Eschewing ceremony, Eugenides said, “You shot the ambassador?”

“You gave me the gun,” protested Sounis.

“I didn’t mean for you to shoot an ambassador with it!” Eugenides told him.

“Oh, how our carefully laid plans go astray,” murmured the magus.

“You shut up!” said Gen, laughing.

The doors to the throne room opened, and there was no time to say more. Those awaiting the sovereigns observed their smiles and smiled in turn.

Attolia took no part in the ceremony, not even ascending her throne, but standing instead to one side of the dais while the complicated oath was read out by the high priestess of Hephestia.

Sounis swore his personal loyalty and his obedience to Attolis. He swore his state to Attolis’s service in the event of war, external or internal. He pledged his men to Attolis’s armies and his treasury to Attolis’s support. He swore on behalf of himself and his heirs loyalty to any heir of Attolis, binding the two nations together permanently. Attolis, in his turn, promised to protect and defend Sounis and his state, to preserve Sounis’s autonomy in all matters internal to the state, to make no interference in Sounis’s authority except as it affected the needs of Attolia.

Sounis bowed over the king of Attolia’s hands, kissed the backs of them both, and held the real one to his forehead. Attolis pulled him close to kiss him on the brow, and the court clapped in congratulations.

Stepping back, Sounis said, “Congratulate me, My King. I am to be married.”

Eugenides smiled. Attolia looked sharply at Eddis, who shook her head. The room quieted.

“She is your subject?” asked Eugenides.

“Indeed not,” said Sounis, insensible to the significance of the question.

“Well, then,” said Attolia, drawing his attention as she stepped onto the dais. She seated herself and laid her hand over Eugenides’s, forestalling him. “It would not be a matter wholly internal to Sounis. You would have to bring it to your king for approval.”

His expression changing, Eugenides looked from his wife to Eddis, and then back to Sounis, who stood confused and uncertain before him.

His easy manner yielded. “Indeed,” said Eugenides quietly, “I would not see your loyalty divided between myself and your wife. There is an easy answer, though, if she is also sworn to me.”

“No,” said Sounis, swallowing misery whole. “She is not.”

“Then perhaps you should broach the subject with her before we speak again.”

“Indeed,” Sounis managed to say in the bleak silence.

He bowed, and the ceremony was wrapped like a package and hastily sealed by the priestess of Hephestia. The sovereigns retired without meeting one another’s eyes, and the rooms were cleared. The court withdrew to change out of its sumptuary and into less precious clothes. With the magus’s hand under his arm, Sounis stumbled back to his own apartments to find the queen of Eddis and her attendants waiting there.

Eddis was in the reception room. She sent her attendants back to the anteroom. The magus excused himself, pulling the door closed behind him, and Eddis and Sounis were alone.

Sounis approached her where she sat on a low seat and took her hand before he dropped to one knee to offer his apologies. “I misspoke. I am sorry. I swear I did not know that he meant to do this, or I would not have engaged you in a promise to be immediately broken.”

“It need not be broken,” said Eddis. He held himself as if he were in pain, and she cursed herself for hurting him, but she had not considered that the ceremony would slip from its careful scripting.

Sounis shook his head as if trying to clear it. “I cannot argue with his interpretation of my oath, though I would not have sworn it had I seen this outcome. You think he will change his mind?”

Eddis shook her head then and said gently, “No. I mean something else, Sophos. I was not unaware of Gen’s requirement when I accepted your proposal.”

He stared at her for a moment before jumping to his feet. “No!” he said, staring down at her. “You cannot yield your sovereignty of Eddis to marry me. You cannot believe that I would allow that?”

“Sophos . . .”

“It would be monstrous!”

“You do not understand,” she warned him.

“I understand enough!” he answered. “I understand that he will make himself a great king over Sounis, Attolia, and Eddis. I understand that I cannot allow it. How can you not see that?”

Eddis stood very slowly and took a deep breath. “I do see,” she said. As he watched helplessly, she pulled her skirt free from where it had caught on the upholstery, and she crossed to the door. She tapped its latch and someone on the far side opened it. It closed behind her without a sound.

Sounis stood at the window, looking across the city toward the port, and as he watched the shadows of clouds move across the water in the distance, he felt a chill on the back of his neck. It was self-doubt, the black beetle that had pursued him all his life, pinching at him, poisoning his every success, whispering in his ear about his flaws and his failures and his unworthiness. He hadn’t felt it in months, but the pinprick of its claws was instantly familiar. They informed him with their tiny tattoo that he had almost certainly done something immensely, irrevocably, and unforgivably stupid.

He turned away from the view and lunged across the room to throw open the door to the anteroom.

“The queen of Eddis,” he said as he headed for the outer door of the apartment, past the startled magus. “Which way, which way back to her rooms?”

The royal guard stared at him.

“Which way?” Sounis shouted.

The guard pointed. Sounis rushed through the outer door of the apartment and disappeared down the hall.

The Attolian palace, like any building hundreds of years old, put rabbit warrens to shame with its corridors and intersections. At the first of these, Sounis stopped and listened. He heard footsteps and headed indecently fast in the direction that they came from, praying he wouldn’t run, unreflecting, into the Mede ambassador to Attolia and his retinue. At each corner he had to stop and listen again, but he was gaining quickly. He almost lost them when he passed a stairwell but then remembered that once earlier he had climbed stairs between his apartment and Eddis’s. At the top of the stairs, he saw, down a hallway, female figures rounding a corner and hurried after them.

With his quarry almost in sight, he might have slowed and composed himself, but he didn’t spare it a thought. He rounded the corner and nearly spitted himself on the business end of an Eddisian pike. Throwing up his arms, he stopped on the tips of his toes with the point of the weapon an inch or two from his chest. He thought of the breastplate that he’d been made to wear for weeks. He lowered himself very slowly and kept his hands out from his sides. Behind him he could hear his own guard stamping up the corridor to catch up to him.

The queen of Eddis was surrounded by her attendants, all of them armed, which was enough to take anyone aback, never mind her Eddisian guards arrayed in front and behind, watching for attack from either direction.

Eddis said quietly, “No need for alarm,” and the weapons disappeared like morning fog. Eddis turned and moved off, followed by her attendants and her guard, leaving Sounis behind. Gingerly, he followed, stepping between two of her guards and catching up. Eddis’s attendants grudgingly made room so that he could walk beside her. He tipped his head forward, to watch her profile.