“He is pest-ridden, Your Majesty. He needs to be got rid of.”
“Petrus said he had an infection in his throat. Galen and Petrus agree my disease is in my stomach. It’s the only thing they agree on. It could not be Pheris who made me ill. He’s never even been close.”
He lied. I knew by then who had come with the lemon water in the night, even if he sounded very different by day.
“Go get your bedding and bring it here,” he said to me, and over the protests from the attendants, I did as I was told.
They were still arguing when I returned with my rolled-up blankets. The king pointed to a corner, and I retreated there to make a nest and climb into it. None of the attendants disagreed with Medander’s recommendation. They wanted me gone, but the king wouldn’t listen.
“He is Erondites’s grandson and heir,” said the king, “and I have conceived a great desire to see him live to adulthood. Now all of you go away.”
“I will stay with the king,” said Petrus officiously. Galen opened his mouth, and I could tell he meant to say that he would stay with the king. Petrus had been kind to me and I hoped the king would choose him, but he refused them both. “All of you go,” he said. “Don’t make me say it again.”
“May I stay, Your Majesty?” asked Ion, sounding deferential. I noticed the contemptuous glance Xikos and Xikander sent his way when the king said yes.
Ion sat in a chair as the room fell quiet. “Would you like me to read something, Your Majesty? Or I could get my instrument.”
The king shook his head. “Send for some food.”
“Of course.” Ion leapt back up. “Some broth, Petrus said, or some fruit.”
“Some lamb in plum sauce,” said the king. “They were making it for tonight.”
“Your Majesty, no.”
“Lamb,” he whispered. “Plum sauce,” almost mouthing the words.
When the food came, he appeared to have changed his mind. Waving away the platter Ion carried, he said, “Give it to the little Erondites.”
I sat in my nest of blankets and ate everything, even the meat, which had been cut up into very small pieces and was easy enough to chew. By the time I was done, the king was asleep and my own eyes were closing. I pushed the tray away and fell asleep, not waking until there was a quiet knock at the door in the morning.
“Your Majesty,” said Hilarion, stepping into the room, “your cousin who is Eddis wishes to speak to you.” Eddis was already in the doorway behind him, coming in whether she was welcome or not. Ion, who’d spent the night in the chair, rose to his feet, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. Eddis smiled at him, and he ducked his head and withdrew to the door before he remembered me.
“The little m—Erondites, shall I take him out?”
Eddis looked at me very seriously. When she smiled, I found myself smiling back.
“I think we can rely on his discretion,” said Eddis, and Ion bowed and left.
When the door closed behind him, the king said to Eddis, “You are leaving?”
“Sounis and I will return to Eddis as quickly as we can, to reduce my worries about someone dying in the near future.”
“I doubt very much that I am going to die.”
“You aren’t the one I’m worried about.”
“That bad?”
“Cleon has called for a trial.”
“Oh, Cleon,” said Gen. “Stupid as ever.”
“He insists you cannot be allowed to rule over me without the approval of the Great Goddess.” Eddis dropped into the seat Ion had vacated and slouched down with her legs crossed at the ankle, much as the king habitually did.
“Does he expect me to rise from my deathbed to fight with him?” the king asked.
“I thought you said you weren’t dying.”
“I’ve reconsidered.”
“He says that the illness is a sign that you do not have Hephestia’s favor.”
The king growled and I hunched deeper into the corner, pulling my blankets around me.
“Alternatively,” said Eddis, “he says you are malingering. You don’t dare to stand trial.”
“I am not, Eddis,” said the king flatly.
“Nonetheless.”
“No. Not nonetheless. You are Eddis. Go smack him.”
Eddis shook her head. “Smacking people will not persuade them. I must go home and explain myself and see if they will ever forgive me for what I’ve done.”
“Nonsense,” said the king. “Eddis would not forsake you if you’d sold them all for cannon fodder. It’s me they hate. Is your Mede ambassador going to remain with you?”
“I suppose he is,” said Eddis, not sounding very happy about it.
“I wish he and Melheret would both go,” grumbled the king.
“So does Sophos. Melheret is, this very minute, lecturing him again about shooting his ambassador.”
“I hope Sophos is being equally rude in return.”
“No, and you know that Sophos is truly sorry to have shot that idiot Akretenesh. He is still worried the gods will take him to task.” After a pause, she said abruptly, “You are sick, aren’t you, Gen?”
I could not see the king lying among his covers, but I heard him sigh. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“People do get sick, you know.”
“But I thought you were getting better.”
“I do not know why I am a magnet for every contagion. I think—”
Eddis leaned forward.
He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I think the life of kings is not the rosy experience the epics make it out to be.”
Eddis’s tense shoulders dropped in exasperation. “Idiot,” she said fondly, and went away.
Hilarion, Lamion, Xikos, and Medander returned to wash the king and change his shirt. Galen came to examine him and found Petrus already in the waiting room ready to rush to the king’s bedside.
The king sent both of them away.
Next, the Mede ambassador arrived, having finished lecturing the king of Sounis. He insisted that there must be recompense for the assault on Sounis’s ambassador and that it would damage trade with the empire if there was not some immediate remedy.
“I so admire your diplomatic skills, Melheret,” said the king. “Ten thousand Mede soldiers landed in Sounis and you are pretending to be outraged because Sophos winged his ambassador. I have an idea. I won’t say anything about the invasion of a country under my protection and you won’t ever raise the issue of that idiot Sophos shot again. And you can stop making idle threats, because I know you are going to agree.”
“And how do you know that, Your Majesty?” said Melheret down his nose in his best affectation of curious condescension.
“Because you don’t like your ‘brother ambassador’ and you’re secretly delighted Akretenesh got what was coming to him.”
Melheret opened his mouth and then closed it again.
“Let us not behave like children, Melheret. You and your ambassador in Eddis will remain because it suits the empire to have you here spying on us. The emperor browbeat us into the exchange of ambassadors, not the other way around. While you may keep up this pretense in public—that we are civilized nations at peace with one another—we both know that your emperor means to crush the Little Peninsula under his sandal as he advances on the Continent.”