at Oneia. I had made my decision, and they had made theirs.

It was well into the night before I was finished with plans and staggered up to my rooms to find Nomenus waiting for me.

He was sitting on a stool not far from the fireplace. His hands were clasped together on one knee, and he was miles away in his thoughts, not even realizing at first that I had arrived. When he saw me in the doorway, he stood. He looked me in the face briefly before lowering his eyes.

“Your Majesty,” he said softly.

“I thought you would be long gone,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Nowhere to go?” I asked. “There are ten thousand Mede soldiers in Tas-Elisa to welcome you.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“Brimedius won’t take you in?”

“I am not his man,” Nomenus replied. I knew whose man he was.

“I killed Hanaktos,” I said.

“Yes.”

I walked closer to him. He was less calm than he appeared. “You’re shaking.”

He shrugged again, the barest shift of a shoulder. “I would kill me if I were you,” he said.

I didn’t know what else to do with him. I certainly wasn’t going to let him walk away free and clear after he’d served me with lies and deceit.

“Your Majesty, they have cells here,” he said, “in the outbuildings. I might yet serve you if you didn’t—if I wasn’t—” Finally he said flatly, “Things might not go as you hope.”

“If Akretenesh wins?” I had to laugh. “If I am installed as his puppet, you are saying that I could call you back to lie to me?” I made no effort to hide my amazement.

“I could serve you. As well as—”

“As well as they’d let you?”

He gave up a shaky sigh and dropped to his knees. He bowed his head, and then he just waited.

I’d had an entire day of whining, self-serving patronoi denying their every transgression and vomiting up excuse after excuse. This was a man who at least didn’t try to pretend to stainless virtue. It was probably calculated, and if so, it was well done. He knew me better, after all, than the barons did and knew what was most likely to sway me. I found I had no desire to see him die.

I called in the guards from beside my door and sent him off with them to be locked up somewhere.

“See that he’s fed,” I called after them, “and taken out occasionally for air.” At my words Nomenus struggled briefly in their arms. As he looked back at me over his shoulder, I saw the fear in his face. He didn’t say anything, though, just stared at me as they led him away.

If Akretenesh did defeat me, and if he didn’t kill me outright, I would have Ion Nomenus to attend me in my puppet show. At least I’d know he was a liar; I wouldn’t have to wonder.

In the dark hours of the morning, I exercised the privilege of a king: I slept. I never even heard the noise as the Eddisians and the Attolians I had asked the magus to send me arrived. I had more than five hundred men among the barons and their retinues. I’d been correct about the weapons that had been concealed. Every baron and his men were armed, but they weren’t an army, and altogether we were fewer than two thousand against ten.

When the sky was growing light, my father knocked on my door. I washed my face and dressed, missing Nomenus already, and then went down the stairs to find something to eat before the day began.

By the time the sun was up, we were far down the narrow road to Oneia. The first spot I had in mind to stand and fight was more than two-thirds of the way to the sea. The road followed a watercourse, and the hills for most of the way were too steep to climb without care and attention, but the narrow valley began to open out as it neared the coast. The hillsides beside the road were both less high and less steep. I knew, as I hoped that the Medes did not, that just behind the rise of those hills there was a level spot. Then, out of sight from the road below, the hillside rose much higher. I put my Attolians just behind the top of the lower hill and sent my barons and the Eddisians to find cover on the upper slope.