Not taking my eyes off him, I tipped my head to one side to let the drool from my mouth spin in a thin line to the floor. Erondites curled his lip and looked away. My mother, fiddling with the beads she wouldn’t let me touch, snorted in amusement.

“Meet your heir, Father,” she said. “Juridius tells me I should have named him Pheris Monstrous instead of Mostrus.”

“You shouldn’t have named him at all. You should have had him got rid of.” It was no longer considered civilized to leave babies like me out on a hillside for a fox to take, though it still happened. More often, they were quietly drowned by a midwife, or left unfed, uncared for, until they faded away.

“And where would you be now if I had?” my mother asked.

Erondites didn’t like that.

“He does not speak?”

“No,” said my mother.

“Play chess?” he asked acidly.

“Melisande knows better. She keeps him out of sight.”

To my surprise, he laughed in what seemed genuine amusement. “He’ll do very well.”

“Be sure you remember our bargain,” my mother warned.

Erondites shrugged. “You have my word. When your firstborn has served his purpose, Juridius will be my heir.”

My brother was younger than I by less than a year, taller and healthy and a credit to his house.

“Juridius will suit you, Father. He knows what he owes his family.”

“Better than you,” said Erondites.

“I know what a woman owes her family. Have I not provided my husband with sons?” Her smile was ugly.

“But now you are restored, daughter, to the family of Erondites.”

“Juridius is my family, and my loyalty will be to him and my other children. If you mean to use my little monster and then reinstate Sejanus as your heir when you have secured his freedom, beware. Sejanus is no match for me.”

“Rest easy,” said her father while looking at me with both ownership and contempt. “From this, we will proceed to rebuild the House of Erondites.”

Chapter Two

In a small audience room made smaller by the granite pillars holding up its high ceiling, with walls paneled in red agate veined in black, the king of Attolia waited. The candles in every sconce couldn’t lighten the room—or the king’s temper. He was awaiting the arrival of the new heir to the estate of Erondites, as stipulated, a child young enough to be raised in the palace away from the malignant tendencies of his family. The baron had proposed his oldest grandchild, the king had approved, and the boy had been delivered, but Hilarion, who’d met his coach in the stable yard, had sent a warning that all was not as expected.

The doors to the audience room opened with a crash, and everyone recoiled except the king. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, heels hooked on the rung of his massive chair, as the attendants dragged me in, the expressions on their faces warning everyone of the smell before it hit.

“His ‘coach’ was a wagon with a box in the back,” Hilarion announced, coming in behind us. “Locked from the outside.”

They’d put me into the box with a bucket and a bottle of water. The bucket upended at every bump, and the jug of water, still half full, had cracked on the second day.

“Is this Erondites’s grandson Juridius?” asked the king, as if he doubted it.

“No,” said Hilarion grimly. “Juridius is the second child of the baron’s daughter, Marina. This is her first.”

“Ah,” said the king.

“His birth was recorded in the temple,” Hilarion admitted defensively. “There’s been no sign of him since. Everyone assumed he’d died.” He didn’t need to say why.

But being invisible is not the same as being dead, and it was obvious that a grave mistake had been made. Feet shuffled and heads bowed as those who might be held responsible ducked the king’s gaze. The men holding my arms released me and I sank into my crouch, wrapping my arms around my knees, staring malevolently at the king as he stared back. As angry as I was helpless, I squeezed the spit from my mouth, drooling onto the floor in front of me, but unlike my grandfather, the king didn’t look away. Eventually I did.

Knowing that every eye was on me, and there was no escape but the one in my head, I dipped my finger into the small puddle in front of me and made a triangle of three carefully placed wet spots. There was a communal exhalation of disgust, and the weight of stares lightened. I added a third row to my triangle with three spots, then another with five.

“Why didn’t they expose him?” I heard someone ask.

“Put him back in his box,” someone else advised the king.

“Return him to Erondites.”

And Erondites, having had his joke, would kill me and make Juridius his heir. Helpless to alter my fate, I concentrated on the ever-widening triangle. The first wet spot was drying out, so I worked up a little more spit. Eyeing the king, I let it run out of my mouth.

“Your Majesty, get rid of him!” I heard someone protest, but the king watched me seriously as I dipped a finger into my self-made ink and re-created my first point.

“No,” he said, coming to a decision. “Get him clean. Find him a bed in my apartments. He will fit in very well with my attendants.”

I lifted my head, thinking I had misheard. If I was surprised, the attendants were horrified—obviously, unmistakably horrified—yet not one of them dared protest. That was the first I knew of the king.

They took me through the palace, past the stares of strangers, to a large room filled with scattered furnishings that I later learned was both guard room and waiting room of the king’s apartments. They stripped off my clothes and left me to stand shivering and naked as servants brought in a circular tub and pitchers of water to pour into it. My silent angry tears had become shaking breathless sobs by the time it was full, and Hilarion sighed heavily as he crouched in front of me and pointed to the tub.

I shook my head. My leg hurt too much to take my weight. I was considering whether I might steady myself with one hand on the edge of the tub when Hilarion ran out of patience and shoved me in. The attendants jumped back, all cursing together as water splashed everywhere. I dragged myself upright, gasping in pain.

“He hoots like a drunken owl,” said the narrow-faced one with long fair hair, the one I later learned was Xikander. Scooping the water with my good hand, I flung it in his direction.

He raised a hand and called me a cursed monster. He didn’t want to get close enough to hit me, though.

One of the servants came forward, with toweling to soak up the water. “You wash him,” said Hilarion, but the servant made a sign to avert the evil eye and backed away.

“Gods damn it,” snapped Hilarion, and I snatched up the soap left by the tub, hastily dragging it across my body, preferring to wash myself than to risk being drowned. By accident or on purpose.

By the time I’d soaped and scrubbed myself, Hilarion had realized that I couldn’t get out of the tub on my own. He lifted me with one hand while one of the other attendants rinsed away the soap, soaking Hilarion in the process.

“Take him to the bed,” he directed, shaking off some of the water.

They wrapped me in sheeting, and one of them carried me down narrow hallways to drop me on a mattress laid out on the floor. I struggled free of the constricting fabric, only to find myself surrounded by headless people. Hearing the thin, whistling sound of my terror, the man standing nearby laughed. I do not remember now who it was, nor do I want to. I do remember Philologos, though, for his kindness.