“I see. You were lonely?”

“No, not lonely.” He deserved what truth I could give him. “I was unappreciated.”

He snorted and covered it with his hand. I ducked my head in embarrassment.

There had been friendly people in Attolia, but none who were impressed by any of the things I thought were important. I toed my shoe in the dust. “I am a little vain,” I admitted.

“I had no idea,” said the Attolian with an impressively straight face.

“I am used to being respected.”

“And no one was awed that you speak four languages?”

“Five.” I corrected him automatically, and he laughed outright.

I laughed myself. I said, “Remember that I told you I had translated the tablets of Immakuk and Ennikar?”

He nodded.

“There was an errand boy at the palace—he was supposed to fetch and polish boots and sandals, stir vats in the laundry, that sort of thing—but he was more often hanging about in the kitchens or somewhere else out of sight, avoiding work. He was the one who pestered me to tell them a Mede story in Attolian. Well, I knew the Ensur language because I’d studied the texts for years. I had the translations into the Mede because I’d made them myself. I could tell him that story in Attolian because I had trained my whole life for it. I expected him to be impressed.”

“And?”

“He said he thought any idiot could do it.”

It had all been very humbling, but I smiled now at the memory. “He was one of the queen’s indentured,” I said as that tidbit came to my mind. I shouldn’t have forgotten it because it was a point of such pride for him.

“Not if he was a sandal polisher,” said the Attolian. “He was lying to you, I’m afraid.”

“Well, he was certainly a liar,” I said, “but no one in the kitchens contradicted him when he bragged about it. Evidently his family took the queen’s tax forgiveness and used the money to educate his older brother. Then the brother was gravely injured in a wagon accident, both of his legs broken.” If he had died, the family’s debt would have been canceled. As he hadn’t, the debt had come due. “They sent the younger brother in his place.”

“He was educated as well?”

“No,” I said dryly. “That’s why he did the grunt work.”

The Attolian guessed from my tone that the boy, raised as the free son of a landholding family, had made a poor servant, as indeed he had.

“To my certain knowledge, he bit the man in charge of Attolia’s kitchens not once but twice,” I said.

“Well, good for him,” the Attolian responded promptly. “More people should bite Onarkus,” and I realized that of course he knew that overly proud petty tyrant of Her Majesty’s kitchens. I think everyone had admired the sandal polisher that day. He’d paid for the bite with a terrific beating and then promptly bitten the man again.

“You were often in the kitchens?” the Attolian asked, and I wondered if we had passed each other there without noticing.

“My master brought very few servants to Attolia. There was just me to see to his food and his clothes, as well as the usual work of a secretary.” Another reason I hadn’t liked Attolia. “I was in the gardens often as well—when I was allowed time to myself.” Grudgingly I admit here that the gardens are also beautiful, that there are more beautiful things in Attolia than I was willing to recognize at the time. The gardens—their lush bounty of green and growing things all meticulously trimmed to perfect order—filled my heart with a kind of contentment I had never known. They were so different from the tiled courtyards of the emperor’s palace—also beautiful but sterile in comparison.

“My king liked the gardens,” the Attolian said. “He was almost assassinated in them, and I don’t know if he walks there anymore. The queen didn’t want him to.”

I would have made a snide comment about a man ruled by his wife if I hadn’t myself been terrified of the queen. Instead, I said, “That work-dodging kitchen boy, he liked the gardens—for hiding in. The first time we met, he was under a bush trying to avoid stirring vats of piss in the laundry. When I asked how he would explain his absence, he said he’d tell the people in the kennels he’d been in the laundry, and the people in the laundry that he’d been cleaning out the kennels.”

The Attolian shook his head in amusement. “And did you tell him a story while he was hiding?”

“No, I only told him the one story of Immakuk and Ennikar before he went home.”

“Home? How? I thought he was indentured?”

“He said he had run away before and meant to try again.” I cast a significant look at the Attolian. “He said the palace guard had hunted him down the first time.”

The Attolian looked surprised. “Not while I was at the palace.”

“He told me quite the tale—chased into the hills, swords, guns. Are you sure?”

The Attolian laughed. “Surely his family would have sent him back,” he said. He knew that you don’t cheat the queen of Attolia of her due.

“He didn’t return. I assume they found some other way to repay the crown. I even got a gift from him later.”

The Attolian’s look was speculative.

“I might have given him a coin to help him on his way.”

“So?” he prompted.

“His family was in a fishing village some way down the coast, past Ifrenia. It was a long way to go with the bloodthirsty palace guard after him. When he made it home, he recopied one of his brother’s scrolls and sent it to me.” The handwriting had been atrocious—I could see why the scribes hadn’t let him work with the rest of the queen’s indentured—but the text had been by Enoclitus, and I’d never seen it before. “It’s the one thing I took with me when my master and I fled the fortress at Ephrata.” I’d rolled it tight and forced it into a bottle. The stopper had leaked but the scroll had still been mostly readable.

Intuiting much, the Attolian said, “You had to leave it behind in Ianna-Ir.”

I dismissed his concern, guilt-bitten by my own lies.

“What else did you leave?” he asked.

My death, I thought. I left my death behind.

I shrugged and said, “Nothing of any importance.”

The twilight had deepened, and the Attolian thought it safe to move on. We climbed on toward the saddle in the hills above us and descended across much the same kind of ground on the far side. It was more treacherous going down than up, and I fell when a stone that appeared perfectly safe rolled out from under me.

“I’m fine,” I called to the Attolian, some distance ahead.

“Of course,” he said back.

I rubbed my leg resentfully. It’s funny how this works. We do better when we are praised and worse when we feel unappreciated for our work. I’d hated being in Attolia and hadn’t at all enjoyed the months at my master’s family estate, when I’d had little to do and too much time to do it. When we’d returned to the emperor’s palace, I had reveled in my work and in the respect I received from those around me. Now I was nurturing a sense of pride in my growing strength, but I feared the Attolian would expect too much of me.