“Do they know?” I asked, gesturing toward all the courtiers behind me.

“Some,” he said seriously. He threw his eyes over the crowd and then looked back at me. “More will know now.”

He smiled.

I remembered him as a boy, small for his age. I found him taller, broader in the shoulder, much older than the intervening years would explain, with a hook where his hand had been—wholly changed, in fact, but for the scar on his face and that smile. Or perhaps, I thought, he has not changed. Perhaps it is just the world that has changed. Perhaps he was only by accident at the edge of this court and had slowly and inevitably drawn all of it into orbit around him.

“Why?” I asked. “Why bring me here?”

“Spite,” said Eugenides frankly. He leaned back and crossed his arms. “I have a great deal of ill will for your former master. And because you are my friend,” he added, glancing up from his boots. “That should have been the first reason, but I will be honest now—it was not.”

Was it the act of a friend to steal my future? To engage Laela in my betrayal? “Kings don’t move mountains as a favor to a friend,” I said aloud.

The king equivocated. “While in my experience, they do, I grant you—it’s not what successful kings are known for. Sometimes a little bit of spite motivates what more kindness cannot.”

The disobedient servant I’d found endearing and the king who’d stolen my future—I struggled to put the two people together in my head. Costis’s stories of a weak and silly king and the confident and cunning manipulator before me—like misaligned papers, I could not shape them into a tidy stack. Like a bad ledger, it wouldn’t tally.

“I’m sorry,” said the king. “I know you wanted your chance at the emperor’s side, even if it meant your death would come with his.”

“We all die,” I snapped.

“We do.” He was suddenly so grieved. I remembered his queen and his heir and wanted to bite my tongue. He said, “I’ve taken something from you that I had no right to take. As Laela did. I hope you will forgive us both.”

He waited, but I was still busy tidying my mismatched impressions, adding his grief to the layering of them in my head. I looked around the room, evaluating the likelihood that this was actually a dream—I was asleep still in the cells under Attolia’s palace. It was a wonder the entire room wasn’t laughing, as I was the butt of the joke now. I looked for Costis but couldn’t pick him out at that distance.

The wine merchant—the memory came to me, now that I knew the truth. I turned back to the king. “You sent the wine merchant?”

He seemed confused. “I did not send a wine merchant,” he said—for whatever that was worth.

“He led me to the docks. He was in Sherguz as well.”

“You would not have gone to the docks on your own?” the king asked. I shook my head.

“A coincidence, then,” said Eugenides.

I shook my head again. I’d been quite sure there was something odd about the merchant, and I’d begun to doubt coincidences.

“I’ve upended your life for spite, Kamet. Will you let me make it up to you?”

He was the king of the Attolians. What was there to say but yes?

“As a token of my good faith,” he said, offering me a coin. I knew, before I took it from his hand, that it would be the very one I’d given him when I thought I was helping him make his way home to a fishing village on the coast. No doubt the whole court would hear the story—and how it ended with this small coin returned to me. All the Attolians would think that he had repaid me for my kindness—because the Attolians were fools. I wondered if he had a brother, if his brother was a scholar, if anything he’d ever said had been true.

“I’ll get you a new copy of Enoclitus’s scroll,” said the king. “Someone with better handwriting can copy it for you this time. We will rebuild your library here in Attolia.”

Then he waved forward an attendant with instructions to take me to my rooms as an honored guest. I was not headed for that street corner yet. I suppose that made Costis right and me wrong, but there was no chance for me to tell him so. Poor Costis. Now that he’d found himself played by his king as well as by me, he probably wanted to see neither of us ever again. Still in a daze, I was led away, leaving the king to continue his audience with others who waited for his attention.

I was walking up one of the wide marble staircases, still in the ceremonial part of the palace, trying to adjust to the idea of being an honored guest with attendants—who were attending me—when I saw the Mede ambassador. Melheret arrived at the top of the stairs and began to descend while I paused, one foot up and one down, and when Melheret bowed, I bowed back, a lopsided, wobbling attempt at courtesy.

“Kamet, what a surprise,” he said. He’d stopped on a higher stair and looked down at me benevolently. “We thought you dead in a rockslide.”

“No, sir,” I said. I knew Melheret. He had been my master’s commanding officer once. He was a mid-level army man who’d grown too old for battle and had been given the position as ambassador to the Attolians because no one else wanted it. After his appointment, he’d come to Nahuseresh’s country estate to ask for advice. For Melheret, it had been a heaven-sent opportunity to advance his career—he need only avoid complete catastrophe and he could return to a much better position at court than he had previously held. He’d had every reason to expect some guidance from Nahuseresh, but my master had looked down his nose at him and been snotty. I think I had probably been snotty as well.

“We almost had you at Sherguz,” Melheret said, conversationally. “You must have been on one of the boats that burned before they could be searched. The Namreen checked the inns afterward, of course, but they were looking for a Setran traveling alone. We didn’t know about the Attolian then.”

