As it happened, Relius wasn’t in his study when I arrived. I knocked on the open door, and when he didn’t answer, instead of waiting politely in the hall, I slipped inside. I went to look into a bedroom at an unmade bed, more books and papers, and a bowl of shriveled grapes. Another door led to a windowless storeroom lined with shelves.

Having determined that Relius was nowhere in the apartment, I turned to an examination of everything I could see in his study. Maps, miscellaneous papers on the table, a rack of writing tools, and a set of brass compasses, highly intriguing devices I’d never seen before. On his shelves were sheets of music, two flutes, and numerous books. I was just reaching to touch one of the flutes when Relius cleared his throat behind me. I snatched my hand back and swung around, almost tripping over my own feet.

“Another time, we will look at those. Not today. You should return to the king’s apartments.”

I felt his eyes boring into the middle of my back as I went.

“Oh, did you get tired of pretending?” Xikander asked when I returned. There was a table in the waiting room that always held a plate of nuts and pastries. There was an amphora of wine as well, with partly filled cups scattered around it. I lifted a wine cup, looked at Xikander contemplatively, and when he tensed, put it back down. Hearing Sotis laughing behind me, I headed off to my closet, and that is why I wasn’t with the king when the news came: the allied fleet of the Greater Powers of the Continent had “unexpectedly” met the Mede navy in the narrow straits near Hemsha. In an event described by the Pent commander of the fleet in a dispatch to his government as a “regrettable accident,” the allies had sunk most of the Mede ships. The emperor of the Mede blamed the king of Attolia and was withdrawing his ambassador.

Officially, the allies had sailed into the narrow straits seeking nothing more than a source of fresh water to resupply their ships, and had come across the Medes at their mooring. Seeing the allies bearing down on them, unsure if they were under attack, the Medes had run out their guns. Some unknown sailor among the Medes had fired without orders. An allied ship, finding herself fired upon, had answered, and once that had happened, there had been no hope of stopping the confrontation. The Mede ships, all sails down, unable to maneuver, had been destroyed almost to the last one.

That night, the Mede ambassador elected to dine in his rooms.

All over the city, people were celebrating, raising their glasses in toasts to the proxy victory. They knew now that Costis’s adventure with Kamet had never been about anything as petty as revenge, and there would be no more talk of “two goats and an olive tree don’t make an estate.”

Melheret took his formal leave from the Attolian court three days later and may well have spent that entire time preparing his exit speech. It was a work of art. The king, listening to it, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, wholly attentive to the Mede’s every word, taking note of the mannered and precise language, the formal words of goodwill layered over with equally stylized insults, the genial good humor that did not hide his contempt. His compliments were conveyed in tones of condescending reproach at the way he, and by extension, his nation, had been treated.

Our king, when it was his turn to respond, sounded far more sincere. “It has been an honor to have the ambassador at our court, and my queen and I are deeply sorry that some untoward misunderstanding has cost us his company. If the emperor of the Mede feels aggrieved, surely it is unjust that we must pay the price with the loss of our ambassador’s fellowship, the recent disturbing news from Hemsha having nothing to do with our Little Peninsula, and the excellent relationship between ourselves and the empire falling victim to the regrettable actions of others. In proof of that, we would like to offer you a token of our goodwill as you depart.”

Melheret had prepared for this customary exchange and signaled his servant to bring forward his own gift, a bottle of scent, tiny but exquisite. “It has a most delicate aroma,” he told the king. “Delightful, but of course, very short-lived.” He bowed.

The king thanked him by saying, “We receive it in exactly the spirit of goodwill with which it is offered, Ambassador, and in exchange—” He turned to Ion, who handed him a flat oval case no bigger than the palm of his hand. As soon as he saw it, the ambassador patted his coat pocket, surprised to find it empty. “Your Majesty,” he said sharply, his anger cutting finally through all of his stiff diplomatic posturing, “that is a private possession of mine.”

“The miniature of your wife. I know. You always keep it with you, and I apologize for borrowing it without asking, but I wanted to be sure our present to you would suit.”

Melheret all but snatched the case from the king’s hand and opened it as if checking to be sure it had not been damaged in any way before he slid it back into his pocket. The king waved Ion forward with a case of a similar size, but a little fatter. When Melheret opened it, he blinked.

“Earrings for your wife,” said the king. “To match the necklace in her portrait.”

“She will be so pleased to have you home,” said the queen, her voice quite kind, but the implication clear. His wife was not the only one to be pleased about the end of the Mede’s tenure in Attolia. “Safe travels, Ambassador.”

Melheret swallowed. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

He seemed almost dazed as he withdrew.

There were sporadic celebrations for days and then, as if the city had taken a deep breath and let all its worries go, people went back to their ordinary lives for the first time in years without the imminent threat of war. Attolia refused to release the grain from the storehouses, but she did order that work restart on the aqueduct—work that put money in people’s pockets and eased for many the high price of bread.

I continued my studies with my new tutor. Relius had informed me that I could expect to meet him for an hour or so each day, beginning at dawn. Most mornings, I easily slipped past whichever attendants were sleeping in the king’s waiting room. The guards, never asleep, opened the doors without a sound to let me through. On the mornings the king took his sword and sparred with the guard, I had no lesson so that I could be there when he dressed. Otherwise, he started his days quite late, and my absence from my little closet drew no attention.

Relius was not a gentle teacher, but he was a thorough one. I got used to the condescending noise he made in the back of his nose as he quizzed me on the words I knew and added more to the codex Kamet had given me. He taught me to write with a pen as well as with chalk, and one day he taught me numbers—not the marks I already knew, but Sidosian numerals. I was still quite wary of him at that time, but when he wrote the numbers out, first one through nine and then ten, I actually knocked his hand away from them, making his pen spatter ink across the scrap of paper, interrupting his explanation of the value of the null symbol. I had seen it. One and null make ten. A symbol that represented nothing increased every number it sat beside by a factor of ten. Two nulls side by side increased a number a hundredfold. Hatch and strike marks grew unwieldy with larger numbers, and it would be impossible to learn a different symbol for every amount, but with a null, one could write any number, an infinity of numbers, even.

“Pheris?” said Relius, displeased.

I ignored him. I was all but unaware of my hands squeezing, as if with my crooked fingers I was grasping at this new idea. With the numbers ordered in columns, one could see new relationships between them without laying out a pattern first.