As he passed from the pronaos into the naos, his footsteps were quiet from habit. The altar was deserted. The incense burned in braziers unattended by a priest, and there was no sign of supplicants, or of a recent sacrifice. The great gilded statue of Hephestia looked down on no one but Eugenides. He walked to the alcove just before the great altar, where there was a smaller altar dedicated to Eugenides, God of Thieves. A curtain provided privacy to supplicants. Eugenides pulled it closed and sat on one of the marble benches that ran along either side of the alcove. He lifted his feet up onto the bench, out of sight of any casual glance under the curtain, and wrapped his arms around his knees.

He’d left his room without his sling. He wondered if anyone had had time to stare when he was hurrying past. He tilted his head back against the marble walls behind him and closed his eyes. He didn’t look at the altar, decorated with an assortment of objects stolen by his ancestors and himself. He hadn’t come to pray. He’d come to hide.

The stars were out when Eugenides picked his way carefully down the road from the temple. He shivered as he slipped through the doorway into the courtyard and nodded to a guard as he entered the palace. The hallways were empty, and he passed no one else on the way back to his rooms.

The library doors were open, and the light from the fireplace inside flickered in the dark hall. He paused at the doorway to look in and saw his father and the queen sitting in silence in his armchairs, waiting for him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

They both stood. Eugenides looked at his father. “I was in the temple,” he said.

“We knew that,” the queen replied. “You could hardly be dragged home from there without risking a rain of thunderbolts, and now that you’ve been safe from being disturbed all day, you’re blue with cold. Sit at the fire.”

Eugenides didn’t sit by the fire; he lay down on the hearth in front of it, close enough to be burned by stray sparks, and pillowed his head on his arms, shuddering from the cold.

“Cowardice has its own rewards,” his father observed, looking down at him.

“More than you guess.” Eugenides spoke into his arms. “Moira came. She brought me a message from the gods.”

The queen and his father were silent. Eugenides rolled over on his back to warm his other side. He stared at the ceiling. He knew that after the destruction of Hamiathes’s Gift the year before, what had seemed an indelible belief in the goddess-given authority of the Gift had slowly faded from most people’s minds, until the gods were once again a vague possibility instead of a nerve-racking reality—even for his father. He counted on Eddis, who had held the Gift, to believe still in the immortals. She looked suitably wary, whereas his father looked only politely interested.

“Stop whining,” Eugenides said.

“What?” Eddis’s expression shifted from wary to puzzled.

“That was the message. For me, alone among mortals, the gods send their messenger to tell me to stop whining. That’ll teach me to go hide in a temple.”

“Eugenides—” said Eddis.

“And I thought that I was doing fairly well,” he said bitterly.

“You’ve been locked in your room all winter practicing your handwriting,” Eddis said.

“Yes,” said Eugenides.

“And what did you plan to do when your handwriting was perfect?” his father asked.

Eugenides sat up and shifted to lean against the heated stones beside the fireplace, with his legs stretched out in front of the fire to warm. “I thought I might go to one of the universities on the Peninsula,” he said at last. “I thought that if I went away to study, I could come back in a few years and be . . . useful.”

He pulled his knees up. “I’m sorry.” He shrugged. “I thought it was a good plan.”

Eddis looked at him helplessly and then at his father. The minister of war bent forward to put a hand under his son’s armpit and lift him to his feet. “Bedtime, I think,” he said. “We can discuss messages from the gods when we’ve had some sleep. Things,” he said, looking at the queen, “are sometimes not as they appear.”

The queen left, and the minister helped his son to bed with a minimum of words. He pulled the overshirt and undershirt over Eugenides’s head with a sharp tug, then directed him to the bed.

“Sit,” he said.

Eugenides sat, and his father pulled off the rest of his clothes and dropped a nightshirt over his head. Then he pushed his son down onto the bed and pulled the covers over him.

“You can wash in the morning,” he said.

Eugenides lay with his head on his pillows, looking up at the ceiling.

“Do you need to eat?” his father asked.

“I ate the ceremonial bread in the temple.”

His father shook his head in wonder. “No lightning bolts?” he asked.

“Not one,” said Eugenides.

“How fortunate.” He went to the door and stopped. “That business of going to the Peninsula to study . . .”

“What about it?”

“It was a reasonable idea.”

Was? Eugenides wondered as he fell asleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IN THE MORNING EUGENIDES SLEPT late. When he woke, his room was full of light, and the magus of Sounis sat in the chair at the foot of his bed.

“What are you doing here?” Eugenides asked, not pleased.

“I didn’t think I’d get a chance to visit again soon, so I came up. You know I like Eddis.”

“The country or the queen?”

“I prefer my country,” the magus admitted.

“And my queen,” said Eugenides. “Well, you can’t have her.”

The magus smiled. He had done his best to maneuver the unwilling queen of Eddis into a political marriage with his king and failed, largely because of Eugenides. In spite of the difference in their ages and their goals, they had a great respect for each other.

The magus was privy to the reports of his king’s ambassador in Eddis and had read them carefully throughout the fall and winter, his personal desires in conflict with his political ones. His king had been delighted at the outcome in Attolia. The magus had grieved, but he’d gone on with the plans he’d thought in the best interest of his country. He was cautious, though, and he’d come to see Eugenides for himself before he encouraged his king toward open conflict with Eddis.

“What’s keeping you busy in Sounis that you think you won’t be back soon to ogle my queen?” Eugenides asked.

The magus had been prepared for apathy but not for ignorance.

“Sounis will declare war on Eddis by summer,” he said.

Eugenides stared.

“Maybe you also don’t know that your country has been at war with Attolia since the fall?”

“That’s not possible,” said Eugenides flatly. “Why would we go to war with Attolia?”

The magus pointed one finger at Eugenides’s right arm.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Eugenides snapped, and got out of bed. He pulled his robe from his wardrobe and threw it around his shoulders. “If this is your idea of a joke, I will kill you,” he snarled.

“You were returned to Eddis with the understanding that the waters of the Aracthus would be restored. Did you know that?” the magus asked calmly.