It was every thief's curse - and right - to die in a fall.

This was not quite the fall he'd had in mind.

It was hot, blisteringly hot, and he had a faint hope that the sweat beading his arms would be enough to let him slip through the rope binding his hands behind his back, but that hope, like every other he'd clung to since he'd been captured, proved false.

Ornon was watching him grimly from the crowd of guards and courtiers come to watch the show. Eugenides ignored him. Ornon was the man who'd provoked the queen into providing him with a quick death, and he wasn't sure yet whether he was grateful for the quick or resentful for the death. He'd run out of time to figure it out.

His eyes skated over the smiling queen, so happy to see him walking to his death.

His broken fingers weren't the only things that hurt.

He'd run out of time for a lot of things.

Easier not to look at any of them. Easier to look up with one last plea.

I have served you faithfully. I will serve you still. Do not let me fall.

Please.

Do not let her be the one to make me fall.

But the spears of the guards jabbed him forward, and there was the rope.

One last piece of jewelry in honor of his god.

Each second was an eon, but it still wasn't enough time because the wooden planks were disappearing beneath his feet and the rope was stretching -

Stretching almost taut.

His feet found purchase on something, he had no idea what, and he struggled to balance. The rope wasn't quite tight enough to cut off all of his air, but it was making a good effort, and only a tiny breath whistled in.

Black spots danced in front of his eyes, but his footing held.

There was a breath on the wind, and it whispered to him, Trust me.

His eyes closed, but he did not fall.

Warm light poured through a window into the library. It was not the library at Eddis. He wasn't sure where it was, but the thought seemed monumentally unimportant.

His patron was standing in front of the window, the warm light dancing over his dark skin.

"Eugenides," his patron greeted him with a wry twist to his mouth. "The others are displeased. There was a plan, you know."

"I didn't, actually. I might could have done a better job of following it if I'd had any idea what it was," he said, drifting closer despite the fear the words invoked.

"You played your part perfectly, actually," he said. "It was Ornon that was the problem. Or possibly the Queen of Attolia or even the Mede." He sighed and turned to face the mortal thief. "They weren't supposed to hang you, you see."

"It mattered how was I executed?"

"You're not dead," his patron said reprovingly. "Which took a bit of doing, thanks to the way things turned out, and even more doing to make sure none of the wrong people noticed, but it was necessary. You're not supposed to die quite yet."

It was a little unnerving to talk to someone who probably knew exactly when that yet would turn into now, but at least he hadn't been called here to hear the failed hanging had been a fluke and the gods were about to correct their mistake.

"What am I supposed to do?"

If there was an answer, he didn't remember it.

His eyes flew open. He tried to gasp, but his throat refused to do more than suck in tiny wisps of agonized breath.

He was moving, he realized, and he took in his surroundings for the first time. He was being carried in a wooden box of some kind, though thankfully one with a few cracks that let in a touch of light and air.

He could also hear Eddisian accents.

Safe, then, or near enough.

He raised a hand and knocked on the lid.

Movement stumbled to a stop. He knocked again.

There was a high pitched yelp and the whole thing came crashing to the ground. Eugenides grunted as the breath was knocked out of him. He didn't have much to spare.

But there was the lid being cracked open with two frightened faces peering down at him.

Eugenides waved cheerfully.

"Hello," he croaked. "I don't suppose you have some water?"

"You were dead," one of them whispered.

The other was decidedly more helpful and offered the requested water.

Eugenides sat up as best he could, wincing at the stiffness. A cautious prodding at his throat revealed more bruises and pain than he currently wanted to think about.

"Maybe," he conceded. "But not anymore. How long till we reach the court?"

Eddis had been prepared to receive the body she had grimly ransomed back.

She was not prepared to see Eugenides limping towards her throne behind his pale faced escort.

Beside her, the Minister of War had gone just as pale.

"She didn't hang you," Eddis said, and it was the first time she had ever felt the slightest bit grateful to the Queen of Attolia.

