She considered the empty hills around the city and the rows of broken stumps. “It would be pretty,” she said aloud, “covered in trees.” She told Klimun, “Very well, cover the hills with olive groves, and I will bring the peace they need to live. But you will have to free the first captive that you see when you leave the temple, and never let the moonlight find you telling a lie. Failing that, your olives will be razed and your city, too.”

Klimun agreed. He waited out the night at her altar, and, in the morning, walked back down the sacred path. The sun was not yet over the horizon, and the road was still dark between the trees. He heard a shout and rushed into the bushes, where he saw a slave—

“I knew I would be in this story somewhere,” Eugenides interjected.

“Oh, no,” said Phresine, “this was a humble slave.”

“Ouch.”

“Though very courageous.”

“Not me,” whispered Eugenides to his pillow.

“Shhh.”

The slave was struggling with some animal. Klimun drew his sword before he realized that one of his own hunting dogs had somehow gotten itself entangled in a snare. It was frightened and enraged, snarling at the slave as the slave worked to free it. While Klimun watched, the cord around the dog’s neck snapped. Klimun was fond of the dog and wished he had seen it first, not the slave. The dog was certainly more valuable, but he remembered his word to the goddess. He struck with his sword and killed the dog as it went for the slave’s throat.

Klimun freed the slave, who was named Gerosthenes, and told him he could go home. But Gerosthenes’s family was long dead, and there was no home for him to go to. He was grateful to Klimun for his life as well as for his freedom, and he said he would stay and serve the prince for the rest of his life.

“And that is different from being a slave in what way?” Eugenides asked.

“I think the difference lies in the choice,” Phresine said gently.

The king looked away.

“One more interruption, and you won’t hear the rest of the story,” she warned him.

“Yes, Phresine.”

“Good.”

As she took a breath to speak, he said, “Have I mentioned that I am king?”

She exhaled in exasperation. “And I am an old woman, and boys with fevers who want to hear a story shouldn’t interrupt, king or not.”

“I’m not a boy,” said Eugenides, sounding like one.

“A boy,” said Phresine, “and your wife just a babe herself to an old woman like me.”

Eugenides grunted in disagreement, but was then, at last, quiet, and Phresine went on.

Perhaps even Klimun didn’t know why Gerosthenes would choose to stay with him, but he was glad of it. He liked Gerosthenes, and the two quickly became friend and friend, not master and servant. Klimun was a very good leader, and he was true to his promise to the goddess. He immediately began the replanting of the olive groves and he invited the princes of neighboring cities to discuss a peace. If he wasn’t wholly truthful, he was truthful by and large, because one cannot tell a lie during the day and be sure that it won’t come home to roost in the evening. The other princes found that he was honest and that he could be relied upon.

As he proved himself to his allies, his reputation for honesty and true dealing grew, and the peace among the cities grew as well. Not all of the cities, of course, but peace held well enough that the olive trees grew higher and higher and the year came nearer when they would begin bearing fruit.

The goddess’s stricture lay very lightly on Klimun. He was honest by nature and, after many years, honest by habit as well. I don’t suppose he had to remind himself very often about his promise to the goddess, and after a time, he began to forget it. I am not saying he started to choose lies over truth; on the contrary, he was honest in his dealing with princes and with paupers. He was kind and he was generous. I am just saying that as the days and years slipped by, he forgot his initial reason for hewing so close to an honest course. Ever since the gods created the world, mortals have been forgetting from where their blessings come.

But the gods make their bargains for a reason, and they do not forget. Not in ten years, not in twenty, not in a lifetime. Every night the moon shone her light on the earth, it bathed Klimun especially bright. She watched him, waiting for him to break his word.

The king, lying on the bed, listening to Phresine, looked uncomfortable, but he didn’t speak.

Now, in the year when the olive trees were near to bearing fruit, there was a new prince in one of the nearby cities, the city of Atos. The Basileus of Atos had died, and it was his only son who had come to power. The old prince had made a few treaties with neighboring cities, but he had never brought his son to the bargaining table, and no one knew if this young man would stir up old troubles the way some young men do.

Klimun decided that he would have a look at this young prince and see for himself if he was a danger. He decided to go to Atos and wander among its people. If they talked about war and vengeance, then Klimun would know what sort of man led them. If they talked of peace and their harvest, Klimun would know they followed the lead of their prince and that he would be a good man. If he saw the prince himself, he would know how the young man treated his citizens. That was the way to learn the most, he thought.

The harvest festival was coming soon. It would be a good time for a stranger to wander through a city without drawing attention. So Klimun, taking only Gerosthenes with him, set out. He arrived in good time for the festival. Once he was there, he told everyone he was a farmer and that his farm was just beyond the border of the land that the city controlled. He was no citizen of the town, he explained, and he was unsure of his welcome, but the townspeople were good to strangers, and they welcomed him to the festival. He drank wine with new friends and asked them what they thought of their prince. “See him for yourself,” he was told at the wine bar. “He will judge the wrestling contest.”

Klimun was no longer a very young man, but he was still young enough to enjoy a wrestling contest, and he decided to enter this one. He won all of his early matches. In the afternoon, he won again, until there was only one match left before he reached the laurels. The new prince judged the final match, and Klimun was able to get a good look at him. He seemed proud, but he judged fairly when he could have cheated and allowed his own citizen to win. Some people might have been angry to see a stranger win the city’s prize, but the prince didn’t seem offended when he awarded the match to Klimun, and the laurels as well. The prince went back to his pavilion, and Klimun, for his labors, received an amphora of wine and an invitation to join the prince for the evening meal.

Now, it dawned on Klimun that it would be hard to sit down with the prince for a meal, and expect the prince not to know him when they eventually met again. The prince might well be angry at being deceived. So Klimun made hasty excuses, found Gerosthenes in the crowd, and the two slipped out of the city as quickly as they could. They had hurried some ways beyond the fields of the city when they came across an old woman on the road. She told them that a horse and rider had recently passed, and in her hurry to get off the road, she’d dropped all the coins she had earned that day selling cakes at the festival. They were there somewhere in the dirt of the road, but the light was failing, and so were her eyes. She begged Klimun and Gerosthenes for their help. Klimun judged they were well away from the city of Atos, and they stopped to help her look for her money.