“Unfortunately, my nice warm country is consuming itself in a civil war, and there are too many people who would slit my throat if they could. One of whom being the king, who may still hold it against me that I was abstracted from his service by your nefarious, underhanded, incorrigible former Thief. My ‘confinement’ will have to continue until Sounis sends for me.”

“You heard this morning in the court about the progress Sounis has made. It won’t be long until things are settled and he negotiates your release. I will miss you when you go.”

He smiled at her fondly. “No less than I will miss you, Helen. Did you send for me for a reason?”

“I thought you might like to see Ornon’s latest report.”

“I would,” said the magus. “Did it come by the diplomatic pouch, or has he sent home another assistant ambassador?”

“It came by the regular route. He is growing anxious.”

“Gen is still acting the buffoon?”

“Yes, but Ornon has begun to worry more about getting what he wished for. You’ve heard about the fall of Erondites?”

“I did, but what has Ornon been wishing for?”

“Well, he didn’t approve of the tactics of his assistant, but he has been trying every way that he thinks might work to get Eugenides to take the reins of power. Mostly, I think he’s put his faith in rational argument, and he lectures Gen every opportunity he gets. It has only just dawned on him that if he succeeds, Eugenides will be King of Attolia.”

“And this is not happy news?”

“King,” Eddis emphasized, “of Attolia.”

“I see,” said the magus, and he did. “We will have a very powerful king, and a powerful queen as well, as our neighbors. But also, a committed ally,” the magus pointed out. “You did not release him from his oaths of loyalty to you.”

Eddis shook her head. “Eugenides never took any oaths of loyalty to me. The Thieves never swear loyalty to any ruler of Eddis, only to Eddis itself.”

She met the magus’s stunned look with a smile. “The Thieves of Eddis have always been uncomfortable allies to the throne, Magus. There is the niggling fear that if you fall out with a Thief, he might see it as his right and his responsibility to remove you. There are some checks, of course. There is only ever one Thief. They are prohibited from owning any property. Their training inevitably generates the isolation that makes them independent, but also keeps them from forming alliances that might become threats to the throne. It is not the folly you might think.”

“Why didn’t I know this?” the magus asked, his sense of his own scholarship deeply offended.

Eddis laughed. “Because no one ever talks about the Thief. Haven’t you noticed?”

The magus nodded. He had registered the superstitious reluctance to discuss the Thief or anything to do with the past Thieves of Eddis. It almost amounted to a taboo. He’d been trying to compile a more complete history of Eddis while he had access to the queen’s library and had been puzzled to find no mention of the Thieves there.

“I did hear a rumor about Eugenides and a comment he made to the Captain of his Guard,” he said.

“Now how did you pick that up?” Eddis asked, amused.

“I got one of your guards drunk,” the magus admitted. “But I am right? The Thief of Eddis has a certain freedom to do whatever he wants?”

“And an accompanying responsibility,” the queen pointed out.

“Even without an oath,” the magus said, “you cannot believe that Eugenides would ever betray you or your interests?”

Eddis looked away. “If Sophos is gone—” she said.

“We don’t know that he is,” the magus interrupted. Like Eddis and Eugenides, he refused to give up hope for the missing heir of Sounis. More than either of them, he felt conscience-stricken to have been safe in Eddis when Sophos disappeared, even though his presence in Sounis would have meant little to the king’s nephew. The King of Sounis had forbidden the magus to continue educating his heir. He had feared the magus’s influence and had sent Sophos away from the capital city to be tutored by someone else.

“But if he is gone, if he is dead, and not a hostage somewhere,” the Queen of Eddis asked, “would you see me marry Sounis, then?”

She turned back to the magus, but he, in turn, had looked away. He answered very reluctantly, “Yes.”

No more needed to be said. They both understood that if Eugenides was King of Attolia, he would face difficult and painful decisions that he would make in the best interests of nations, not individuals, no matter how much he might love them.

Relius had been moved from the infirmary, but not into his own apartment. In his own rooms he would have been in the center of all his webs of intrigue, surrounded by the papers and codes and histories of his work. Those rooms, no doubt, had been locked up. Once emptied of his personal effects, they would be turned over in their entirety to the new Secretary of the Archives. The thought gave him no pain. It was surprising how remote his past life now seemed. His thoughts only pained him when he struggled to bring his previous work to mind, and he did not do that much. If he considered anything at length, it was some memory of his childhood or the flight of a bird past his window. Mostly he lay in his bed as blank and free from thought as a newborn baby. His days were immeasurably restful.

Darker thoughts crowded in during the deepest hours of the night when he woke listening to the secret mystifying sounds of the sleeping palace. Many nights, the king was there. Pleasant, irreverent, and distracting, he eased Relius past nightmares and self-recrimination. Some nights he said nothing at all, just comforted with his presence. Other nights he related the events of his day, spewing out his insights and analyses of the Attolian court in a devastatingly funny critique that Relius suspected was as much a relief to the king as a distraction to Relius. Occasionally they talked about plays or poetry. Relius was surprised by the breadth of the king’s interest. He knew a great deal of history. Several nights they argued the interpretation of great events until Relius was exhausted.

The king’s arguments were spiced with “the magus says this” or “the magus thinks that.” Relius and the magus had crossed paths many times, never on academic matters, and Relius was fascinated by this revelatory view of an old opponent. He thought that when he had healed sufficiently, and withdrawn from the capital, he might write the magus a letter and open a correspondence on Euclid, or Thales, or the new idea from the north, that the sun and not the Earth might be in the center of the universe. As he healed and memories of the world he had moved in grew more distant, he imagined, very tentatively, a new life opening in front of him.

The lamp beside his bed was lit. If the king came this night, he would arrive soon. When the door opened after a light knock, he turned his head, but the greeting on his lips died, as his forgotten world crashed upon him like a breaking wave. The king stood in the doorway, but not alone. His arm was linked through the queen’s and he guided her into the room. She stood by the bedside while Eugenides fetched a chair, and then she sat. Relius lay on the bed watching, unable to look away from her as she seemed unable to break from his gaze.

Eugenides looked from one silent face to another. “You must speak sometime.” He brushed his wife’s cheek with his hand and bent to kiss her softly on the cheek. Some of Relius’s longing must have showed on his face because the king turned to him with a smile.