One morning, she’d found it moved slightly from its resting spot and beside it a pair of matching ruby earrings. She’d thought at first that it was some flattery delivered with the connivance of one of her attendants, perhaps from the newly arrived ambassador of Medea, or one of her court currying favor, but before she could interrogate the women of her chamber, a nagging suspicion grew that it was not a gift of flattery, but the Thief of Eddis laughing at her again. She never wore the rubies. They were kept in their own velvet case beside the one that held the headband.

In the moonlight she sighed again and climbed stiffly out of her chair and went to look at them. She opened the case and flicked them across the velvet lining with the nail of her forefinger, resisting touching them as if they might be hot. She snapped the case closed, laid her robe over a chair, and went back to bed and finally to sleep.

“She’s retaken Thegmis.” Nahuseresh sat in his office, tapping the edge of a folded message against his knee.

Kamet stopped in the doorway. “Will you have the excuse you need to land?” he asked.

Nahuseresh picked a letter from the emperor off the secretary’s desk. The emperor wanted news of progress and would not be pleased to hear that Thegmis was once again safe in Attolia’s hands. The ambassador didn’t answer his secretary’s question but spoke his thoughts aloud.

“I haven’t seen enough of her generals. She is clever enough to hide them from me, sending this one away as she speaks to that one, never leaving an opportunity for me to study them. If I knew which one planned the retaking of Thegmis, I could kill him and cripple her. She’d offer us anything then, desperate for help.”

“And if you can’t identify the generals that she depends on, and you can’t cut off her military support, what then?” Kamet asked. “The emperor will not start a war with the Continental Powers. They are bound by treaty to defend this coast if you attack it.”

“We’ll have our invitation, one way or another, and once invited in, we will be hard to send home again,” said the Mede. “But, Kamet, I’ve noticed in you a distressing tendency to err in your pronouns of late. You say ‘if you attack,’ instead of ‘if we attack.’”

The secretary dropped his eyes and held very still. “Forgive me,” he said.

“Of course,” said the Mede. He looked through narrowed lids at his secretary. “Are you tempted by the barbarian indulgences, Kamet?”

The slave shook his head slightly, still looking at the table in front of him. “I hope I have not made you angry.” He glanced up and dared a self-effacing smile.

“Good heavens,” said Nahuseresh. “Kamet, you’re love-struck.”

Kamet dropped his eyes again. “She’s very beautiful,” he said in his own defense.

Nahuseresh laughed. “She is. She has beauty even those cats in the imperial court would admire, but I hadn’t expected to see you fall victim to a pretty face.”

The secretary shrugged, too wise to say that he sympathized with the barbarian queen as her choices grew fewer and her freedom slipped away.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE ROYAL ENGINEER WATCHED THE water pouring through the sluice of the dam at the Hamiathes Reservoir and reported his measurements to the queen of Eddis. With the heavy spring rains and the snowmelt from the mountains, the gates of the reservoir remained open. To close them would risk their destruction.

When the water flow slackened, it was already summer in the lowland countries and Attolia and Sounis continued their war, leaving Eddis penned in by part of Attolia’s army at one side of the mountain pass and by Sounis’s army at the other. Attolia retreated from the islands Sounis attacked, waiting patiently for her opponent to make a mistake. Finally the engineer reported that it would be safe to shut the gates on the flow of the Aracthus, reducing the river to a small stream, at least for the length of a day, or a night, without risking damage to the dam. Eddis’s army ordered itself for a march from the top of the main pass down to Attolia, leaving a smaller force to defend the main bridge in the event that Sounis decided to attack Eddis while her troops were committed elsewhere.

Campfires at night betrayed the size of the Eddisian force massing against Attolia, and her army in turn began its preparations. Attolia had expected that Eddis must make some effort to drive back her enemies or face starvation the following winter.

“She has made no alliance with Sounis? You are certain?” she asked the secretary of her archives.

“Nothing is ever certain, Your Majesty.” Relius had grown more cautious since the renaissance of the Thief of Eddis. “But if Sounis has made any agreements with Eddis, no one else knows of them. That is not to say that he will miss an opportunity to attack once you are involved in a land war.”

“We can hold the coast,” Attolia said, unworried, “and if we lose the islands, we will eventually gain them back again. So long as we hold Thegmis and Solon, he can’t easily pursue a land war. Eddis has made a tactical error, I think, if she believes that we will be pinched in a vise between her and Sounis.”

“Will you use the Mede’s ships to keep Sounis’s navy away?”

Attolia shook her head. “No. We don’t need their help for this.”

As the sun was setting, the engineer at the Hamiathes Reservoir ordered the main sluice gates on the dam lowered and watched carefully as the work was accomplished. The water strained against the wooden gates and forced its way in jets through the narrow gaps between the sluices, but the gates held. The royal messenger took the news to the palace, and the men waiting there began to move. Eddis spoke one last time to the general and the officers in charge of the men, and to her Thief. When she had given them their last instructions, she sent them on their way. She recalled the Thief as he reached the steps up to the door.

“My Queen?” He turned back, unsure what she required.

“Only for that,” said Eddis.

Eugenides smiled and bowed his head. “My Queen,” he said again, perhaps for the last time. Then he was gone.

Behind the last rush of the Aracthus, with their feet wet in the persistent trickle from the reservoir, a line of soldiers began their difficult journey in darkness, many glancing over their shoulders at the dam behind them until it disappeared from sight.

Because any torches might have been seen for miles across Attolia and reported to the capital, the stream of men twisted down the mountain in single file with only the light provided by the full moon. The canyon of the empty riverbed rose on either side. There were few breaks in the slick stone walls, and the shadows had a solidity that deceived the inattentive. The riverbed under their feet was rocky and uneven, and many were burdened with ladders as well as their weapons and gear. Those in the rear struggled with block and tackle, roughly squared wooden beams, wooden carriages and cannon.

From time to time they passed an officer looking up the river and counting minutes on a pocket watch. The men cast anxious looks up the river themselves and waded as quickly as they were able through waters that were sometimes as deep as their waist. Eugenides stayed just ahead of the cannon and worried no less than the queen’s soldiers.