“Kamet!” she cried, and opened her arms, but instead of a more enveloping embrace she seized my cheeks between her hands. “A month!” she scolded. “A month you have been here and not come to see us.”

“Not a month!” I protested, trying to shake my head, held fast in her grip.

She eyed me sideways.

“I’ve been busy,” I said apologetically.

“Hmpf,” she said. “We are not so neglected as we have been by someone else.” She spoke like the queen she was. “And we will not treat you as harshly.”

“I heard you boxed his ear,” I said.

“Ah,” she said, unhanding my cheeks and wrapping me in her arms, squeezing hard enough to make my ribs protest. “I would never box the king’s ear. I gave it the merest tweak.” Then she laughed, her bosom heaving, as she released me.

Brinna’s “tweaks” could leave a large man in tears, and her accuracy was unerring. In fact, this would not have been the first time she’d hung the king up by his ear. She’d caught him often enough helping himself to one of the rolls cooling on racks in her kitchen.

“He should have come to talk to us sooner. He wouldn’t have eaten so much sand.” She nudged me with her elbow and laughed at my amazement. Then she sent everyone back to work and me on my way, after assembling a tray of pastries for me to take. She told me to come back and visit when they were not so busy. “Stop eating alone,” she said. “I don’t have enough boys to send one up with your dinner every day.”

I did try to take the advice hidden behind her complaint. I had a standing invitation to the king’s public dinners, and I went to a few. Once I did, I was invited to private dinners by people who thought I might be useful to them. Many of those people were good company. I dined with Relius occasionally, and when he suggested I open a correspondence with Sounis’s magus, I did that. I made the acquaintance of various members of the indentured, but my heart wasn’t in it.

I poked through the collections in the king’s library. The king had offered again to have a copy made of anything I particularly liked, and as good as his word, he had already set a scribe to preparing a copy of the Enoclitus scroll. I put aside a few other scrolls to be copied, but my heart wasn’t in that, either. As each day passed, I grew more uncomfortable—I had more and more hours to fill and nothing to do. I hadn’t seen Costis since the day we’d arrived. I wouldn’t ask about him if he did not wish to contact me first, but my new life had an aching void in it and I was out of the habit of being lonely. Finally, I told Relius I was leaving. I intended to take what coin the king would give me and head north. I asked him for his help to get out of the city without being seen by Melheret’s spies.

“Kamet.”

The king spoke from behind me, and I dropped my pen. I made a blotch on this account, the one in my description of the cargo on the deck of the Anet’s Dream, and that is why I had to recopy that entire paragraph.

I stood to face him, apologizing as I did. “I’m sorry,” I said. I meant to forgo his hospitality, and I knew that was why he’d come, appearing alone again at twilight in my room. This time I was awake and had the lamps lit, but I still hadn’t seen him arrive. He was already seated in Nahuseresh’s favorite chair before he said my name.

He waved my apology away. “You wish to leave Attolia. Has someone made you uncomfortable here?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I’ve been very comfortable, but . . . I cannot make a place for myself because I cannot leave the palace.” Not without worrying that one of the emperor’s agents, or my master’s, might find me.

“You can take the guards outside your door with you.”

“That’s not . . .” It wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was to not be cooped up like a chicken, but I could hardly say that to the man who was both responsible for my predicament and far more closely caged himself.

“It’s a nice coop,” he said. “But it’s up to you, of course.” Looking down, he toed the carpet with his boot. The silence stretched between us.

“Your Majesty,” I said suspiciously, speaking not to His Majesty at all, but to the sandal polisher I knew better.

“Yes?” he said, looking up with his inviting smile, and I knew he had maneuvered me again.

I crossed my arms. “Why don’t you tell me your devious plan?” I might have glowered. It was no way to treat the king of the Attolians, but I had not yet made those two images of him align, the work-dodging sandal polisher and the king. I seemed to toggle between one and the other, flipping from deference to overfamiliarity. “You do have one,” I said.

“I have a suggestion. That’s all,” he said. “I did mean it when I apologized for bringing you here. I didn’t imagine that you would be comfortable in Attolia, even if as it turns out, most of the court can read and write.”

I refused to be embarrassed. It was true—the preference for oral recitation did not preclude most of the court from being literate. I had misjudged them. I plead special circumstances.

The king said, “There is a temple in Roa in Magyar where they have discovered a collection of scrolls in their treasury, quite rare ones. They wish to have them recopied. I wonder if you would be willing to take up the task. The Duke of Ferria is already sending scholars, so you would not be the only foreigner in town, and your arrival would be unremarkable.”

“And?”

“The temple is on the heights, of course. It overlooks the Ellid Sea. With a good glass, you could see any ships sailing toward Attolia. We have lost many of our observers of late, and we need people we can trust outside our borders. There would be danger. I can’t tell you how much or how little. Perhaps you would be safer in Mûr. Perhaps safer in Roa as an unremarkable temple worker.”

“It’s the least—”

“No.” The king was so firm, I stopped.

“You owe me nothing, Kamet. You are a free man. It is I who owe you, and I would only be more indebted if you chose to help Attolia further.” He looked at his toes again. “Think about it, will you?” He got up to leave, headed toward the door like any man, but he turned back as he opened it.

“Nahuseresh has retreated again to his family estate. He won’t be returning to the capital soon, if at all, and he sold off his possessions before he went. Our agent was able to purchase the dancing girls and Laela together without raising any suspicion. He’ll take them to the delta, and they will be freed there.”

I swallowed and nodded. I had worried over Laela’s fate, fearing for the harm that would come to her when my master learned how he had been betrayed. It may seem foolish to my reader, but I could not entirely forgive her for what she had done. She had meant it for the best, though, and I hated to think she would suffer for it.

“It might not have worked out so well,” said the king, and added unnecessarily, “I would have pursued this course anyway.”

His plan might have sent Laela to a gruesome death, or me, or Costis, who was his favorite. “Why send Costis?” I asked, still puzzled by that.

“He’s honest, not stupid,” the king pointed out.

“No, of course not. That’s not what I meant.”