I swallowed, remembering the inn. I’d only gotten the Attolian out of the courtyard because the wine merchant from the capital had come into it. We could have been sitting right there in plain sight when the Namreen had come hunting. I hoped the wine merchant, wherever he was, would be blessed by the gods with a booming business, with health and wealth and an old age surrounded by his grandchildren.

Melheret smiled. “You’ve come from an audience with the king, but before that from the prisons. Not how an honored guest is usually received.”

I waited.

“Perhaps because you are less an honored guest and more . . . stolen property. I can restore you safely to your place, Kamet. You have been lost and are now found.” He indicated his burly servants, and he held out his hand to me, offering me back the very future I’d just been grieving over. All I had to do was take his hand and I would belong to the Medes again, protected by all the diplomatic agreements made with the ambassadors of foreign heads of state. Here was the control of my destiny that I had been denied.

The attendants beside me stiffened, and the two palace guards who had been following at a polite distance surged forward, but they were powerless to stop me. I’ll never know if Eugenides would have honored the diplomatic agreements because I didn’t take the ambassador’s hand. I just stood there, still halfway between stairs.

“No?” the ambassador asked.

“No,” I said, and he withdrew his hand.

“Freedom tastes sweeter than you thought.”

I nodded.

“May it always taste so sweet.” The ambassador bowed. “Nahuseresh will miss you, I am sure.”

My heart skipped a beat. I’d been so stunned by the king’s revelation, and by the ambassador’s offer, that this most salient detail had been neglected. Nahuseresh was still alive. Laela was alive. As betrayed as I had felt only moments before, a rush of relief flooded my body—she and the houseboys, the cook and the valet, they were all alive—and almost immediately after the relief, familiar fear. Did my master know that Laela had betrayed him? How long until he learned I was in Attolia?

“His Majesty’s interest is unaccountable,” the ambassador was saying.

It was. A weaker, more foolish king might have stolen me away from my master for spite, but not the man I’d just seen on the throne. A less ruthless man might have done it out of kindness, but Eugenides had dismissed that justification.

“The king does enjoy his little jokes,” I said. There was a subtext to this conversation that I was missing. Whatever it was, I felt very strongly that I didn’t want to talk to the Mede ambassador anymore. I nodded and twitched another moment or so, trying to think of a good reason to excuse myself before I remembered that I didn’t need one. I was a free man. So I bowed again, said, “Good day,” and continued past him up the stairs.

I wondered what it was that Melheret knew, that the king knew, that perhaps all the attendants and guards around me knew, that I did not. I wondered if I would ever find out. I was nobody’s secretary with my ear to the ground. I had no connection to these people. No expectation that they might pass along rumors or information. Melheret was correct about one thing. I certainly wasn’t an honored guest. I didn’t know what I was.

The king’s attendants led me to a set of rooms I recognized immediately. I had lived in them with my master when he was ambassador in Attolia. Indeed, the king did like his little jokes. One of the attendants, Lamion, I think, explained that there would be guards at my door, but only to be sure I was undisturbed. I was free to come and go as I liked. He pointed out the amenities of the rooms, with which I was already familiar, and directed me to the guests’ bathing room with heated water for the bath. I nodded. I knew where the bathroom was, though I’d never used it, just carried my master’s cosmetics to and fro. The dreamlike feeling of the day was only growing more intense. I realized, with just enough time to politely send the attendants out the door, that I was going to burst into tears. As soon as I was alone, I did. I sat there on a velvet-cushioned stool and sobbed like a child. I was a free man—with the favor of the king of Attolia as well as the undying enmity of my former master, and I had lost my only friend.

When I was done, I wanted a bath but was too exhausted to manage it. I crawled onto my master’s bed, wrapped myself in the linen, and fell asleep.

I woke groggy. Recognizing the bed I lay in, I panicked, wondering what could have possessed me to commit such a transgression, before I came fully awake and found the king of Attolia sitting on the footboard. Another figure nearby held a lamp. It was deep twilight, and I had slept through the day.

The man with the lamp used the taper on the nightstand to light the larger lamp on the desk and then went from sconce to sconce until the room was filled with light. He set his lamp down on a side table and came to stand near the bed. He wasn’t an Attolian. He had the clothing as well as the fair hair and skin of men from the north.

“It wasn’t spite or friendship,” I said, glancing sideways at the king.

“It wasn’t just spite or friendship,” he said. “Though I hope you will believe that both played their part. This is Yorn Fordad, ambassador of the Braels, come to have a chat with the two of us.” The Braeling bowed silently to me.

The king said, “The emperor is preparing an army to attack our Little Peninsula.”

I nodded. Everyone knew that.

“Everyone knows that?” prompted the king, as if, like Costis, he could read my thoughts.

I nodded again. “Yes.”

The king looked significantly at the ambassador and then back to me. “Everyone knows except the Braelings and the rest of the Greater Powers of the Continent. Their official position is that the emperor is only rattling his sword and when he’s rattled himself to death, his heir will have so much to occupy him that he will have no interest at all in our three little states.”

