Attolia ceded Ephrata. When she learned that the proceeds of the ten seized Attolian trade caravans had gone to Eugenides, she tabled her demands to have the monies restored to her treasury. Despite the basilisk stares of Eddis’s minister of war, a military accord was reached in a matter of days. The arrangements for a wedding finally began. And then halted when the queen of Attolia balked at the matter of consecrating an altar to Hephestia for the ceremony.

When pressed on the point, she uncharacteristically fled. Dropping the pen she held, she said, “There will be no altar to Hephestia in Attolia,” and stalked from the room. Eddis and Eugenides, the ministers and aides, both Eddisian and Attolian, were left looking at one another in surprise and consternation.

Eddis excused herself, and summoning Eugenides with a wave of her hand, she followed the Attolian queen. Once in the corridor Eddis stopped.

“The throne room,” Eugenides suggested.

They found her there. The empty room echoed their footsteps as they crossed the smooth marble floors. Eddis couldn’t help craning her head to look around as she did each time she saw the room. Attolia’s throne room was blue and white and gold instead of the more somber red and black and gold of Eddis’s. The mosaics on the floor, the high ceilings with windows at the tops of the walls to flood the room with light, made it a more beautiful room even than the newer throne room and banquet hall in Eddis. Attolia didn’t need to eat in her throne room; she had other, even larger rooms for dining and dancing. Glancing at Eugenides, Eddis thought he walked through the room as if it were so familiar as to be unworthy of his attention. Perhaps it was. Attolia ignored them until they were standing in front of her.

“There will be no altar consecrated to Hephestia,” she said.

Eugenides continued up the steps to the dais and took her hand. “It is a token to the gods I believe in, no more.”

“No,” said Attolia.

“Because you do not believe?”

“Oh, no,” said Attolia bitterly. “Because I believe and I do not choose to worship. I will have no altar dedicated to her and no sacrifice made.”

“I made a vow,” Eugenides said, “promising this if I became king—”

“No,” said Attolia.

“Why?” shouted Eugenides.

Pale with fury, Attolia pulled her hand away from Eugenides and clenched her fists. “How did I catch you when you hid in my palace? How did I know you moved through the tunnels for the hypocaust? How did I know how you entered the town and how you would escape? How did I know?” she shouted.

Eugenides had grown pale as well. “I made a mistake,” he said.

“You made a mistake,” Attolia agreed. “You trusted your gods. That was your mistake. Moira,” Attolia said, spitting out the name. “Moira, the messenger of your Great Goddess, came and told me where you would be and that if I would have my men nail boards between the trees above the curve in the river after dark that day, then I would catch you there. She came back later to warn me not to offend the gods. Moira,” she said again, “in the guise of one of my attendants, told the Mede where to find you in the mountains. How else could he have found you there at the Pricas? I do not worship your gods, and I will not be married before that altar.”

Eugenides stared at nothing, numb. If he felt anything, it was that he was falling through space, as all thieves fall when their god forsakes them. Without a word, and without meeting Attolia’s eyes, he left. Walking quickly, he crossed the empty room without turning his head. Attolia stood and would have followed him, but Eddis stopped her with a hand on her arm.

Attolia looked at her. “You knew,” she said.

“That he had been betrayed by the gods? I guessed,” said Eddis.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EUGENIDES MOVED LIKE A SLEEPWALKER down a hallway he didn’t see, remembering the sound of hammers as he had hidden in bushes near the city walls. Remembering, he began to move faster, down the long hallway to the kitchens, through them without speaking to a soul, and out to the animal pens in one of the lower courtyards of the palace. There were pigs kept there, and goats. He demanded a kid from the puzzled stable hand and carried it, wriggling, back into the palace.

There were many empty rooms in the palace. Eugenides knew of one that had been a solarium until recent building had obstructed its sunlight and left it too cold and too dark to be useful. With no anterooms between it and the hallway outside, and with a row of load-bearing pillars dividing the room in two, it was awkwardly sized and located. It was rarely used and had made a good hiding place on his previous visits. There was a stone table that would do for an altar. Anyone could make an altar, anyone could consecrate it with a sacrifice. Not everyone received a response from the gods, but Eugenides never doubted his invocation would be answered.

Shifting the kid under his right arm, Eugenides took a candle from a sconce as he walked. He passed people as he climbed back up the staircase. No one spoke to him. People stepped away and watched quietly as he passed. He climbed faster and hurried down a hallway to the empty room and kicked its door closed behind him.

The table was to the right of the door, pushed against the wall. The window was opposite him, its length divided into unequal thirds and each third into many separate panes. Once it had looked out on the acropolis that rose behind the city. Now all that could be seen through it was the blank wall on the opposite side of an interior courtyard. The sun was still high, and a beam cleared the rooftops to light the sill of the window and the dust motes floating in the air.

The kid bleated as he squeezed it under one arm while he fumbled for matches to light the candle. He had a silver match case that he could open with one hand. When the candle was lit, he tilted it to let wax fall onto the table, and chanted an invocation to the Great Goddess, deliberately choosing the one he had sung over and over in the queen’s prison cell. Once sufficient wax had pooled on the tabletop, he jammed the candle down into it until it was well stuck. Then he swung the kid out from under his arm and onto the table. It kicked, but he pinned it with his arm while he freed his knife. Deftly he slit its throat, and as the blood spilled across the table with no ceremonial bowl to catch it, he turned the knife and slid it into the body just below the cartilage at the top of the rib cage. Then he dropped to his knees. He rested his forehead against the bloody edge of the table and his forearms on the tabletop and waited.

The blood cooled and dried. He went on waiting, unmoving, growing stiff and cold.

“The door won’t open, Your Majesty,” said one of the servants.

The door had no lock, but Attolia wasn’t surprised that it was fastened closed. She hadn’t expected otherwise.

“Leave him,” she said. “He is talking to his gods.” The servants bowed and dispersed, murmuring a little among themselves, and Attolia knew that the news of the mad Eugenides would percolate through the palace, like water through soil. Attolians did not invest much belief in their religion. They dutifully attended temple festivals and used their gods for cursing and little else.

Eugenides knelt against the altar, his body beginning to ache and his mind numb until the daylight faded and the room was dark except for the light of the candle. A hand rested for a moment on his shoulder. He looked up to see Moira beside him. “How did I fail the gods, that they betrayed me to Attolia?” he asked.