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I.
“My king, may I bargain for a moment of your time?” Eugenides looked into the serious, strained face of his wife’s attendant. He would have given her the moment for no other reason than that she had asked, but he felt a small prick of concern that she was asking him. Her Majesty’s ladies solved most problems within their own circle.
He gave the young woman a slight bow. “Step into my office.” He didn’t have an office. He had a bedchamber with a desk in it, and she’d caught him still dressed for the day, but only just. Eugenides pointedly did not close the door behind her. He beckoned at nobody in particular among the men in the antechamber, unsurprised when young Chareis sprang up to prove his usefulness to the crown by undertaking the monumental task of bringing in a seat for…Caeta, her name was Caeta.
She had been with the queen for several short stints over the years, and was very soft-spoken. Gen knew little of her character, but she was one of several young people at court whom he felt irrationally indebted to, because they had been left behind when his attendants were killed in the war. It was obvious she had not come on the spur of the moment, because she had worn very beautiful earrings. Her gown was high-necked, and she did not remove her fur-trimmed cape when she sat. Caeta knew how the palace gossip mill worked. She was saying she was a respectable lady, thank you very much, and wasn’t in need of money, either. Eugenides wondered how much of it was true.
Caeta reached into an interior pocket of her cape and withdrew a sheet of paper folded into a perfect square. “Two nights ago, this was left for me at my dinner place. It accuses me of having taken Costis Ormentiedes as a lover.” Eugenides bit back a smile. Caeta opened and closed her free hand as if trying not to curl it into a fist. “My king, I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Does something need doing?”
“My father cannot hear about this!”
“Is it blackmail, then?”
“No. Only invective.”
“Then burn it.”
Caeta scoffed. “Oh, because the writer cannot pen another?”
“Do you think they can prove it?”
She looked astonished. “Oh—it isn’t true. I wish!”
Eugenides had been on his hands and knees playing horsey rides with his children that evening, and his back hurt. He settled more deeply into his armchair and began pulling at the buckles that held his hook in place, not caring whether it made Caeta uncomfortable. “You still haven’t told me what has you so shaken, or why you think I can help.”
Caeta grimaced. “My father is trying to arrange a marriage for me. If he thinks I’m not…marketable, shall we say, everything in my life will change. So, so, so. I either need to find out who has accused me of such a thing and stop them from repeating the lie to him, or I need to make it no longer a lie at all.”
The king flung his hook carelessly onto his desk and laughed. “My dear, all becomes obvious now. Yes, I will identify the culprit. Yes, I will introduce you to Costis. No,” he added, inferring desires she had not stated, “I will not be keeping it a secret from the queen.” Caeta winced. “No, you will not come to any harm under our aegis. Go to bed, Caeta, and leave the note with me to examine. I am something of an expert at alarming little notes left for Attolians at mealtimes.”
She rose, thanked him in strong and formal terms, and glanced once over her shoulder to add, “And sir? If it turns out Silla has the poison pen, I will be putting an emetic in her coffee when she has her best dress on, and I will not feel an ounce of shame. Start with her, if you will.”
Alone, Eugenides read the note and frowned deeply. “Ion,” he called. “Are you free? Come help me put my boots back on, I have one last errand.”
~~~
Irene leaned forward over the dressing table, face washed faintly orange by the candle at her hand. Gen swept her hair to the opposite shoulder, away from the flame. “The watermarks do match, I agree,” she said at last. “Look, you can lay them overtop each other.” She used the candle to make Caeta’s note and the paper Gen had sought out appear transparent. “I don’t see any deviations, do you?” She bit her lip. “How hard are they to fake?”
“We could test whether it was added during the papermaking process or after the fact, but the method I know involves submerging the paper in water, and I don’t want to blur the ink.” Gen shrugged, meeting her eye in the mirror. “Anyway, why would anyone bother? ‘Ooh, the three lilies watermark, the paper must have been taken from the palace correspondence office!’ That doesn’t narrow it down. Anyone could invent business there—and it’s not a full sheet, they could have received a missive and cut off the excess.”
“It does narrow it down. Look.” Irene flipped the note over and folded it back into its square. “See how it’s addressed? The courtier Lady Caeta, daughter of Minos. Any number of people could have passed it along to deliver it, and since it calls her a courtier, it needn’t have originated within the palace—except for the paper.”
Gen kissed her temple. “You’re brilliant. I love your suspicious mind.” Irene glowed from within.
“I wish it had been blackmail,” she mused. “It’s much more disturbing to see this kind of language without a clear purpose. No wonder Caeta couldn’t put it out of her mind.” She caught sight of her husband’s expression and raised an eyebrow. “Gen?”
