“That’s you,” I said, pointing to the Attolian’s token. “And that’s Ne Malia’s symbol, the moon reflected in the water.” I traced the pentagram and the circle. “When you offer it to the well, the Goddess’s favor is on you.” Together we walked to where a raised course of stones prevented the rainwater from washing across the filthy plaza and falling directly into the purer waters of the spring below. The dirty water was diverted into pits under the paving stones of the plaza. The pits, filled with sand, filtered the runoff before it seeped into Ne Malia’s waters farther down.

The well was just as impressive as the onion farmer had suggested. Each of its five sides was made up of interconnecting staircases descending to the water and then disappearing into it. Some staircases had risers only a giant, or a god, could comfortably use, while others were more suitable for mortal traffic. One could pick any staircase to start, but as some disappeared at each level, many routes at the top led into fewer and fewer options as the well narrowed toward the bottom. The miscellaneous crowd of pilgrims descending from all directions was funneled into just one line that snaked around four sides of the well, turning back on itself when it neared the fifth wall—reserved for the royal pavilion—and arriving finally at the altar just above the water. The altar was stone, but pieced together, so that as the water level dropped, it could be disassembled and rebuilt farther down. The line of pilgrims approached it from the side and made their offering to a priest, who carried each token out over the opaque green water and dropped it in. He waited for a message from the goddess and then returned to whisper it into a pilgrim’s ear before moving on to the next offering.

I thought it quite likely the priest spent his day saying the same things over and over, but the Attolian, standing on the lip of the well, was suitably awed. We spent an hour or two standing in line. It was magically cool, even in the hot sun. To me, the priest said, “Your journey will take you farther than you imagine”—a safe prophecy even if my journey had only been across the city. The Attolian looked a little mystified, and I asked what he’d heard. He repeated the words as he’d understood them: “Remember Immakuk. Pay the fastener.” I tried to figure out what the priest had really said and the Attolian had misheard, but I couldn’t puzzle it out.

Then, as we were climbing out of the well, the Attolian’s sandal strap broke, and he wanted to look for a leatherworker to repair it. We walked through the markets nearby and found a craftsman with a booth and a collection of slaves at work on benches under an awning. The Attolian handed over his shoe, then walked on one bare foot to a wineshop just down the street to wait in the shade while it was fixed. The wineshop was on the opposite side of the street from the leatherworker’s shop, and I could watch the slaves at their labor, my eye on the one who had the Attolian’s sandal.

He sat at a slightly finer bench, with a cushion underneath him. Usually a head slave like this one has authority over the others, but I wondered if it was a recent promotion that had made the other slaves jealous. They treated him so abominably that I could see it from across the open ground between us. As I watched, they jostled his elbow, pulled his work askew, and, while he was distracted, substituted a broken tool for his awl.

When he ruefully offered his broken awl up to his master, the man smacked him on the head and regretted aloud the money he had wasted on a trained slave when he could have had an untrained one doing better work by a month’s end. That ended the mystery and should have ended my interest; the slave was new and resented by the others. Still, I liked the look of the new slave and didn’t particularly like the snake-eyed amusement of the most pernicious of his tormentors. When the Attolian went to retrieve his repaired sandal, I exercised my new authority as a free man and pointed out to the leatherworker the drama his slaves were acting out in front of him.

The leatherworker turned to look ominously over his slaves. The new one threw me a grateful glance before he hunched back down at his bench. The leader of the tormenters was more bold, and he stared at me with a look that would have boiled lead, but when I stared back, he had to drop his eyes.

It was a trivial thing, and I was used to wielding far more power than this. I had bought and sold slaves for my master and sent miscreants to be punished and had occasionally rewarded those who served my master well. But then, I had been wielding my master’s power for him. This was my first exercise of my own authority as a free man, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the feeling.

By this time it was too late to be leaving the city. We agreed that we would buy our provisions and find an inn to rent us a room for the night. Thinking no more of the leatherworker, we walked the market stalls, buying up dried meat and fruit and grain that could be stewed quickly in a pot, which we also purchased. The Attolian carried all this, having declined my offer to take the parcels as we made our way down the streets, looking for a likely place to spend the night.

As we walked through the twilight, we saw stepping out of an inn doorway just ahead of us the slave from the leatherworker’s stall. The Attolian recognized him before I did and stopped in the street. I saw him shift his packages to leave his right hand free, and my heart pounded in my chest. Only then did the leatherworker’s slave come close enough for me to make out his face and then close enough to speak without being overheard. He addressed the Attolian, quickly and quietly. “The Namreen are in the city looking for an escaped slave, a Setran—with a foreigner—they have posted a bill in the judicial square.” He looked at me. “Few would have noticed Bahlum’s tricks, and only another slave or a freedman would have mentioned them to my master.” He ducked his head politely, as if he’d done no more than offer us a greeting in passing. Then he was gone.

Both the Attolian and I continued walking as if the message were of no particular importance. In unspoken agreement, we passed by the inn where the slave had probably just made inquiries that would draw the landlord’s attention to us if we were to stop in so soon after he left.

“There are other foreigners in the city,” said the Attolian. That was true. They were quite common. But an Attolian and a Setran were a less common mix. And just because the slave had said “foreigner” didn’t mean the Namreen hadn’t more specifically said “Attolian.”

“We may still make it through the city gates, and better to try now with the twilight to disguise us,” said the Attolian. “We should try the main gate, though. It will be more crowded.”

I followed, thinking of the bill the slave had said was posted in the judicial square, where the punishments authorized by the empire’s courts were carried out. We would cross through the square on the shortest route back to the main gate. If the Attolian passed the bill, he would see the printing that declared me a murderer, and then the fat would be in the fire. I would not be able to pass off the official description of my crime as an exaggeration born of rumormongering.

Though he showed no sign of haste, the Attolian had picked up speed, and I hurried to catch up.

“We’ll need water,” I said, which was true. We’d left our waterskins with the mules after agreeing that we needn’t buy the higher-priced water inside the city—supposedly blessed by Ne Malia. We’d intended to buy cheaper water out on the road or wait until we reached a public well.