“Don’t tease. You heard the bells—how could you not hear them?”

“Ah, yes. I did notice something ringing…”

She scowled. She didn’t like him saying foolish things and pretending he was serious about them, treating her like a child who needed to be amused. She wondered if he had done that with his own daughter, the one he spoke of so sadly, the one he so clearly missed. (He didn’t speak about his son very much, though, she couldn’t help noticing.) “Enough. I have to hurry back to my family. What of you, Your Majesty?”

“A formal title. Now I am worried.” He nodded his head, almost a bow. “I will be well, my lady, but I thank you for your concern. Go with your family. I have a nice, safe room with bars on the window and a warm coverlet.” He stopped. “Oh, but you are truly frightened. I’m sorry—it was cruel of me to make sport.”

She was about to deny it, but suddenly felt warmth in her face. She was terrified she might cry in front of this man who, for all their friendly conversations, was a stranger, a foreigner. “A little,” she admitted. “Aren’t you?”

For a moment something showed through his mask of charming manners—a deep, bleak wretchedness. “My fate is entirely in the hands of the gods.” A moment later he had regained his composure and it was as if the mask had never slipped.

Of course it is, she thought. And my fate is, too. Why should that be so frightening, if we do as they want us to do? Aloud, she said, “But what do you think the autarch wants with us?”

“Who can say?” Olin shrugged. “But Hierosol has stood for a long time. Many kings have tried to pull it down and failed—many autarchs, for that matter. A hundred years ago Lepthis…” He paused, then frowned. “Forgive me, but I cannot remember which Lepthis, the third or fourth. They called this one ‘the Cruel,’ as if that was enough to mark one Lepthis from another, let alone one autarch from the rest of the bloody-handed crew. In any case, this autarch swore he would shatter this city’s walls with his cannon, which were the mightiest guns in the world. Do you know about that?”

“A little.” She took a shaky breath. Olin had seemed genuinely upset to have frightened her, and now she could not help wondering who was making whom feel better. “He failed, didn’t he?”

Olin laughed. “Evidently, for we are speaking Hierosoline and you see no temple of fiery Nushash or black Surigali here on Citadel Hill, do you? Lepthis the Cruel swore to destroy the temples of all the false gods, as he called them, and put all Hierosol’s inhabitants to the sword. He pounded the walls with cannonfire for a year but could not even nick them. The flies and mosquitoes bit and bit down in the valley below the northern walls, and the Xixians died there in droves of fevers and plagues. Thousands more died of fiery missiles from inside the citadel. At last his men demanded he let them go back to Xis, but Lepthis would not hear of such a compromise to his honor. So his men killed him and made his heir the autarch instead, then they all sailed back to the shores of Xand.”