He hummed, the corners of his mouth pulling out like he’d tasted something astringent. “Caeta told me a suspect. I just hope she has too much sense to have asked me to investigate a note she wrote herself to get her rival in trouble.” Irene turned fully in her seat, alarmed. Gen lifted his hand, and, reflexively, his stump. “It’s one possibility.” Irene did not need to say that Caeta would regret her existence if she’d tried to use Attolis as a petty chess piece. Gen did not need to say he would probably forgive her if she had.
“Is the rival she named Silla Stadicos?” At his nod, she hissed. “Will the damage Nahuseresh did to my court never run its course?” Silla was the daughter of a disloyal baron; Caeta, the reverse. “Minos, you may know, publicly brought evidence against Stadicos to me during a court session, and neither man’s daughter has forgiven the other family. Not for the treason, and not for the disgrace. The house of Stadicos was all but ruined, and Minos knew that would happen when he chose how to approach me.”
“You let Silla continue to serve you, though.”
“Oh, yes. For the same reason you kept Philologos. Young people shouldn’t be destroyed by someone else’s games.”
Eugenides tipped her chin up and kissed her. “I’ll take care of them, my love.”
“I know.” She smiled brilliantly. “It was very clever of me to marry you.”
~~~
II.
The next afternoon, Irene met Gen in the queen’s garden and hooked her arm through his, as if on a whim. She led him away from their parties, in the direction of a fountain popular with meeting lovers. “You will not believe this,” she murmured. “There’s been another poison pen letter.”
“For Caeta?”
“For Silla.”
Gen giggled into his sleeve. “Sorry, sorry. I just—does this one accuse her of sleeping with Costis, as well?”
Irene’s lips thinned in the way he loved so much. “Do you remember,” she began, with ironic sincerity, “when someone stole Chareis’s underthings and flew them from the spire of Comemnus Tower?”
“Vividly.”
“As you would.”
“I keep telling you, I had nothing to do with it.”
Irene brushed a beetle off of Gen’s sleeve. “Of course not, my king.” She looked beyond him. “Here comes Silla.” Gen pouted at her. “No, no,” Irene murmured, smiling placidly at her attendant. “You are a model of veracity.”
Silla made a courtesy, the coin fringe on her scarf jingling. “I’m so relieved Your Majesties are on my side. When my brother read it out, we both thought for sure I’d be sent down from court.” At their questioning eyebrows, she elaborated, “Chareis being Her Majesty’s cousin. I probably should have thought of that at the time, but, well, I don’t think at all, sometimes.” She couldn’t suppress her grin.
Eugenides looked triumphantly at the queen. “Silla, are you saying that the accusation is true?”
Silla was one of those people whose resting state is to not be at rest at all. Her hands were usually busy, and when they were empty, she talked with them. Once Gen had watched, fascinated, while Silla held her hands still for Chloe to varnish her nails for her, and Silla started drumming her heels in time to popular songs so she could stand it. Now, she froze for the space of a breath, eyes flicking between them. The color left her face, revealing her fear that she was going to be disgraced for the prank after all.
The queen touched her shoulder briefly. “I think we can all agree Chareis survived.” Unlike Silla herself, Chareis had opportunities outside the palace, and a father who loved him. Embarrassment seemed a very little thing.
At a little prompting, Silla walked them through the discovery of her note. Her brother, who was aide-de-camp to Pegistus, had been given it to deliver to her, and had instead read it himself and gone looking for her in a great panic. He very keenly felt that he and his sister held all the hopes of the house of Stadicos. A cousin had been granted the barony after their father was banished, and the new baron had made no externally obvious attempt to produce a child. With no personal wealth, if the younger generation burnt through their goodwill, they risked falling from the children of nobility to okloi in a single lifetime.
But who had given her brother the note? “One of his tedious striving friends.” She rolled her eyes. Silla’s brother, perhaps understandably, had grown into a very serious and correct young man who associated as much as possible with other serious and correct men. He failed to understand that Silla had become a close companion of the queen, Lady Heiro, and the wife of Sounis’s magus because she was sincere and fun.
Gen tapped his lower lip thoughtfully. It was hard to say whether that specific ignorance was consistent with the sort of person who would write a screed against a prank, or whether that cluster of men would consider it beneath their honor to do it anonymously. Suspects worth considering, at any rate.
“Silla,” he asked, “would you say you have any enemies at court? Or rivals?”
She looked astonished. “No. None at all, I’m on good terms with everyone.” Apparently she didn’t count her family. Gen knew they would drop her like a hot coal if they thought she was a liability to their fragile respectability, and thanks to her brother, she never got the chance to protect herself. Irene was going to make a point of being seen enjoying Silla’s company that afternoon.
