“Hold still, or I’ll pull it tighter,” he said, and I gave up. I sat still while they tied my wrists and my ankles together, complaining the entire time.

“Be sure and make it tight,” Ambiades told Sophos, who was working on my ankles.

“It’s too tight,” I said. “You’re tying my hands too tight.”

“Shut up,” said Ambiades.

“Are you sure it’s not too tight?” Sophos asked.

“Of course I’m sure. Have you got his feet done?”

“Ambiades”—I made one last effort to convince him—“you’ve tied my hands too tight. I can’t feel my fingers. You have to loosen them.”

“Maybe you should, Ambiades.”

“Don’t be stupid, Sophos, he’s just saying that. Look, his hands are fine.”

“They are not! Look.” I held them up to Sophos. The pink skin on either side of the ropes was already puffy, but he was looking at my fingers.

“They aren’t blue.”

“They will be soon.”

“They will not. Come on, Sophos.” Ambiades had collected the fishing gear out of the magus’s pack, and he pulled Sophos away.

I wanted to shout for them to come back, but I was afraid that that close to an Attolian town, someone else might hear me. One curious villager could get us locked in a cellar until a queen’s guardsman came to interrogate us. I didn’t want to be publicly beheaded, and the ropes were not so tight that I couldn’t stand them for a little while. I kept thinking that at any moment the magus or the Uselesses would be back. I sat and watched my hands turn blue.

Ambiades and Sophos didn’t return from the river until they had seen Pol making his way down the riverbank. They found me lying on my side, breathing quietly and trying by mental effort to force the blood past the constricting knots and out of my hands, which were swollen and mottled.

“Oh, no,” said Sophos.

“Damn right,” I hissed, “get the ropes off. Be careful!” Ambiades had started tugging at the knots, and the pain was shocking. He jerked on the ropes and pulled the knots even tighter.

“Stop, stop,” I said. “Just leave them. You can cut them off.” But he wasn’t listening. He managed to loosen one loop of rope, and he squeezed it over my fist, scraping the skin off my knuckles. “You’re killing me!” I was reduced to yelling as Pol rushed into the clearing. He pulled Ambiades away and looked down at my hands and then at the fish lying in the dust, forgotten.

“Go get some more fish, both of you.”

After a couple of uncertain steps backward, both Sophos and Ambiades turned and hurried into the bushes by the river. When they were gone, Pol set about carefully removing the knotted ropes. I didn’t bother to whimper suggestively. I lay quietly while he cut the ropes away and only hissed when he pulled them away from the skin where they were stuck.

He started to straighten my curled fingers. “Don’t,” I said.

“They’ve got to be flexed. The blood has pooled.”

“I’ll do it,” I promised, “myself.”

After a moment he nodded.

“Where’s the magus?” I asked.

“He sent me ahead with some of the food. It’s a good thing.” Pol looked over his shoulder to the river. “He doesn’t need to know about this.”

“Oh, yes, he does,” I said. By that time I wanted to see Ambiades flayed alive.

“No,” said Pol, “he doesn’t.” He crouched down a little more so that he could look into my eyes. “The magus has staked his reputation and his life to find this silly stone, wherever it is, and he’ll murder the person who prevents him from getting it. And that person is not”—he shook his finger in front of my face—“going to be Sophos.” I could see that there was no way to get Ambiades punished without dragging Sophos into trouble as well.

“His father sent me to make sure he’s safe and that he learns something on this trip, but he is not going to learn what happens when you ruin the plans of a man like the magus.” It was more words spoken altogether than I’d heard Pol use yet. He wrapped one hand in the fabric of my shirt and pulled my face closer to his. “My orders are to keep him safe and out of trouble. Whether we succeed in retrieving something from a fairy tale is not important to me. Do you understand?”

I nodded my head vigorously and then shook it back and forth. Yes, I understood, and no, the magus didn’t need to be told after all. After all, when I thought about it, I had no grievance against Sophos, and Ambiades’s hash I could settle on my own.

Pol went over to his pack to pull out the relief kit and brought back some bandages and salve to rub on my sore hands and a little paper packet of dried berries.

“Chew two of these,” he said, “They’ll help with the pain. We’ll tell the magus that one of the sores reinfected.”

“How long have I got, Pol?”

“Till what?”

“Till we get to where we are going.”

“How would I know?”

“You know how much food the magus bought.”

He thought for a moment. “Two more days.”

The magus came back with the rest of the food and accepted Pol’s story about my wrists without question. He only seemed concerned that the hands would be functional, and Pol reassured him. Ambiades looked scornful, but Sophos was visibly relieved. When we rode back into the olive groves, he moved his horse alongside mine and apologized very prettily. I told him to shut up and watched him blush. I don’t know what had passed between him and Ambiades down at the river, but Ambiades seemed to have fallen quite off his pedestal. I thought he would probably climb back up again, but not soon. Meanwhile, Ambiades kept his horse near the magus, and Sophos fell back to ride beside Pol or sometimes beside me. I asked him why he had such a fancy cloak, and he blushed again. He was as regular as clockwork.

“My mother bought it for me when she heard I’d be traveling to the city to be with a new tutor.”

“The magus?”

“Yes.”

“Where were you before?”

“One of my father’s villas. On the Eutoas River. It was nice there.”

“But?”

“My father came for a visit and found out that I couldn’t fence and I couldn’t ride and I didn’t like to go hunting. I liked to read instead.” Sophos rolled his eyes. “He threw my riding instructor and my fencing instructor and my tutor out the front gate of the villa. Then he said Pol would teach me riding and fencing and I’d live with him in the city, where he could keep an eye on me.”

“Pol is your father’s man?” I glanced over my shoulder and met Pol’s eyes for an instant before I turned back to Sophos.

“He’s captain of my father’s guard.”

I whistled soundlessly. A man’s son has to be pretty important to him if he has the captain of his own guard give him riding lessons and then does without his captain altogether so the son can have a bodyguard.

The olive groves changed in character as we moved through them. Instead of tightly packed rows of trees, there began to be space between the trunks. The irrigation ditches thickened with weeds and silt and were eventually choked out of existence. More dry oaks appeared, and we were eventually riding between trees that had gone entirely back to the wild.