“You’re certain he’s dead?” someone asked.

My eyes flew open, and I straightened up. A stranger stood before me, taller than the Attolian and slim, very elegant. He had a long, narrow face darker than my own and a heavier beard than I will ever grow. The patterns at the edges of his soft skullcap, and the ones around the collar and hem of his belted shift, marked him as a traveler from beyond the Isthmus.

“Your pardon, sir?”

The man repeated himself, and this time I heard him say, “Is there a pain in your head? You look unwell.”

“No,” I stammered. “Thank you, I am quite well.”

“Ah, I see it is grief, not illness, that strikes, but there are rumors of plague in the city. It is perhaps unwise to lean so sorrowfully against a wall, you see?”

I did see.

He said, “You have lost a friend?”

“He was not my friend,” I said automatically, then wondered why I’d said anything at all.

“Hmm,” said the man, thoughtfully tensing his lower lip. “You know, I think you are mistaken about that,” and he smiled, very kindly.

I thought back to the many dead in my life. I had told the Attolian as we sat among the stones above the tin mines that I had seen many deaths, and I had. Young and old, the houseboys of a fever, Jeffa of the same—other slaves and free men, associates of Nahuseresh, by age or disease or violence. All were alive one day and dead the next, as instantly as the Attolian, and yet this feeling was new, this particular loss, as if some part of me had been hollowed out, leaving me at a standstill and directionless.

The man said gently, careful to avoid offense, “You will forgive a man who has given you one bit of good advice if he gives more, won’t you? If you are wrong about whether he is a friend, perhaps you are wrong as well about whether he is gone, hmm? Sometimes we mistake these things.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Be certain before you let go of him. I once was lost, and my friend came for me.” He patted my arm and waved a good-bye before heading away into the crowded market.

I didn’t dare lean back against the wall. He was right that rumors of plague could be dangerous for the sick and the well. They didn’t always check for plague signs before they tossed anyone who appeared to be ill into plague houses. Better to be on the safe side, they would say, never mind the poor soul going to certain death.

The stranger had had an immense dignity about him. It had been inconceivable to be rude to him, in spite of his intrusion into my private affairs, but the Attolian had not been my friend. The Attolian had been no more to me than a convenience.

“Sometimes we mistake these things.”

The Attolian was dead. There had been no sound from the well. Only the yelp of the dog and then silence, echoing up from the depths. I looked back over the crowd in the market for a glimpse of the man in the patterned cap, as if I could go to him and insist that he was the one who was mistaken, but by then he was out of sight. I closed my eyes briefly and saw an image of the Attolian lying at the bottom of the well, not dead but dying. His legs or his back broken, calling for help. For a drink of water in the dark. Begging the miller to save him. I shook the image away.

What could I hope to accomplish by returning except to waste a chance to put myself further from the reach of bounty hunters or the Namreen? He was dead. There was nothing I could have done but run away. I would have ended up in the well myself if I had stayed. How long might it take the Attolian to die, if he was alive in that well, if he was alone there? Someone bumped against me in the crowd. Startled, I lifted my eyes from the ground, looking around to see who had bumped me, but I couldn’t tell. I looked up at the impersonal blue sky over my head, thought of flying up and away in Anet’s Chariot, and then I began to retrace my steps to the mill.

It was past midnight by the time I got back to the mill yard. The full moon overhead made the walls of the mill stark and beautiful, and all the spaces between the buildings impenetrably black. It was quiet. The miller, it seemed, had had only one dog.

I stood by the side of the well, dithering. Finally, I lay down on my stomach and lowered my head through the irregular hole in the rotten cover. There was no sound from below. I stretched my neck and turned my head, listening for any sign of life, and impaled myself on a splinter of broken wood.

“Monsters of hell,” I whispered sharply, pulling away from the splinter that was sticking into my skin perilously close to my eye.

“Kamet?” said a quiet voice from below.

I nearly jumped out of my skin and then froze, not sure if it was the Attolian or the ghost of him that spoke.

“You’re alive?” I whispered.

“Of course I’m alive,” he said, sounding peeved.

“Well, why didn’t you say something?”

“I just did.”

“I meant before I stuck myself with a splinter like an awl.”

