Attolia remembered his face as it had looked the first time she examined it closely, when he’d been in her castle on the Seperchia, bleeding from a sword wound. He’d smiled at her—the satisfied smile of an archer whose shot had gone home—when he’d told her that she was more beautiful than Eddis but less kind. Attolia didn’t think he would smile at her again, not even to gloat. She hesitated another moment and then stepped into the boat. It rocked under her, and she sat down quickly, facing backward, on a wooden bench that stretched from side to side close to the mast. She pulled her cloak tighter to ward off the chill.

“Where there’s life, there’s hope, Your Majesty?” Eugenides asked, his voice expressionless. Attolia didn’t answer. She fixed her gaze on the centerboard case in front of her, while the Thief used the knife-edge along the inside of the hook to slice through the line that bound the sail of the boat. The boom dropped beside her, the sail flapped free. Eugenides untied the boat and, holding its bowline, walked it toward the end of the dock. Distantly they heard shouting. Eugenides picked up speed, beginning to trot. The boat moved quickly through the water, and as it passed the end of the dock, Eugenides stepped in at the stern. The boat rocked again. Attolia clutched the front edge of her seat. Men spilled through the doorway behind them, but the boat was already out from under the overhang of the megaron’s foundation and into the wind. It heeled abruptly as the sail filled, and Attolia shifted her weight. Eugenides dropped into the seat at the stern and laid his hook over the boat’s tiller to steer. He adjusted the sail with his hand and the boat picked up more speed, leaving the cavern behind. By the time Attolia’s soldiers reached the end of the dock, the boat was out of reach, its occupants invisible in the darkness.

The water in the harbor was choppy, and the little boat seemed to jump from wave to wave. Attolia felt the spray hitting her back and was thankful that the closely woven wool of the cloak repelled most of the water. She huddled inside it.

They left the harbor and sailed out into the dark sea. When Eugenides turned the boat to follow the coast toward Eddis, the wind was behind them and he was a dark mass in the stern. Over his shoulder Attolia watched the lights of the megaron fade until they disappeared entirely behind the rocks of a headland. They sailed on, the water slowly soaking through the back of Attolia’s cloak as it splashed over the bow behind her.

Eugenides asked, “Do you swim, Your Majesty?”

“No,” she answered shortly.

When Teleus led the soldiers up from the cavern below the megaron, he met the Mede, waiting at the top of the stairs. “Perhaps you would like to tell me what caused this furor, guard?” the Mede asked, and Teleus hesitated, but could see no justification in not reporting the abduction of the queen. The Mede smiled grimly.

“How very clever of the Thief of Eddis. No doubt he is drowning her as we speak,” said the Mede. “Perhaps drowning himself as well, if he means to sail down the coast on a cloudy night with no moon to guide him.” Nahuseresh didn’t seem to mind much the idea of the queen drowning. Teleus watched him, eyes narrowed.

“We have to get a message to the army at the pass,” Teleus said.

“Why?” asked the Mede, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “To start the arrangements for a state funeral?”

“She might not be dead,” Teleus snarled.

“True,” Nahuseresh agreed thoughtfully. “That’s true. I had better leave you to your task. Please excuse me, guard. I have some dinner waiting for me in my rooms, I think.”

“Your Majesty.” Eugenides spoke many hours later. “You’ll want to bend your head, I’m going to jibe.”

Attolia opened her eyes and looked back toward him. The wind had blown the clouds apart, and the moon shone on the water around her and on the high black cliffs not far away.

“The sail will swing across the boat quickly,” Eugenides explained. “You don’t want the boom to hit you.”

Stiffly, Attolia hunched down. Eugenides moved the tiller to one side, and the boat lurched. The sail swept overhead and slammed hard at the end of its lines. The boat tilted and Attolia lunged for the high side, but Eugenides was already sitting on the rail, leaning backward to bring the boat level. The speed of the boat, once it had turned broadside to the wind, seemed twice what it had been before, and Attolia went on clutching the siderail as the boat charged toward sheer cliffs.

She was rigid, her fingers clenched as Eugenides steered between rocks topped with foaming white water and sailed directly toward the cliffs, in which she could see no break or variation. Then, as he adjusted the tiller again, she saw the narrow opening they aimed for. A minute later they were between its walls. The wind lessened, and the water was smooth, only rising and falling in gentle swells. The boat’s momentum carried it forward as Eugenides carefully maneuvered it past hazards that she couldn’t see.

Moving more and more slowly, they drifted into a tiny cove entirely surrounded by the high cliffs. There was no wind, and the water was smooth, reflecting the moon that shone overhead. The harbor was utterly quiet after the noise of the open sea.

Attolia settled herself again in the middle of the forward bench, staring again at the centerboard case.

“Your Majesty.” Eugenides spoke quietly and waited until Attolia raised her eyes to look at him.

His face was still, his expression unreadable. Seeing it, Attolia remembered the day in the audience chamber when she had become queen in fact as well as in name. Her guard captain, Teleus’s predecessor, had eliminated her overbearing suitor, and she’d left her barons to themselves to accept the reality of her rule and gone to her bedchamber—the last time she would go to that room instead of the royal apartments. She’d stood in front of the smooth silver mirror there and studied her face, reaching up to touch her skin, wondering if it could in truth be as hard as it appeared. She’d been frightened and sick in that audience chamber, with no assurance that the captain could or would hold to his promises, but none of her fear, or her revulsion, had shown on her face. She was the stone-faced queen, then and ever after. She had needed the mask to rule, and she had been glad to have it. She wondered if Eugenides was glad of his.

“You have a choice now,” the Thief was saying. “Conscious or unconscious, you can go into the water. I have the boat pole to make certain you don’t come out again.” He nudged the pole lying at his feet. It rattled against the centerboard case, and hearing it, Attolia glanced down. The boat pole was five or six feet long and had two small hooks at the end. The hooks she could easily imagine catching in the folds of her clothes as Eugenides leaned on the pole to force her farther and farther under the surface.

She looked back at Eugenides impassively. She thought he had brought her a long way to drown her, but she knew that in his own field he was meticulous and supposed he wanted to be entirely sure of his results.

He made no move but instead spoke again. “Or you can offer me something I want more than I want to hold your head underwater until the last of your air is gone.”

Attolia had thought her choice was to be conscious or unconscious when she breathed in the black water that would kill her; she couldn’t imagine what Eugenides might want more than that. It was all she would have dreamed of in his place.