This sounded unlikely to me. It was possible that the emperor would squander his resources on an army he didn’t mean to use, but he would have to have some exceptionally good reason to do so, and I couldn’t imagine what it might be.

“Our allies fear to provoke the emperor by arming Attolia. They make excuses, hoping the threat will melt away. They are busy with their own problems and won’t deal with ours until the Mede is on their doorstep. By then, it will be too late for little Attolia, little Eddis, and little Sounis.” The king pinched his finger and thumb together, under no illusions as to their significance in the conflict between the Continent and the Medes. Little countries get eaten up by bigger countries. Or crushed between them.

“However”—the king went on, clapping his hand against his leg—“my queen believes the emperor cannot bring his army against us without ships—many ships. She thinks he preserves the illusion of sword-rattling while he masses his navy—moving in secret to avoid open confrontation and hoping to take the Continent by surprise. If the allied navy came face-to-face with those ships, no one could ignore the threat they represent. We need the allies to see that fleet, Kamet.” The king leaned toward me, searching my face. He asked, “Where are the emperor’s ships?”

This was why I had been brought from the empire, and this was why the Namreen had hunted us so relentlessly. Not because Nahuseresh had been murdered, but because the emperor feared I could tell the king of Attolia where he was hiding his navy. Melheret had made one last effort to retrieve me, to ensure my silence, but he needn’t have bothered. I didn’t know.

The emperor’s fleet was in no correspondence that Nahuseresh had dictated or received. He’d been in disgrace, I wanted to remind the king. We had spent months at his family estate with his razor-tongued wife before he had been allowed back to the capital, and then all of his efforts had been directed at living down his humiliation. That was why I had been taken in by Laela’s story—because Nahuseresh was obsessed with the emperor’s good opinion, and I assumed he had lost it permanently—fatally. If there was one thing I was certain of, it was that Nahuseresh had had no part in the emperor’s plans.

Eugenides let out a long sigh. “Well enough, Kamet. It was worth a cast of the dice.”

But my sleep-sodden brain was finally tallying its account. “Hemsha,” I said aloud, and the king straightened up again.

Hemsha. It had been such a humble request for my proud master to make of the emperor, to be governor of an undeveloped coastal province. I remembered my relief that he hadn’t been overreaching as he often did and my mistaken certainty that he would be successful—overconfidence that had certainly cost me dearly. If Nahuseresh was not dead, if he hadn’t sunk so low in the emperor’s graces as to be poisoned by his own brother, why then hadn’t he been made governor of Hemsha?

More certain by the moment, I said to the king, “Hemsha has only a tiny port at Hemet, but there is a protected strait along the coast to the northeast where you could put a hundred ships, two hundred ships. There’s no water there to make it a usable port, but there are good roads to bring supplies and soldiers to Hemet, and they could then be ferried from there to the fleet. Hemet is far south, but they could sail for Cymorene. The emperor has agents there ready to betray the fort.”

“Really?” asked the king, surprised.

“I burned the correspondence from them before we left that fortress at Ephrata. I’m sure they are still there.” After resupplying on Cymorene, the fleet could sail north to anywhere on the Little Peninsula.

The king nodded. “Province of Hemsha,” he said gravely. “Thank you, Kamet.”

He continued to sit cross-legged at the foot of the bed a little longer, assuring me that I would be safe in the palace, even from the Mede ambassador. I remember that he rubbed his ear as he spoke. As he had no right hand, he rubbed it with his left while his hook stayed in his lap. It made him look very young, like a boy imitating a monkey, absolutely unlike the man I had seen on the throne early that morning.

“Melheret is more bark than bite, but we will keep guards at your door just in case,” the king said. “You can trust them. It’s gold that makes treason, and the emperor hasn’t given Melheret any. He can’t afford an assassin to knife you in your sleep, and you needn’t worry about something being slipped into your dinner. I had a little talk with the kitchen staff last night, so happily, neither will I.” He rubbed his ear again. “The ambassador will have to assume that you have brought me the information I needed, but any message he sends back to the emperor will be slowed by the labyrinth of imperial correspondence—it’s very likely Melheret’s warning will be dismissed even if it reaches the inner court. This morning a hundred people heard me say that I stole you away for spite, and the Mede will want to believe it. All that Melheret or I can do is wait to see how this plays out, while you, Kamet, can begin a new life. Contemplate a new name, if you like, to start with.”

He gave me an encouraging nod as he rose and left with the ambassador of the Braels—the Braeling never saying a single word. I didn’t hear the outer door close behind them, and I believe that the guards, if asked, would have insisted that no one had passed by.

I hadn’t gotten to my feet in the entire time Eugenides had been in the room. I lay back down, thinking how I might describe the encounter to one of the other secretaries in the emperor’s palace, and began to appreciate Costis’s difficulty in accurately representing the king of the Attolians. I looked around—except for the lamps, lit by the Braeling, there was no evidence that the king had been there.

