I came upstairs to these rooms, where I told the magus and the guards to wait in the anteroom, as I did not want his company or anyone else’s. That seems to have meant very little, though, because no sooner did I close the door than it opened again. You came in. You took one look at me. And you laughed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE Queen of Eddis protested. “I did not laugh,” she said.

“You did,” Sounis said. “You are laughing still. And why didn’t those guards turn you away?”

Eddis studied him. His face was much changed by Basrus’s fists. He was also taller and heavier than when they had last met. His shoulders had grown broad from his working in Hanaktos’s fields, and she could easily imagine him dropping a man with a single blow. She did not think he realized how fierce his appearance had become; though his smile had changed, his easy blushes remained. She did not know how to put into words the relief it was to see him safe, and so the feelings escaped as another laugh. Still smiling, she defended the Attolians. “They are guards,” she said. “They could not deny a queen.”

Sounis returned her smile and conceded. “No, and neither can I. You asked to hear the story of events that brought me here, and I have given it to you, as I am sure anyone would give you anything you asked. I am only sorry that all my face can offer you is amusement,” he added.

Eddis reached to touch her own crooked nose. “If I laughed,” she said, “it is only at the idea that we make a matched pair now, you and I.” She asked him, more seriously, “Your uncle who was Sounis learned of our letters. That was the cause of your exile to Letnos?”

“An unfinished letter was stolen from my desk and delivered to him,” explained Sounis. “He had my rooms searched and intercepted your next letter. He and my father and the magus spent the evening in a shouting match, and I was sent away the next morning.”

“So you did not receive the letter? You have not read it?”

“No.”

“You made a proposal in your previous letter. Perhaps it was only hypothetical?”

“It was not.”

Eddis gently chided, “All that time in the fields of Hanaktos, you thought of many things and many people, but never, it seems, of the queen of Eddis.”

The color rose in Sounis’s cheeks, but he did not look away. He had thought of her every day. “When I was working in the fields, I knew how unfounded my hopes were,” he said. “I was a poor excuse for an heir of Sounis when I made the proposal and then became even less than that.”

“How less?” asked Eddis.

Sounis looked down at her hand, lying in his, and covered it for a moment. Still holding it lightly, he stood and stepped back until her hand slipped away from his grasp. Then he crossed to the far side of the room. Without looking back, he said, “That look on Gen’s face. Does he think I am a fool? That I came to Attolia instead of Melenze because I was naive? Did he think I was asking him to give me soldiers and gold to fight a war as a personal favor? I came here on my knees to offer him Sounis, and he looks at me as if I were my uncle and grabs it out of my hands.”

Eddis asked, “The magus did not talk about this on the road?”

Sounis shook his head. “He tried to warn me, and I refused to listen.” He shook his head again, this time in bewilderment. “Eugenides offered his life once to save me. Why should I doubt that he is my friend?”

“He is the king of Attolia,” said Eddis.

“And no particle of your Thief remains?”

Eddis searched for words. “He swore an oath to be Thief on his grandfather’s death. But the oath is a mystery of the Thieves, and no one alive but Eugenides knows what it requires.”

“So now I must deliver my country into the hands of enemies? The magus no doubt thinks I am a fool.”

“I cannot believe that,” said Eddis. “Nor will I believe you could have a better friend than Eugenides.”

“I should throw something, perhaps,” said Sounis, “but I do not think it would relieve my feelings.”

“I have not found it to do so,” said Eddis.

“Gen evidently does.”

“Gen is Gen,” said Eddis.

“Gen is a bastard,” said the king of Sounis.

Eddis looked sad, and Sounis was sorry he had spoken so harshly. He returned to sit by her side.

He said, “Sounis is lost. I know what comes of the Mede occupation. In a generation, or perhaps two, Sounis and Attolia and Eddis will be gone. Only Medes will serve in the government, only Medes will hold public office, only Medes will own land or hold wealth. They will knock down the old temples and control the guilds and the trades, and the Sounisians will be left okloi, or worse, beggars in their own cities.

“I could sell half my country to Melenze to get its protection, but that would only delay the Medes, not turn them back. Also, there’s little hope that Melenze would be satisfied with half of Sounis. They would eat up the rest of it in the next few years, and I would be in no position to stop them. I am in a war with Attolia I cannot win, with a civil war at home that I have fled.

“But Sounis is not the only country at risk. This war drains Attolia’s resources and endangers her as well. I thought…I thought that Gen would be satisfied with an oath of loyalty to him and a negotiated surrender on my part. Sounis would give up the islands we had lost, and in exchange, I would still be king. Sounis would be free, only allied as a tributary of Attolia, much as Melenze is allied with Ferria. And instead I find that Attolis demands a complete surrender, to depose me from my throne and disenfranchise my patronoi.”

“He did not say that,” said Eddis.

“You were there? You heard him?” Sounis asked. “He said I should admit my defeat. You heard his voice and saw his face. What else could he mean?”

“Would you give up being Sounis?” Eddis asked, too casually. “Would you allow your country to become just another part of Attolia?”

Sounis’s eyes narrowed. “No,” he said. He stood, and his restless energy carried him across the room again. “I will go to Melenze. And hope to delay the Medes long enough to find some other solution to their imperial expansion. Of course, that assumes the king and queen of Attolia intend to honor the laws of hospitality and allow me to travel safely to the border.”

Eddis nodded. Sounis dropped into a chair on the far side of the room and stared at Eddis. “He sent you.”

Eddis’s slow, broad smile appeared. Sounis crossed his arms and bolstered himself against it.

“Why?”

“Because he wants no more than you thought to give him: your allegiance and the islands he already controls.”

“That is not what he indicated in the throne room.”

“He needed you to know that he meant to take Sounis whether you offered it or not. He would have taken it from your uncle.”

“I can see that,” said Sounis. “Did he think I didn’t know it? The king of Attolia is a bastard, but an honest one? I came here to offer him my allegiance. I came because I trusted him. So why does he make me think I should not?”

Eddis sighed. “Maybe, Sophos, because he is an idiot.” She shook her head. “He sent me to ask if you will negotiate a surrender. I cannot speak for him otherwise, but Sophos, I know he is your friend.”