Gen gave Irene’s hand a questioning squeeze, and she squeezed back in assent. “Not even Baron Minos?”
“Whyever would you ask a thing like that?”
“He did expose your father.”
Her brow cleared. “Oh. No, don’t you see? The Minoses don’t make me angry, they make me ashamed. My father betrayed me, too.” She made a helpless gesture at the paper still in Irene’s left hand. “Though the more things I do with piss-poor explanations for, the more I suspect my father and I have something fundamental in common.”
“What is your explanation, by the way? For picking on poor Cousin Chareis.” Irene flashed a smile.
Silla had to think about it for a moment, tapping her thumbs against the knuckles of her index fingers. “He was driving me insane, that’s all. It’s like he thinks his life will be over if he doesn’t fulfill every ambition. I can’t deal with it. If I was rich and educated, I could do so many better things with my time than kiss up.” She sighed deeply. “Two peas in a pod, Papa and me. My saving grace is that I’m not selfish.” She gestured at the note again. “Wouldn’t you say Chareis has improved? Come out of his shell? I think I did a public service, really.”
~~~
Irene took her husband’s arm again and beamed at him when, behind Silla’s exiting back, he stuck his tongue out at her. Placidly, she replied, “I told you I believed you.”
“Can Caeta’s rivalry with Silla really be one-sided?”
“Perhaps it’s more serious than Silla realizes, but less than Caeta does?” She sighed. “You’re still afraid one of them is lying. To us.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Afraid of it? Yes.”
“But you don’t believe they are.”
She brushed a hand against a flowering bush as they passed it. “I believe that they’re not stupid enough.”
Eugenides thought that Relius hadn’t needed to be stupid to fail them, but he kept it to himself.
~~~
III.
After several days without incident, Ileia received the third poison pen letter, but she herself considered it far less important than the arrival of Sounis’s magus for a diplomatic visit. He was a popular guest in Attolia’s court, and more so since his recent marriage to the former courtier Lady Chloe. Ileia led the pack of women running to embrace her, crowing as if they’d been apart for six years instead of six months.
Chloe kissed Ileia on both cheeks and released her to spin Aglaia around, shrieking happily when Imenia embraced her from behind. Her friends gave her assessing looks. “Marriage suits you,” Aglaia pronounced.
Chloe put a hand to her hairband to put it back in position, making the light sparkle on her wedding ring. “Satisfaction suits me,” she agreed suggestively. “The stamina, darlings. My Tykus is a man of more talents than I even knew.”
The assembled friends looked blank. Tucked under Chloe’s arm, Caeta asked, “Who the hell is Tykus?”
“My husband. That’s his name. Tykus—oh, never mind, you horrible girl. Stop laughing!”
Caeta only laughed harder. “It’s just so hard to think of him as having a name.”
Chloe sniffed in exaggerated offense. “Didn’t you write me that you’re getting engaged? How’s that going?”
Caeta shut her eyes and made a pained sound. Gen, on a balcony above, murmured “Oh dear,” under his breath.
~~~
When Gen visited the queen’s apartments in the evening—arriving through the hidden passage—Irene pulled him to the doorway of a sitting room and brought a finger to her lips before cracking the door open for him to look through. Silla was prone on the sofa under the mural of the death of Lupalia, with attendants ranged around her in attitudes of concern.
Irene shut the door silently. “She’s been jilted.”
“She isn’t the one whose engagement I was concerned about. What happened?”
“It seems she and her brother quarreled so much, the fiance finally demanded to know what they were talking about.” Irene shrugged eloquently. “Can you believe there are people in the world who consider stealing things to manipulate my courtiers to be a disqualifier for marriage?”
Gen kissed her face. “Silla’s taking the disappointment quite hard.”
Irene snorted. “Not quite. She was so angry that she threw her slipper at him, but when she tried to take off the other one, she lost her balance and fell down those little stairs into the conservatory. She smacked her head so hard Petrus has ordered her to lie still until he says otherwise. That’s why everyone’s fussing over her, so she won’t get bored and be tempted to stand up.”
They sat down together in the bedroom with Gen’s arm around Irene, and Ileia’s note spread out in her lap. “I would have been quite angry about this one if Ileia had been upset by it at all,” Irene sighed, “considering that it only lights into her for doing what we asked her to do.”
Gen frowned. “It’s troubling that this person knows about Ileia selling information to the Pents. I thought we’d done a good enough job shrouding her.”
“As long as they don’t realize the information is fake, the operation isn’t a loss, I think.” Irene tapped her lower lip with two fingers. “It might be best to have her stop, though. I hate that even one of our people thinks she’s a traitor. She isn’t safe anymore.”
Eugenides made a face. “That, or one of our Pent guests is the poison pen.”
