As soon as the guards where gone, I lay down on my stone bench and dumped the king and his threats out of my head without ceremony. They were too unpleasant to worry over anyway.

This is the stupidest plan I have ever in my career participated in," Xenophon said. "I love stupid plans," said Eugenides.

Is that what the wine is for? To help you think?" "Oh, the wine. The wine, Costis, is to help hide the truth. It doesn't work. It never has, but I try it every once in a while just in case something in the nature of the wine might have changed.

Just asleep," Eddis reassured her. At the sound of her voice Eugenides's head turned slightly, but he didn't wake. Attolia, seeing the movement, breathed again and pressed her hand to her chest where it hurt.

The queen had passed him, so close he'd felt the stir of air, and he guessed that if she had turned her head, only a little, and met his eyes, he might have died right there.

Who was the Thief that she would love him? A youth, just a boy with hardly a beard and no sense at all... A liar, she thought, an enemy, a threat. He was brave, a voice inside her said, he was loyal... A fool, she answered back. A fool and a dead one. She ached with emptiness.

The Thieves of Eddis don't have breaking points. We have flash points instead, like gunpowder.