I waited.

“Perhaps because you are less an honored guest and more . . . stolen property. I can restore you safely to your place, Kamet. You have been lost and are now found.” He indicated his burly servants, and he held out his hand to me, offering me back the very future I’d just been grieving over. All I had to do was take his hand and I would belong to the Medes again, protected by all the diplomatic agreements made with the ambassadors of foreign heads of state. Here was the control of my destiny that I had been denied.

The attendants beside me stiffened, and the two palace guards who had been following at a polite distance surged forward, but they were powerless to stop me. I’ll never know if Eugenides would have honored the diplomatic agreements because I didn’t take the ambassador’s hand. I just stood there, still halfway between stairs.

“No?” the ambassador asked.

“No,” I said, and he withdrew his hand.

“Freedom tastes sweeter than you thought.”

I nodded.

“May it always taste so sweet.” The ambassador bowed. “Nahuseresh will miss you, I am sure.”

My heart skipped a beat. I’d been so stunned by the king’s revelation, and by the ambassador’s offer, that this most salient detail had been neglected. Nahuseresh was still alive. Laela was alive. As betrayed as I had felt only moments before, a rush of relief flooded my body—she and the houseboys, the cook and the valet, they were all alive—and almost immediately after the relief, familiar fear. Did my master know that Laela had betrayed him? How long until he learned I was in Attolia?

“His Majesty’s interest is unaccountable,” the ambassador was saying.

It was. A weaker, more foolish king might have stolen me away from my master for spite, but not the man I’d just seen on the throne. A less ruthless man might have done it out of kindness, but Eugenides had dismissed that justification.

“The king does enjoy his little jokes,” I said. There was a subtext to this conversation that I was missing. Whatever it was, I felt very strongly that I didn’t want to talk to the Mede ambassador anymore. I nodded and twitched another moment or so, trying to think of a good reason to excuse myself before I remembered that I didn’t need one. I was a free man. So I bowed again, said, “Good day,” and continued past him up the stairs.

I wondered what it was that Melheret knew, that the king knew, that perhaps all the attendants and guards around me knew, that I did not. I wondered if I would ever find out. I was nobody’s secretary with my ear to the ground. I had no connection to these people. No expectation that they might pass along rumors or information. Melheret was correct about one thing. I certainly wasn’t an honored guest. I didn’t know what I was.

The king’s attendants led me to a set of rooms I recognized immediately. I had lived in them with my master when he was ambassador in Attolia. Indeed, the king did like his little jokes. One of the attendants, Lamion, I think, explained that there would be guards at my door, but only to be sure I was undisturbed. I was free to come and go as I liked. He pointed out the amenities of the rooms, with which I was already familiar, and directed me to the guests’ bathing room with heated water for the bath. I nodded. I knew where the bathroom was, though I’d never used it, just carried my master’s cosmetics to and fro. The dreamlike feeling of the day was only growing more intense. I realized, with just enough time to politely send the attendants out the door, that I was going to burst into tears. As soon as I was alone, I did. I sat there on a velvet-cushioned stool and sobbed like a child. I was a free man—with the favor of the king of Attolia as well as the undying enmity of my former master, and I had lost my only friend.

When I was done, I wanted a bath but was too exhausted to manage it. I crawled onto my master’s bed, wrapped myself in the linen, and fell asleep.

I woke groggy. Recognizing the bed I lay in, I panicked, wondering what could have possessed me to commit such a transgression, before I came fully awake and found the king of Attolia sitting on the footboard. Another figure nearby held a lamp. It was deep twilight, and I had slept through the day.

The man with the lamp used the taper on the nightstand to light the larger lamp on the desk and then went from sconce to sconce until the room was filled with light. He set his lamp down on a side table and came to stand near the bed. He wasn’t an Attolian. He had the clothing as well as the fair hair and skin of men from the north.

“It wasn’t spite or friendship,” I said, glancing sideways at the king.

“It wasn’t just spite or friendship,” he said. “Though I hope you will believe that both played their part. This is Yorn Fordad, ambassador of the Braels, come to have a chat with the two of us.” The Braeling bowed silently to me.

The king said, “The emperor is preparing an army to attack our Little Peninsula.”

I nodded. Everyone knew that.

“Everyone knows that?” prompted the king, as if, like Costis, he could read my thoughts.

I nodded again. “Yes.”

The king looked significantly at the ambassador and then back to me. “Everyone knows except the Braelings and the rest of the Greater Powers of the Continent. Their official position is that the emperor is only rattling his sword and when he’s rattled himself to death, his heir will have so much to occupy him that he will have no interest at all in our three little states.”

This sounded unlikely to me. It was possible that the emperor would squander his resources on an army he didn’t mean to use, but he would have to have some exceptionally good reason to do so, and I couldn’t imagine what it might be.

“Our allies fear to provoke the emperor by arming Attolia. They make excuses, hoping the threat will melt away. They are busy with their own problems and won’t deal with ours until the Mede is on their doorstep. By then, it will be too late for little Attolia, little Eddis, and little Sounis.” The king pinched his finger and thumb together, under no illusions as to their significance in the conflict between the Continent and the Medes. Little countries get eaten up by bigger countries. Or crushed between them.

“However”—the king went on, clapping his hand against his leg—“my queen believes the emperor cannot bring his army against us without ships—many ships. She thinks he preserves the illusion of sword-rattling while he masses his navy—moving in secret to avoid open confrontation and hoping to take the Continent by surprise. If the allied navy came face-to-face with those ships, no one could ignore the threat they represent. We need the allies to see that fleet, Kamet.” The king leaned toward me, searching my face. He asked, “Where are the emperor’s ships?”

This was why I had been brought from the empire, and this was why the Namreen had hunted us so relentlessly. Not because Nahuseresh had been murdered, but because the emperor feared I could tell the king of Attolia where he was hiding his navy. Melheret had made one last effort to retrieve me, to ensure my silence, but he needn’t have bothered. I didn’t know.

The emperor’s fleet was in no correspondence that Nahuseresh had dictated or received. He’d been in disgrace, I wanted to remind the king. We had spent months at his family estate with his razor-tongued wife before he had been allowed back to the capital, and then all of his efforts had been directed at living down his humiliation. That was why I had been taken in by Laela’s story—because Nahuseresh was obsessed with the emperor’s good opinion, and I assumed he had lost it permanently—fatally. If there was one thing I was certain of, it was that Nahuseresh had had no part in the emperor’s plans.