It was the next day that my mother sought a word in private, looking for me in the small chamber attached to the palace library where Gen used to have his bedroom. Pausing at the threshold, she framed a question. “I thought you would be in a hurry to be on your way to Attolia?”

“I am in a hurry,” I said. “But that’s no reason you should be made uncomfortable. It will be much more pleasant for you if we go back to the main pass and await the soldiers returning to Attolia and then travel with them.”

“It will be slower, though, won’t it?” she asked, as she settled lightly on the arm of a chair opposite me.

I looked studiously at the book in my hand.

My mother waited.

I finally gave up and closed the book. “I broke the truce at Elisa and I shot an unarmed man. I shot the ambassador. I cost the lives of her soldiers and Attolia’s as well as my own, and my hands are covered in blood. What if Eddis thinks there was a better way? What if she is glad she has not already agreed to marry me, and what if she wants nothing to do with me now?”

My mother said very reasonably, “You can’t hide from someone in her own palace. If you don’t go to Attolia, she will come here.”

I hunched my shoulders and went back to looking at my book.

My mother stood, saying peacefully, “I will tell your father that you will go tomorrow by way of the Old Aracthus Road. The rest of us will travel with your borrowed military.”

She looked back before she pulled the door closed. “Your questions—you know I am not the one to answer them.”

She was as right as ever, and so I have come to the queen of Eddis, to ask her for answers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SOUNIS folded his hands and waited. He had arrived at the palace late the night before and had risen early in the morning, expecting to find no one but the two honorary royal guardsmen and his own personal guard in his anteroom. Instead he found Ion, the attendant of the king of Attolia, waiting by a bench against the wall.

“You’re still here, then?” asked Sounis, in surprise and pleasure.

“Yes, Your Majesty. My king thought that you might wish to dress with particular care this morning. There will be an official reception in a few hours.” Ion was smiling. They both knew that Attolis hadn’t been referring just to the ceremony planned for the day.

Sounis looked down at the clothes he’d put on. He hadn’t given them a thought, but Eugenides was probably right. He opened the door wider and turned back toward his bedchamber.

Ion had brought scissors, and after he shaved him, he trimmed Sounis’s hair and added a light coating of oil. He opened a small jar and took a pinch of gold powder and shook it to cling to the oil.

“Ion,” said Sounis, dismayed.

“It’s for luck,” said Ion. He packed his case and went to Sounis’s wardrobe.

“My clothes are still in cases in my reception room, except for what I am wearing.”

But Ion was already pulling a suit from tissue paper. “His Majesty—”

“I hazard to guess,” said Sounis. “The tailors still had my measurements?”

“Indeed,” said Ion, and helped him out of his clothes and into a linen shirt so fine that it was easy to see the shape of his arms right through it. It was covered by a sleeveless tunic in dark blue.

“Boots, too?” said Sounis.

“He likes to think of everything.”

“Yes, yes, he does.”

“An opal earring, Your Majesty? Or would you prefer onyx?”

When Sounis was finally presentable to Attolian standards, Ion opened the door to the reception room and bowed. Xanthe, the oldest of Eddis’s attendants, was standing just outside. She turned away and said to someone not in view, “Your Majesty, the king of Sounis.”

Eddis was waiting for him on a carved seat by the window. She stood. Her dress was of linen as fine as his own. It had an overdress decorated in knotted cord and a waist of satin covered in tiny beads in the same pattern as the knots.

Sounis swallowed. “I did not realize,” he said. “I would have come to your rooms to speak to you.”

Eddis smiled. “I intrude?”

“No,” said Sounis, trying to breathe. “Of course not.”

Ion had excused himself to the anteroom, but the door was open, and Xanthe as well as the queen’s other attendants came in and left from time to time. Eddis’s attention never wavered. When Sounis finished, she said, “Your mother was right, I think.”

“She usually is,” said Sounis.

“Did you think I would change my mind?”

“I failed to persuade my barons, and I fell back on violence and murder.”

“You made your choice,” said Eddis.

“I did. I hope you understand why I cannot back away from it.”

“Even if I condemn you for it, as you condemned Nomenus?”

“Even then,” said Sounis.

“Sophos,” said Eddis sadly, “I sent my Thief to Attolia, and when she had maimed him, and knowing the risk, I sent him back. I have started a war of my own, sent my cousins to die, taken food from the mouths of widows and children to feed my army.” She took his hand. “We are not philosophers; we are sovereigns. The rules that govern our behavior are not the rules for other men, and our honor, I think, is a different thing entirely, difficult for anyone but the historians and the gods to judge. There is no reason I can see that I would not be honored to join Eddis to you. But it is complicated by many things that I must tell you about first.”

“Of course,” said Sounis, his grin too boyish to be reminiscent of his uncle. “More talking!”

“Yes, and some of it important. I would ask—”

But Sounis was too pleased to register any nuance. He only knew that he was happy. He interrupted her. “I thought, when I first met you, that you would marry Gen.”

“I would sooner have strangled him,” said Eddis.

“I didn’t see that,” said Sounis. “I still don’t, honestly. He has saved Attolia.”

“Gen and I are too close to marry. If he has saved Attolia, then she has saved him as well, and I’ve told her as much. But—”

“Your Majesties.” Ion bowed in the doorway. “Please forgive me. The king and queen of Attolia ask that you join them.”

Eddis sighed and let the matter go, thinking there would be time enough to reveal her plans to Sounis after he had sworn his loyalty to the king of Attolia. She and Sounis rose and walked to the anteroom, where they were greeted by the beaming attendants and Sounis’s magus, who stood with a broad smile splitting his face. Eddis felt the blood rising in her own face as the magus bowed.

“Our felicitations, Your Majesties,” he said.

“We thank you,” Eddis said to the magus, and kissed him on both cheeks.

“We certainly do,” said Sounis, and kissed him as well, before being kissed in turn by Xanthe. Then, in response to Ion’s polite prodding, the room was emptied out into the passageway.

Eddis and Sounis parted on the way to Attolia’s throne room. Eddis was to enter by the main doors and wait with the rest of the court. The magus and Sounis continued on to a retiring room where the king and queen of Attolia waited.