“He’s very tenderhearted,” said Relius. “He’ll feel quite bad about it as he cuts you up into little pieces and feeds you to wolves.”

I laughed. Then I remembered Relius’s hands.

He nodded seriously. “I myself would walk across hot coals for him.” The Relius I had known had been fanatically loyal to his queen. “For either of them,” he added.

I didn’t trust Eugenides—I trusted my judgment of Relius. “What is it that you would like to know?” I asked.

Many more meetings followed. Every morning a messenger arrived at my door with a list of appointments, and I was asked to offer all my understanding of the entire empire as if I were a combination of oracle and travelogue. I described every port I had been in, and I had been in many. I laid out the roads for them, as if it were they who were invading the Mede and not otherwise. I told them about the hierarchy of the empire’s armies and navies and described every member of the court in as much detail as I could—habits, commitments, and liaisons, both proper and improper. Significant details, trivial details, when the emperor rose in the morning, what the heir preferred for breakfast, the strength and disposition of armies, of their stockpiles, every rumor of unrest in the provinces. All the information I had gleaned from my master’s correspondence. Everything I had learned as a slave—wholly attentive to any detail that might someday be used to my advantage. That information would be turned to the Attolians’ benefit—and that was to mine. I had no loyalty to the empire that had enslaved me and none to the Attolians, either. This was a business arrangement.

Not content with a spoken version, Relius wanted a written record of my flight from the empire, so I began this narrative in the palace of Attolia but have only recently neared its completion. I will eventually send it to Relius, when I am sure it can be delivered without interception, and I hope he will be satisfied with my account, as I would be honored to have it added to his library. I think he is more truly the secretary of Attolia’s archives now than he was when he carried the title. If events fall out badly, perhaps the scroll will go no farther than the library at the temple just up the hill from here.

While my day was filled with meetings, it was empty of other responsibilities—shockingly so, to me, who had never had time to call my own. I had hours to walk through the palace, revisiting the places I remembered, sometimes seeing them with new eyes. Mosaics, statuary, and the detailed carvings on railings and staircases that I had previously hurried past, unable to linger without appearing to be shirking my duties, I had time to fully appreciate. Day by day I found more beautiful things in Attolia.

If I had once been an anonymous secretary to a Mede master, I was no longer. People greeted me in the hallways wherever I went—the indentured were especially polite. The first time I heard my name, I was flummoxed and stood blinking as I translated its meaning in my head: Kamet Who Called Eugenides the Great King. It was even more of a mouthful than Ashnadnechnamharr and eventually shortened itself to just Kamet Kingnamer. I do not use it, as I am living very quietly here in Roa, known only as Kay the Scribe, but that is the name they use for me in Attolia. I am delighted, and I don’t care if Costis mocks me for it.

I spent much of my free time in the palace library, where several times I saw the youngest attendant of the king wrestling with his lessons. He had a pugnacious self-reliance that was unusual in such a body, and I suspected he was tying his tutor in knots on purpose. Curious to see if I was correct, I approached just after a lesson had ended and the tutor had decamped. I asked the young Erondites if I could use his slate, and he handed it over, amiable enough. I drew a bird and wrote three Attolian letters underneath it. “Which of these makes the first sound in the word?” I asked.

Very deliberately, he pointed to the one for pa, and not to the ba in bird. He knew it was wrong. I could see it in his face, and he, in turn, could see that in mine. After a moment, he shrugged with just the one shoulder and picked the chalk out of my fingers. Using great care, and his left hand, he added two more letters, one for ja and one for ne, next to the letter he’d chosen. Then he cast me a speculative glance from the corner of his eye and waited.

I conceded. “Indeed, it is a pigeon.”

Rarely have I seen a smile so utterly transform a face.

When I was not exploring the library or wandering the interior of the palace, I wandered instead in its gardens—not the queen’s garden, because that was private to the royal family, but the wide gardens that lay between the palace and the sacred grounds of the temples on the hillside above it. They were as orderly and as peaceful as I remembered, and I liked to visit one particular outdoor room where hedges enclosed a grove of mature trees and a deep pool was encircled by a ring of large stones. I enjoyed sitting there as the fish rose to the surface nearby, nibbling at the crumbs I dropped on the water.

One day I approached the grove so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t realize that others were there before me until I passed through the arched entryway in the hedge and two of the palace guards stepped in close beside me. They dropped the butts of their long guns into the gravel under our feet with an intimidating crunch, and I saw that the queen was resting in the garden, her attendants all around her. They turned to look at me, but I was already murmuring my apologies and backing away.

One of the attendants rose and followed me out. “Kamet,” she called as I retreated, “the queen says you are welcome and asks you to join her.” Attolia’s request was my command, so I nervously trailed after the attendant as she returned to the group beside the rock-rimmed pool. Attolia lay on a couch that had been carried out from the palace—her beauty heightened by an unsettling frailty. She was surrounded by cushions of velvet and embroidered linen, and a boy sat nearby with a fan to cool her if she grew too warm, while one of her attendants had a woven cloth folded in her lap, ready to deploy if the queen became too cool. She was obviously ill, but her vulnerability only emphasized the nature of her power. It was neither her beauty nor her physical strength that made her queen.

I bowed low, and as I lifted my head, she indicated the ground by her side with a glance. I dropped to sit cross-legged on the grass next to her couch. She smiled at me, and her eyes seemed brighter for it. She asked, “Is it true, Kamet, that my king twice bit my head cook?”

I nodded and said gravely, “Indeed, Your Majesty. I witnessed it with my own eyes.”

She murmured, “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, it seems,” and I ducked my head to hide my own smile. It was a most apt summation of the king’s behavior. I knew by then that there was far more affection between the monarchs than I would have believed possible before my arrival in Attolia, and it was no surprise to me that she characterized him so well.

“Kamet,” she said a little more seriously, “we have a saying in Attolian: the river knows its time. My king tells me that it came originally from the land of the Ianna and refers to that great river.”

I nodded. “Indeed, I believe that is so, Your Majesty.”

“My king says it is part of a longer piece of writing that he has read about, but has never seen. He told me that you might know it.”

I nodded again. “It’s from one of the tablets of instruction.” I knew what she was asking, and I recited the text quietly for her.