“Well. Ileia told me she can brush off being called a bitch because she’s been with me on and off for the better part of a decade and, I quote, ‘It’s so mild that if someone said that to you, we’d know they were folding like a wet playing card.’” Gen winced. “So it seems the outrage is all ours and the harm all Silla’s, for the moment.”
“You know the Erondites party just returned before I came up?”
“No, I hadn’t heard. Have you spoken to Costis, then?”
“Tomorrow. I was more eager to pick his brain when Caeta’s problem was the only one.” He smothered a yawn. He’d been awake too long, much longer than the queen. “At best, he can do damage control.”
Irene kissed his temple. “Even if that’s all we manage, it’ll make the difference for her.”
~~~
Gen had thought Costis might be embarrassed to be asked if he was willing to be introduced to a lady who was likely to propose he have an affair with her to confound her father’s matchmaking efforts. “Or she might ask your blessing to merely threaten to have an affair with you, or she might decide not to rock the boat with her father after all. I don’t know.”
Costis threw his head back and laughed. “She sounds like fun.” He laughed again at Gen’s expression.
“You can probably bring fun out in her,” Gen equivocated. “She’s very self-controlled.”
“I know a thing or two about what it takes to relax when you take duty seriously. She should make friends with Lady Silla. She never fell into that trap to begin with.”
Gen wondered briefly when Costis had become friends with Silla—but of course, he knew Silla had made friends with Pheris, so Kamet and Costis had followed. He rubbed his face theatrically. “No need to loosen Caeta up by having her hit me in the face.”
“Of course not, sir. Not without warning you first.”
As Eugenides stuck his tongue out at him, Attolia entered the patio. “I hope you had a pleasant trip, Costis.” She smiled slightly.
He rose just long enough to bow to her, and settled back into his chair. “We moved more slowly than I’d expected, but we did choose a house that will suit even better than we’d hoped.” Now that Dite and Juridius Susa had returned to Attolia, Pheris had asked them to take a tour of properties held by the Erondites heirs and consent to selling or leasing some they did not wish to personally use. Because Costis and Kamet Kingnamer had been looking for a farm with a villa to buy, he’d invited them to come, too.
“Where is it?”
“On the Pelean tributary.”
Irene lit up, turning half away from the glass of wine her husband was pouring for her. “The Villa Suterpe?”
“Yes, my queen.”
“Oh, how very nice—it’s such a pretty place. I’m surprised Pheris doesn’t want it…or maybe I’m not, our memories of it have a very different tone.”
“You’ve been there?”
“When I was young, it was the last place anyone was kind to me for what felt like a very long time.” She shrugged and elegantly lowered herself into Gen’s lap. “Your family suits it.”
~~~
Eugenides was aware a party of attendants to the royal couple left the palace together that night, but nothing could have prepared him for Ileia to urgently wave at him from an intersection of corridors while he was en route, silently and alone, to give his sleeping children a kiss each before snooping through a baron’s desk. He sighed, feeling his plans for the night slipping away, and went to see what was wrong.
Ileia smiled sheepishly and gestured grandly with her arm like she was selling him a carpet. “Behold: a middle ground.” Caeta was in between Costis and Gen’s attendant Chareis, their arms around her. Caeta knocked her head back to make the hood of her cloak, which was pulled too far forward and covering her eyes, fall back. Costis tugged it free for her.
“Oh hello, your majesty!” She burbled. “Isn’t it a beautiful night? I’ve been dancing sooooo much.” She giggled. “I’m so so tired, and I don’t even mind. That’s new! I’m so…it’s so…I like that.” She stumbled, dragging both men in her wake to keep her upright.
Chareis laughed. “I didn’t realize she meant to get quite this drunk.”
Gen looked between them. “What’s the problem? She’s only a bitty thing, I’m sure Costis can even carry her.” Ileia lifted her shaded lantern higher, casting light across their faces. Gen laughed silently. “Oh, you’re all drunk as Aracthus.”
Ileia spoke again. “It’s a miracle we got as far as we did before she refused to keep walking.”
“My feet hurt,” Caeta explained in a reasonable tone, “from dancing with all the nice people.”
“I was only trying to scout ahead, but I thought maybe you could get us to her bed faster?”
Gen took point, with Ileia behind him shining a path for Costis. He surely didn’t need the light as much as he had before Gen had trained him to move through the dark…but then, Gen had never trained him to do it drunk and carrying a squirming noblewoman. Chareis followed at the rear, using his free hands to close doors Gen opened.
Caeta began to snore. Gen glanced over his shoulder. “Do you really think drunkenness will be enough to prevent an engagement?”
Ileia and Chareis both made uncomfortable noises. Costis chuckled. “The drunkenness was just for plausible deniability. Her real tactic was flirting outrageously with me and then taking her clothes off.”
