“What possible use could you have for a one-handed former Queen’s Thief?”

“You’re not a former queen’s Thief; you’re my Thief. So far I’m still queen.”

“You know what I meant.”

“It’s a lifelong title. You’d be Queen’s Thief if you were bedridden, and you know it.”

“All right, what do you want a useless one-handed Thief for?”

“I want you not to be useless.”

“I can’t steal things without two hands,” Eugenides said bitterly. “That’s why she cut one off.”

The queen of Attolia was only ever “she.” The name Attolia rarely passed his lips, as if Eugenides couldn’t bear the taste of the word in his mouth.

“There are a lot of things that a person with two hands couldn’t steal,” Eddis said.

“So?”

“Surely if it’s impossible to steal them with two hands, it’s no more impossible to steal them with one. Steal peace, Eugenides. Steal me some time.”

She sat back in the chair. “Sounis has pushed Attolia to the brink of a chaotic civil war. No one could claim that she’s been anything but brilliant, holding her throne for this long. Her people support her, but her barons hate her, ostensibly because she rules in her own right and has refused to take one of them for a king. What they really hate is the success she has had at centralizing the power of her throne and preventing them from running their estates as their own private kingdoms. But she has reached the end of her resources. She invited the Mede to a treaty. You know that’s why I sent you to Attolia. If she takes help from the Mede, if they land on this coast, they will eat us alive: Attolia, Sounis, and Eddis. I sent you because I needed to know how close her contacts with the Mede had become, because Sounis will not stop his attempts to unseat Attolia.”

“Go to war with Sounis.”

“I can’t. Sounis is too strong. Eddis and Attolia together might beat him, but Attolia won’t have anything to do with Eddis. She hates me too much, and she’s too much concerned trying to keep a grip on her own country.

“She came to my coronation, you know,” Eddis explained. “She took me aside and gave me a lot of advice on how to hold on to the throne: raise taxes so that I’d have the money to put down insurrection, increase the size of my army, and purge my council regularly. Trust no one, and execute any threats, no matter how insignificant, immediately.”

Eugenides stared, and the queen shrugged. “She’d only been on her throne a few years. If Eddis had been anything like Attolia, it would have been good advice. She’s hated me for not taking her advice and for having a country where I didn’t need to. And she’s hated me because I have you, Eugenides, to keep Sounis and his corruption out of my court.”

She stood and stuffed her hands in the pockets of her trousers and paced the room, pausing to rise on tiptoe to look out the window. Eugenides wondered when she’d started wearing trousers again. Thinking about it, he couldn’t recall seeing her in a dress except at the formal dinners.

“You’d never threatened her directly, but you were a threat to Sounis,” said Eddis. “If Sounis had someone else to harass, he’d have less time to devote to Attolia. He’s been barking up our tree from the moment she cut your hand off.” She turned back to Eugenides.

“Sounis could be entangled for years trying to secure power for himself here in Eddis. He’d find us easy to bite off but not easy to swallow.” She smiled thinly. “Attolia could have had the same result by killing you, but she wanted something that would hurt you and me more.” She looked at him. “You know all this,” she said.

“Most of it,” Eugenides admitted. “I didn’t know why Attolia hated you.”

“Get dressed,” said his queen, “while I order breakfast, and I’ll tell you some more.”

“Without you to deter Sounis, he was ready to begin a campaign to weaken Eddis. I think my court is too loyal to be bought with his money, but his real power is trade. We depend on imports. Sooner or later he was going to stop those. And if Attolia was trading with the Mede, we wouldn’t get any supplies from her.”

“I know this,” said Eugenides.

“Of course. What you don’t know was that I’d been thinking for some time about deposing the queen of Attolia.”

Eugenides blinked.

“It is a measure of complete desperation to unseat a neighboring monarch, and there isn’t a successor that’s much more palatable, but Attolia has been growing more and more unstable as she tries to counter Sounis, and with the Mede hanging over us like vultures, instability is more dangerous than anything else,” said Eddis, pacing the library. “Then she cut off your hand, and I stopped caring if she ended hanging from her own palace walls. Every single person in Eddis agreed with me. Your father and I thought that if Sounis had an opportunity to install a puppet government in Attolia, and if it could be done too quickly for the Mede to interfere, Sounis would leave Eddis alone.”

The queen shrugged and admitted, “In that sense, we are no better than Attolia. To save Eddis, I’d throw her country to that dog Sounis without hesitation.”

“And?”

“The magus, of all people, stopped us in our tracks. He told Sounis that Attolia would treat with the Mede if Eddis and Sounis both attacked her. He may be right, but I believe she’s treating with the Mede anyway. I hoped that if they had to deal with an internal war and an external one, the country would close ranks against the Mede and against the queen as well. They would accept a puppet king from Sounis, at least for a few years, and we would be rid of her. The Mede emperor cannot interfere without an invitation from the acting government of the country without breaking his treaty with the Greater Powers of the Continent. The Greater Powers don’t want the Mede on this coast any more than we do, and they are also ready to interfere at the first excuse, but the last thing we need is to have the conflict fought out on our ground.”

“So what’s happening now?”

“Sounis wants Eddis and Attolia both. I offered him a chance to help me, but he’s choosing instead to join Attolia, although he hasn’t committed himself yet. She’s going to try to bring an army up the pass when the weather breaks. It will be slow, and most of the losses will be hers; there’s no room for her to maneuver. Should she get to the main fortifications, Sounis will bring his army up the other side of the pass. He wants to know that the defenses on his side of the Seperchia won’t be reinforced before he attacks. We’ve evacuated the people from the coastal mountains and moved the livestock over the bridge to this part of the country. We’re up to our eyeballs in sheep right now. If we don’t start slaughtering them soon, they’ll have grazed out the pastures. The silver mines have been packed with explosives that can be detonated if we’re going to lose them.

“Trade has been suspended through the pass. I did that,” said Eddis. “I thought that I might as well do it before one of the lowlanders did. Goods are being moved by ship through the coastal islands. There has been an unsurprising increase in piracy,” she said dryly.

“Can we stop the Attolian army?” Eugenides asked.