He gave me an encouraging nod as he rose and left with the ambassador of the Braels—the Braeling never saying a single word. I didn’t hear the outer door close behind them, and I believe that the guards, if asked, would have insisted that no one had passed by.
I hadn’t gotten to my feet in the entire time Eugenides had been in the room. I lay back down, thinking how I might describe the encounter to one of the other secretaries in the emperor’s palace, and began to appreciate Costis’s difficulty in accurately representing the king of the Attolians. I looked around—except for the lamps, lit by the Braeling, there was no evidence that the king had been there.
A month or so later, an allied fleet sailed into the narrow bay north of Hemsha, ostensibly looking for a stream to refill their water barrels, and found instead the ships of the Emperor’s navy neatly lined up at their moorings. Alarmed at the approach of the foreign ships, an unknown gunner on board one of the emperor’s brigs fired his cannon without instruction. The allied ship Hammer of Yeltsever responded. Once the firing began, there was no stopping it. The emperor’s ships, unable to maneuver, were destroyed by a fleet one-third the size of their own. Eighty or more of the emperor’s ships sunk. Thousands of men lost.
The admiral of the allied fleet wrote a very regretful report to his king, calling the loss of the Mede fleet a most untoward accident. Rumor had it that Eugenides stole the report from the diplomatic correspondence of the Pentish ambassador and read it out loud to his queen.
The Attolians liked to point out with a snicker that there was no sign anywhere of the king’s hand at work.
I took the king seriously and spent much time that night considering my new life. I struggled to name myself. I could be Jeffa, or Nish. Or Ashnadnechnamharr, if I chose, though the ghost of King Ashnadnechnamharr might haunt me if I were so bold. I began to understand why Godekker might have continued as Godekker—it was difficult to imagine answering to a new name. Kamet was the name my mother had given me, or so I have always believed, and I decided to keep it. Kamet the Setran? Kamet the Scribe? Nothing seemed to fit. I would be stuck with Kamet Freedman if I waited too long, but I resolved to wait anyway, in hopes of finding a name that felt right.
In the morning a boy brought me my breakfast on a tray and was scandalized when I took it from his hands and sent him on his way—I couldn’t be comfortable being served. There were guards outside my door as promised, and one warned that I should expect visitors after breakfast.
Indeed, my first visitor was Attolia’s former secretary of the archives, Relius. The guard announced his arrival, and I bowed and stepped back to admit him. We’d met before. He’d been one of only a few people who had understood my value to my former master. I was surprised that he was no longer secretary of the archives, the official title of Attolia’s master of spies, but of course, I couldn’t ask about the change. I invited him to sit on the elegant cushioned furniture and perched a little gingerly on a chair opposite him. As he pulled his robe around him before sitting, I saw his hands were misshapen, badly broken and healed, with two of the fingers missing. I looked from them to his face and quickly away. They had been undamaged when I had seen him last.
“There are some questions you might answer for us, Kamet. I am here to ask if you would be willing to do so.”
I’d expected this. I knew more about the empire than just the location of its ships, and I’d thought through the night about what things I might tell the Attolians that would profit them.
Relius said, “The king wants you to know that you are under no obligation. You are his guest, free to come and go as you please, and welcome to stay—in the palace, or anywhere in Attolia—for as long as you like.”
Or until Attolia fell. I still believed the Mede would roll the Little Peninsula as a lion rolls a gazelle, and I intended to be long gone when they arrived.
“You are thinking of driving a stiff bargain,” said Relius, and he was right. I’d thought long and hard about what my information might be worth. “Don’t,” he advised me. “You will do better to trust the king—he will see you amply rewarded.” I remembered Eugenides the night before, sitting at the foot of my bed, and earlier, sitting on his throne. I remembered how much I had liked him when I’d thought he was an errand boy—when he had ruthlessly tricked me into believing that was all he was. The only thing I knew was that I didn’t know anything, really, about the king of the Attolians, and I didn’t trust him.