"Oh, no," Eugenides assured her. "She did." The rasp of his voice and the bruises she now noticed confirmed this. "But it's not her decision when a thief will die from a fall," and a look passed between that speaks of gifts and visions and gods.

She swallowed, but not even that could keep the relief from rushing through her. "I'm glad," she said fiercely. "She won't have another chance to try."

Eugenides winced. "About that."

"No."

He tried for a week to convince her otherwise.

When that failed, he just went anyway.

There were things they needed to know, like how close the Mede were coming to getting an alliance, and things they needed to do, like disrupting the potential for that alliance with a few well placed herbs.

The ambassador was only sick - the last thing they wanted was an excuse for the Mede to declare war - but it was enough to keep him from blandishing his oily compliments on the Queen, and that was something.

And if he tested out his plan on a few guards who had urged on the dogs . . .

Well. He was just being cautious, after all.

Eddis shouted at him when he came back. His father waited until he caught Eugenides in the training yard. They fought to a standstill in silence before the Minister of War put down his sword and said abruptly, "You'll be careful."

"Always," Eugenides said flippantly, but he had looked death in the face twice now, and there was true acknowledgement in his eyes.

The noose was a bit too on the nose, maybe, and certainly a risk. If she didn't know someone was sneaking around her megaron again before, she certainly knew now.

But the nightmares had never faltered in their perfect depiction of the rope tightening ever more while she smiled at the Mede and drank her wine, and he had to do something.

He was close enough when she found it to hear her scream.

When he finally revealed his plan to Eddis, she told him he was insane.

"Maybe," he admitted. "But it'll work." He fiddled with the cushion he sat on by her feet. "Will you back me?"

It was a risk, he knew. For all of them.

But he also knew he was not the only who had been having nightmares, and Eddis's were not of the noose.

"I'll back you," she said with a sigh. "I'll always back you, you know that." She looked down at him. "Your father won't like it though."

"So, so, so - " He sighed in turn and admitted defeat. "So. But I'll try it anyway."

He brought her earrings as a sort of apology for the noose and also for the fact that he was holding a knife to her throat in the interest of her not getting the chance to pull one on him.

"Good evening, my queen," he said as cheerfully as he could manage, pretending those words didn't do something strange to his chest. My queen, my queen, my queen. "I have a proposal for you."

"Oh?" she asked, perfectly composed.

"You need allies," he pointed out. "And the Mede ambassador has been increasingly . . . indisposed."

Her eyes narrowed. "Your doing."

"That's not what the Mede Empire will think if he dies," Eugenides pointed out. "Why should they, when they have a queen well known for poisoning the men at her table right there and ready to blame?"

"One man," she said coolly. "And if they do suspect it, they'll finally have an excuse to invade. Once they have a foothold there, do you really think your mountains will be safe?"

"I don't," he conceded. "Unfortunately, if we do nothing, it seems increasingly likely they'll get a foothold anyway."

She stiffened. "As you said. I need allies."

"Like Eddis?"

She laughed bitterly. "I very much doubt your queen is currently kindly disposed towards me."

"Not particularly," he admitted. "But there could be guarantees. A marriage is traditional, I think."

He saw the moment it hit her, and his stomach twisted with nerves. This wasn't - it wasn't -

Well, it certainly wasn't the way his father had proposed to his mother.

"I did say I came with a proposal."

"You want me to marry a dead man."

"I'm not dead," he protested. "Just hard to kill."

He pulled the knife back and ignored the thrill of fear that shot through him when he did.

"Think of it this way," he said. "You'll have a far easier time trying to control me than the Mede. And I don't have an obnoxiously oily beard."

Something that was almost a smile twitched across her mouth. "Send your proposal through your ambassador," she said, "and I'll consider it."

"The last time Ornon tried to be diplomatic, he got me hanged," Eugenides grumbled, but his heart felt like it might pound out of his chest.

She hadn't screamed. She would consider it.

All things considered, it could have gone much worse.