Gen gasped. “In public?”
“Oh, yes.”
Caeta giggled. “He’ll have to let me find my own husband now. Father’s taste in men is so bad, you have no idea.”
“It really is,” Costis agreed.
Caeta made her voice deep and mocking. “‘You need connections on the continent so you have an out if they come for us next.’” She blew a raspberry. “Marry him yourself, Pater!”
“Shhh, now,” Gen ordered. “We’re here.” He opened a panel into a chamber of the queen’s apartment. Ileia slipped past him in the corridor to open the door to the room where Caeta slept.
The room’s other occupant, a woman named Nektaria, wasn’t there. Silla, wrapped in a quilt, must have heard some noise that drew her, because she stuck her head into the doorway to watch in amazement as Gen pulled back the covers on Caeta’s bed and Costis gently set her down. “Is she well?”
“I’m so well, you could throw a bucket down me. It’s nice of you to ask. You’re so nice. I wish we were friends.”
Silla went still for a heartbeat. “I thought you hated me.”
“I thought you hated meeeee,” Caeta wailed. “No wonder everybody’s fed up with us. We could’ve been friends all this time!” She flapped her hands around in excitement before Silla could answer. “Oh, Silla! Your idea was smarter, but I think I had more fun.” She giggled again. “The turns have tabled.”
“My idea for what?”
“Scaring off awful fiances.”
Silla flinched. Ileia saw and took pity on her, though Gen knew it wouldn’t convince Costis. “She’s too drunk to get any sense out of.”
Silla shook her head and went into the room to sit on Caeta’s bed. “We can talk about it in the morning, if you still mean it. About starting over.”
“If I forget, you have to remind me. Please promise to remind me. Silla, please, don’t let me go back to thinking you hate me.” Silla pulled her to sit upright and hugged her, wrapping the quilt around them both.
Ileia shut the door softly. “Should I see Your Majesty out?” He waved her off, and all three men took the main door out of the apartment.
Chareis made a point of thanking him and Costis very prettily for helping Caeta. Gen could tell he was speaking slowly to not slur his words, and sent him in the direction of his bed. He glanced at Costis. “He’s awfully invested in her well-being. He isn’t her young man, is he?”
Costis laughed. “No, they’re cousins who were close growing up. Someone said he’s related to the queen, too—is that on the other side?”
“It must be, but he’s more closely related to Caeta, I’m sure. His father was Attolia’s heir before the twins were born. She had to do some clever interpretation of the family tree to make him so; all her surviving cousins are distant, and some better claims were held by worse people. Anyway, Chareis would like to remain in some way important to her. He might even get his wish, he’s been growing on me.”
Costis yawned. “What are you up to tonight?”
Eugenides balanced on his heels and shrugged. “The usual. Rooting through people’s secrets, looking for stolen stationary, teasing out malice, and eavesdropping on ambassadors.”
“Can I help?”
“I don’t think Kamet would forgive me if I let you jump across a lightwell drunk and tired.” Gen smiled fondly.
“Double standards,” Costis joked.
Gen had to think for a moment what he was talking about, and hastily smothered his snort in his sleeve. “Yes, well, our god did turn up that time.”
“I’m sure he needs his sleep, too,” Costis conceded, with emphasis. Gen swore he would sleep himself before long, and half-meant it.
~~~
IV.
While Irene rotated her attendants regularly enough that a dismissal was neither a criticism nor a preclusion of future service, an abrupt departure sometimes occurred when a woman had transgressed, or requested it. The latter was why Gen knew Caeta less well than most of her ladies; after the war with the Mede Empire, Caeta had wished to go home to help her family regroup and grieve her little brother. She was Minos’s heir now.
She’d made friends, during that period away, with the woman who was now her roommate. Another baron’s daughter who had abruptly become a baroness-in-waiting, her name was Nektaria Cosmas, and when Chloe married the magus and moved to the Sounisian court, Caeta suggested to the queen that Baron Cosmas’s eldest daughter was bright but had been somewhat sheltered. Might it be a good thing for her to learn something of politicking up close?
Eugenides had danced with Nektaria on her first night at court, and he saw the way she looked at her father, and the way she looked at her mother, and when he got into bed with his wife that night, he said “I think Nektaria is afraid her father’s going to murder her mother.” Sleepily, she countered that he could just divorce her. Gen shook his head. “No, he can’t. All the money is hers.”
There was relatively little they could do about it, but Relius and Orutus both had spies on the Cosmas estate. By the time of the poison pen letters, Lady Cosmas still lived, and no evidence had been passed to the Attolias that the baron was attempting to replace her with a younger woman. He gave every appearance of being proud of Nektaria, and was said to have told his friends when provoked that she was every bit as capable as his sons had been. Only a great fool would think a hypothetical infant boy could lead better than an adult woman.
