“It is good to have a friend nearby,” said the queen, squeezing his hand before releasing it. “But the greatest aid you can give me is your company.” She knew the warships of the Mede emperor cruised the open water just beyond the outer islands, waiting to come to her assistance.

“For that honor,” the Mede said, “no distance is too far to travel.” Standing up, he looked curiously around the great room and for a moment glanced behind him. The queen reinforced his subtle hint with a nod at one of the attendants, and a chair was brought forward.

“Your Majesty is most gracious,” said Nahuseresh as he sat. “But not well served by your steward, I think.” He looked with disapproval at the room. Its walls were undecorated except for an interlocking pattern painted near the ceiling. The pattern on its painted floor was darkened with age and indistinct.

“It’s very old,” the queen said with a smile. “This was an Attolian megaron, a fortified room on a hilltop, when your emperor’s present palace was an empty plot of land in the Sidosians’ territory.”

The Mede ambassador preferred beauty to age. He didn’t say so, but the queen knew it. Perhaps because she was Attolia and it was her megaron, she preferred it to the splendors of the Mede palaces with the glazed tile walls and the gold-topped pillars.

The Mede changed the subject. “Eddis overreaches herself at last?”

“Perhaps.”

“And your barons, you are wary of treachery?”

“More wary of stupidity.” Attolia dismissed the war and her barons with a wave of her hand. “Tell me, how was your journey here?”

The Mede had traveled by ship and had landed down the coast only a few miles away at the port of Rhea, but he told Attolia in convincing detail about the poor quality of the roads between Ephrata and the capital and the even poorer quality of the springs in his carriage.

“Poor Nahuseresh,” said the queen, “to suffer so much for my sake.” She laid a languid hand in his.

“At least I was fortunate to arrive before the rain.”

“Is it going to rain? I have been immured in this hall with tiresome people all day and have not seen the sky.”

“Yes,” said Nahuseresh, “it will certainly rain.”

The clouds had not yet dropped low enough to occlude the view from the mountains, and Eddis’s watchers had seen the Mede ship land. They reported the landing as well as the weather to their queen where she was camped in her tent above her army.

“Attolia would not hurry to attack in the rain,” said Eddis. “We can hope for something heavier than the usual summer drizzle, and perhaps she will call her barons to her to receive their instructions.” She worried that the queen might leave her megaron in order to oversee the disposition of her army. “So long as she is in the megaron, I think the Mede, on his own, will not complicate Eugenides’s plans.”

The queen of Attolia was waiting impatiently for the last of the barons that she had summoned to arrive when the captain of her guard, Teleus, entered the room and stepped to her side. He bent down to speak quietly in the queen’s ear. The message took some time to deliver, and she sat immobile while she listened, her eyes narrowed in concentration. When he was done, she stood without explanation. Everyone else at the council table stood as well, while the queen left the room.

She reached the steps down to the courtyard as a group of exhausted horses was led away. There were six mud-splattered soldiers surrounded by a larger group of curious onlookers. Seeing the queen, the onlookers melted away. The muddy soldiers pulled themselves to attention, and one of them stepped forward.

“The royal messenger?” the queen asked.

Her guard captain, standing just behind her, answered, “He was struck by a crossbow quarrel just at the edge of the forest.”

“And the message he carried?” the queen asked the lieutenant of the small group.

“We went back for the message bag, Your Majesty,” he said, speaking carefully. He handed the leather messenger bag, stamped with the royal crest, to Teleus, who reached forward to take it.

“Well done,” the queen praised him. She took the bag and opened it, withdrew the folded paper inside, and handed the bag back to Teleus. Attolia glanced at the signet on the seal only a moment before she cracked the wax and began to read the message. She looked up when she was finished.

“Send them to the barracks and come inside,” she said to her guard captain, and started back up the steps to the porch of the megaron.

The lieutenant bowed to Teleus and nodded to his men, directing them toward the doorway that led from the courtyard to the guard barracks. Teleus saw that the lieutenant was familiar with Ephrata and left him to settle his soldiers himself. He followed the queen.

Nahuseresh saw them pass and took note of the message bag swinging from Teleus’s hand. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. He thought he had closed off every road to Ephrata and accounted for every royal messenger.

In an anteroom to the counsel chamber, Attolia turned to Teleus. “Send for Hopsis from the capital,” she said. “And call back Relius, too. Baron Efkis has betrayed us. One of his officers reports that he has allowed an army of Eddisians coming down the Seperchia to land on this side of the river. They are probably in the woods already.”

“There are no messenger ships in the harbor,” Teleus said. “The one due today hasn’t arrived. The next isn’t due until tomorrow.”

The queen swore with a ferocity that would have stunned her Medean ambassador. “Get one of the fishing boats from the village,” she said. “There should be a fast ship at Rhea down the coast.”

“How could the Eddisians have come down to the Seperchia without being sighted?” Teleus asked.

“More treachery,” said the queen, flicking a shoulder in a brief shrug. “I would not have thought it of the officers in the blockade at the bridge by the Old Aracthus Gate, but if they were overwhelmed and there were no survivors, the Eddisians might have got through without warning.” She cursed again. “The messenger reported cannon,” she said.

“We can’t hold against cannon,” Teleus protested. “We’ll have to send to the army for rescue.”

“You must try, Teleus,” said the queen. “But I believe it is already too late.”

She went to the wall above the gate of the castle to look out over the field to the forested ridge that lay between her and the Seperchia River. The woods that covered the ridge had grown down to the far edge of the fields. The fields themselves were no more than the garden patches for the megaron and the nearby village. The Eddisians would be able to fire from the cover of the trees and would direct all the force of their cannon into the poorly maintained walls of the megaron. Her captain pointed out the body of her messenger still lying on the road in the fading light of the day.

“You can’t get the body?” she asked.

The captain shook his head. “The Eddisian crossbowmen have the gates covered. We tried sending messengers out to the village, but they were unable to get through the crossbow fire and came back.”

The queen nodded. She had feared as much. “If we could get a boat out, we could send someone down the coast to Rhea, but I think we have to assume that the baron holds Rhea as well,” she said.