A month or so later, an allied fleet sailed into the narrow bay north of Hemsha, ostensibly looking for a stream to refill their water barrels, and found instead the ships of the Emperor’s navy neatly lined up at their moorings. Alarmed at the approach of the foreign ships, an unknown gunner on board one of the emperor’s brigs fired his cannon without instruction. The allied ship Hammer of Yeltsever responded. Once the firing began, there was no stopping it. The emperor’s ships, unable to maneuver, were destroyed by a fleet one-third the size of their own. Eighty or more of the emperor’s ships sunk. Thousands of men lost.

The admiral of the allied fleet wrote a very regretful report to his king, calling the loss of the Mede fleet a most untoward accident. Rumor had it that Eugenides stole the report from the diplomatic correspondence of the Pentish ambassador and read it out loud to his queen.

The Attolians liked to point out with a snicker that there was no sign anywhere of the king’s hand at work.

I took the king seriously and spent much time that night considering my new life. I struggled to name myself. I could be Jeffa, or Nish. Or Ashnadnechnamharr, if I chose, though the ghost of King Ashnadnechnamharr might haunt me if I were so bold. I began to understand why Godekker might have continued as Godekker—it was difficult to imagine answering to a new name. Kamet was the name my mother had given me, or so I have always believed, and I decided to keep it. Kamet the Setran? Kamet the Scribe? Nothing seemed to fit. I would be stuck with Kamet Freedman if I waited too long, but I resolved to wait anyway, in hopes of finding a name that felt right.

In the morning a boy brought me my breakfast on a tray and was scandalized when I took it from his hands and sent him on his way—I couldn’t be comfortable being served. There were guards outside my door as promised, and one warned that I should expect visitors after breakfast.

Indeed, my first visitor was Attolia’s former secretary of the archives, Relius. The guard announced his arrival, and I bowed and stepped back to admit him. We’d met before. He’d been one of only a few people who had understood my value to my former master. I was surprised that he was no longer secretary of the archives, the official title of Attolia’s master of spies, but of course, I couldn’t ask about the change. I invited him to sit on the elegant cushioned furniture and perched a little gingerly on a chair opposite him. As he pulled his robe around him before sitting, I saw his hands were misshapen, badly broken and healed, with two of the fingers missing. I looked from them to his face and quickly away. They had been undamaged when I had seen him last.

“There are some questions you might answer for us, Kamet. I am here to ask if you would be willing to do so.”

I’d expected this. I knew more about the empire than just the location of its ships, and I’d thought through the night about what things I might tell the Attolians that would profit them.

Relius said, “The king wants you to know that you are under no obligation. You are his guest, free to come and go as you please, and welcome to stay—in the palace, or anywhere in Attolia—for as long as you like.”

Or until Attolia fell. I still believed the Mede would roll the Little Peninsula as a lion rolls a gazelle, and I intended to be long gone when they arrived.

“You are thinking of driving a stiff bargain,” said Relius, and he was right. I’d thought long and hard about what my information might be worth. “Don’t,” he advised me. “You will do better to trust the king—he will see you amply rewarded.” I remembered Eugenides the night before, sitting at the foot of my bed, and earlier, sitting on his throne. I remembered how much I had liked him when I’d thought he was an errand boy—when he had ruthlessly tricked me into believing that was all he was. The only thing I knew was that I didn’t know anything, really, about the king of the Attolians, and I didn’t trust him.

“He’s very tenderhearted,” said Relius. “He’ll feel quite bad about it as he cuts you up into little pieces and feeds you to wolves.”

I laughed. Then I remembered Relius’s hands.

He nodded seriously. “I myself would walk across hot coals for him.” The Relius I had known had been fanatically loyal to his queen. “For either of them,” he added.

I didn’t trust Eugenides—I trusted my judgment of Relius. “What is it that you would like to know?” I asked.

Many more meetings followed. Every morning a messenger arrived at my door with a list of appointments, and I was asked to offer all my understanding of the entire empire as if I were a combination of oracle and travelogue. I described every port I had been in, and I had been in many. I laid out the roads for them, as if it were they who were invading the Mede and not otherwise. I told them about the hierarchy of the empire’s armies and navies and described every member of the court in as much detail as I could—habits, commitments, and liaisons, both proper and improper. Significant details, trivial details, when the emperor rose in the morning, what the heir preferred for breakfast, the strength and disposition of armies, of their stockpiles, every rumor of unrest in the provinces. All the information I had gleaned from my master’s correspondence. Everything I had learned as a slave—wholly attentive to any detail that might someday be used to my advantage. That information would be turned to the Attolians’ benefit—and that was to mine. I had no loyalty to the empire that had enslaved me and none to the Attolians, either. This was a business arrangement.

Not content with a spoken version, Relius wanted a written record of my flight from the empire, so I began this narrative in the palace of Attolia but have only recently neared its completion. I will eventually send it to Relius, when I am sure it can be delivered without interception, and I hope he will be satisfied with my account, as I would be honored to have it added to his library. I think he is more truly the secretary of Attolia’s archives now than he was when he carried the title. If events fall out badly, perhaps the scroll will go no farther than the library at the temple just up the hill from here.