“Maybe because I thought you were the miller, you idiot.”

“Oh, you were expecting him to sneak into his own mill yard in the middle of the night?” I didn’t know why I was so angry.

“Kamet,” said the Attolian patiently, “stop arguing, please, and get me out of here.”

“How?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted. “I’ve tried climbing the walls, but they are smooth down here, and I can’t get a grip.”

“I saw rope in the mill earlier.”

“That would help.”

I pulled my head out of the well and turned toward the yawning darkness that was the entryway to the mill. I’d seen the rope running through a pulley system deep inside, but I wasn’t sure I could find it in the dark. Fortunately, the moon was shining a bright beam of light through a window or a broken place in the dilapidated roof, and that beam picked out the block and tackle hanging from a rafter. I picked my way across the mill and tried to free the rope as quietly as possible, but the pulleys, like everything else, were in disrepair. The wooden wheels stuck, and as they turned, they squeaked. I cursed the miller and his stinking mill under my breath.

In the end I couldn’t free the rope entirely—the knot that held it to the final pulley was too old and too tight to be undone. I tried to cut the rope with my penknife, but the sun would have risen before I got the small blade through it. Cursing myself for having sold the longer knife, I scooped up the coil of rope I’d pulled free and carried it back toward the well, unwinding it as I went. At the well I dropped the remaining coil through the hole in the cover, hoping it wasn’t too rotten to hold the Attolian’s weight.

A whispered curse indicated that I should have given him some warning first.

Down on my knees, I stuck my face back into the well to apologize. There was a whisper of sound beside me, a footfall in the dusty soil, and I pushed myself backward onto my heels just as the miller’s club swung down. It hit the well cover, very near where my head had been, and caught in the rotten wood. I still had my penknife in my hand, and before the miller could wrench his club free, I plunged the little blade into his thigh. It made only a small wound, but I stabbed him again and again. He shouted and struck at me, but his blows landed with little force. He retreated, and I got to my feet.

Limping heavily, the miller came at me again. I circled away, staying outside the swing of the club, while the miller hurled abuse. “Thief,” he called me. “Stinking thief in my mill. Come to rob me, come to steal, nothing here for you but my club.”

I held my hands away from my body and said as calmly as I could, “I mean you no harm. I just came back for my friend. I’ve only come back for my friend.”

“He’s dead!” the miller snarled. “You can’t have him!”

Intent on hitting me with his club, he had turned his back on the well. He didn’t see the Attolian rising out of it like a mechanical god in a stage play, shining white in the moonlight.

Oh, dear gods, I thought, he really was dead.

My stark terror must have been obvious because the miller whirled to face the apparition. Just for a moment we stood frozen: the ghostly Attolian, the miller, and me. Then the club dropped from the miller’s nerveless fingers, and he produced a thin, whistling sound like a wounded toddler without the breath to scream. He tried again. Every breath brought a louder sound as he ran away, wobbling on his wounded leg. Staring back at us over his shoulder, he crashed full on into the wall of a shed and then staggered out of sight, still shrieking.

The Attolian looked after him, then turned his puzzled expression on me.

Emotions welled up in me until I was near drowning in them. I reached to touch his warm, living hand and swallowed a laugh and a sob. The Attolian cocked his head as if I were as inexplicable as the miller, but there was no time for explanation. If he was hale enough to climb out of the well, then he was equally capable of running. I grabbed him by the arm and hauled him toward the road, away from the cursed mill and its miller before any others came out to see the apparition and realized that he was no ghost at all, but a man still liberally coated in flour.

We ran until darkness and the high brush growing beside the road hid the mill from sight. Slowing, I turned to check on the Attolian. He seemed little injured by his fall—he had kept pace with me and appeared in every way whole. He was breathing heavily, but he smiled, realizing what had so frightened the miller.

“Woo—oo—hooo-o,” he said, floating his hands in the air.

Something in my chest split then like an overfull wineskin, and I laughed out loud. The two of us stood there clutching ourselves and heaving with laughter. Every time one of us tried to catch his breath, the other would raise up his arms with a “Woo—oo—hooo-o,” and off we would go again like children.

