“Offered him a glass of remchik.”

She made a puzzled sound, though she and I both knew that slaves were beaten for all sorts of reasons and sometimes for no reason at all.

“He didn’t get the governorship of Hemsha.”

“Ah,” said Laela. She wasn’t a dancing girl anymore; she was as experienced as I was in listening to rumor and sorting out its meanings. “Well, you couldn’t have known,” she told me, but I didn’t agree.

“I’m a fool,” I said.

“You handle him well,” Laela reminded me. “Don’t blame yourself.”

Her words helped as much as the cool cloth on my face. My expertise had been painfully acquired over the years, but it was mostly reliable. I did usually handle my master better than I had that day, and I was proud of my skill.

“I should see to the girls. They’ll need to know he’s in a mood,” Laela said. “I’ll come back if he sends for you.” And she went away, leaving me to rest while I could.

When Laela came to fetch me, it was already dark. She lifted a lamp to my face and winced.

“You look like a pomegranate,” she told me.

“Thank you so much,” I said. My voice was mocking, but she knew I was grateful. I was stiff as well as sore, and she had to steady me while I got to my feet. She walked me as far as the entrance to the dormitory, then left me to make my own way.

“Kamet, you look like a pomegranate,” my master said.

I said nothing.

“Get your clothes off so I can see the rest of the damage.”

Slowly, I peeled my tunic off, in order to allow him to inspect his handiwork. He always did, after a beating, partly to be sure that any serious injury was seen to, and partly just to admire the bruises. When he was done with me, I was shaking and sick, my skin prickled with a cold sweat, but he had wrapped my chest and shoulder in bandages and given me a dose of lethium to put me to sleep. He helped me over to the cot in my office, then gently covered me with a blanket, checking to see that I was as comfortable as possible before he went back to his own sleeping room.

I moved very gingerly for the next few weeks, in part because of my healing body and in part because my master was still in a dangerous mood. It was best to stay out of his sight as much as possible until his temper evened out. I kept the curtain pulled across my alcove, though it was stifling in the small space, with no movement of the air.

The quarterly accounts had come in, and they kept me busy. The allowance for household costs was delivered to me four times a year, mostly on the basis of these accounts, and they had to be examined thoroughly. I oversaw all of my master’s finances, not just for the palace household but for his outlying estates as well. His slaves and servants answered to me, and I in turn to him. Reading between the lines, I suspected that the steward at the family estate was at his wit’s end trying to keep my master’s wife’s expenses in check. I might have had some sympathy for him—she was very strong-minded—but I’d been unimpressed by what I had seen of his management. I decided to cover the added expense for the quarter, but I thought that I would replace him soon. I could move a man I had in mind from one of my master’s smaller estates. The incompetent steward was a free man—he could be turned out without the trouble of selling him.

When I heard the houseboy open the apartment door, I twitched the curtain on my alcove aside. My master was out and Kep, the houseboy, could only be coming in to speak to me.

“It’s Rakra, Kamet, about his pay.”

I nodded and the houseboy showed Rakra in. A burly man in his thirties, he’d been a houseman on the family estate and had returned with us to the capital. In the palace, he had little to do to earn his pay and had perhaps too much free time to sample the pleasures of the city.

Rakra looked me over, his eyes lingering on my bruised face, and I felt my own eyes narrow. Pomegranate? I wondered, but he didn’t say it, just snorted. Honestly, I looked a little more like an overripe melon at that point—purple and green.

“I’ll need more money,” Rakra said. “Same amount as before.”

Quite a few of my master’s palace servants came to me for advances on their pay. I made loans out of the discretionary funds in my budget and charged them a fee, deducted from their pay at the end of the quarter—in this way making a bit of money for myself. There was an embroidered bag holding all my savings sitting in my master’s cashbox under my desk. Unlike Rakra, most of the people in need of a loan arrived at my threshold with some embarrassment, not with bold demands.

“Better our master doesn’t know about our business, eh?” Rakra suggested.

“Ah,” I said.

This was exactly the sort of loss of discipline I hated to deal with after a beating. Rakra assumed my loan-making was a secret. He’d heard a rumor that I was in disfavor and thought he could threaten me with its revelation. In my experience, crooked men assume others are crooked as well, and I was reconsidering Rakra’s character. He opened his mouth to say something even more unpleasant, I was sure, but I held up a hand to stop him.

“Very well,” I said. “I will take what you owe from next quarter’s pay and charge you no fee.” I bent under the desk to lift the cashbox, and opened it with the key on a tie around my waist. I counted three coins into his meaty palm while Rakra looked pleased with himself.

“I’m sure my master is well aware of the payday loans,” I told him. This voided the power of his threat, and was also true. There was no reason my master should not know of my loans, and I had always assumed he did. Rakra’s eyes narrowed, belatedly wary, but I dismissed him with a wave of my hand toward the door and looked back down at my work. Rakra hesitated, but I went on ignoring him until he left. I could have discharged him from my master’s service—I had that kind of authority—but Rakra had been hired by the steward at the family estate, the very one whose accounts were out of order. I resolved to check the expenses more thoroughly, and I did not want Rakra returning in disgrace to the estates too quickly, as it might alert the steward to my suspicions. I would soon know if there was a larger problem to address. If there was, I would bring it to my master’s attention and possibly he would be pleased with me.

Once the accounts had been attended to and the money disbursed, there were housekeeping arrangements to be made. My master’s rooms were growing shabby, and if we were not to be displaced to Hemsha, he would expect them to be updated. The lingering ache in my shoulder reminded me that I needed to find him another statue of Shesmegah. I called in various merchants to discuss new rugs and furnishings, doing as much as I could from my little office. The tradespeople had representatives in the palace and they were wise enough to show no sign they noticed my bruises. Unlike Rakra, they knew the authority I wielded over their purses.

Laela stopped by to fill me in on some of the stories circulating among the lower echelons of the palace—the laborers and slaves. They knew little and made up more. She told me that Abashad had been named general and admitted to the Imperial Council of War. She said she thought the poor little country of Attolia was doomed, but that was not news. Our emperor continued to pretend he did not mean to invade the Little Peninsula and had browbeaten the Attolians into exchanging ambassadors, but all of the city-states there, Eddis and Sounis as well as Attolia, were doomed. We all knew it. I think Laela had a friend among the servants set aside for the Attolian ambassador. She told me that Ornon was a pleasant enough man who didn’t harass the slaves or otherwise increase their labors.