While my day was filled with meetings, it was empty of other responsibilities—shockingly so, to me, who had never had time to call my own. I had hours to walk through the palace, revisiting the places I remembered, sometimes seeing them with new eyes. Mosaics, statuary, and the detailed carvings on railings and staircases that I had previously hurried past, unable to linger without appearing to be shirking my duties, I had time to fully appreciate. Day by day I found more beautiful things in Attolia.

If I had once been an anonymous secretary to a Mede master, I was no longer. People greeted me in the hallways wherever I went—the indentured were especially polite. The first time I heard my name, I was flummoxed and stood blinking as I translated its meaning in my head: Kamet Who Called Eugenides the Great King. It was even more of a mouthful than Ashnadnechnamharr and eventually shortened itself to just Kamet Kingnamer. I do not use it, as I am living very quietly here in Roa, known only as Kay the Scribe, but that is the name they use for me in Attolia. I am delighted, and I don’t care if Costis mocks me for it.

I spent much of my free time in the palace library, where several times I saw the youngest attendant of the king wrestling with his lessons. He had a pugnacious self-reliance that was unusual in such a body, and I suspected he was tying his tutor in knots on purpose. Curious to see if I was correct, I approached just after a lesson had ended and the tutor had decamped. I asked the young Erondites if I could use his slate, and he handed it over, amiable enough. I drew a bird and wrote three Attolian letters underneath it. “Which of these makes the first sound in the word?” I asked.

Very deliberately, he pointed to the one for pa, and not to the ba in bird. He knew it was wrong. I could see it in his face, and he, in turn, could see that in mine. After a moment, he shrugged with just the one shoulder and picked the chalk out of my fingers. Using great care, and his left hand, he added two more letters, one for ja and one for ne, next to the letter he’d chosen. Then he cast me a speculative glance from the corner of his eye and waited.

I conceded. “Indeed, it is a pigeon.”

Rarely have I seen a smile so utterly transform a face.

When I was not exploring the library or wandering the interior of the palace, I wandered instead in its gardens—not the queen’s garden, because that was private to the royal family, but the wide gardens that lay between the palace and the sacred grounds of the temples on the hillside above it. They were as orderly and as peaceful as I remembered, and I liked to visit one particular outdoor room where hedges enclosed a grove of mature trees and a deep pool was encircled by a ring of large stones. I enjoyed sitting there as the fish rose to the surface nearby, nibbling at the crumbs I dropped on the water.

One day I approached the grove so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t realize that others were there before me until I passed through the arched entryway in the hedge and two of the palace guards stepped in close beside me. They dropped the butts of their long guns into the gravel under our feet with an intimidating crunch, and I saw that the queen was resting in the garden, her attendants all around her. They turned to look at me, but I was already murmuring my apologies and backing away.

One of the attendants rose and followed me out. “Kamet,” she called as I retreated, “the queen says you are welcome and asks you to join her.” Attolia’s request was my command, so I nervously trailed after the attendant as she returned to the group beside the rock-rimmed pool. Attolia lay on a couch that had been carried out from the palace—her beauty heightened by an unsettling frailty. She was surrounded by cushions of velvet and embroidered linen, and a boy sat nearby with a fan to cool her if she grew too warm, while one of her attendants had a woven cloth folded in her lap, ready to deploy if the queen became too cool. She was obviously ill, but her vulnerability only emphasized the nature of her power. It was neither her beauty nor her physical strength that made her queen.

I bowed low, and as I lifted my head, she indicated the ground by her side with a glance. I dropped to sit cross-legged on the grass next to her couch. She smiled at me, and her eyes seemed brighter for it. She asked, “Is it true, Kamet, that my king twice bit my head cook?”

I nodded and said gravely, “Indeed, Your Majesty. I witnessed it with my own eyes.”

She murmured, “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, it seems,” and I ducked my head to hide my own smile. It was a most apt summation of the king’s behavior. I knew by then that there was far more affection between the monarchs than I would have believed possible before my arrival in Attolia, and it was no surprise to me that she characterized him so well.

“Kamet,” she said a little more seriously, “we have a saying in Attolian: the river knows its time. My king tells me that it came originally from the land of the Ianna and refers to that great river.”

I nodded. “Indeed, I believe that is so, Your Majesty.”

“My king says it is part of a longer piece of writing that he has read about, but has never seen. He told me that you might know it.”

I nodded again. “It’s from one of the tablets of instruction.” I knew what she was asking, and I recited the text quietly for her.

Mother why does the River not rise

It is not the River’s time

Why does the seed not sprout

It is not the seed’s time

Why does the rain not fall

the leaf not unfurl itself

Where is the hind and why does she not graze the fields before us

It is not their time

The River knows its time

The seed knows its time

The rain the leaf and the hind

They know their time

The River will rise the seed will sprout

The rains come down and the leaves unfurl

The hind will bring her children to graze before us

All in their time

It was quiet then. The leaves of the trees overhead ticked against each other in the light breeze. A fish flapped its tail in the water as it dove deeper into the pool. The queen looked down at her hands, stroking the soft velvet of a cushion, and said, “It was not her time. We will welcome her when she comes again. Tell me, Kamet, have you been to the kitchens?”

