He looked momentarily as confused as I felt. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was just trying to stop you from worrying and I’ve seen someone else do it that way. Actually, I don’t know why you didn’t leave me in a hole in the ground.” He smiled at me, as if he might have laughed again at the miller, but he was too tired to make the effort. There were marks like bruises under his eyes. I hadn’t seen them before in the dim light. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “Let’s keep going.”

He wasn’t fine. He rubbed his head as if it ached, and mindful of the rumors of plague in the city, I watched the people passing near us on the road to see if they noticed. I reached hesitantly to touch him, and his forehead was hot and dry. He brushed my hand away and stood a little straighter for a few steps but soon sank back again into silent plodding.

“It’s just a sore throat,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”

Better that he’s ill, said a small voice in the back of my head—it would make it easier to slip away after we reached the Attolian trade house.

The day before, I had wandered without direction. This time I was looking for the fastest way to the center of the city, and I was hopelessly lost. Once we were among the buildings, the streets grew so narrow it was impossible to get any reliable guidance from the sun. All I could do was pick the widest street at every intersection, hoping to reach someplace where I could get my bearings. At last we reached a broad avenue and I could follow the vendors clearly headed for the market in the old city.

Horses and mules pulled wagons, and the occasional camel was given a wide berth. There were a few chairs occupied by people rich enough to be carried but not so influential as to have the road cleared for them. As their attendants had sharp elbows, they were given a wide berth, too. Nonetheless, the crowd tightened around us as we approached the gates, and we were eventually at a standstill. I cursed the delay even before I saw the cause of it.

Just ahead of where we waited, a group of armed men stood by the open gates to the old city, surrounding another man in an official-looking robe. My heart leapt to my mouth before I realized the man in the robe was a health official—they weren’t hunting me. Then it leapt to my mouth again. They were checking for signs of the plague, the tiny red dots that would grow into pustules. It was probably meant to reassure the population and calm the city, but if someone was pulled from the crowd, it was going to start a stampede. I had the Attolian close at hand and was holding him by the arm as if we were close friends traveling together. Head down, he was unaware of anything beyond the paving stones under his feet. He’d complained of a sore throat, so it wasn’t plague he suffered, I was sure, but that might mean nothing if he caught the inspector’s eye. I looked over my shoulder. Trying to force our way against the crowd would draw exactly the attention we wanted to avoid.

I looked forward again and saw a camel not too far ahead of us. The vile nature of camels was such that even in the tight crowd there was space around it. Nudging the Attolian along, I pressed forward into that space, then maneuvered to put the camel between us and the official at the gate. We had just drawn even with the camel’s back end, and I was watching it closely because it was much too close for comfort, when I heard the man leading the camel say over his shoulder, “Lucky fellow!”

It was the stranger, the gentleman from south of the Isthmus who had questioned me the day before. “You have found what you thought was lost, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, pushing the Attolian forward as discreetly as possible. The Attolian, who’d been hunched before, was suddenly standing straight up. I prayed he wouldn’t do anything to draw attention.

“Ennikar!” he said, as if greeting an old friend.

The southerner looked startled. He did look like Immakuk’s companion. Tall and dark skinned, with his carefully groomed beard trimmed straight across at the bottom, he was very like the actor who had represented Ennikar in the play back in Ianna-Ir. I was afraid the man might be offended, but he laughed.

“You know those stories?” the southerner asked. He threw an arm around the shoulder of the Attolian and didn’t seem to notice the way the Attolian staggered. Anyone watching would have thought that we were together and that the Attolian’s stumble was no more than the result of a friendly embrace. Arm in arm, we proceeded into the old city.

Once through the gate, we walked in a narrow midway between the stalls of the market. Only the central space was wide enough to allow the traffic to pass through to the rest of the city.

The Attolian continued to be positively delighted by the stranger. I decided it would be best to make an exit before the Attolian said something rude and before the southerner realized how ill he was. I gestured to a space between two market stalls—the booths were constructed of interlocking panels with ceilings of striped fabric, a temporary city within the city, with even narrower roads.

“Our way is through here,” I said. “Many felicities to you.”

“And many to you, Kamet.”

I turned away, only for a moment. No sooner had I stepped between the stalls than I looked back, but he was gone. Puzzled, I stepped out into the open again. The camel at least should have been easy to spot. How could he have known my name?

“You saw him, too?” asked the Attolian.

“What? Yes, of course.”

“He’s gone now.”

“I see that.” I was still looking, though.

“We should go, too,” said the Attolian.

Fevered and weak, he had more sense than I did. “Yes, yes,” I agreed, and pushed him along between the stalls, among the merchants selling scarves and robes and bolts of cloth, but still looking over my shoulder every few steps until the open part of the market was entirely out of sight.

At a stall selling leather bags, I asked a woman for directions to the Attolian trade house. The answer came in a heavy accent, and I wasn’t sure I understood completely, but I nodded and thanked her and moved on. She’d pointed in the direction we were already going, so I thought I could follow my best guess at what she’d said, then ask someone else. We left the market and made our way along a fairly open street. The whole city sloped downhill to the waterfront. The higher part of it, where we’d entered the gates, was where the wealthier people lived and shopped. The stores along the street were for ink and paper and fine tailoring. The trade house would be down near the waterfront.

I’d known that it would be difficult to get the Attolian to the harbor. When we passed a fountain with three stone dolphins, I was relieved that I’d followed the leather seller’s directions that far. She’d said there was a road marked with a crowned lion, and there was. We came to a flight of steps, but I wasn’t sure if she’d said to turn at the top or at the bottom. I’d hoped it would be obvious when we got to them, but it wasn’t.

All I really needed to do was continue downhill—one way or another I would get to the waterfront—but I wanted, for the Attolian’s sake, to get there as soon as possible. I parked him against a wall and went quickly down the steps to investigate the street below.

“Excuse me, kind sir,” I asked a passerby. “Can you tell me how best to get to the Attolian trade house?”