Finally, afraid that the miller might come to his senses and hear us out on the road, I waved a hand toward the city and, arm in arm, we staggered off. “I’ve still got my sword,” the Attolian said, “but I left the bow in the well.”

“We aren’t going back for it.”

“I guess not,” he said.

I led the way past now-familiar landmarks: the small town, the ditch where I had washed my shirt, the last rise above the city. As the moon dropped toward the horizon, the sun rose—it would be hot later, but the morning was cool and pleasant. I looked forward to the bustle of the city. Then I glanced at the Attolian, surprised to see how far he had fallen behind. My happy spirits settled with a thump.

“You’re hurt,” I said, walking back to him.

“I’m fine,” said the Attolian.

“No, you aren’t,” I said. He’d told me he’d landed on the dog—killing it and breaking his fall. He’d been senseless for a bit afterward but otherwise unharmed. Only now, he walked with his shoulders bowed and a hesitation in his step.

“I’m fine,” said the Attolian again, more curtly. Then he seemed to rethink. “Actually,” he said, “I am inches from death from a putrid sore throat and you should leave me in the nearest ditch.”

“What?” I was mystified. “If I wouldn’t leave you in a well, why would I abandon you in a ditch?”

He looked momentarily as confused as I felt. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was just trying to stop you from worrying and I’ve seen someone else do it that way. Actually, I don’t know why you didn’t leave me in a hole in the ground.” He smiled at me, as if he might have laughed again at the miller, but he was too tired to make the effort. There were marks like bruises under his eyes. I hadn’t seen them before in the dim light. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “Let’s keep going.”

He wasn’t fine. He rubbed his head as if it ached, and mindful of the rumors of plague in the city, I watched the people passing near us on the road to see if they noticed. I reached hesitantly to touch him, and his forehead was hot and dry. He brushed my hand away and stood a little straighter for a few steps but soon sank back again into silent plodding.

“It’s just a sore throat,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”

Better that he’s ill, said a small voice in the back of my head—it would make it easier to slip away after we reached the Attolian trade house.

The day before, I had wandered without direction. This time I was looking for the fastest way to the center of the city, and I was hopelessly lost. Once we were among the buildings, the streets grew so narrow it was impossible to get any reliable guidance from the sun. All I could do was pick the widest street at every intersection, hoping to reach someplace where I could get my bearings. At last we reached a broad avenue and I could follow the vendors clearly headed for the market in the old city.

Horses and mules pulled wagons, and the occasional camel was given a wide berth. There were a few chairs occupied by people rich enough to be carried but not so influential as to have the road cleared for them. As their attendants had sharp elbows, they were given a wide berth, too. Nonetheless, the crowd tightened around us as we approached the gates, and we were eventually at a standstill. I cursed the delay even before I saw the cause of it.

Just ahead of where we waited, a group of armed men stood by the open gates to the old city, surrounding another man in an official-looking robe. My heart leapt to my mouth before I realized the man in the robe was a health official—they weren’t hunting me. Then it leapt to my mouth again. They were checking for signs of the plague, the tiny red dots that would grow into pustules. It was probably meant to reassure the population and calm the city, but if someone was pulled from the crowd, it was going to start a stampede. I had the Attolian close at hand and was holding him by the arm as if we were close friends traveling together. Head down, he was unaware of anything beyond the paving stones under his feet. He’d complained of a sore throat, so it wasn’t plague he suffered, I was sure, but that might mean nothing if he caught the inspector’s eye. I looked over my shoulder. Trying to force our way against the crowd would draw exactly the attention we wanted to avoid.

I looked forward again and saw a camel not too far ahead of us. The vile nature of camels was such that even in the tight crowd there was space around it. Nudging the Attolian along, I pressed forward into that space, then maneuvered to put the camel between us and the official at the gate. We had just drawn even with the camel’s back end, and I was watching it closely because it was much too close for comfort, when I heard the man leading the camel say over his shoulder, “Lucky fellow!”

It was the stranger, the gentleman from south of the Isthmus who had questioned me the day before. “You have found what you thought was lost, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, pushing the Attolian forward as discreetly as possible. The Attolian, who’d been hunched before, was suddenly standing straight up. I prayed he wouldn’t do anything to draw attention.

