“I said that I don’t want to hear about Nahuseresh,” interrupted Attolia. “Give me the keys to the Thief’s cell,” and the seneschal obediently hunted through the rings of keys attached to his belt and pulled one ring free. He picked one key out of the rest and handed it to the queen.

“This key, Your Majesty.”

Careful not to let the key slip down among its similar fellows, Attolia took key and ring and strode away.

The guard looked at the seneschal, who looked back at him, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head.

Eddis, arriving in the courtyard, had seen the queen. She, too, had dropped from her horse and left the rest of her party milling behind her as she hurried up the steps to follow Attolia. She passed the seneschal, and the guard captain reached out a hand to hook her elbow.

“Now then, young man,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. “Where were you going?”

Eddis turned. The captain needed only one more look to see that he’d made an error. He withdrew his hand, and Eddis, without speaking, followed Attolia.

When she was gone, the captain looked again at the seneschal and grimaced, shaking his hand as if he’d touched something hot and burned it.

“That look would have boiled lead,” agreed the seneschal. “You’re not going to follow them?”

“Not I,” said the captain. “I will be very glad to be somewhere else if those two are crossing swords.”

He stepped out into the courtyard to engage his services in sorting out the growing chaos there as Eddisian and Attolian officers and soldiers arrived.

The key turned in a well-oiled lock, and the door opened easily. Inside the room Eugenides looked to be sitting on the floor, his legs curled beside him. His head and shoulders rested on the bed, one arm for a pillow. The hook on the other arm lay across his knees. His eyes were closed. He didn’t move. As Attolia waited in the doorway watching him, he didn’t stir or wake. On the floor beside the bed a tray held the remains of a meal. There was a wine cup. It had tipped over and broken, spilling the lees onto the floor.

Attolia stood, caught at the threshold like one who has trespassed on the mysteries and been turned to stone. She thought of Nahuseresh. How many poisons did he have at his command? How many allies did he have among her barons? How easy would it have been to arrange the death of a successful rival? She should have listened to what her seneschal wanted to tell her. He would have warned her of what she would find. Unadvised, the queen found it difficult to bear.

How cruel of the gods, she thought, to send her a boy she would love without realizing it. How appropriate that the bridegroom she would have chosen to marry be poisoned. Who could contest the justice meted out by the gods?

There were footsteps behind her. Eddis, Attolia thought, was not going to believe that anyone but Attolia was responsible for the boy’s death. She remained in the doorway while her rival queen stepped past her. Eddis slid by without touching her, without so much as brushing the flowing sleeves of her robe.

In the time it took for the other queen to move through the doorway, Attolia looked into the future. Eddis would return to war. Sounis would continue his attacks, the Mede would aid anyone but Attolia. None of it mattered. Attolia was alone as she had always been, but she had never felt so desolate. She cursed herself for her stupidity. Who was the Thief that she would love him? A youth, just a boy with hardly a beard and no sense at all, she told herself. A liar, she thought, an enemy, a threat. He was brave, a voice inside her said, he was loyal. Not loyal to me, she answered. Not brave on my behalf. Brave and loyal, the voice repeated. A fool, she answered back. A fool and a dead one. She ached with emptiness.

Eddis, having passed Attolia, halted between her and the bed. She looked at Eugenides’s body and turned back to the queen in the doorway. “He’s asleep,” she said.

Attolia took her eyes off the future to focus on Eddis.

“Just asleep,” Eddis reassured her.

At the sound of her voice Eugenides’s head turned slightly, but he didn’t wake. Attolia, seeing the movement, breathed again and pressed a hand to her chest where it hurt.

Eddis leaned over the Thief and poked him in the shoulder. “Wake up,” she said.

Struggling to do just that, Eugenides at first had no idea where he was. He’d slept very little since he and Xenophon’s soldiers had made the last part of their voyage by raft to land near Ephrata. He’d sailed along the coast, climbed up a cliff’s worth of stairs, ridden back down a mountainside, fought a useless skirmish, and walked back to Ephrata. After Attolia’s guards had locked him in the tiny room, he’d paced to keep himself awake, painfully caught between fear and a terrible hope as the night slowly passed. His arm had ached fiercely, but he hadn’t tried to remove the cuff. He’d been afraid he wouldn’t be able to get it back on, and no matter what happened, he told himself, he didn’t want to face his destiny tucking his stump into his sleeve and clutching the hook in his remaining hand like some sort of bizarre athletic trophy. Twice someone had brought him food, which he hadn’t eaten, and once a guard had marched him down the hall to relieve himself. The guard had not been friendly, and Eugenides hadn’t dared to ask for news.

Finally, in the afternoon, a day after he’d been locked up, he had seen from the narrow window an Eddisian soldier on the megaron’s wall walking with an Attolian. It had seemed like a good sign. Later a young woman came with another meal and told him that the other Eddisian prisoners had been released and the Mede ambassador had been locked in his rooms. She hadn’t known the results of the battle on the far side of the ridge, but for Eugenides these two things were news enough of success, and he had sat down on the floor next to the bed and eaten all the food she’d brought. There was no table and no chair. The serving girl had laughed, telling him he didn’t have to eat in a hurry, she would come back for the tray. Then she’d gone, and he’d been so tired even the pain in his arm couldn’t keep him awake. He’d rested his head for a moment, he thought, on the bed. He hadn’t moved for hours, hadn’t heard the key turn in the lock, hadn’t woken at the sound of voices.

When Eddis prodded him, his first fumbling thought was that his entire body ached and he must be in the king’s prison in Sounis. His next thought was that he’d left that prison and it must be Pol or Sounis’s magus prodding him. He didn’t want to talk to Pol. Pol would want him to go somewhere on the back of a horse.

“Go away,” he said.

Eddis sighed. “Eugenides,” she said, “wake up.”

“I would have expected a light sleeper,” Attolia commented.

“Usually he is,” Eddis said, growing more concerned.

“He looks—” Attolia hunted for the word. “Defenseless” came to mind, but it wasn’t the one she wanted, nor was “young,” though he looked even younger when he was asleep. “Quite guileless,” she said at last.

“Oh, yes,” said Eddis. “I’m always willing to forgive him anything—until he wakes up.” She leaned down and poked him again.

Eugenides finally opened his eyes and lifted his head. He looked confused and started to lift his right arm, then froze when the hook bumped his leg. He carefully lifted the other hand to rub his face. He looked from Eddis to the window, where the visible sky was already dark. He looked back, his gaze a little sharper, and said, “You forgot me.”