“And that’s all?”

Eugenides looked at Eddis. “Why are you prying all of a sudden?”

“I have an interest in your welfare,” Eddis said dryly, “and the welfare of two countries. One way or another this government must be stable if Eddis is to prosper.”

Eugenides stared at nothing. “I can’t leave her there all alone, surrounded by stone walls.” He looked at Eddis, hoping she would understand. “She’s too precious to give up,” he said.

“But she won’t talk to you.”

“No,” Eugenides said painfully. “And she won’t listen to me either. And if she won’t listen to me, how can I tell her I love her?”

“If she won’t listen, how can you lie to her?” Eddis asked.

Eugenides had been looking up at the roofs of the palace. He dropped his eyes suddenly to look at Eddis. “I wasn’t thinking of lying to her,” he said.

“How can she know?” asked Eddis. “She is not in the habit of trusting people. Why should she suddenly believe anything you say? You might unlock the door for her; you can’t make her walk through.”

The faults in Eugenides’s character were too well known for him to need to make any reply. “She’d believe you,” he said after some consideration.

“She would not,” said Eddis.

“She would.”

“Eugenides,” Eddis protested.

“She would,” Eugenides insisted. “You said you could settle on a treaty with a wedding or without one. You have no reason to lie to her. She would believe you.”

“Eugenides, I am the queen of Eddis, not a matchmaker.” If she had been a matchmaker, he would have been home, properly married to Agape.

The Thief only leaned back against the stone railing behind him and crossed his arms. He waited until Eddis threw up her hands. “All right,” she said. “I’ll ask for a private interview. I’ll tell her we can have a treaty without a wedding if she would prefer it, and we’ll see what she says.”

“So the slipper is on the other foot now?” Attolia asked Eddis in the privacy of her apartments when the two queens had met, alone for the first time since the hillside above Rhea. “First I am forced to accept him, and now you try to draw him back?”

“And you will keep him to spite me?” Eddis asked. Attolia realized that the mountain queen was well aware of her jealousy.

“Isn’t he your most prized possession?” Attolia asked.

“He’s not a possession,” Eddis said, her voice hard.

“But you want to keep him for yourself?” Attolia suggested. “Don’t you?”

“Make him king of Eddis? I think you mistake our friendship,” Eddis answered.

“No, not king of Eddis,” said Attolia. “But you would keep him safe, marry him to some member of your court, have him to dance attendance on you indefinitely, tied safely to leading strings?”

Eddis scowled. “No,” she said.

“Why not?” Attolia asked.

“It would kill him,” said Eddis. “He cannot draw back now.”

“Then why are you here?” Attolia asked, her smile insincere.

“I don’t know,” said Eddis, stung, and she stood to leave.

“Wait,” said Attolia. Eddis paused. “Please,” said Attolia. Eddis sat again, but Attolia rose and went to the window and was quiet for a long time.

“I like you,” said Attolia at last, speaking to the window. “I didn’t think I would. Still, to have you here in my palace galls me every day. I see you surrounded, even here, by people you can trust with your life. You are safer than I am, and it is my home, not yours. Do you understand?” she asked.

“Yes.” Eddis nodded and waited.

“And what part of your resources can I have for myself? Your Thief. I have so little of faith or trust or friendship, and I should let him steal it from me?”

“Eugenides doesn’t want to steal anything from you.” Eddis fumbled for words.

“How can you understand?” Attolia asked as she turned to face Eugenides’s queen. “He hasn’t lied to you.”

Eddis looked at her, surprise showing in her face. “Of course he has,” she said.

“He lies to you?” Attolia asked.

“Constantly,” said Eddis. “He lies to himself. If Eugenides talked in his sleep, he’d lie then, too.”

Attolia looked stunned. “And you can’t tell?”

Eddis thought for a moment. “I sometimes believe his lies are the truth, but I have never mistaken his truth for a lie. If he needs me to believe him, he has his own way of showing his veracity.”

“Which is?”

“When he is being honest with you, you’ll know,” said Eddis, and nodded reassuringly to Attolia.

Attolia shook her head. “Let us face the truth. He is too young, and I am too old, and there is the not inconsequential fact that I cut off his hand. Try to tell me that this is not his revenge.”

Eddis stood up to face her and to look in her eyes. “He is not too young. You are not old. You only feel old because you have been unhappy for so long, and this is not his revenge,” she said.

“What kind of fool would I have to be to believe it was anything else?”

“I wouldn’t have allowed it,” Eddis told her.

“You wouldn’t have allowed it? Isn’t it your revenge, too?”

“Irene—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You were the princess Irene the first time we met.”

“It means ‘peace,’” Attolia said. “What name could be more inappropriate?”

“That I be named Helen?” Eddis suggested.

The hard lines in Attolia’s face eased, and she smiled. Eddis was a far cry from the woman whose beauty had started a war.

“Irene, I wouldn’t let Eugenides throw his life away on revenge no matter how he had been maimed.” Attolia looked away, but Eddis went on. “And if he says you are not a fiend from hell, I will accept his judgment.” Attolia slowly paced across the room. Eddis spoke again. “Irene? What choice do you have but to believe in him?”

“I might have to marry him,” Attolia said in a low voice. “I don’t have to believe anything.”

“Yes, you do,” said Eddis. “If you are going to marry him, you have to believe him. He isn’t a possession. He isn’t mine to keep or to give away. He has free choice, and he has chosen you. You must choose now. Between the two of us we can reach a treaty without a wedding. You don’t have to marry him, but if you choose to marry him, you have to believe him.”

Attolia turned, and Eddis thought that behind her mask the queen might be afraid, and so she finished lightly. “You have to believe him, because he’s going to have your entire palace up in arms and your court in chaos and every member of it from the barons to the boot cleaners coming to you for his blood, and you are going to have to deal with it.”

Attolia smiled. “You make him sound like more trouble than he is worth.”

“No,” said Eddis thoughtfully. “Never more than he is worth.”