I started again.

They anointed each other

knew the ferryman would not take them across the river

knew they would swim

knew the waters of the eternal river would wash the oil

away

Brought the bottle to anoint themselves

and to anoint themselves again

anoint themselves and others in the world

make all invisible to the Devourer

So that none must go to the gated lands without leaving

all shall come and go as they choose

said Immakuk

Before they could pass the gates

the ferryman spoke to the gray people

told them Immakuk had that bottle

that contained the oil of immortality

Kununigadak was blind could not see them

only Kununigadak could not see

the gray people not so blind

They pursued the heroes

faster went Immakuk

the gray people followed

grappled trapped seized

Ennikar Strong Ennikar

Trapped him the gray people

as the great are brought down by the weak

when they are many

As the hawk is mobbed by the roller birds

as the great sea eagle is brought down by gulls

Immakuk saw Strong Ennikar held

slowed his steps

noble Immakuk turned back

Give us the bottle of oil said the gray people in the

wind-filled whispers

the bottle give it give it to us and we will let you leave

the gated lands

all will leave the gated lands

never to return

Immakuk remembered his promise to Death

threw the bottle far away

deep into the gated lands

As the gray people weakened their hold

seized Ennikar and drew him through the gates

as they receded wailing

seeking the bottle lost that made a

man invisible to the Devourer

Wailed as the Queen of the Night

affrighted the gray people

seized with her claws

lifted the bottle

flew back to the palace

of Death her brother

Together Immakuk and Ennikar passed through the

gates

as no man has before or since

Immakuk and Ennikar

swam the eternal river

came into our world together

climbed the stepwell of Ne Malia

Because Immakuk had saved his friend but lost the

bottle of oil

no man has escaped Death since

“That Ennikar,” said the Attolian. “Always with a maid.”

“Sometimes it’s Immakuk who gives the Queen of the Night a child. It depends on the tablet and who is translating it.”

“Translating it from the old language?”

“Yes, from old Ensur, from before the Mede, then into Attolian.”

“Who translated what you have told me, then?”

I rocked a little, embarrassed and proud at the same time. “It’s my translation.”

His eyebrows went up. “All the translations—yours?”

I nodded again. I tried on a few feelings of superiority, telling myself that the Attolian was an uneducated audience who couldn’t really appreciate the work involved, but I couldn’t push that to a sticking point. I fell back on the embarrassment and pride. “I’m glad you like it,” I said.

“Are you translating it just now, as you tell it?”

“No, I translated it from the Ensur into the Mede a long time ago. I was in Attolia when I translated it into your language. I used to sit sometimes in the kitchens, and the workers there liked to ask me about where I came from. Once when they were telling stories of the Attolian afterlife, they asked me if there were stories of the Mede afterlife. One of them kept asking until I translated Ennikar and Immakuk and the Queen of the Night for him. I liked doing it, so I kept at it.”

The Attolian poked at the remains of the caggi in front of him. “In our stories of the underworld, it’s important not to eat anything, or you will be trapped there forever.”

“You’d be doomed,” I said.

“I would. I think I’d trade immortality right now for a jug of wine and a plate full of nutcakes.”

I remembered those cakes. I had been wrong to say that the only beautiful thing in Attolia was the queen. She was as beautiful as the Queen of the Night, but the Attolian nutcakes, with their tops decorated in loops and swirls of sticky honey, were even more beautiful—and they wouldn’t kill you.

I sighed. “I’d trade the plate of nutcakes for a bath,” I said. He nodded. We’d washed as well as we could in the springwater we’d found, but I think our pursuers, if they were out there in the wasteland, could have found us by smell and without needing a dog.

“When we get to Traba, if we transform that chain into coin, the first thing we will do is have a wash and a shave,” the Attolian promised. “May you dream of it tonight,” he said, and I lay down hoping for just that but instead was haunted through the night by visions of the Namreen.

I was still asleep in the morning when the Attolian sat up suddenly, waking me. Before I could speak, he held up a hand. There was a sound. Very faint. A clinking noise, a sort of tapping, not the jingle of a harness, but almost musical in the same way. I couldn’t identify it, but it was tantalizingly familiar.

The Attolian scrambled to his feet, pulling the strap of a waterskin over his shoulder. He leaned down briefly to ask, “Can you whistle?”

I said yes, not sure why he wanted to know.

“If I cannot find you again, I will whistle. You should whistle back. Two notes, one higher, then one lower. I will find you more easily than if you shout, and we won’t announce ourselves quite so obviously to anybody else nearby.” Then he scrambled out of the gully and was gone.

It was several hours before he came back. As time passed, I listened more and more intently for a whistle, wondering if I’d missed one while dozing or distracted by my thoughts. I considered how easy it would be for the Attolian to just go home to his king, leaving me—slow, annoying, and insufficiently appreciative of his caggi dinners—behind in the wilderness. I concentrated on his earlier refusal to leave my dead body by the side of the road to Perf and strained my ears for a sound floating through the air.

Finally, not far away, I heard a whistle and answered with one of my own. The Attolian appeared at the lip above me with one of the waterskins full again.

“I found a water seller,” he said.

The road was north of us, and we could have walked parallel to it for some time before it curved south to cross our path. As it was, the Attolian led me to it fairly quickly, and we followed it all day. There were a number of towns between Perf and Traba, and the road had more travelers and conversely fewer caravans than the one between Sherguz and Perf. The need to travel in groups for safety was less pressing.

In the evening we reached a small community with campsites all around it. Quietly we joined other travelers at the shared fire and listened for gossip. There was no talk of the Namreen hunting an Attolian and a runaway slave—or of a murderous slave escaped from the capital either. I had a story prepared, ready to dismiss the second version as the inevitable exaggeration of rumormongering, but I didn’t need it.

The Attolian thought it safe enough to stay at the campsite and continue on the road the next day. Mixed with the other traffic on the road, our presence would be unremarkable.