“Oh, but Tim here is special,” said Teodoros. “Trust me.”

Half the time I don’t understand what these people are talking about, Briony thought. The other half the time, I’m too tired to care.

The town of Ardos Perinous sat on a hilltop. It had once been a nobleman’s fortress, but the castle was now occupied by no one more exalted than a demi-hierarch of the church, a distaff relative of the Syannese king, Enander. Briony’s ears had pricked up when she heard that—Enander was the man whom Shaso had thought might help her, if only for a price.

“What’s he like, the king of Syan?” Briony asked Teodoros, who was walking beside the wagon for once, sparing the horse having to carry his weight up the steep road. She had never met King Enander or any of his family except a few of the more distant nephews and nieces—the lord of Syan would never send his own children to a place as backward and remote as Southmarch, of course—but she knew of him by reputation. Her father had a grudging respect for Enander, and no one disputed the Syannese king’s many deeds of bravery, but most of what she had heard were tales from his younger days. He must now be past sixty winters of age.

The playwright shrugged. “He is a well-liked monarch, I believe. A warrior but no great lover of war, and not so crazed by the gods that he beggars the people to build new temples, either. But now that he is old I have heard that some say he is disinterested in anything except his mistress, a rather infamous Jellonian baroness named Ananka—a castoff of King Hesper’s, it is said, who somehow found an even better perch for herself.” His forehead wrinkled as he thought about it. “There is a play in that, if one could only keep one’s head on one’s neck after performing it—The Cuckoo Bride, perhaps…”

Briony had to struggle to concentrate on what Finn was saying—she had been distracted by the mention of Hesper of Jellon, the traitor-king who had sold her father to Ludis Drakava. He was another one she wanted desperately to have at the point of a sword, begging for mercy…

“And there is the heir, too—Eneas, a rather delicious young man, if a bit mature and hearty for my tastes.” Teodoros showed his best wicked grin. “He waits patiently. They say he is a good man, too, pious and brave. Of course, they say that about every prince, even those who prove to be monsters the instant their fundaments touch the throne.”

Briony certainly knew about Eneas. He was another young man on whom her girlish fancies had once fixed when she had been only seven or eight. She had never actually seen him, not even a portrait, but one of the girls who watched over her had been Syannese (one of Enander’s disregarded nieces) and had told her what a kind and handsome youth Eneas was. For months Briony had dreamed that someday he would come to visit her father, take one look at her, and declare that he could have no other bride. Briony had little doubt she would look on him differently now.