Surprised by the question, I said I had not.

“Do not leave it so long as my king did,” said the queen. “You don’t want your ear boxed.”

It was a dismissal, so I returned to my feet and excused myself. As I withdrew, the attendants rose like a flock of attentive birds and adjusted the queen’s pillows, offered her a tray of delectables, cast the woolen cloth over her legs and tucked it around her, and then settled again, some to stools, some to the ground, with their peaceable activities, embroidery, handweaving, sewing, back in their hands as silent accord returned to the grove.

Once out of sight of the queen, I continued walking along the garden paths. There was nowhere else I needed to be, the heavy schedule of meetings had finally begun to thin, and so I wandered, the flowers and leafy branches nodding at me as I passed. The palace gardens were extensive, with interlocking paths and long alleys of plantings linking open spaces with green lawns and often a fountain or a statue or both. I came eventually to the high wall that surrounded the garden and separated it from the sacred grounds beyond. That land belonged to the temple precinct on the hillside above the palace. Guards pacing the wall looked down at me, and I had no doubt they’d been watching me for some time. Their queen had chosen to leave her private garden, and I was probably the only person nearby except for her attendants and guards. I wondered if they could tell that I was delaying. I looked over my shoulder at the scuff marks in the gravel walk, clear evidence that I had in absolute truth been dragging my feet.

Attolia’s extensive gardens fed her palace. There were fruit trees as well as herbs and other edible plants. Every morning the gardeners moved through it, filling baskets to be carried to the kitchen yard to join the wagonloads of provisions arriving there. Throughout the day the cooks sent the youngest workers out to fetch another handful of tarragon or one more perfect bunch of grapes to adorn a dish for the royal table, and whenever I had seen them in the distance, I had headed off in a different direction. In my recent rediscovery of the palace I had visited every part of it but had never crossed through the kitchens, sometimes taking long detours to avoid doing so. I had been one among them once when I was a slave. They had been kind to me, but full of my own self-regard, I hadn’t appreciated the community they’d offered. Since my return they had sent trays of food up to my room carried by well-behaved servants I didn’t recognize, who never looked me in the eye. Did they remember me? Would they remember me and even so bow politely and shoo me back out of some place I no longer belonged? I didn’t want to find out but took the queen’s directive to heart. There was nothing to be gained by delay. Screwing up my courage, I crossed over my reluctant footprints and headed back toward the palace.

The closer I got to the kitchens, the less ornamental and more practical the plantings became. I walked between lemon trees, standing like soldiers at attention on either side of the path, to a door into the orangerie, where the trees were planted in circles around an open grassy lawn. On the other side of the orangerie was another enclosed garden where the vegetables grew in tidy rows, and waist-high stacks of clay tubes held hives of honeybees. The insects hummed in and out of them as I passed.

Beyond the walled garden was a gate into the paved yard with multiple open doors leading into the soot kitchen, where the roasting was done. I made it as far as one doorway and stopped on the threshold, directly in the way of anyone trying to get in or out—a behavior I despised in others, and yet there I stood, rooted like an inconvenient pillar of salt. At long tables, men and women worked, chopping vegetables, plucking feathers, boning fish, grinding ingredients in mortars. Some of the mortars were stone, but the ones for spices were metal, with a metal pestle that made a constant soft ringing in the background. There were quiet moments in every day, but I had not arrived at one. Woodchoppers and spit boys, roasters and carvers, dishwashers—all were busy. Beyond the bank of roasting ovens, doorways led to passageways that led to more kitchens. There was an entire room for the sauce makers, the boiling kitchen. There was a pastry room and a room where the bread rose and was baked in special ovens. Attolia’s palace was nowhere near the size of the emperor’s, but more than a hundred were employed in its kitchens—and that didn’t include the servants who carried the food up to the tables in the main hall and out to various smaller dining rooms and to me on a tray in my apartments. It was no surprise that one extra boy-at-all-jobs and sandal polisher had not seemed out of place.

No one looked up at me, and at first all the faces were unfamiliar. Some of the ones near to me I began to recognize. Tarra was chopping herbs—I could smell the rosemary. Semiux was boning a lamb, but the ones farther away were indistinct. Someone bumped into me from behind, Zerchus, pushing past with an enormous bowl filled with honeycomb that he thumped down on a table. The honey reminded me of the nutcakes Costis and I had longed for during our days of eating only caggi.

A young woman I didn’t recognize bustled up to me, wiping her hands on her apron. “Did you want something?” she asked briskly.

I opened my mouth to ask if they had nutcakes, but in Attolia’s kitchens the cooks were notorious for denying sweets to those not in their favor. Straight-faced, they would claim that such treats were unavailable and send petitioners on their way while the kitchen staff laughed behind their hands. I would ask for coffee. There was always coffee—they would grind it and prepare a tray for me, and I would take it back to my room and be done with this unpleasant moment.

