“The new emperor chooses a few to be freed and serve in his household. Not all die.”

“Most do?”

I shrugged. “We all die someday.”

After a long uncomfortable silence I abruptly said, “My master could be very kind.” I had no idea why I needed to defend him, but it was true. Part of being capricious was that quite often he had been capriciously kind. “Once I dropped a figure of Tenep made by Sudesh. It was a gift for the emperor’s birthday, very rare, and I had no business touching it, but I’d wanted to hold her just once.” I cupped my hands, remembering, how strong and how beautiful Tenep had seemed, flawless, because my master and I had conspired to have the figurine stolen from the workshop before any part of it could be broken by Sudesh. Then she had slipped through my fingers and smashed into three pieces on the floor.

Still ashamed of myself, I admitted to the Attolian, “I thought of blaming someone else, but my master came into the room just then.”

“And?” said the Attolian.

“He laughed. He said I may as well have the pieces glued together and keep it. It was of no use to him anymore.” I wondered what had become of the little figure of Tenep. I had packed her very carefully every time we traveled to be sure she was not damaged further. “He almost killed me when he overhead Marin and me talk about running away, but he wouldn’t have hurt me so much if he hadn’t loved her, too.”

The next morning, when the houseboy had come in, he’d seen me lying on the floor and said, “Is Kamet dead?” I still remember how my master had leapt from his bed and sent for his own doctor to care for me. How upset he had been and how carefully he had watched over me until I was better. “He felt very bad,” I said.

“Of course he felt bad,” said the Attolian. “He nearly did himself out of a well-trained secretary.”

I wanted to believe it was more than that. “He sold Marin.” When I had recovered and rose from my bed, she was gone.

“I’m sorry,” said the Attolian.

His sympathy made me as uncomfortable as his anger, and I shrugged. “He could have kept her. I was more important to him than a dancing girl.”

“More valuable,” corrected the Attolian.

I conceded. I was much more valuable than a dancing girl, but I knew what it had cost him to let her go.

A year later he had made up a silly excuse to visit a vineyard in the country, and I’d seen Marin there. He’d sold her to a man he knew would be kind to her, one who would free her and make her his wife. We didn’t have a chance to speak, we only exchanged a glance as she carried in a tray of coffee, but I could see that she was happy. I told the Attolian this, but he just shook his head. Maybe he was right. Maybe I gave my master too much credit for his kindness. Maybe he had gotten rid of Marin to keep me focused on my work.

There was another uncomfortable silence. The Attolian broke it, with characteristic consideration. “I think the Mede ambassador in Attolia has a piece by Sudesh. He’s the artist who always breaks some part of his figurines after they are made?”

“Yes, that’s him. He breaks them to appease the gods who might be angry at him for striving to match their perfection.”

“The ambassador’s statue is missing its right hand. The king often remarks on it, hinting that the ambassador should offer it to him as a gift. The ambassador watches it like a hawk, afraid the king will steal it.” He admired his fool king, and yet he generously held him up for my ridicule.

I obliged. “At least my master had a sense of decorum,” I said. And the awkward moment passed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Well,” the Attolian observed, “they are green hills at least.”

We had made our way through the valleys and ridges of loose rock, climbing higher after each descent until we’d reached a ridge where we could see across a patchy plain to the mountains on the far side. The Taymets. It was true, their lower slopes were misted with green, unlike the ground behind us, so they had at least some soil covering them, but their summits weren’t green—they were shining cloudlike white. Their winter snows never melted.

It was impossible. I looked at the Attolian. He had to know it.

“There will be water on the far side of the plain,” said the Attolian. “I think I see a lake.”

The idea of washing was a pleasant distraction, but an improbable one. The plain below was barren, only the lightest stretches of scrubby plants, and the ground was a mottled gray and white.

“It’s a salt pan,” I explained. “If there is a lake out there, it will be filled with salt. We’ll have to find a stream of snowmelt if we want fresh water.”

The Attolian hefted his waterskin. It was half empty. We’d filled them earlier that day at a small spring he’d found by following animal tracks to it. My skin had a little less water, though I’d been trying to drink no more often than he did.

“It’s flat ground,” he said, “so we can make good time across, but we’ll need the skins full.” He told me to wait and rest while he checked for another spring nearby—or, if that failed, went all the way back to the spring we’d found earlier. “I’ll set a snare before I go. We haven’t seen any Namreen since we buried the goat. I think we can cook this time.” He was trying to reassure me.

The raw goat liver we’d eaten hadn’t been that bad. On the other hand, the raw caggi we’d had that morning had been so disgusting that once I’d choked it down, I almost brought it right back up again. I agreed that cooked caggi would be highly tolerable by comparison.

We waited until night was falling and then headed out onto the plain. We made good time and stopped when we found a group of rocks that would shelter us from the sun and from the eyes of any watching Namreen during the day. The sky was just lightening when I fell asleep. I woke in broad daylight and found the Attolian staring out over the salt pan.

“There are buildings,” he said. “We’ll make for them when the sun sets.”

We dozed the rest of the day, and then headed toward what turned out to be an abandoned farm. There was a ring of flat stones set in the ground that might have been the top of a well. It needed no cover to keep people from falling into it, though, as it was filled to the brim with sand. The night was not yet over, but we decided to save what water we had and to rest inside the stone walls of the empty farmhouse until the next evening. We started walking again as the sun was sinking toward the west, and our shadows seemed to stretch as far as the horizon on the other side of the world. By dawn the Attolian could see what he thought might be inhabited farms ahead, supported by the seasonal runoff from the hills. We kept moving as the sun grew brighter and brighter on the salt and around us darkness seemed to rise in shimmering waves from the ground. I stumbled over a clump of dry weeds. The Attolian took my arm to steady me.

With the sun high overhead, we cautiously approached a shepherd out with his goats. Our water was gone, and we hadn’t eaten in two days. The goats were nibbling a bare sustenance from the scrubby grass we had seen more and more of as we left the salt behind. The shepherd was standing in the sparse shade cast by a few dry willows. We moved closer, stopping a stone’s throw away to call our greetings.