“Ennikar!” he said, as if greeting an old friend.

The southerner looked startled. He did look like Immakuk’s companion. Tall and dark skinned, with his carefully groomed beard trimmed straight across at the bottom, he was very like the actor who had represented Ennikar in the play back in Ianna-Ir. I was afraid the man might be offended, but he laughed.

“You know those stories?” the southerner asked. He threw an arm around the shoulder of the Attolian and didn’t seem to notice the way the Attolian staggered. Anyone watching would have thought that we were together and that the Attolian’s stumble was no more than the result of a friendly embrace. Arm in arm, we proceeded into the old city.

Once through the gate, we walked in a narrow midway between the stalls of the market. Only the central space was wide enough to allow the traffic to pass through to the rest of the city.

The Attolian continued to be positively delighted by the stranger. I decided it would be best to make an exit before the Attolian said something rude and before the southerner realized how ill he was. I gestured to a space between two market stalls—the booths were constructed of interlocking panels with ceilings of striped fabric, a temporary city within the city, with even narrower roads.

“Our way is through here,” I said. “Many felicities to you.”

“And many to you, Kamet.”

I turned away, only for a moment. No sooner had I stepped between the stalls than I looked back, but he was gone. Puzzled, I stepped out into the open again. The camel at least should have been easy to spot. How could he have known my name?

“You saw him, too?” asked the Attolian.

“What? Yes, of course.”

“He’s gone now.”

“I see that.” I was still looking, though.

“We should go, too,” said the Attolian.

Fevered and weak, he had more sense than I did. “Yes, yes,” I agreed, and pushed him along between the stalls, among the merchants selling scarves and robes and bolts of cloth, but still looking over my shoulder every few steps until the open part of the market was entirely out of sight.

At a stall selling leather bags, I asked a woman for directions to the Attolian trade house. The answer came in a heavy accent, and I wasn’t sure I understood completely, but I nodded and thanked her and moved on. She’d pointed in the direction we were already going, so I thought I could follow my best guess at what she’d said, then ask someone else. We left the market and made our way along a fairly open street. The whole city sloped downhill to the waterfront. The higher part of it, where we’d entered the gates, was where the wealthier people lived and shopped. The stores along the street were for ink and paper and fine tailoring. The trade house would be down near the waterfront.

I’d known that it would be difficult to get the Attolian to the harbor. When we passed a fountain with three stone dolphins, I was relieved that I’d followed the leather seller’s directions that far. She’d said there was a road marked with a crowned lion, and there was. We came to a flight of steps, but I wasn’t sure if she’d said to turn at the top or at the bottom. I’d hoped it would be obvious when we got to them, but it wasn’t.

All I really needed to do was continue downhill—one way or another I would get to the waterfront—but I wanted, for the Attolian’s sake, to get there as soon as possible. I parked him against a wall and went quickly down the steps to investigate the street below.

“Excuse me, kind sir,” I asked a passerby. “Can you tell me how best to get to the Attolian trade house?”

The man pointed back to the top of the stairs. “Take Zam Street to the next set of stairs on the right, and go down from there to Sun Street, follow it to the first fountain and look for a cookshop called the Lady’s Grace, go to the right of the cookshop for a bit, and turn toward the water at the cobbler’s. There’s another court there, with a”—something I didn’t understand—“fountain, and the largest building is the trade house.”

“Thank you, k—”

“They’re closed, though.”

Plague. They had heard rumors of the plague and cleared out, boarding up the doors and leaving the city for the time being. I thanked the man again, wishing he’d told me that first, and went back up the stairs to the Attolian. It was still morning and he could have been a drunk resting on his way home after a long night, but not for much longer. As the sun got higher, he was going to look more and more like a plague victim. I needed to get him out of sight.

I looked around, assessing our options. I couldn’t take him to an inn. No innkeeper would give him a room. In the city of Ianna-Ir, I could have found a storage site, a warehouse, a stable, or some kind of shed, but Zaboar was a smaller city and inside its walls it was wealthiest. It would be hard to find a place where the Attolian could be tucked away. Even if he had the strength to make it to the shabbier parts of town outside the walls of the old city, I didn’t dare take him past the health inspectors at the gates again.