The following week brought the news that Sounis had negotiated the purchase of ships from an anonymous continental power willing to support his war with Attolia. The ships were scheduled to be delivered in time to break the blockade of Thegmis and to support a land invasion before the arrival of the summer windstorms. With one stroke Sounis had doubled the size of his navy and Attolia had lost her opportunity to make peace.

“He knew he had the ships coming when he attacked Thegmis,” said Eddis.

“Almost certainly.”

The minister of war spoke to Eddis’s council. “Attolia is fighting not only Sounis but her barons as well. She can’t command in person the land battle and direct the navy at the same time, and her new-model generals can’t run a war if her barons are going to work against Attolia’s interests. The defeat at Thegmis was entirely due to the interference of the baron Stadicos with Attolia’s orders. Sounis is already organizing to take back the islands that he’s lost. He’ll begin as soon as the new ships for his navy are delivered. If he controls the islands, Attolia will be hard pressed to stop a land invasion.”

“She’s an astute strategist. Are you sure that Sounis will retake the islands, even with superior firepower?” someone asked.

The minister of war shrugged. “Who’s to say? Sounis is not a subtle thinker, but he’s not a fool either. Lately we had hoped that Attolia would take Sounis and be content once he was no longer a threat to her throne, whereas Sounis’s goal has been to expand his hegemony. If he controls Attolia, he may still pursue war with Eddis, attacking us on two fronts. The only relief we could hope for would be the time it would take him to solidify his control over his new territory.

“However, the Mede presence off the coast is the real danger, and it has intensified. It’s doubtful that Sounis could in the near term execute so crushing a victory that he could capture the queen. If the queen flees to the Mede, they will make every effort to restore her to her throne as their puppet. They will have the excuse they need to land in force on this coast, and they will likely overrun Sounis and then Eddis as well. Even if they refrain from a direct attack, our situation will only worsen without an outlet for regular trade. So for us, the very worst possible outcome would be Attolia’s going to the Mede for help.”

The queen asked for comment, and talk went on all morning as every detail of the war was reexamined.

“Your Majesty,” said her Thief at last. He’d never spoken before at a council meeting, and those at the table turned to look at him in surprise.

“Our goal has been to dethrone Attolia without inviting in the Mede. If the instability of her rule were eliminated and Attolia had a government more stable but inimical to the Mede, it could mean an alliance between Eddis and Attolia that would drive back Sounis.”

“Yes,” Eddis agreed.

“I think,” Eugenides said quietly, “that I could eliminate the instability of the Attolian queen.”

“Go on,” said Eddis, and her council listened as Eugenides talked.

“Attolia isn’t in the capital. She is at Ephrata on the coast. There’s no real castle there. It’s a fortified megaron in the old style, which means it’s not as easy for me to move through as her palace is, for example, or the megaron in Sounis’s capital. However, Ephrata is not well defended. Sounis doesn’t yet have a navy to attack her by sea, and she has the lower ridges of the coastal hills as well as the Seperchia between her and the base of the pass from Eddis. Our army would have to break the blockade at the bottom of the pass and cross the river and those hills to reach her. She’s not much worried about an assault, and she keeps only a minimal garrison of her private guard at Ephrata.”

The council looked at him expectantly, holding their collective breath.

“If I could get into Ephrata, I could remove the queen.”

In the past he wouldn’t have needed help, and it would have been a matter for him and the queen to discuss alone. Now he spoke to her entire council and its individual members looked not at him but at their hands, or cast quick glances at one another, all of them remembering a younger Eugenides who’d sworn he’d never be a soldier and wanted nothing to do with the business of killing people.

“We would need a force large enough to seize Ephrata,” Eugenides said.

“How could we seize Ephrata?” one of the men at the table asked. “You just said she has her entire army camped between us and the Seperchia.”

Eugenides explained. As the intricacy of his plan unfolded, it became indisputably clear where he had been for the ten days he’d been away. The queen watched him with her eyes narrowed as he talked about taking a small force down to Attolia and bypassing her army camped at the Seperchia.

“She has border patrols along the base of the mountains.” One of the generals welcome at Eddis’s council meetings spoke up. “How would you get any significant group of soldiers past those without alerting her?”

“She doesn’t patrol the dystopia.”

“For obvious reasons.” The dystopia was the black, rocky ground left behind by the eruptions of the Sacred Mountain. The ground was fertile but too rough to cultivate and too dry. Its only regular water source was the unnavigable Aracthus River, which flowed down from the shoulder of the Sacred Mountain and directly across the dystopia to the fields between it and the banks of the much larger Seperchia River.

“How do you propose to get to the dystopia without being seen and then get across it?” the general asked.

Eugenides looked at his father.

“The Aracthus?” his father asked.

Eugenides nodded without speaking.

“What’s the garrison at Ephrata?” the minister of war asked.

“Fifty men,” Eugenides answered, and waited.

After a pause for thought his father nodded. “It could be done,” he said at last.

Eugenides turned back to the general. “You see,” he argued, “by taking a smaller force, we can avoid the Attolian army. We can seize the megaron without meaning to hold it because once the queen is gone, the megaron is irrelevant.”

“And you’re sure she’s there?”

“I am.”

“And that she would be there when we attacked?”

“That could be determined.”

Before anyone else could speak, the queen cleared her throat. All eyes except Eugenides’s turned to her. He looked at the floor.

“If you would please excuse us,” the queen said very quietly, “I will speak to my Thief.”

Unsure at the cause of her anger, her council hastily collected its papers and disappeared. Eddis looked across the empty table.

“Fifty men,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You counted?”

“As best I could.”

Eddis waved her hand at the empty seats around the table. “They think I sent you. They think you went to Attolia on my orders. I gave you permission to run away and hide, not to go creeping around Attolia’s megaron so that she can catch you again. Are you out of your mind?” she shouted, standing up, scattering the papers piled in front of her, knocking a pen so that it dripped ink in fuzzy black dots onto the tabletop.