We were taken to a small audience room, one near the great throne room. There were no windows, only candles in the iron chandeliers overhead and in the sconces on the walls to give us light. The room was full. Men and women lined the walls, leaving open only a narrow aisle that led to a throne on a raised stage. Costis stood frowning beside me.

My thoughts wandered—to the blue of the sky I had glimpsed and memories of the blue of the sea we had sailed across. I thought of the sandal-making slave in the city who had warned us of the Namreen, and the kind people on the desolate farm beside the salt pans who’d given us more for a song than they had for a coin. I hoped the slaves from the tin mine were safely arrived at the sanctuary and prayed that the other slaves of my master had been spared torture once I had fled like a guilty party. I thought of Laela and hoped she hadn’t suffered. I thought of Marin and hoped she was happy.

All around the courtiers chatted and whispered, having easy conversations about horse races and trade ships and quieter ones about the queen. They cast the occasional glance in my direction, but I knew they had not gathered there because of me. Whispers had traveled through the palace that the king would have an audience—and they had come to see him, hoping for news of their queen. How appalled they must be to think that their queen might die and they might be left with the Thief of Eddis as their sovereign.

Then the king entered the room.

I couldn’t see him at first, but I knew someone had arrived because every head turned in his direction and words died on every lip. It might have been someone else, some baron who was a power behind the throne, but no, the man who stepped out from among the attendants dropped onto one of the gold-leafed chairs on the dais with a clear sense of ownership. He was too far away for me to see him very well, but the strength of his personality was apparent—reflected in the undivided attention of every single person in the room. Great Anet, I thought, I have been deceived, and I looked over at Costis in amazement because it was he who had deceived me. This was not the weak and silly man he had described. This was not the king of the Attolians they talked about in the empire. This was a man who held his court in thrall as if he were the emperor himself.

“The queen lives and will be well,” said the king, and everyone breathed again. In unison, they dipped their heads and turned their palms up, grateful to receive the blessing of their gods, but not because they would have abandoned Eugenides if she had died. No. They feared the worst because they cared for her and perhaps, as I later learned, because the king’s health was also poor. The Attolians knew their precarious position and feared to lose either head of state. He was their sovereign as much as she. I could not doubt it.

Oh, my Costis, I thought, oh, my friend. I turned to him, panic filling my heart because he was as solid and unflappable as ever, and he was an idiot. Never in all his stories of the king had he shown me this man sitting on the dais—this man, who had seized a throne and in so short a time made it indisputably his own. I’d counted on the fact that Costis was the favorite of a weak and petty man—that the king who had forgiven him once would forgive him again and that any consequences of the king’s anger would fall on me alone. But powerful men like this had no patience for those who disappointed them. I looked at Costis and only in that moment recognized—to my horror—that the expression on his face was not anger but stubbornness. He meant to lie to his king. He would try to conceal my master’s death, sure that the king would free me and I could flee before the king learned he had been deceived.

“Great king,” I said, turning away from him, shouting toward the far end of the room, struggling to advance, but held by the arms of the guard.

All around me people inhaled sharply—it was as if the whole room had gasped. I’d merely used the archaic form of “great,” hoping to flatter him. “Great king,” I repeated even louder, “my master, Nahuseresh, is dead. I have—I have deceived your servant to secure my freedom.”

I heard Costis shout from behind me that it was his fault, not mine, and I could hear him struggling to come forward. The king waved one hand, and Costis was silent. The king waved again, and the men holding me back eased their grip. I stumbled as close as I dared and dropped to my knees, hastily assembling in my head a story to persuade the king of Attolians that I had left the empire for no other reason than a desire to serve him.

“Kamet.” He spoke with such familiarity, as if we were friends meeting at a wineshop, that I paused in my generation of my narrative and raised my head. I must have looked like a caggi checking for a hawk.

“I am reluctant,” said the king slowly, studying his boots as if they were a surprise there on the end of his legs, and wriggling one, as if checking its polish before starting again, “I am reluctant to incur the wrath of the gods by claiming that a man lives when they may take any of us at their pleasure, but I believe that Nahuseresh is in perfect health.”

I couldn’t imagine what he meant.

The king shifted on his throne. “It is my fault. Let neither of us blame Costis.” How amusing that both of us were absolving Costis, but it was nonsense. The king was speaking nonsense.

“Nahuseresh was not poisoned.”

Of course he was poisoned. Laela had told me so.

“My ambassador in the empire, Ornon, arranged for Laela to meet you in the passage and misdirect you. We didn’t tell Costis.”

Misdirect me? Lie. He meant “lie to me.”

I thought back to when Laela had stopped me before I reached my master’s apartments—had saved me from the inquisition. Hadn’t she? I shook my head in disbelief. There had been no one to support or contradict her story. We had been alone. But it was impossible. It was absolutely impossible. Why would Laela lie?

We don’t trust one another. We don’t do each other favors.

Everything she said had made sense to me—my master was desperate to recover his place at court, and he had been failing. The emperor was unhappy, Nahuseresh’s friends had turned away from him, and he was an embarrassment to his brother—so the emperor had gotten rid of him. It seemed perfectly clear, but I had taken it for truth, had believed Laela without question because I had believed in her. I had trusted her. I’d left the palace in a panic on the basis of nothing but her word. Oh, Laela, I thought. Did you lie to me?

She had.

She had lied. I could feel my heart breaking. When only she could have betrayed me, she had. Laela. Laela, I thought. Why?

“You would not have left Nahuseresh otherwise,” said the king.

I wouldn’t have. I was going to be a great man; I was going to direct an empire. Instead, played for a fool, I had run away from all my dreams, from my future, to this dark room lit by flickering candles and smelling of too many people in an airless place. Speechless, I curled around the terrible hollow feeling in my middle until my head knocked the floor.

“Kamet, she did it so that you could be free.”

I didn’t look up.

“As I knew she would.”

How could he have known such a thing? I knew Laela and could not fathom it.

“Because you told me so much about her.”

Never. I finally looked up. I had never spoken to the king.

“I know you don’t see well, but I thought you would remember my voice.”