“Mmm-hm.”

“How tactful of him.”

Eugenides smiled painfully. “I asked him.”

Eddis smiled painfully back.

“What are you thinking when you look like that?” Eugenides asked.

“I’m thinking of murdering the queen of Attolia,” Eddis admitted.

Eugenides stood up and turned his back on her to look out one of the deeply set, narrow windows. “I hate that Mede,” he said.

“Gen, it was Attolia that cut off your hand, wasn’t it?” Eddis asked.

Eugenides shrugged. “Would we be at war if I had been hanged?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Eddis. Truthfulness made her add, “Maybe.”

“Can you deny this started the war, then?” Eugenides held up his mutilated arm.

“No.” Eddis had to concede the point. “But as I said, Attolia cut off your hand.”

“Because of the Mede,” Eugenides answered. “If he hadn’t spoken, she would have hanged me. Ornon had her angry enough to have me drawn and quartered and be done. Not,” he added, truthful in turn, “that I would have enjoyed being drawn and quartered.”

“And could the Mede have known he was inciting a war?” Eddis asked.

“Oh, yes,” said the Thief.

Eddis was quiet, looking down at the table in front of her, covered with reports on casualties and the cost of the war with Attolia. “Then I will not consider myself in his debt.” She looked over the stacks of paper that detailed her remaining resources, the size of her army, the supply of food, the ammunition. “He’s got troopships sailing in the straits,” she said. “They are like crows waiting to fall on the bodies. I wonder if Attolia knows.”

Attolia knew. She’d known before they left their own harbor that they were being provisioned to patrol her coast. She knew how many of them there were and how heavily they were manned and how many cannon they carried. She knew that her barons were as well informed. They were quiet these days, like little birds hiding in the shrubbery when the fox passes by. She was fortunate, she also knew, that the Mede emperor had sent her an ambassador who was physically as well as politically attractive. Her court knew she had short patience for flattery, and she rarely heard it, but Nahuseresh’s she accepted with smiles, delighting in the compliments he showered on her. Better than his compliments was the consternation on the faces of her barons as they watched her dipping her eyes at him and looking up from under her lashes, just the way she had seen her youngest attendants flirting with their lovers. Attolia was enjoying the Mede’s company very much. She was happy to have him think her a womanly instead of a warrior queen. When he escorted her, she was receptive to his verbal sallies, a complacent object of his suggestive caresses as he linked arms with her and held her a little closer than was appropriate. She hoped no one told Nahuseresh how she’d treated the last person who’d tried to flatter her, though perhaps if someone did, the Mede would only be more confident of his appeal.

Her attendants all agreed with her assessment of the Mede’s physical appearance. She listened to their chatter in the mornings and the evenings as they dressed her and arranged her hair. Attolia permitted them their gossip so long as they were discreet. She enjoyed their chatter, though she never took any part.

“They say the Mede has ordered a new tunic woven with gold in the thread and precious stones sewn in around the collar.”

“They say he has several sets of emeralds and his valet sews them onto whichever clothes he chooses in the morning.”

“He should buy some other stones,” Phresine said. She was the oldest of the queen’s attendants and sat by the window with a needle pinched in her lips while she arranged the hem she was darning in one of the queen’s dresses. She took the needle out. “Something that goes better with rubies,” she said, glancing over at her queen, whose rubies were being carefully braided into her hair.

It was a daring attendant who risked a sly gibe at her mistress, but there could be no doubt that Attolia smiled on the Mede, that she permitted him to hold her hands at greetings a trifle longer than was proper, that he called her “dear queen” and sometimes just “my dear.”

“Something that goes better with his beard,” said one of the younger women with a titter. Her rash words provoked an uncomfortable silence. The attendants looked to their queen.

“Chloe,” said Attolia.

“Your Majesty?”

“Go fetch something for me.”

“What would you like, Your Majesty?”

“I don’t know. Go find out.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Chloe whispered, and hurried away.

The talk turned to safer topics after her departure.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE COUNTRY OF EDDIS PRAYED, and as if in answer, the Etesian winds came late. Sounis used what remained of his navy to ferry his army out to the islands to defend those that he could. Attolia attacked relentlessly and secured one island after another. The Mede whispered advice in her ear, and she listened carefully. She had always been a careful listener, and it was easy for the Mede to see evidence of his advice carried out. He was an astute general, and Attolia appreciated that.

“Does she know about the ships?” Kamet asked him.

“I doubt it,” said the Mede. “What intelligence she has she directs toward her barons, trying to keep them on their leashes. She has very little vision outside her tiny country, and doesn’t seem much interested in the affairs of the wider world. I begin to think she owes her throne to the very barons she suspects of treason. I don’t know who else keeps her in power.”

“You will ask her about an embassy on Cymorene? We will need that as a staging ground.”

“I have asked her already. She is wary and has put me off, but I will win her over in time. It will be no trouble to convince her that the embassy will be small and harmless, existing only to supply the occasional messenger ship between our benevolent empire and hers.”

“We still need cause to land here on the mainland.”

“We’ll have it,” said the ambassador. “There is no need to hurry, and once we are fixed here, we will be unmovable.”

When the Etesians finally came, Sounis withdrew his troops from the islands, leaving them to defend themselves in the unlikely event that Attolia would risk her own navy by attacking during the season of windstorms. He collected his navy in his safest harbors and turned his attention toward his land-based enemy, Eddis. Attolia did the same.

The mountains defended Eddis better than any army could have, but there were gaps in their protection. The Irkes Forest was a stretch of pines that covered one of the gradual rises into the mountains. When Sounis had tried to move an army through the forest, Eddis had threatened to burn the trees around them. Sounis had withdrawn. With the sea war temporarily stalled, Sounis returned to the Irkes and burned it himself and then advanced through the ashes.

The mountains were more uniform on the Attolian border. The newly forged cannon at the pass prevented Attolia’s army from attacking there. The only other access for an army was the canyon where the Aracthus River had once cut its way down the mountainside to join the Seperchia. When the Hamiathes Reservoir had been constructed, the river had been diverted to a new course and joined the Seperchia farther downstream. The former riverbed and the road that ran along it were defended by a heavily fortified gate at the bottom of the mountains, and that gate was further defended by the chasm of the Seperchia River between it and Attolia.