“Jealous, Relius?” With no sign of embarrassment, or of jest, he brushed the former secretary’s hair back and kissed him as well.

It was laughable, surely, but as the king left, Relius blinked the water from his eyes. The kiss had been gentle, and the king’s eyes as he delivered it had not smiled.

The flame in the lamp guttered, the sound unnaturally loud. The queen spoke at last, saying softly, “I failed you, Relius.”

“No,” Relius protested. He lifted himself on his elbows, disregarding the dull aches such movement reawakened. It was imperative that the queen not mistake his culpability. “I failed. I failed you.” He added awkwardly, “Your Majesty.”

Sadly, she asked, “Am I no longer your queen, then?”

Shocked, he whispered, “Always,” breathing his soul into the word.

“I should have known that,” she said. “I should have had more hope for the future instead of re-creating the past.”

“You had no choice,” Relius reminded her.

“So I thought, that it was another necessary sacrifice, like so many we have made together. I was wrong. I did trust you, Relius, all these years; I shouldn’t have stopped.” She leaned forward and straightened the covers, smoothing the wrinkles from the white sheeting. “We cannot forgive ourselves,” she said. Relius knew that he would never forgive himself, that he didn’t deserve forgiveness, but he remembered what Eugenides had said about the queen’s needs. He had considered it during the lonely night hours in the infirmary. “Perhaps we could forgive each other?” the queen suggested.

Relius pressed his lips together, but nodded. He would accept a pardon he knew was undeserved if by doing so he could relieve his queen of any part of her burden.

The queen asked, “What do you think of my king now. Is he impetuous? Inexperienced?…Naive?” She repeated his words back to him. Her voice, reassuringly calm, achingly familiar, eased a little of his distress and shame.

“He is young,” Relius said hoarsely.

It was Attolia’s turn to look surprised, the slightest lifting of one eyebrow.

Relius shook his head. Tongue-tied, he had misspoken. “I meant that for ten years, or twenty…” He hesitated to put his thoughts into words, as if speaking them aloud might work against his hopes.

Attolia understood. “A golden age?”

Relius nodded. “He doesn’t see it. He doesn’t want to be king.”

“Did he say so?”

Relius shook his head. He hadn’t needed to be told. “We talked about poetry,” he said, still speaking hesitantly, “and about a new comedy by Aristophanes about farmers. He said you had chosen a small farm for me, and suggested I write a play about it.” Relius was a man whose entire life had depended on insight. “He didn’t marry you to become king. He became king because he wanted to marry you.”

“He says he will not diminish my power or rule over my country. He intends to be a figurehead.”

“Don’t let him,” Relius said, and then pulled himself back, in case he had overreached. Gently his queen waved away his concern.

“Am I not sovereign enough, Relius?” she said. There was no smile on her face, but it was there in her voice, and Relius, who knew her every intonation, heard it and breathed more easily.

The queen said, “No matter how securely I hold the reins of power, so long as I had no husband, my barons had to fight, afraid that someone else might seize that power. Only if they could be certain that that goal was out of their reach, and out of their neighbors’ reach as well, would there be peace, Relius. Oh, there are stupid men among them, and a few warmongers, but mostly, you and I know that they fight me because they are afraid of each other. If there were a king, secure in his power, the barons would unite.

“I have bought all the time I can against the coming of the Mede,” she said. “If Attolia is not united when they strike again, then we are all, king, queen, patronoi, and okloi, lost. But it is not up to me alone, Relius, whether or not Eugenides will be king or just appear as one.”

“He refuses?”

“He refuses to either defend or assert his position. He just…looks the other way and pretends he doesn’t hear. He cannot be led, or driven. The Eddisian Ambassador has tried everything, I think, including extortion, and failed. I think he is afraid.”

“Ornon or the king?”

“Both. Ornon looks more and more like a man at the edge of a precipice every day. But I think Eugenides is afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of failing,” said Attolia, as if that fear, at least, Relius should have recognized. “Of stealing my power from me.”

“You would only be stronger.”

“I know,” Attolia soothed him. “I did not say that I am afraid. He is, though, I think. Afraid of his own desire for power. He is not unused to wielding power, but it has always been in secret. I could, of course, command him to be king. He will give me anything I ask.”

“That would only confirm your sovereignty, not his,” Relius objected.

“So,” agreed the queen.

Relius considered her, sitting beside him. She didn’t seem unduly concerned. “I am confident, My Queen, that if you have met your match, so has he.”

“He is stubborn,” Attolia reminded him, “and very strong.”

“Surely he revealed himself in the fall of Erondites?” Relius asked.

“The barons have come trooping through my bedchamber, to have a new look at him.”

“And?” prompted Relius.

“He simpers. He preens.”

Relius snorted. “I suppose that the barons reported that the plan must have been yours all along, that the king was your witless tool.”

“So.” The queen nodded. She looked down at her hands, lying quiet in her lap, while Relius imagined the scene the king must have enacted, no different from the scenes he himself had witnessed when the king was playing the fool.

“You must force him into the open,” Relius warned her.

She raised her head, and he was aghast to see her eyes bright with tears. “I am tired of driving people and forcing them to my will. I am like a war chariot with bladed wheels, scything down those closest to me, enemies and my dearest friends alike.”

“I failed you, My Queen,” Relius reminded her.

“You served me. I rewarded you with torture and, if not for his intervention, with death. He loves me, and I reward his love by forcing on him something he hates. In the evening, after we dance, he rarely returns to the throne; he dances with others or he moves from place to place through the room. The court thinks he is trying to be gracious, sharing his attention. Only I see that he moves always toward the empty spot and the court moves always after him. He is like a dog trying to escape its own tail. He indulged himself in one brief moment of privacy and almost died of it. Relius, he hates being king.”

Relius thought of his companion of the past nights and their wide-ranging conversations and the king’s laughter.

Still diffident, he disagreed with his queen. “The Thieves of Eddis have always been set apart, Your Majesty. He has had very little company in his life, and he isn’t used to it. But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness. Drive him out. Whether he wants to or not, he belongs in the open. The world needs to see what a king he is.”