“I thought you said that was all over. I missed it.”

“I only said that you weren’t a boy hero. You’ve grown now. People will expect even more of you—that you can steal a magus and bring Sounis to his knees again and do it with one hand.”

“One hand, maybe, but a hand full of your best soldiers. How much credit can I take for that?”

“All of it,” said Eddis. “It wouldn’t have happened but for you. You deserve all the credit—or the blame, some might say—otherwise Attolia wouldn’t be so frightened of you.”

Eugenides looked over at her, surprised.

“Oh, yes, she’s afraid. She’ll take Sounis in the spring or by summer. We’ll offer peace again, and she’ll take it if she can, because she’s afraid of what you might do once Sounis is no longer occupying our attention.”

Eugenides continued to look nonplussed, and Eddis nodded her head. “I wish she would give up this war now, but I can see that her barons would eat her alive. Still, she is not so foolish that she would continue a war once she had some victory to appease them. And after Sounis’s defeat at Irkes Forest, she knows that our soldiers are as good as their reputation.” She said quietly then, “Gen, you are a sacred relic to the men in that hospital.”

“Are you telling me in your gentle way to stop whining?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t feel like a hero. I feel like an idiot.”

“I think heroes generally do, but those men believe in you.”

“I did wait until I was outside before I threw up.”

In the spring the rains came. The trees bloomed in the lowlands. The snows melted in Eddis, and the floodwaters kept every access to the mountain country closed. The people of Eddis prayed for the rain to never stop even as they trudged through mud to their knees and longed for fresh greens. Attolia and Sounis worked their fields before turning back to their war making. Eddis watched to see if they would attack each other or move again against the mountains.

The rains continued. Sounis bypassed any attempt to retake the islands he had lost to Attolia and instead moved in a surprise attack on Thegmis, almost in the harbor of Attolia’s capital city. The queen was not in her capital. Communications failed, her generals blundered, and Thegmis fell.

Sounis controlled the island, but he’d lost his last large ship in the attack and had no means to resupply his troops or to withdraw them. Attolia blockaded the island with her own navy and waited. Sounis offered to make peace, but Attolia, with the upper hand, rejected his offers. In the mountains Eddis and her minister of war hoped that Sounis was being stupid without the advice of his magus, but they worried.

“He’s not this much of a fool,” said Eddis.

“Have you talked to the magus?” her minister of war asked.

“I did. He is not much help, and that may be deliberate, but he says he doesn’t know what Sounis is planning.”

“We shall wait then and see,” said the minister.

In the evenings, before dinner was served, the court gathered in the old throne room. Four officers who had already drained several cups of watered wine joked about the threats of the queen of Attolia, lately reported by Eddisian spies. In a sudden silence, their words carried over the crowd. “ . . . send him into the afterlife blind, deaf, and with his tongue cut out as well . . .”

Eyes turned to Eugenides, standing across the room in a group with several of his uncles. Everyone knew that Attolia had been speaking about him. Eugenides turned to the crowd and ducked his head. “I was so looking forward to my next visit,” he said with mock chagrin, and, chuckling, people returned to their conversations. Eddis, from where she stood near the hearth, watched the Thief carefully, but he turned back to his uncles with an impenetrably bland expression. The queen gestured to her steward and directed him in a low voice to reorder the seating at dinner.

Later, from the head of the table, Eddis watched Eugenides take his place with his father to one side of him and Agape, the youngest daughter of the baron Phoros, on the other. The queen was too far away to hear what he said as he sat down, but Agape answered, and they seemed to get on well. Eddis sent up a small prayer under her breath and turned to speak with her own seatmates.

“You seem to be burdened with my company more often than you deserve,” Eugenides was saying.

“They’re afraid you might snap at anyone else,” Agape answered with a serious expression.

Eugenides looked startled. “No one could snap at you,” he said.

“Yes,” said Agape, still very serious. “I’m much too sweet.”

Eugenides laughed outright, and Agape’s grave expression gave way to a smile. She was the youngest of four sisters and the loveliest as well. The others had allowed a certain shrewishness of character to distort their good looks, but Agape was a great favorite at the court for her kindness and her wit.

“Are you in a dreadful mood?” she asked, laying a hand over Eugenides’s. “Your father warned me that you might be.”

Eugenides glanced at his father, who was staring down at his plate and didn’t look up, though he had certainly heard.

“Yes,” said Eugenides, turning back to Agape, “a dreadful mood. You should swap seats with your sister Hegite. She and I deserve each other this evening.”

“You are unkind to poor Hegite.”

“I would be if she were sitting next to me.”

Agape smiled. “I suppose it is lucky she is not, then,” she said.

“I think luck has nothing to do with it,” Eugenides answered, glancing at his queen, “but with a dinner companion as lovely as you, I won’t complain. Are you singing at the festival?”

They talked then about the upcoming festival, which would end with the rites of Hephestia and an entire day and night of singing by the temple chorus and by selected soloists. Agape had sung the year before and said she would sing again, spending the next few weeks in seclusion in the temple grounds while she practiced.

Midway through dinner Eugenides lifted his wine cup and looked down into it.

“Something is the matter with this cup,” he said.

“What is it?” Agape asked.

“I can’t get anybody to fill it.” He had several times caught the eye of a wine bearer only to have the boy glance away, pretending not to have seen him. “Excuse me,” he said to Agape as he turned and leaned across his father. It was an awkward reach as he had to use his left hand. He accomplished it gracefully and removed his father’s wine cup, leaving his own in its place.

“There,” he said, “I’m sure you can get it filled.” He challenged his father with a look, and the older man nodded.

“I’m sure I can,” he said, and signaled to a wine bearer. The boy came with the ewer and poured out the wine. Eugenides drained the cup he’d taken from his father and held it up. The boy hesitated and looked to the minister of war.

“Demos,” Eugenides said, “stop looking at my father, and fill my wine cup.” The minister of war turned to look across the room. Demos filled the cup. Eugenides drained it. “Now fill it again,” he said, and the boy did as he was told while the minister of war sat stiffly, turned away.