She twitched her lip at me to remind me that she felt she had a responsibility to be opulent if she couldn’t be beautiful. I frowned because my good advice had obviously been forgotten while I’d been away.

The magus offered an apology for wandering away in the middle of their conversation, but she waved it aside, then sat on the bed beside me and squeezed my hand.

“I think you need more rest,” she said.

“First I need to know what the emissaries from Sounis said.”

“Eugenides, you’re tired.”

“I’ll get up,” I threatened, “and find someone else to tell me.”

She gave in. I’d known she would. She wouldn’t have come in and sat down otherwise.

“The first was just a stiff note to say that Sounis had removed his men from the forest on the southern slopes of Mount Irkes.”

“He tried to sneak an army through the fir forest?”

“Yes.”

“Aagh.” I rolled my head back in contempt. “The idiot. See what he does when his magus isn’t there to stop him? Did you set fire to the trees?”

The queen shook her head. “No, it wasn’t necessary. I sent a note with your cousin Crodes telling him to get his men out by sunset or we’d burn the forest to the ground.”

The magus’s face paled at the thought of his country’s entire army burnt to ash.

“The second emissary was more polite,” the queen continued, settling back against my cushions. “The king of Sounis requested any information we had on the whereabouts and well-being of his magus and his heir.”

“The magus’s heir?” I asked.

“The king’s heir.”

I looked at Sophos. “Your father the duke is also the king’s brother?”

“You didn’t know?” he said.

“I did not.”

The queen laughed. “With one move,” she said, “you have secured my throne and brought me the heir of my enemy. The court is greatly impressed.” It would be the first time for most of them, I thought. “I believe,” she said, “I will extract a few concessions from Sounis before I send his nephew home.”

She smiled at Sophos, and he blushed as he smiled back. She had that effect on most people, not just Sophos. A smile from her made anyone’s blood warmer. There was good reason for the magus to want her as queen of his own country.

“But now it is time to go,” the queen said, lifting herself off my cushions. She bent down to kiss my forehead as she freed her hand from mine, and I noticed Hamiathes’s Gift swinging from the gold torque around her neck. As she stood, it settled back against her skin, just below her collarbones.

Two days later, long before I was ready to participate, there was an official ceremony to make my cousin Queen by Possession of Hamiathes’s Gift. Evidently just handing her the stone didn’t satisfy a lot of stuffy conventions. My father’s dresser came and helped me struggle into fancy clothes. I wandered through the ceremony in a haze and managed a perfunctory appearance at the banquet afterward. My cousins made their usual thinly veiled insults. My aunts looked down their noses at me, and my uncles casually insulted me by remarking how surprisingly like my father I was turning out to be, as opposed to my mother’s rather ne’er-do-well side of the family.

I couldn’t seem to stir up any of my usual cutting comments in response. I was discreet, I suppose. Really, I didn’t care, and I see now that it amounts to the same thing. I went to bed.

My fever climbed in the night, and my constant companions were the doctor and his assistants for the next week or so.

I remember the queen coming to me one night to offer me Hamiathes’s Gift, but I told her I preferred to die. I’d had enough of Hamiathes’s Gift and its rumored powers to confer immortality. There is something horrible and frightening and, I’d discovered, very, very painful about being trapped in this life when it is time to move on. She nodded wordlessly to me, as if she already understood. It may have been a dream.

When I finally felt better, I remained confined to my bed by the queen’s physician. I had attended the ceremony against his vehement opposition, and he was feeling vindicated and authoritarian. He warned me that if I set a foot on the floor, he’d cut it off. I said that I thought the followers of Asklepios took an oath to do harm to no one. He said he’d make an exception for me.

Finally, negotiations had been settled between Sounis and Eddis, a new treaty had been drawn up, some compensation had been paid to the treasury of Eddis, and the magus and the king’s heir were going home. They worked their way past the physician in order to say good-bye.

I sat myself up in bed as they came in.

“Magus”—I greeted him with a nod. “Your Highness”—I nodded to Sophos as well. He blushed.

“Was it because your mother was the Queen’s Thief that you were called Eugenides?”

“Partly. It’s closer to the truth to say that Eugenides is a family name and I was named after my grandfather. But my mother, you know, was never the Queen’s Thief. She died before my grandfather did, and I inherited the title directly from him.”

“But people called your mother Queen’s Thief,” said Sophos, puzzled. “At least, I’ve heard them say that.”

I smiled. “She was a favorite at the court and was called Queen Thief, but not Queen’s Thief. They said she stole people’s hearts away. She certainly stole their jewels and wore them herself or sometimes dedicated them. She liked to take the things that people were most proud of. So if you flaunted your new emeralds, you were likely to see them next on Eugenides’s altar, and once dedicated they were irretrievable. People were careful not to offend her.” They’d learned not to offend me either.

Sophos started to say, “Your mother, did she—” and then stopped when he realized what he was asking.

“Fall out of a window when I was ten? Yes, but not out of the Baron Eructhes’s villa. She’d been dancing on the roof of the palace and slipped coming back in.”

Sophos was quiet for a moment, looking for a safer subject. At last he blurted out, “When do you think you will get married?”

“I suppose it depends on when I find someone to marry,” I said, puzzled.

“Well, you know.” He floundered again.

I looked at him, perplexed. He was blushing. I looked at the magus to see if he knew what Sophos was hinting at, but he didn’t. I finally had to ask, “Sophos, what do you mean?”

“Won’t you marry the queen? Aren’t you a favorite of hers, and isn’t she queen because of you?”

“She’s fond of me, Sophos, but that’s because most of the rest of her cousins are morons. I’m very fond of her for the same reason, but I don’t think I can make her queen and then insist she marry me as a return favor. The sovereign is not supposed to marry the thief. The possibility doesn’t often arise and”—I hesitated as I watched the magus—“there are always political advantages to be considered when a sovereign marries.” Eddis might still form an alliance with Sounis, although our queen would marry their king over my dead body.