Irene swept dramatically into Gen’s apartment one evening soon after Caeta had engineered an end to her unwanted marriage negotiation, waving a piece of paper. Caeta and Silla hurried in her wake. Attolia didn’t even bother to wait for privacy, thrusting the paper into Gen’s hand before he had a chance to rise from the table where he and Ion were playing chess.
Faithless little viper, it began, and Eugenides scoffed. “For a moment, I thought it was for me. I’m beginning to feel left out.” He went on to read an accusation for Nektaria, claiming she had stolen from Petrus’s pharmacopeia cabinet. Gen read the named substances twice, remembering the saying that “the dose makes the poison.” He looked up at his wife, seeing her fury. Caeta had a glass jar in her hand, the size of her (not very large) clenched fist. “Is that them?”
She nodded. “Still in dried pieces, mixed together like potpourri.” She indicated the twine tied around the mouth of the jar. “I found it hanging down our airshaft.”
Gen whistled. “Do we know who…?”
“Baron Orutus will tell us as soon as possible.” Irene shook her head sharply at some unvoiced thought. “I should have gone to observe, but Relius was with me when Silla found it, and he advised otherwise.”
Gen took her hand and filled in the ambiguous pronoun. Caeta had found the poison, Silla had found the note. “That was lucky, Silla,” he prodded coolly.
Silla blushed. Attolia turned to move into the bedroom, gesturing for the three of them to follow. With the door closed behind them, Silla explained, holding her arms around herself, “I thought it was from Baron Erondites. We send each other notes to practice.” Gen must have looked blank, because she looked even more self-conscious. “When I came to the palace, I couldn’t read.” It was out of fashion for noblewomen to be so uneducated, and Attolia’s circle was obliged to be sharper and more skilled than their male counterparts. “I hid it for a bit, but then Pheris, I mean Erondites, caught me peeking at one of his lessons…” She shrugged. “He still reads much better than I do, but my writing is superior, so we swap challenges. This was folded like one of his.”
Irene put in, “Our quarry didn’t bother to address this one at all.”
Something clicked in the back of Gen’s brain, but he wasn’t sure what it meant. “Does your brother know you can read?”
“I don’t tell him interesting things about myself anymore. Why?”
“Because I wonder whether that note and this one were intentionally put into the hands of people who might open them.”
Irene sat, with unusual informality, on Gen’s bed. “That gave you an idea, I can tell.”
“Only the pit of one. It gives the affair a different tenor, don’t you think? Not just bullying, but trying to achieve something.”
She huffed. “It would have been much easier to tell us to our faces that my attendant was stockpiling poison.”
Gen had nothing to say to that, but Silla put in: “Well, I suppose I owe them. I was too afraid of losing my relationship with my brother altogether to stick up for myself. I didn’t realize how miserable my fiance made me until he left me. If they were trying to harm me, it had the opposite effect.”
~~~
Orutus presented his opinion to the queen late the following day. “Between my interrogation of Nektaria, and the statements given by members of the court including Petrus and Her Majesty’s attendants, I feel confident that the poison had only been stolen within an hour of its discovery. Your letter-writer worked very quickly.” He hesitated. “According to Nektaria, her father is trying to kill her mother, but we were watching the wrong flank. He’s persuaded Nektaria to help him so that she will inherit the money, and the two of them can,” he spread his hands, “do whatever they want.”
Gen groaned. “Gods, I feel a fool.”
“If I may say, my king, I feel the same.”
“So, so, so. What were her movements yesterday, do we know?”
“Quite clearly, actually.” Orutus smiled. “She went to Petrus to request a painkiller for, ah, an intimate complaint. While unobserved, she stole the materials for her poison, and wanted to process them in her chamber in the queen’s apartment right away. Fortunately for us, Lady Heiro was consulting Petrus at the same time, and she insisted that Nektaria join her for a cup of coffee. Nektaria claimed to need a shawl, and only took long enough to hide her jar before rejoining Heiro. They were still together when the guards arrived to make the arrest. It was very public, which may not have been ideal. Nobody likes to think of young women in the dungeon. You can expect an uncomfortable atmosphere at dinner.”
~~~
V.
Eugenides found a square-folded note on his plate. “An uncomfortable atmosphere, indeed,” he murmured, catching Irene’s eye. He read through the note briefly, smiled dangerously, and looked around the room to be sure certain people were watching. Then he ripped the note into pieces with his hook, and thrust them into the flame of a beeswax taper. He dropped the scraps onto his plate, watching the fire consume them like a flambé. He smiled benignly at a server. “When that burns out, you can bring me a clean plate, but not before.” Everyone was watching, now. He leaned over to whisper in Irene’s ear. “I know who wrote the letters.”
