“Admiring the view,” someone said.

Costis recognized one of Teleus’s squad from the prison cell the day before. “Did you see him?” Costis asked, too quickly. “Which way was he looking?”

The guard eyed him strangely. “I couldn’t see. What difference does it make?”

“Never mind,” said Costis hastily. “I’m glad you eventually got him back to his room.”

“Her Majesty’s rooms. It seems he is staying there.”

Another guard leaned into the conversation. “I heard that he wanted to leave again, but the queen’s attendants put lethium in his wine.”

“I heard they put it in his food. He refused the wine and fell asleep anyway.”

The guards laughed unkindly.

“So he lied,” said Costis with a forced laugh. “It’s what he does best.”

“Well, you would know, wouldn’t you?” said the man on his left.

“Tell us about the fight,” someone else said, and others around the table echoed. “Tell us about the fight with the assassins.”

Glancing up, Costis saw that Aristogiton had come to join them as well, a wine cup in his hand and his mouth full of bread. Costis smiled in delight. “I thought you were confined to quarters?”

Aris smiled back, his cheeks bumpy. “The queen reinstated me yesterday morning, as a squad leader still in the upper cohort, no less, at the same time that she reinstated Teleus as captain and threw out Enkelis.”

“She threw out Enkelis?”

But this was old news to the guard. They wanted to hear about the assassination attempt, and they wouldn’t be put off.

“Aristogiton says he arrived too late to see anything but the bodies on the ground. Tell us what really happened, Costis.”

Costis reluctantly told them what he had seen of the assassination attempt, that there were three men, that the king had taken the long knife away from one of them and used it to cut the throat of another. He’d then thrown the same knife at the last assassin as he tried to escape.

“He wasn’t armed himself?”

“How did he get the knife away, then?”

Costis shrugged. It hadn’t been a training demonstration. There hadn’t been time to observe carefully while he was running flat out toward the king. “It happened too fast.”

“I see,” said the man on his left.

He clearly saw something Costis didn’t, by the tone of his voice, but there was no time for more conversation. A barracks boy was at his elbow with a message. Costis was commanded to appear in the queen’s guardroom immediately. He got to his feet. “I have to go.” He excused himself, not wanting to give offense.

“Of course you do,” said someone down the table into his wine cup.

Costis hesitated. Whatever they were thinking, the men at the table clearly shared the same thoughts. Costis couldn’t stay to press the matter. He would ask Aris about it later.

He had to go back to his quarters for his breastplate and his sword. Then he hurried to the queen’s guardroom, where he took the sword off and racked it. An attendant who had clearly been waiting for him led him into the maze of interconnected rooms to the anteroom to the queen’s bedchamber.

The queen and Ornon were there.

“What he tolerates, he does so for your sake, Your Majesty.”

“What you are saying, Ambassador, is that he can be led, not driven.” The queen’s voice was chilly.

“Your Majesty, what I am saying is that I have never seen him driven, and rarely led either. However, if you were to twist him around your finger and could conceivably grind him under your heel in the process, you have to know that I would be eternally grateful. I would die a happy man.”

The queen chuckled at this admission, and Ornon smiled, but grew quickly grave. “His health was broken, Your Majesty. His constitution is not what it was before…”

“Before I cut his hand off.”

“Before you cut his hand off.” Neither of them would mince matters. “The wound is not serious, but he will be in real danger if there is infection, and we cannot afford to have him die. Your Majesty may choose to use other measures and keep this one in reserve. It is your decision, of course.” Costis doubted that this was true. Eddis held a sword at Attolia’s throat, and Costis had heard that there were agreements written into the treaty that gave the ambassador certain authorities superior to the queen’s.

The queen still considered.

Ornon said, “I have seen him jump across atriums four stories above the ground, a distance that would make your blood freeze, and I heard him once confess that he sometimes thinks the distance is beyond him. He always jumps, Your Majesty. The Thieves are not trained in self-preservation. I beg you would take my advice.”

“You could summon them on your own authority.”

“I would never presume.”

He was presuming, and he wasn’t going to give up until she agreed.

He smiled again. “He has accepted certain restraints; that doesn’t mean that they no longer chafe. If they come from another source, he might find them easier to bear.”

“Why?”

“Mostly because he can complain about them.”

The queen nodded, conceding the point.

“Then we are in agreement?”

“Very well.”

Costis and the attendant stepped hastily to the side, and Costis ducked his head as the queen passed. When she was gone, he started for the doorway, and stopped when Ornon reached for his sleeve.

“Your whole goal in life is to make sure the king stays in bed. Has that been made clear, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” Costis answered, wondering how the task had fallen to him, but too well trained to ask.

Ornon, smiling very slightly, answered the unasked question. “Obviously, His Majesty the king isn’t going to take direction from his attendants and would probably eviscerate them for giving it. He won’t take it from me either, but he might, just might, be more suggestible to your advice. If he does take offense and eviscerates you, well, then not much is lost. Politically speaking,” Ornon added, “of course.”

“Of course, sir,” Costis said politely.

“I suggest you try anything that works to keep him in bed, including bludgeoning him. Her Majesty’s attendants used lethium in his soup, but it was a short-term solution. He was up again in the middle of the night, while Her Majesty and her attendants slept. Do your best, Lieutenant, and don’t worry too much if he threatens to have you executed, because if you fail, it only means that it is your queen who will have your head.” Ornon patted him on the shoulder and stepped aside to allow Costis to pass.

It was apparent, even from across the room, that the king was worse off than he had been the day before. He lay in the bed with his head turned to one side. His face was pale, his normally dark skin yellowed. His eyes, when he opened them to look at Costis, were overly bright.

“What are you doing here?” he asked without lifting his head.

Costis bowed stiffly. “I am here to make sure that you stay in bed, Your Majesty, because if this offends you and you order me summarily executed, it is no loss. Politically speaking.”