“Some burnt wine?”

“Go away,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.

They had never seemed more like yapping dogs to Costis, although he couldn’t really blame them. With the possible exception of Sejanus they all seemed rattled.

“Just have a sip, Your Majesty,” said one, offering a glass.

“Just a nightmare.”

“A clean shirt—”

“Go away!” Eugenides shouted. “Go away!”

The attendants backed off for a moment, but then closed in again. They opened their mouths to speak, but the queen’s voice interrupted from the doorway. “I think His Majesty’s wishes are plain.”

Every attendant turned to her, aghast.

The queen looked back at them. “Go,” she said, “away.”

They bolted for the door.

Costis, beginning from the far side of the bed, and trying to leave with a little dignity, was the last to reach the door. He looked back. The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop. Without meaning to, he stopped to watch.

She reached out and touched the king’s face, cupping his cheek in her hand.

“Just a nightmare,” he said, his voice still rough.

The queen’s voice was cool. “How embarrassing,” she said, looking at his maimed arm.

The king looked up then, and followed her gaze. If it was embarrassing to wake like a child screaming from a nightmare, how much more embarrassing to be the reason your husband woke screaming. A quick smile visited the king’s face. “Ouch,” he said, referring to more than the pain in his side. “Ouch,” he said again as the queen gathered him into her arms.

Costis turned in confusion to the attendants standing around him. They looked as surprised as he, and Costis felt it wasn’t any of their business, anyway, how the king and queen resolved their quarrel. It wasn’t any business of theirs at all. He reached back for the door. Hooking his hand into the hole where the lock should have been, he seized it by the splintered wood and swung it closed.

The attendants looked at him in outrage, but no one said a word that might draw the attention of the queen. Costis looked over the shoulders of the attendants and met the eyes of his guard.

“Clear the room,” he ordered.

At that, the attendants did protest in low but vehement tones. Sejanus’s voice cut through. “By what authority do you act with such confidence, Squad Leader?”

Costis didn’t answer. Sejanus knew his rank and the rank hardly mattered. Even as a lieutenant he had no authority over a king’s attendant.

“How do you propose to enforce your order?” Sejanus added in his infuriating and condescending drawl, and in doing so, gave Costis the answer.

“At gunpoint, if necessary,” Costis said.

Sejanus’s hand went to the knife at his waist. Without a moment’s hesitation, half the guards in the room put their hands on their own swords and the other half grounded the butts of their guns and started loading them.

Costis didn’t take his eyes off Sejanus. The rest of the attendants were sheep. Where Sejanus went, the others would follow, and when Sejanus lifted one shoulder and exhaled his contempt, Costis knew he had won.

“I’m sure none of us wish to disturb Their Majesties,” said Sejanus.

In the hallway outside the guardroom, Costis posted his guards. He stood at the door himself after he had checked the rest of the king’s apartment to be sure it was empty. The hallway was crowded with the king’s attendants and also with the queen’s women. Someone had fetched the benches from down the passage and moved chairs out of the receiving rooms. Costis stifled a yawn and put a hand to his ear, which had begun to throb. It was swollen and stiff with drying blood, and when he looked, he saw blood on his shoulder as well. Evidently the ricochet of the second bullet hadn’t entirely missed him. The queen’s senior attendant approached, and he stiffened. Phresine was an older woman with graying hair neatly twisted away from her face. She smiled at him and stepped close enough to wipe his ear with a white cloth. It was wet and smelled of lavender.

“Well done, Lieutenant,” she murmured as she worked gently to sponge away the blood. When she was done, she smiled again at him and settled on a bench not far away.

Her support was reassuring in the face of the baleful glares from the king’s attendants, and Costis was sorry when she left only a little later. Another of the queen’s attendants, Luria, came down the hallway to speak to her, and when they had exchanged their whispered words, the older woman stood. She nodded to the other attendants, and all the queen’s women glided away, leaving the guards and the king’s attendants alone with each other in the hall.

It was a long night.

The king’s attendants played dice or cards, or lay on the benches and slept. Costis and his guards stood at their posts. Costis wished the king’s attendants could go away, as the queen’s attendants had gone, but he supposed they should be available should the king call for them, as unlikely as that might be. Finally most of the attendants slept.

The guard changed for the dog watch of the night. Costis sent his men back to their quarters but stayed at his post. Only his authority could keep the attendants out of the guardroom. There was no sign of the new captain, Enkelis, although he must have heard about the confrontation between the guard and the attendants. There was no sign of any of the other lieutenants, though they must also have heard. No doubt, they thought it was safest to leave the matter in Costis’s hands and avoid any responsibility for the outcome, Costis thought dryly.

There was a gray light visible in the atrium at the end of the hallway when Phresine returned. Standing in front of Costis, with her back to the others in the hallway, Phresine held out a gold seal ring, set with a carved ruby.

“Come with me, please, Lieutenant,” she said.

Costis shook his head, surprised. He couldn’t leave the king’s door.

She looked up at him gravely and lifted the ring a little higher. It was the seal ring of the Queen of Attolia. Holding it, Phresine spoke with the voice of the queen. To disobey her was to disobey a direct order from the queen.

Costis looked over his shoulder at the closed door behind him. Then back at the queen’s attendant. She offered him no further explanation. He knew, even if he had told no one, that his orders to guard the king, day and night, had come through Enkelis, from the queen herself. He looked again at the crowd in the passage, trying and failing to imagine what might justify leaving the king and queen unguarded.

“My men?” he asked the attendant.

“Leave them here, if you wish. They are not needed.”

“Very well.” The king would be adequately guarded without him. He instructed the squad leader on duty to admit no one to the king’s apartments until the king or the queen summoned them. Then he followed the queen’s attendant.

In the queen’s opulent guardroom, he left his sword and the gun he had appropriated from another guard. No one proceeded further into the royal apartments armed. He followed his guide through a passage and various interconnected rooms to a small chamber, an anteroom by its furnishings, with a couch and a desk and a closed door. Knocking gently, Phresine pressed the latch and opened the door. She was a small woman, and Costis could easily see over her shoulder into the room. On a gilded chair, waiting for him, was the queen.