Mithradates started. "What do you mean?"
"I was honored to serve the Great King, but it cannot be any more. Let me go out upon the Axylon."
Flavius caught a gasp between his teeth. Mithradates drew his knife in a hand that shook. The slaves at the room's end cowered back into shadow; some half-sensed ripple went along the lines of guardsmen, and all their eyes swung inward toward Eodan.
"I must thank the Roman," he went on. "I would have let her die out there, or worse than die. He showed me my shame. I am not certain why she is gone: it may be a spell cast on her or it may be of her own choosing, for some reason I do not understand. But she watched over me while I slept among foemen. I cannot offer her less now than my own help."
"You—would bring her back—here?" Mithradates said it with a stubbornness that dug in its heels. He would not believe anything else. "Well, perhaps so—"
"With the Alan kept hostage for his return, Your Majesty," put in Flavius.
Eodan shook his head. "Tjorr has nothing to do with this, My Lord. That is why I ask leave to depart the King's service. I do not think it likely Phryne wishes to return hither."
"And you would set her will above mine?" asked Mithradates in a stunned voice.
"What I would like," said Eodan, "is that you give her freely into my hands, so that I could bring her back here and let her do or not do whatever she wished. But I have no art of wheedling; I ask merely for a dismissal."
"You will get your head on a gatepost!" exclaimed Flavius in a blaze of victory.