“I understand,” said Sounis, and he did. “Where are we going?”

“To a nice tavern where they have no idea who I am, so pull that cloak a little tighter over your fine clothes. I don’t want them asking awkward questions. I just want a chance to have a moment without my dear companions or, gods forbid, any physicians.”

“They seemed a little unfriendly with each other,” said Sounis.

The king of Attolia sighed. “They purport to be worried about my health.”

They had left the narrow alleys and were walking along the broader Sacred Way, and Eugenides kept his voice low. Sounis suspected that everyone in the palace worried about Eugenides’s health.

“I am nothing but a bone of contention,” said the patient bitterly.

Sounis was unsympathetic. “That seems unlike Galen,” he said.

“Well, you try insinuating that he’s a mountain bumpkin with the medical knowledge of the village butcher and see how he takes it,” said Eugenides. “My oh-so-timid palace physician turns out to be quite ferocious when he thinks someone is trespassing on his medical ground.”

“That also seems unlike Galen,” said Sounis.

“My fault entirely,” Eugenides admitted. “I asked to see Galen while he was here with Eddis and touched off a bout of professional jealousy.”

Sounis snickered.

“Your time will come, puppy. You just wait,” said Eugenides. He turned again into a narrow side street. “There it is,” he said, “under the lantern.”

The tavern had a sign of painted grapes just barely illuminated by the dim lamp. Sounis went down stone steps and ducked through a low door underneath the sign. The taproom was no better lit, and he stepped carefully around scattered tables to a booth against a wall where he and Eugenides could sit opposite each other and still each have a view of the door.

By unspoken agreement they paused in their conversation until they were sitting with the high walls of the booth on either side.

“And your attendants?” Sounis asked.

“Every one another Ambiades,” said Gen, referring to the traitor who had betrayed them both when they followed the magus in pursuit of Hamiathes’s Gift. “I’d had some hope for Philologos,” Gen admitted, “but Sejanus won that hand neatly.”

Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. “He would have been a better man under different circumstances.”

Gen looked at him. “True enough,” he said. “But does a good man let his circumstances determine his character?”

Sounis couldn’t argue with that. “Perhaps you can bring out better in them?”

Eugenides shook his head. “I pulled the carpet out from under them very thoroughly. They will not cross me, but they won’t love me, either. I am not Eddis. People do not hand me their hearts.”

Sounis wondered. He would have given Eugenides his heart on a toothpick, if asked. He remembered Ion’s obvious wince at being rated somewhat less significant to Gen than his boots.

The barmaid came to the table, and Gen ordered wine.

When she was gone, Sounis asked if Attolis paid his way out of his own palace often, but he needled to no effect.

“Oh, that’s not a bribe to get out the gate. It’s compensation for the rating he’ll get from the captain of my guard. Teleus hates it when I go out, and he’s going to be sullen in the morning, but I’ve given him enough ground. The circus this morning was largely at his insistence. My father and Procivitus would have served my purposes well enough, but Teleus insisted his guard be involved. He does not like them to be ashamed of me.” Eugenides shrugged. “So. Melheret will already know I was making a fool of him, and I won’t be able to trick him again, but Teleus must be appeased.”

“Oh, poor king,” said Sounis.

The barmaid brought the wine and cups. When she was gone, Eugenides dunked a finger in his wine and flicked it at Sounis.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE long summer twilight was in the sky outside, but the lamps were lit in the small dining room, casting a warm glow over the diners reclined on their couches. The king’s attendants moved quietly through the room with platters of food and amphorae to refill wine cups.

“Why not refuse the ambassador, send him home?” Sounis asked.

He watched Attolia out of the corner of his eye. She was still cool, like a breath of winter in the warm evening air, but in the last few days he had begun to sense a subtle humor in her chilly words.

When Gen had complained earlier that evening that Petrus, the palace physician, should stop fussing over him like a worried old woman, Attolia had asked, archly, “And me as well?”

“When you stop fussing,” Gen had said, slipping to his knees beside her couch, “I will sleep with two knives under my pillow.”

Attolia had looked down at him and said sharply, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Only when Eugenides laughed had Sounis realized her implication: If she ever turned against Eugenides, a second knife wouldn’t save him. He almost swallowed the olive in his mouth unchewed.

As he stared, Attolia had brushed Eugenides’s cheek almost shyly before sending him with a wave back to his own couch.

“One cannot toss ambassadors back like bad fish,” said Eugenides. “You treat them with care, or you’ll find you’ve committed an act of war.”

“If we have one of their ambassadors, the Medes, in turn, have one of ours,” said Attolia.

Sounis knew from the magus that Attolia’s spy network had been devastatingly compromised. He understood why they were willing to accept the risk of having a Mede ambassador sowing dissent in their palace if it meant they had some representative of their own in the Mede Empire.

“We would like to know where the Mede emperor is gathering his army, his navy,” Attolia said. “The Great Powers of the Continent, and those on the Peninsula, don’t believe he is raising one. They insist that it is saber rattling. Which,” she conceded, “it might be. The emperor is dying, and dying men rarely start wars with their last breaths. But I believe that his heir has already seized power, and a conquest is a reliable means to cement his authority.”

“Only if he can trust his generals not to turn on him once they come home as heroes,” said Sounis.

“In this case, his general is his brother Nahuseresh,” said Eugenides. “Civil unrest from that quarter is more than we could hope for.”

Eddis said, “The Continent wants proof of an attack before they take any risks to counter it. They don’t want to offend the Mede Empire and so precipitate the war we all are trying to avoid. Though they would of course be willing to stage troops here,” she added drily.

Sounis winced. Small countries like Sounis, Eddis, and Attolia were as vulnerable to the “aid” of the Continent as to the conquest of the Medes. In his lifetime Sounis had seen small city-states on the Peninsula absorbed by their larger neighbors in the guise of “safekeeping.”

Sounis sensed that it would be impolite to ask outright if Eddis had any spies across the Middle Sea. Her spies more probably were deployed closer to home, in Attolia. Or in Sounis, he supposed. He resolved to ask the magus for more information about his own sources of information.