~~~
“I don’t understand why we’re not confronting the culprit directly,” Irene complained, watching Gen carry a sleeping Hector to his bed after telling the twins a story. Eugenia had stayed awake until the end, and walked ahead.
“Because I can’t actually prove it, so I want an admission.”
“Ah. One of those.”
Gen stuck his nose in the air. “When have I ever let you down?”
“Never. What was in the note?”
“That would be telling.” He put their son down, and they both went to kiss Eugenia goodnight. “Now,” Gen told Irene, “what’s been so strange about the notes is that they haven’t actually done any harm.”
Attolia made a protesting noise, then thought about it. “I suppose not. One got Silla out of a bad match, another inspired Caeta to do the same for herself. Nektaria was caught before she could commit murder. Ileia…oh, I see your point. It actually helped her to know that she’d been observed dealing with the Pents, because now we can protect her. And the one to you?”
“Didn’t help, but could do no harm, as long as it didn’t pass beyond me.”
“I see. The language used in them was quite offensive, but, as Ileia said, it wasn’t extreme. There was no reason for someone who really wanted to shame their targets to pull punches.”
“I’m still trying to work out why they pretended to be hostile at all,” Gen admitted.
“Oh, that’s easy, isn’t it? Think about who got the first note. Caeta. She was the one who was being given the option of taking the note to her father. If it hadn’t sounded angry, there would have been no threat of scandal, and nothing for her to bargain with. The same applies to Silla. I think helping the two of them was the original purpose. Theirs were done first, and with no pause between, so they were important. Ileia’s and Nektaria’s only came from opportunity. In each case, there was an unanticipated problem, and an opportunity to provide a smokescreen for Caeta and Silla. The last thing they need is to be exposed rocking their family boats. Is it one of them, after all?”
“No.”
“Hm. So, to force a confession?”
“I’m going to ask Chloe to pretend she got a copycat note and it’s ruining her marriage.” Irene laughed so loud he had to shush her not to wake the children.
~~~
+I.
Chloe burst into the music room where Dite had just finished hosting a concert of new pieces from the Greater Continent. Dite was putting away his sheet music and answering questions about technique and innovation.
As planned, Chloe made her entrance already sobbing, stumbling in obvious emotional pain, her hair coming undone. Of her particular friends, Heiro was nearest to the door, because Gen had wanted to sit in the back, and asked her to join him. Chloe touched her shoulder and knelt—crumpled—in the informal central aisle of seats to whisper in her ear. Heiro gasped, louder than Gen could have hoped. Some people were trying to politely ignore Chloe’s distress, but anyone who looked couldn’t fail to miss the sickened horror on Heiro’s face.
Heiro leaned to ask Chloe a question, and Chloe let out a choked wail. “I think it’s over! He said…” and she covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking. Eugenides thought she might have felt a laugh sneaking up on her, and was covering it.
Heiro stood, pulling Chloe with her, and supported her out of the room, trailing several other women behind like agitated ducklings. Gen knew what she was going to tell them, having rehearsed it with Chloe, but when the music party had broken up enough for him to politely slip away, he went to eavesdrop on them in another chamber.
“No, no,” Chloe wept. “I swear, Tykus is going to divorce me for this.” Gen couldn’t for the life of him remember who Tykus was for a minute. “He’s never going to call me his little kalamata again.”
Heiro made soothing sounds. “The magus couldn’t stand to be parted from you so easily, dear.”
Chloe sniffled and looked directly at the vent Gen was watching through. “My Tykus,” she said slowly, “always matches his underclothes to my gowns so he can carry a piece of me with him during the day.” Gen gagged. Chloe winked. He took the hint and moved on.
As he walked away, he heard Heiro say “There, see, he won’t take the word of a silly anonymous letter.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t, if it had been the only one.”
~~~
Pax.
Heiro found him on the roof, where he’d spread out a rug and set wine and a plate of bread and cheese. “Eugenides, please, we have to help her,” she began, and then saw his air of anticipation. Her posture did not deflate, but she did lose momentum. “Oh, gods, Chloe was acting, wasn’t she? You dick. ” It seemed she found it very hard to find her next words, and force them out. “I will apologize, but I’m not going to concede wrongdoing.”
Gen patted the rug next to himself, and she sat. “I’m not angry. That’s a lie. I’m a little angry. Why didn’t you tell me? I wasted a lot of time and sleep trying to identify the culprit.”