“It’s Kamet,” I heard someone say.

“Kamet!” said Tarra, looking up from her chopping, and then I heard my name repeating across the room. The chatter died down—the only person seated in the kitchen stood up. At one time this would have been Onarkus, head of all the kitchens, but the king had sent Onarkus away, and in his seat was Driumix, promoted to be head of the soot kitchen. With a wave of his hand, Driumix permitted a lull in activity, though of course those stirring pots or turning spits kept at their work.

The woman now in charge of all the kitchens was Brinna from the bakery. I remembered her as every bit as dictatorial as Onarkus had been, and even more likely to fly off the handle, but she leavened her shouting with affection and was much better liked. My name had reached her ear far away by the baking ovens, and she came through the crowd gathering around me like the royal barge displacing smaller, less significant vessels.

“Kamet!” she cried, and opened her arms, but instead of a more enveloping embrace she seized my cheeks between her hands. “A month!” she scolded. “A month you have been here and not come to see us.”

“Not a month!” I protested, trying to shake my head, held fast in her grip.

She eyed me sideways.

“I’ve been busy,” I said apologetically.

“Hmpf,” she said. “We are not so neglected as we have been by someone else.” She spoke like the queen she was. “And we will not treat you as harshly.”

“I heard you boxed his ear,” I said.

“Ah,” she said, unhanding my cheeks and wrapping me in her arms, squeezing hard enough to make my ribs protest. “I would never box the king’s ear. I gave it the merest tweak.” Then she laughed, her bosom heaving, as she released me.

Brinna’s “tweaks” could leave a large man in tears, and her accuracy was unerring. In fact, this would not have been the first time she’d hung the king up by his ear. She’d caught him often enough helping himself to one of the rolls cooling on racks in her kitchen.

“He should have come to talk to us sooner. He wouldn’t have eaten so much sand.” She nudged me with her elbow and laughed at my amazement. Then she sent everyone back to work and me on my way, after assembling a tray of pastries for me to take. She told me to come back and visit when they were not so busy. “Stop eating alone,” she said. “I don’t have enough boys to send one up with your dinner every day.”

I did try to take the advice hidden behind her complaint. I had a standing invitation to the king’s public dinners, and I went to a few. Once I did, I was invited to private dinners by people who thought I might be useful to them. Many of those people were good company. I dined with Relius occasionally, and when he suggested I open a correspondence with Sounis’s magus, I did that. I made the acquaintance of various members of the indentured, but my heart wasn’t in it.

I poked through the collections in the king’s library. The king had offered again to have a copy made of anything I particularly liked, and as good as his word, he had already set a scribe to preparing a copy of the Enoclitus scroll. I put aside a few other scrolls to be copied, but my heart wasn’t in that, either. As each day passed, I grew more uncomfortable—I had more and more hours to fill and nothing to do. I hadn’t seen Costis since the day we’d arrived. I wouldn’t ask about him if he did not wish to contact me first, but my new life had an aching void in it and I was out of the habit of being lonely. Finally, I told Relius I was leaving. I intended to take what coin the king would give me and head north. I asked him for his help to get out of the city without being seen by Melheret’s spies.

“Kamet.”

The king spoke from behind me, and I dropped my pen. I made a blotch on this account, the one in my description of the cargo on the deck of the Anet’s Dream, and that is why I had to recopy that entire paragraph.

I stood to face him, apologizing as I did. “I’m sorry,” I said. I meant to forgo his hospitality, and I knew that was why he’d come, appearing alone again at twilight in my room. This time I was awake and had the lamps lit, but I still hadn’t seen him arrive. He was already seated in Nahuseresh’s favorite chair before he said my name.

He waved my apology away. “You wish to leave Attolia. Has someone made you uncomfortable here?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I’ve been very comfortable, but . . . I cannot make a place for myself because I cannot leave the palace.” Not without worrying that one of the emperor’s agents, or my master’s, might find me.

“You can take the guards outside your door with you.”

“That’s not . . .” It wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was to not be cooped up like a chicken, but I could hardly say that to the man who was both responsible for my predicament and far more closely caged himself.

“It’s a nice coop,” he said. “But it’s up to you, of course.” Looking down, he toed the carpet with his boot. The silence stretched between us.

“Your Majesty,” I said suspiciously, speaking not to His Majesty at all, but to the sandal polisher I knew better.

“Yes?” he said, looking up with his inviting smile, and I knew he had maneuvered me again.

I crossed my arms. “Why don’t you tell me your devious plan?” I might have glowered. It was no way to treat the king of the Attolians, but I had not yet made those two images of him align, the work-dodging sandal polisher and the king. I seemed to toggle between one and the other, flipping from deference to overfamiliarity. “You do have one,” I said.

“I have a suggestion. That’s all,” he said. “I did mean it when I apologized for bringing you here. I didn’t imagine that you would be comfortable in Attolia, even if as it turns out, most of the court can read and write.”

