Attolia waited, sensing a trap. The moon disappeared behind a cloud. Eugenides was only a dark form against the darker water behind him. “Before you make a decision,” he said, “I want you to know that I love you.”

Attolia laughed. Eugenides flushed in the dark.

“I have been surrounded by liars all my life and never heard one lie like you,” said Attolia, smiling.

“It’s the truth.” Eugenides shrugged.

“This is a feeling that’s come upon you suddenly? Since our recent engagement?”

“No,” said the Thief quietly. “When I stole Hamiathes’s Gift, I loved you then. I didn’t understand it. I thought you must be a fiend from hell,” he admitted, cocking his head to one side, “but I already loved you.”

He said, “Before he died, my grandfather used to bring me to your palace so that I could see it for myself. There was a party and dancing one night, and the palace was full of people. I went to the kitchen garden to hide because it should have been empty, but once I was inside, the door opened from the flower gardens, and you came in by yourself. I watched you walking between the rows of cabbages and then dancing under the orange trees. I was above you, in one of the trees.”

Attolia stared. She remembered the night she danced under the orange trees. “And how old were you?” the queen asked. “Six?”

“Older than that,” said Eugenides, smiling at the memory.

“Calf love,” said the queen.

“Calf love doesn’t usually survive amputation, Your Majesty.”

“A good thing I cut off your hand, then, instead of cutting out your heart,” said Attolia cruelly. “You think you still love me?”

“Yes.”

“And you think I’ll believe you?”

Eugenides shrugged. “You can kill me here, Your Majesty, and be done with this. Or you can believe me.” He’d seen her in a pale dress dancing in the moonlight, pretending an entire troupe of dancers danced the harvest circle with her, her arms open to embrace the sisters and friends who existed only in her imagination, and he’d never seen anything so beautiful or so sad. He’d remembered that moment when he’d seen her flush at being called cruel. Afterward, when the magus offered to send him information more current than that in his own library, Eugenides had accepted gladly and read carefully, trying to see whether Attolia could be the monster in human guise she was accused of being, or only a woman who ruled without the support of her barons. In the end he had taken advice his grandfather had given him years before and gone to see for himself.

“I love you,” he said. “You could believe me.”

Attolia looked at him a moment longer, still holding the knife ready. Then she slid it back into its padded sleeve in the front of her dress and stepped forward. She laid one hand on his cheek. He stood as if he were frozen.

“This is what I believe,” she said. “I believe that at the top of the stairs you have friends waiting, and if I climb those stairs without you, I will surely die at the top.”

“There’s the boat,” Eugenides said quietly, not moving under the warmth of her hand.

“You didn’t tie it to the dock, and it has floated away. If I did reach it, could I hope to paddle it past the rocks?”

“No.”

“Then let us climb the stairs together,” said the queen, and she turned away from him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE STEPS LEADING UP FROM the beach were cut into the side of a fissure in the cliffs. From time to time wooden steps stretched across the fissure to carry them to better footing on the opposite side. Eugenides let the queen go first, that she might set the pace and that he might keep an eye on her. The climb warmed her and loosened her muscles, but her feet in their felt slippers were still wet and cold. Each step hit like a blow. She checked the knives in their places frequently. At the first turn, where a wooden bridge crossed to the far side of the narrow canyon, she turned to speak to Eugenides. He was below her, cautiously out of reach.

“You didn’t suborn Efkis,” she said.

“No,” Eugenides answered, “that was a lie. There was no royal messenger. The lieutenant was my cousin Crodes. He has been practicing his Attolian accent for months. The royal messenger pouch we had from your embassy in Eddis.”

“But you moved your men past Efkis’s guard. And your cannon,” she said. “Eleven cannon. How did you get those past?”

“They were wood.”

“Wood?”

“Wood,” said Eugenides. “Fake. We brought them all down the Seperchia on one boat and then threw them over the side at the end and floated them to shore.”

“Bastard,” Attolia said.

“Not that I know,” Eugenides responded, and for a second a smile flickered on his face, the same sly smile of the successful archer that Attolia remembered. The smile disappeared in an instant.

Attolia turned to begin climbing again. She declined to look back at Eugenides. She climbed ferociously, spending her anger on the stairs. Eugenides followed, listening as her breath grew more labored, waiting for her to get tired and slow down. Having set the pace, the queen refused to reduce it. Struggling to breathe without panting, she kept climbing.

“Your Majesty,” Eugenides said.

The queen stopped and swept around to stare down at him.

Eugenides had spoken before he’d thought of anything to say. He only wanted her to stop, hoping that when she began the climb again, she would go more slowly. He looked up at her, tongue-tied by her beauty and her scorn.

“I thought you might like the earrings,” he said lamely.

It was as if he could hear the blood moving through her and could hear her flushing with rage.

She said venomously, “I might like the earrings? As much as I would like to marry a half-grown boy? A one-handed goatfoot?” She used the lowlanders’ slang for the mountain people of Eddis. “When I am actually willing to marry you, I will wear your earrings. Don’t wait for it, Thief.”

She turned her back on Eugenides and started climbing again as fast as before.

“Your Majesty,” he called.

“What now?”

“It’s a long climb,” he said, very subdued. “If you keep going like that, you’re going to die of apoplexy before you reach the top.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first you drove to apoplexy,” snapped Attolia, but resumed her climb at a slower pace. Eugenides followed, still a safe distance behind her.

They climbed in silence for another half an hour. They could see the end of the stairs above them when Eugenides succumbed to temptation and produced under his breath a credible imitation of a small goat bleating. Attolia heard him. Her head lifted, and she froze for a moment, her hands tightened into fists. She reached for the knives and again found them gone, though she had checked them in their sheaths several times during the climb. Murderously angry, she turned and started deliberately back down the stairs toward the Thief. Eugenides skipped backward step by step as the queen advanced.

“The more stairs we go down, the more stairs we have to climb up again, Your Majesty,” Eugenides called.