He pushed the plate at her, and she spread cheese on a small round slice of bread while she thought. “Well, for one thing, I didn’t realize you were. Caeta, Silla, and Ileia are all my friends, but they didn’t tell me they’d asked you for help. I thought…” She scrunched up her face. “I thought I was fixing it all myself. I suppose I did, but I thought the problems I invented were going to stay in our circle for me to sweep up as well.”
“It was a good plan. Here, let me pour that, your hands are shaking.”
“Are they?” She looked down at them. “How embarrassing.”
Gen didn’t tell her not to be afraid of him. He knew she knew what kind of person he was. That was why he’d burned the false accusation she’d left him where she could see that nothing of it remained to come back to bite her. He hoped she’d gotten a good chuckle out of the expression that must have crossed his face at the idea they were having an affair. “With Ileia and Nektaria, why didn’t you just tell me what you’d discovered?”
“Well, I didn’t know Nektaria was up to anything until it was happening. She didn’t realize I could see her theft in the mirror, you see. I thought about just shouting for one of the guards, but when she went into her room, I didn’t know whether she might come back armed.” She bit her lip. “But mostly I honestly didn’t know whether it was really poison, and nobody was in the anteroom just then to confide in. She’s always made me a little uncomfortable, and I felt badly about wanting her to be under scrutiny. I figured that if there was nothing nefarious in what she took, nothing would happen, and I’d have wasted an hour. Otherwise, someone needed to keep her busy until my suspicions were found.”
Gen nodded. He could relate to overcomplicating things to avoid someone finding out what you thought of them. “And Ileia?”
“Well, I would have had to explain how I’d seen her, and that would have been embarrassing.” She sighed heavily. “Gen, are you really going to make me tell you?”
“I had nightmares about stationary watermarks. Please, Heiro. For my agonies.”
She sighed deeply. “While she was meeting the Pents one night recently, I was on the other side of the hedge with a man.”
“Would this man have been present when I joked that I was feeling so terribly left out from your notes?”
She gestured with her cup. “He didn’t know. He just thought I might like to know you seemed kind of off. He’s very thoughtful. And funny, if you can get him to relax.” She looked a little smug. “Which I can.”
“Do I have to guess which lapdog you’re talking about?”
“Oh, yes. It would be ever so funny. For my agonies.”
He squinted. “Chareis.”
“No fair!” She threw a breadcrumb at him. “You already knew, didn’t you!”
Gen’s arms flew up in defense. “Ack! No, I just thought which one was least insufferable, and the answer is Ion. He’s married, so I went down the list.”
“The least insufferable bachelor isn’t bad, as epithets go. Anyway, I’ll let you know if he becomes more than diverting. He spotted how much Silla disliked her fiance before I did, though. I think we might make something of him.” She looked at her lap for a moment. “Gen, do we have to tell them it was me? I wrote such unkind things.”
“I won’t tell them, but I think perhaps you should. Just tell them why you did it in the first place, Heiro. It was because you love them.”
He extended his hand to her, and she took it, knowing he’d forgiven her. “I thought if I could do anything to ease their pain, it was worth doing.”
He beamed at her. “You are one of my most cherished friends. You know that, right?”
She laughed. “Yes, of course I do. That’s why you made Chloe scare the wits out of me. Oh, Gen, I was so afraid it had all blown up in my face. I came up here expecting to beg you to forgive me and help me pick up the pieces.”
“I would have,” he said urgently. “It probably doesn’t feel much like it at the moment. I know I was being petty.”
She saw right through him, because of course she did. “No, you weren’t. You just couldn’t take the hurt if I lied to your face, so you made sure I didn’t have to consider it.” Gen winced, and didn’t deny it. “Would you like me to promise to tell you, next time I’m scheming?”
“No,” Gen said at once. “No, I don’t think that would be fair. Not everything you might care about is any of my business.”
“You’re the king,” she protested.
“And you’re my friend!” The words burst from deep in his chest. “If you want to do something for me, love me enough to keep secrets from me. There are very few people I can trust so much, don’t relinquish that like it’s cheap.”
“But all that trouble I caused you!”
“And I regret none of it, because it makes it that much harder for anyone whose plans you ruined to trace the matter back to you. I want to let it go,” he pleaded.
“Well, I can’t! Promise me—look, really, honestly promise me—that if you think I might know something, you’ll ask. I need to know I won’t be a burden to you.”
Gen didn’t answer in words. He didn’t want her to hear the lump in his throat. Instead he hooked his pinky finger around one of hers in a silent playground oath. “We are not burdens to each other,” he agreed.
And Heiro let out the breath she’d been holding since Caeta had come to her, less than a month ago, and told her that her father was talking about marrying her to Quedue. Gen didn’t need to know how close they’d come. Not right now, not while his smile was shining as brightly as the sun.