I refused to be embarrassed. It was true—the preference for oral recitation did not preclude most of the court from being literate. I had misjudged them. I plead special circumstances.

The king said, “There is a temple in Roa in Magyar where they have discovered a collection of scrolls in their treasury, quite rare ones. They wish to have them recopied. I wonder if you would be willing to take up the task. The Duke of Ferria is already sending scholars, so you would not be the only foreigner in town, and your arrival would be unremarkable.”

“And?”

“The temple is on the heights, of course. It overlooks the Ellid Sea. With a good glass, you could see any ships sailing toward Attolia. We have lost many of our observers of late, and we need people we can trust outside our borders. There would be danger. I can’t tell you how much or how little. Perhaps you would be safer in Mûr. Perhaps safer in Roa as an unremarkable temple worker.”

“It’s the least—”

“No.” The king was so firm, I stopped.

“You owe me nothing, Kamet. You are a free man. It is I who owe you, and I would only be more indebted if you chose to help Attolia further.” He looked at his toes again. “Think about it, will you?” He got up to leave, headed toward the door like any man, but he turned back as he opened it.

“Nahuseresh has retreated again to his family estate. He won’t be returning to the capital soon, if at all, and he sold off his possessions before he went. Our agent was able to purchase the dancing girls and Laela together without raising any suspicion. He’ll take them to the delta, and they will be freed there.”

I swallowed and nodded. I had worried over Laela’s fate, fearing for the harm that would come to her when my master learned how he had been betrayed. It may seem foolish to my reader, but I could not entirely forgive her for what she had done. She had meant it for the best, though, and I hated to think she would suffer for it.

“It might not have worked out so well,” said the king, and added unnecessarily, “I would have pursued this course anyway.”

His plan might have sent Laela to a gruesome death, or me, or Costis, who was his favorite. “Why send Costis?” I asked, still puzzled by that.

“He’s honest, not stupid,” the king pointed out.

“No, of course not. That’s not what I meant.”

“You would have eluded a man with twice his cunning,” said the king, and that was probably true. “He is in the Gede Valley these last few weeks. I sent him home to his family.” He was admitting that he’d left me lonely on purpose. What a piece of work he was. I don’t know why I like him as much as I do.

“Your Majesty,” I called, and he looked back as he was leaving. “Your youngest attendant needs a better tutor.”

“Thank you, Kamet,” said the king. “I’ll look into it.” And then he was gone.

A week later I was on a ship in the harbor, waiting for it to sail. I was headed west, though Roa lay to the east. I would take a long and circular route as far north as Rince in the Gulf of Brael, then south again on the River Naden and over the mountains to Magyar and Roa. We hoped to throw off any pursuit by my master or by the enraged emperor of the Mede. Melheret would have relayed my extraordinary contributions to the Attolian state, and I could count on the emperor to be vengeful indeed.

For the sake of caution, if nothing else, I would not be traveling in style. On the other hand, I had money for the journey and I was quite confident I could manage. I needn’t impersonate a free man—I was a free man—and no one was expecting me to be a caravan guard.

I would miss the Attolians. I had taken my leave from various people over the previous days with real regret. Setra had no hold on me, nor did I feel I owed anything to the Medes, but to Attolia I felt a growing attachment. I did not know if I would ever return, but I knew I would feel a tie to Attolia for as long as I lived. I would go to Roa and I would copy scrolls and I would be glad to work in her interest for so long as Eugenides could keep her free. I could have been—almost—grateful for the sense of purpose he had given me.

I missed Costis. I was beginning to believe that what I had thought of as pride all my life was no more than a kind of self-deception, and I wished that I could have apologized to him again for my abuse of his better nature. Almost as if wishing made him seem to appear, I noticed that a man on the dock with a duffel on one shoulder was very like Costis in poise and in gait. The man turned onto the gangplank to board the ship, and my heart lifted, though I tried to squash what I thought was a ridiculous hope. He was almost standing right in front of me before I could be certain it was him.

“Come to see me off?” I asked.

“Come to point out that you are far from plying your trade on a dusty street corner,” said Costis.

“So,” I conceded. “You were right and I was wrong.”

It was so very good to see him again. He asked seriously, “Are you worried by the journey?”

“I am sure I will manage, though I am not used to traveling alone,” I admitted.

“Would you like company?”

I didn’t think I had heard him correctly. “What of your king? Your position here?”

“It was his suggestion.”

Eugenides and his “suggestions.”

“He sent me to visit with my family for a few weeks and to say good-bye. I took my sister a wedding present. I am going to look a fool if you say you don’t want me along with you, Kamet.”

“Gods forbid you should look like a fool, Costis.”

“Is that a so then?”

“So it is,” I said.

“Immakuk and Ennikar,” he said.

“Where?” I snapped my head around to scan the dock, and he nudged me with his elbow.

“Idiot. Us,” he said.

“Oh, of course.” I was squinting down at the dock nonetheless, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary there.