“Kamet of Nahuseresh!” bellowed a voice behind me.

I should have gone to the Attolians to get my throat cut. At least it would have been faster.

I took one step, but it was too late to run. I faced around, expecting to see the palace guard and instead found a single burly older man in a handsome robe, imposing and obviously wealthy. He was also obviously a former soldier. He still had the bearing and the scars—he was missing his right eye—but he was certainly not the palace guard, nor one of the city’s Enforcers of the Imperial Peace.

“You are Kamet of Nahuseresh?” the man asked, looking me up and down.

I admitted it, bowing as I did so. I had no idea who he was.

He hesitated, almost as if he were the one making up a story. “I am a—a wine merchant,” he said. He didn’t look like a wine merchant. “And—and your master says I should arrange some deliveries with you.”

Mystified, I looked around. There was no wineshop near.

“My warehouse is at the dock,” the man said, as if daring me to contradict him. The sweeping black terror that had flooded my heart a moment before was receding, leaving me weak in the knees, with darkness crowding at the edge of my vision. The merchant almost glowed in contrast, and the noise of the street faded to nothing. “Come along with me and inspect the casks,” he said. Dazed but obedient, I followed.

He hired a chair. I do remember thinking that no one would expect to find a fugitive slave traveling beside a chair, head down and well behaved—that the merchant would take me through the city walls to the riverfront, and then I must devise a way past the secondary walls upriver and downriver of the city limits. But then my thoughts scattered and did not return. They churned against one another like waves in a storm and the darkness at the edge of my vision didn’t fade. Meanwhile, the merchant gave conflicting directions to the chair men, and we wandered through the back alleys of the warehouse district by the river until, just as we reached an open boulevard, he called a halt. With his hands on the elaborately carved armrests of the chair, he twisted to look down at me and said, “Never mind. I’ve forgotten another appointment. I will contact you later.” And he left me standing in the street, at a loss.

I kept moving only because it was dangerous to draw attention by standing still. I continued down the boulevard and found myself at the Rethru docks, of all places. If only I could believe the Attolians might be there to help me when the sun went down. It was busy, with the smaller riverboats tied two and three deep to the stone quays along the water. There were ferrymen in even smaller boats plying their trade, carrying people and packages across the water to the unfortified part of the city on the far side. Not a few slaves had escaped the city by waiting until dark and slipping into the water, but I couldn’t swim. When my master and I had fled Attolia, he had come up with the plan to swim out to a boat offshore. I’d begged him to leave me behind, but he’d insisted on pulling me through the water, determined to leave nothing that belonged to him behind for the Attolian queen. I’d swallowed half the sea that night, and after the crew lifted us on board the larger ship waiting for us, I’d vomited it out on the deck until I was too weak to stand. Even thinking of going in the water made my stomach heave.

The ferries wouldn’t take me in daylight, not without permission from my master. They might take me at night, when they had less chance of being seen breaking the law, but by nightfall I would be notorious. Ten times the money I had in my pocket wouldn’t get me across the river. And the sun was lower in the sky than I expected. Somehow the first part of the afternoon was already gone. I couldn’t afford to stand there in the open like I’d been turned to stone. If I didn’t find somewhere out of sight, I wouldn’t make it until dark. I would try to slip into one of the warehouses to hide among the bales and barrels. When it was dark, I could . . . sneak into one of the ships? Steal one of the rowing boats? Drown myself? I’d have to think of something while I waited.

Turning away from the water, I found myself nose to chest with the Attolian.

Again, well trained, I stepped back with a bow and an immediate apology.

The Attolian leaned in over me. “I told you after sunset,” he said quietly. “After dark.” Then, after a hesitation—“I did say after dark?”

After noon, after dark, the phrases are almost identical, and it was an easy mistake for a foreigner to have made. He hadn’t heard of my master’s death, that was clear. I seized my opportunity and stared at him helplessly, begging him with my eyes to save me. Should I have said, “Yes, you did say after dark, but my master has been poisoned, and it will be more convenient for me to run away right now?” I still thought he meant to murder me, not free me, but I didn’t care. If this man meant to take me out of the city before disposing of me, I had a much better chance of escaping one Attolian soldier than of escaping the combined forces of the palace guard and the city’s enforcers. If he could be fooled into helping me for even a little while, Gessiret’s money might see me to a chance at least of escaping the emperor’s torture chambers.

I cleared my throat. “You said, ‘after noon,’” I whispered, the first of my many lies.

“Oh,” he said, and then, may gods bless him forever, he rose to the occasion. He slid his hand into his purse and tossed me a coin, like any man offering a charity to a slave. I bowed over it as he moved by me.

“Follow me,” he said quietly. “Pay the fee for the cheapest entrance.” He smiled as if he were accepting my apology for bumping him, then passed on. I waited until he was a little ways ahead, and then, heart in mouth, I went after him, drawing on all my years of practice to give an appearance of calm that I didn’t feel.

We went to the theater.

If it hadn’t been a matter of life and death—mine—I would have been amused. Alone, the Attolian wouldn’t have drawn attention in the cosmopolitan mix of the city, and were I not being hunted, I could have disappeared into a number of places where slaves are welcome so long as they have at least a little coin in their pockets. An Attolian soldier and a high-status slave could go nowhere together without arousing interest—except the theater. In the open ground just below the stage, free men and slaves frequently mixed. I bought my ticket and followed the Attolian in, finding a space to stand with a few other slaves not far from him.

It was a cheap production. The amphitheater near the docks didn’t cater to a discerning crowd. It hosted comedies and variety shows for those whose taste matched their finances. It had the usual stone benches of a more prestigious theater, but the semicircular space below the stage was unusually large. The least expensive tickets would let anyone stand there, and slaves and the poorest of the free people in the city packed themselves in. It made it almost impossible to hear the actors if you were seated on the benches up the back of the amphitheater, but the performances were always formulaic and the people in the seats weren’t interested in the play. They were there to conduct business.

A series of comedy skits, with the wily slave Senabid outwitting his foolish master, were acted out for the jeering audience, and then the long performance followed—the story of Immakuk and Ennikar stealing Anet’s Chariot. I paid little attention to the actors—I was too busy scanning the crowd around me for any sign that I had been recognized. I watched the Attolian, seemingly enthralled by the play, wishing I had his apparent equanimity. By the time the two main actors were lifted off the stage in a giant chariot with wings painted on the side in cheap yellow paint, I could have puked my fear into a bucket if someone had offered me one. My master had been dead for hours. The city gates would already be closed. All the places a runaway slave might hide were being turned over while I stood there, listening to the epilogue.