The one person I did complain to, and at length, was Hyacinth, my single friend on the island of Letnos. He lived in a villa nearby and came down to visit almost every day, arriving as my mother and sisters were rising from their afternoon rest, his visits therefore coinciding with their afternoon meal. On the rare occasions that he was late, Eurydice always saved him a cake.

He was my only companion of my own age, and I should have been more grateful to have him, but it was hard to be grateful for Hyacinth. His father was a patron with a property of only medium size, holding few of the king’s responsibilities, and Hyacinth was gratified to consider himself a friend of the heir to Sounis. He was always smiling and always eager to please. Everything I said he agreed with, which was trying, and his flute playing would make the deaf wince, but I think the real problem with Hyacinth was that he reminded me of myself. He read poetry. He flinched at loud noises. In addition to having no musical skills, he had no martial skills. He avoided any situation that might require a physical effort on his part. Seeing him, I found it no wonder that my father despised me.

Yet I was his companion, and he mine, and when Malatesta beat me, I went to him for sympathy. Oh, yes, I was taller than Malatesta by inches, and long since old enough to be considered a man, but my tutor was still switching me across the palms of my hands and leaving painful blisters there. And I was still sniffing back tears of rage and humiliation like a big baby. Especially so, when I was switched for insisting that burn did not rhyme with horn or that I couldn’t produce any factors for 31 or 43. Malatesta used to say things that even he knew were wrong and then watch me in contempt when I let them pass, too cowed to contradict him.

While I was failing to manage my own petty problems, my uncle who was Sounis was dealing with greater ones. After the sabotage of his fleet in its own harbor, he’d jumped into war with Attolia without hesitation. The magus would have counseled him otherwise, but the magus, as you know, was whisked away before he could counsel anything. Then Sounis discovered it was Eddis who was responsible for both the destruction of his ships and the disappearance of his valuable advisor, and he started a new war without any more forethought. He was confident, I think, of success over both Eddis and Attolia right up until the world heard that the Thief of Eddis had stolen the queen of Attolia and meant to marry her.

When the stars aligned in that very unexpected way, my uncle was at a loss. Together, Attolia and Eddis were far more powerful than they were alone. He was overmatched, and everyone knew it. There were more rumors each day. The maids picked up news from who knows where and retold it to Ina and Eurydice, who carried it to Mother and me. My mother scolded them for listening to gossip, but she never insisted they stop.

One morning at breakfast Ina said, “Our uncle has agreed to marry the cousin of the queen of Eddis.”

“Your uncle who is Sounis?” my mother said, gently reminding Ina of the honorific.

“Indeed,” said Ina, not touching on the unspoken truth that only one of our uncles, the king of Sounis, survived. “They say her name is Agape.”

I should have been glad that it might mean peace among our three countries, but my pleasure was more selfish. My uncle had given up his pursuit of Eddis. He would marry someone else and might soon produce an heir. My mother warned me not to put faith in rumors, but I was quite filled with hope.

I wrote to my father, as politely as I knew how, to say that my sword work was improved and that I was sick of poetry (sick of Malatesta’s, at least). With a marriage to the queen’s cousin Agape planned, there would soon be a much more appropriate heir to replace me, and could I please come back to the mainland? I prayed to the household gods to save me from one more day on Letnos. Within a day of sending the letter, like an idiot in an old wives’ tale, I got what I asked for.

I was crossing the courtyard of the villa, and it was as if one of Terve’s lessons had come to life. He may as well have been there, shouting, “You are suddenly attacked by fifteen men; what are you going to do?” Only they weren’t a product of Terve’s imagination; they were real men, cutting down the guards at the front gate and streaming into the courtyard of the villa.

Terve’s first question: “Where’s your weapon?” My sword of course was in my room, upstairs at the back of the main house and as useless to me as if it had been on the moon. The men were spreading out across the courtyard toward all entrances to the house, and by the time I got to my rooms to fetch my sword it would be too late to do anything with it. Terve’s sword, I was almost certain, was still in my study under the couch where my father had thrown it in disgust when he’d seen its condition. Malatesta had taken control of my study and my books, allowing me in only for his insipid lessons; he didn’t know that the sword was there, and I doubted that the servants would have moved it. None of the armed men racing across the courtyard was headed for the study, which was just opposite from where I stood, its door open to the courtyard.

My feet were moving in that direction before my head had finished reaching a decision. The study had a door and a window. I jumped through the open window because it was faster and fell to the stone floor on my stomach, scrabbling in the dust under the couch until my hand closed on a stiff leather strap. I dragged the sword free of its sheath with difficulty and turned, still on my knees, as a man filled the doorway. Coming from light into the dark, he was looking ahead of him, not down toward me. My lunge, as I came to my feet, took him in the chest as I drove the sword upward with the strength of my legs. Even rusted, the sword slid through him, and I found, for the first time, how easy it is to kill a man.

Astonished, I pulled the sword free and immediately plunged it into the man behind him, who had as little warning as his fellow. I hit bone that time, but the man’s momentum drove him onto the point. It was harder to draw the sword out, but I pulled mightily, desperate to get it free.

Terve’s second question: “What are you going to do with the weapon?” I knew what I meant to do: defend my mother and my sisters.

The villa on Letnos is typical, with the courtyard formed on three sides by buildings of a single story—my study was on one side, close to the house. My father’s study was on the opposite. In between, facing into the courtyard, were the dormitories, the stables, and the kitchen, as well as the office of the steward and the officer of the guard.

The fourth side of the courtyard was the main house, with a porch on the uppermost story for the women’s rooms. There was a stair in the wall that led to the roofs of the lower buildings, and a drain tile, I knew, that offered a handhold for a climb from the lower roofs to the porch. I’d taken that route before when my father was looking for me and I was avoiding him. If I hurried, I thought I might beat the men who were already in the villa, who would be making their way up the stairs inside the house. I ran across the courtyard, now empty, and climbed the steps to the roof, all according to a plan I had once laid out in response to one of Terve’s seemingly useless exercises.

Why would anyone attack an unimportant villa, I had asked at the time, and if it was important enough to be attacked, why wouldn’t it be defended? Just pretend, he’d said.

I climbed up and over the railing around the porch, trampling the privacy screen in the process and getting my foot stuck through it for a moment—not a part of the plan. As I rushed through the door into my mother’s rooms, the maids were screaming. I had to shout over the noise they were making, but whether she understood me or not, Ina had the sense to push shut the large wooden door at the entrance to the rooms. Someone in the hallway outside pressed the latch, and the door started to swing open, but I ran full tilt into it and slammed it closed again. There was a shout of pain from the other side, and a thump as a body struck the door. Ina grasped the latch to keep it from moving. While her small hand secured it, the metal tongue of the latch secured the door. The door shook in its frame, but it was solid, and we had as much time as the latch would give us.