“All of it,” said the Attolian.

I stopped in my tracks as he kept on walking.

“So?” I asked when I’d caught up with him. It hadn’t been much, but to Godekker it was no doubt an eye-popping amount and all we’d had to feed ourselves with.

He nodded. “So, so, so.”

“The trade house is closed because of the plague rumors,” I reminded him.

“There will be an Attolian ship in the harbor,” he said confidently.

“I didn’t see one.”

“You can’t see your hand in front of your face.”

My eyesight was not that bad. “If there are none?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug, still smiling.

“So we will burn that bridge when we come to it?” I asked, and he laughed as he threw one arm over my shoulder. If Godekker had betrayed us, he’d undeniably saved us first. I said, “Maybe he’ll help some other runaway.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Do you think Godekker will have us back?” the Attolian asked.

“Not if he thinks he already has all our money,” I said. Godekker might turn over a compassionate new leaf, but I doubted he would ever be any friend of ours.

There had been no Attolian ships in the inner harbor, and we had moved out to the docks beyond the city walls. Zaboar wasn’t the trading city that Sukir was, but its docks were usually busy. Larger vessels came in from the Middle Sea and smaller ones traded up and down the coast of the Shallow Sea—collecting goods to resell at Zaboar, or buying in Zaboar to resell to smaller ports where the ships with a deeper draft could not go. Rumors of plague had reduced traffic, though. We had worked our way about half the length of the waterfront without finding an Attolian ship and were pausing for a rest. Two bollards, cast iron mushrooms cemented to the stone quay, provided mooring for the nearest ship and seating for us. As we looked ahead, it was clear we were running out of options—the tail end of the waterfront was mostly smaller local boats.

The day was warm, the sun breaking on the top of every wave in the harbor. There were a few clouds that proceeded across the sky like errant parasols, giving us brief moments of much-appreciated shade before moving on. I thought how pleasant it would be to move to one of the wineshops on the waterfront and sit there, watching all the traffic go by, but we had no money, and I couldn’t forget that the Attolian was still recovering. He might yet be picked up as a plague victim. That he was on the mend was obvious to me but might not be so to a health inspector. As well as Godekker, there were the enforcers of the peace to consider. Gods forbid we ran into any of them out in the open air.

The Attolian got back to his feet, saying, “Onward then.” I tried again to convince him to stay while I went and found a ship.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, and when I looked at him skeptically, offered a more honest assessment. “I’m not fine, but I’m good enough for another few ships.”

So we walked on until we came to a shabby little caravel, with a dolphin in peeling paint on its stern. A sailor told us it had an Attolian captain. “Though the crew comes from here and there.” It was not the most prepossessing vessel, but as I said, we were reaching the end of the docks and the end of our options.

The Attolian led the way up the plank to the deck and spoke to a sailor there. Much to my surprise, when the captain appeared the Attolian pulled the ring from his ear and held it out.

“This is the private seal of Attolis Eugenides,” he said.

Well, thank the eternal gods he hadn’t swallowed it.

The black cylinder of stone that had dangled from his ear since we had left Ianna-Ir was not flat on the bottom as I had assumed, but engraved—evidently with the king’s seal. The carving was much too small for me to make out, and I had to resist the impulse to bend over it to get a better look. The captain reached for the seal, but the Attolian pulled it back.

“I die before it leaves my hand,” he warned, and the captain slowly nodded his understanding.

“We need passage home,” said the Attolian.

“We are headed east,” said the captain. “I can take you on board, but we will not see Sukir again for three or four months. It will be half a year before we are back in Attolia.”

“We need passage now,” said the Attolian.

“Find another ship,” said the captain. He looked out over the water, as if one might rise up out of the brightly twinkling waves.

“Our king will pay you well,” offered the Attolian.

The captain rolled his eyes. “Well enough to compensate me for the loss of trade on a six-month trip?” he asked, not believing it.

The Attolian nodded. I was quite impressed with his air of command. Even more impressed because he was still pale from illness, with dark circles under his eyes and his clothes quite filthy after his stay in Godekker’s garbage pen.

The captain hesitated. Locking eyes with the Attolian, he weighed the dangers of failing us if what the Attolian said was true, if we did indeed travel under the private seal of the king.

“Very well,” said the captain at last, and I let go of my breath. “I will take you as far as Sukir.”

The Attolian opened his mouth, but the captain raised a hand to forestall him. “We will take this seal of yours to the trade house in Sukir and see if they verify it. Maybe you can find a better ship there. I am captain, not captain-owner, and I won’t go farther than Sukir without more proof than some carved seal I have never seen or heard of before. I warn you, those who own this ship are powerful enough to hunt you down if this is fraud.”

“They won’t need to,” the Attolian assured him.

The captain shouted for his bosun then and ordered the crew recalled from the shore.

The Attolian was unhappy—he stood at the ship’s rail and glowered at the passing waves as we sailed. He’d wanted to bypass Sukir, saying we’d spent too much effort getting out of the empire to step back into it so easily, but I was secretly relieved. In Sukir, it would be easy to disappear. Twice the size of the Zaboar’s capital city, it has twice the chaos to get lost in, and because it was on the north side of the Black Straits, I could slip away overland. I wouldn’t need to pay passage on a ship to get me away from the empire. I did not want to leave the Attolian, but once he knew of my master’s death, our brief friendship would be over. He might hear the rumors in Sukir, and he would certainly know the truth when we reached Attolia. I could not accompany him there, no matter what. I’d made a fool of a ruler so petty he’d stolen another man’s slave for spite, so profligate he’d waste the profits of a six-month trading trip to have what he wanted. He wasn’t going to free me, and might well kill me for it. I had to pray that because the Attolian was a favorite, he would be safe.

Even if the Attolian king didn’t kill me, I wouldn’t live long in his city. The news of my presence there would travel back to the emperor like an arrow shot from a bow, and when the Little Peninsula fell to the Medes, they would be looking for me. Bounty hunters might well arrive before that. Attolia was no safe place for me. I needed to leave the Attolian and the empire far behind, and as the days passed, I planned. I needed no cap, as Godekker did, to pass as a free man—I just needed to show a little more confidence. After asking the captain’s permission, I had helped myself to some of his paper and pens. With those, I would be able to prove my worth to any merchant in the city of Sukir. It would not take long to find an employer who needed a trustworthy scribe to travel to a distant city and work his ledgers there. I could go as far as Mûr on the Black River or farther north to Oncevar.