“When?”

“The middle of our spring, if we’re lucky.”

“And what are your plans?”

Eddis looked grim. “To abandon the country beyond the Seperchia: the coastal mountains and the silver mines. We can hold the entrance to these interior valleys. We have enough grain to get us through next winter.”

“And then?”

“We hope that Sounis and Attolia bring each other enough grief to reduce their interest in Eddis. Please gods, they can’t maintain an alliance long, and one of them may be willing to break off and ally with us before we starve.”

“And if they remain allied with each other?”

“Then we surrender, Eugenides, and I am the queen that gets deposed. Attolia would probably take the coastal mountains and silver mines. Sounis would have the Hephestial Valley and the iron mines, unless he tries to grab the whole. At any rate, you could be a former queen’s Thief yet. Now I have to go speak to Xenophon. He’s been waiting for me.”

“Yes,” said Eugenides. “Go talk to Xenophon, by all means.” He went back into his bedroom and shut the door.

That night, after a day of staring into the flames of his fire, Eugenides left his room and wandered the deserted hallways of the palace. He was thinking. Absentmindedly he passed familiar things: a panel that opened into a passage behind the queen’s chambers, a storeroom with a tiny window from which he could reach the equally tiny window of his cousin Phrinidias’s dressing room, a useful hiding place behind a twisting staircase.

The palace slept at this time of the night, and he’d always felt these hours belonged to him alone, so he was surprised, when he turned into a passageway that led to a staircase up to the roof, to find a guard at the end of it. He forced himself to continue down the passageway. There was no reason to turn back just because he’d been seen. He reached the doorway to the staircase, and the guard shifted his weight in order to stand squarely in the middle of it.

“I’m going to the roof,” Eugenides explained, puzzled.

“No, sir,” said the guard.

“What do you mean, ‘no, sir’?” said Eugenides. “Why not?”

“I have my orders, sir.”

“What, that no one is allowed on the roof?”

“No, sir.”

“No, sir, no one is allowed on the roof, or no, those aren’t your orders?”

“No, those aren’t my orders, sir.”

“Well, then, what are your orders, and stop calling me sir.” No one had ever called him sir before he’d stolen Hamiathes’s Gift, but since then it had been cropping up quite often. He didn’t like it.

“My orders are not to allow you onto the roof, sir.”

The Thief stared, dumbfounded.

“Eugenides.”

He turned. The queen stood at the end of the passageway, flanked by two more soldiers and a third man.

“What do you mean, I’m not allowed on the roof?” said Eugenides, outraged.

The queen walked toward him. The third man, Eugenides saw, was one of Galen’s assistants. He glanced from the assistant back to his queen.

“You have someone watching my door,” he accused her.

She looked uncomfortable. Eugenides turned to the guard beside him and cursed. He turned back to the queen, still cursing. The soldiers on either side of her looked shocked.

“You think I’m going to throw myself off the roof?” he asked.

She did. The people in his family tended to die in falls. His mother, even his grandfather. When the palsy in his hands had grown so severe that he could no longer feed himself, he’d been unable to climb to the roof, and he’d tumbled over the railing at the top of one of the back staircases. It hadn’t been a hard fall, but enough to kill an old man.

“You started a war without mentioning it,” Eugenides snarled. “You have my rooms watched, and I’m not allowed on the roof. What do I find out next?” He pushed past her and the soldiers. He walked backward away from her. “Tell me you’ve enrolled me as an apprentice bookkeeper. You bought a lovely house for me in the suburbs. You have a marriage arranged with a nice girl who doesn’t mind cripples!” he shouted. He had reached the corner and disappeared from sight still shouting. He was making enough noise to wake every sleeper in that wing of the palace, and he didn’t care. “I can’t wait to hear!” He spaced his last words out and finally was finished. There was no sound, not even that of his receding footsteps.

The queen sighed and dismissed the soldiers who’d accompanied her.

“Shall I go back to watching his door, Your Majesty?” Galen’s assistant asked.

“Yes,” she answered heavily. “Watch him as carefully as you can.”

Returning to her room, she sighed again. The accusation about the arranged marriage had been a home shot. It was a good thing Eugenides hadn’t realized it yet.

In the morning the magus knocked at the library door and entered without waiting for an invitation. Eugenides, still in the clothes he’d worn the day before, looked up once from the fireplace and then ignored him.

“My king sent me, you understand,” the magus said, sitting in the armchair opposite the Thief. “Our ambassador has reported that you were no longer a threat, but Sounis is wary when you are involved. He wanted me to gather a second opinion.”

Eugenides ignored him.

“I have to go. I can hardly stay longer. My king isn’t going to declare war until Attolia has the pass under her control. The narrow ascent will make the attack costly for her, but Eddis has only a small army to hold the pass. She has no real defenses outside the natural terrain. When her army is gone, my king will attack from Sounis. If Eddis surrendered . . . it would be better. You can see that, can’t you, Gen?”

Eugenides didn’t look at him and didn’t speak, not even to point out to the magus that only very close friends were entitled to call him by the shortened form of his name.

“Gen, sitting in here isn’t going to help anything. You can talk sense to Eddis. Maybe you aren’t a Thief anymore, but you could still do something.”

Eugenides lifted his head, but only to look into the middle distance beyond the walls of the library. The magus sighed and stood up. He patted Eugenides once on the shoulder and left without seeing how the Thief’s eyes narrowed, watching him go.

He returned to his king in Sounis and told him he thought the Thief was no longer a danger to anyone, except perhaps himself. The best course of action was to join Attolia and seize Eddis. Sounis was delighted.

He was in his private dining room, reclining on a couch as he picked at a late meal. As the magus talked, servants moved in and out carrying trays with tempting delicacies, most of which the king ate. The trays were offered to the magus, and he selected enough to avoid offense.

“And when Eddis has surrendered, you think we will be able to hold all of it?” the king asked.

“Attolia’s army will be wasted trying to secure the pass. You should be able to take it from her fairly easily. By then she will be deeply enmeshed with the Mede, trying to hold some power in her own country. Neither of them will have time to squabble over Eddis. If you secure Eddis quickly, you will be strong enough to outface the Mede when he tries to expand beyond Attolia.”