“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.
Mother why does the River not rise
It is not the River’s time
Why does the seed not sprout
It is not the seed’s time
Why does the rain not fall
the leaf not unfurl itself
Where is the hind and why does she not graze the fields before us
It is not their time
The River knows its time
The seed knows its time
The rain the leaf and the hind
They know their time
The River will rise the seed will sprout
The rains come down and the leaves unfurl
The hind will bring her children to graze before us
All in their time
It was quiet then. The leaves of the trees overhead ticked against each other in the light breeze. A fish flapped its tail in the water as it dove deeper into the pool. The queen looked down at her hands, stroking the soft velvet of a cushion, and said, “It was not her time. We will welcome her when she comes again. Tell me, Kamet, have you been to the kitchens?”
Surprised by the question, I said I had not.
“Do not leave it so long as my king did,” said the queen. “You don’t want your ear boxed.”
It was a dismissal, so I returned to my feet and excused myself. As I withdrew, the attendants rose like a flock of attentive birds and adjusted the queen’s pillows, offered her a tray of delectables, cast the woolen cloth over her legs and tucked it around her, and then settled again, some to stools, some to the ground, with their peaceable activities, embroidery, handweaving, sewing, back in their hands as silent accord returned to the grove.
Once out of sight of the queen, I continued walking along the garden paths. There was nowhere else I needed to be, the heavy schedule of meetings had finally begun to thin, and so I wandered, the flowers and leafy branches nodding at me as I passed. The palace gardens were extensive, with interlocking paths and long alleys of plantings linking open spaces with green lawns and often a fountain or a statue or both. I came eventually to the high wall that surrounded the garden and separated it from the sacred grounds beyond. That land belonged to the temple precinct on the hillside above the palace. Guards pacing the wall looked down at me, and I had no doubt they’d been watching me for some time. Their queen had chosen to leave her private garden, and I was probably the only person nearby except for her attendants and guards. I wondered if they could tell that I was delaying. I looked over my shoulder at the scuff marks in the gravel walk, clear evidence that I had in absolute truth been dragging my feet.
Attolia’s extensive gardens fed her palace. There were fruit trees as well as herbs and other edible plants. Every morning the gardeners moved through it, filling baskets to be carried to the kitchen yard to join the wagonloads of provisions arriving there. Throughout the day the cooks sent the youngest workers out to fetch another handful of tarragon or one more perfect bunch of grapes to adorn a dish for the royal table, and whenever I had seen them in the distance, I had headed off in a different direction. In my recent rediscovery of the palace I had visited every part of it but had never crossed through the kitchens, sometimes taking long detours to avoid doing so. I had been one among them once when I was a slave. They had been kind to me, but full of my own self-regard, I hadn’t appreciated the community they’d offered. Since my return they had sent trays of food up to my room carried by well-behaved servants I didn’t recognize, who never looked me in the eye. Did they remember me? Would they remember me and even so bow politely and shoo me back out of some place I no longer belonged? I didn’t want to find out but took the queen’s directive to heart. There was nothing to be gained by delay. Screwing up my courage, I crossed over my reluctant footprints and headed back toward the palace.
The closer I got to the kitchens, the less ornamental and more practical the plantings became. I walked between lemon trees, standing like soldiers at attention on either side of the path, to a door into the orangerie, where the trees were planted in circles around an open grassy lawn. On the other side of the orangerie was another enclosed garden where the vegetables grew in tidy rows, and waist-high stacks of clay tubes held hives of honeybees. The insects hummed in and out of them as I passed.
Beyond the walled
garden was a gate into the paved yard with multiple open doors leading into the soot kitchen, where the roasting was done. I made it as far as one doorway and stopped on the threshold, directly in the way of anyone trying to get in or out—a behavior I despised in others, and yet there I stood, rooted like an inconvenient pillar of salt. At long tables, men and women worked, chopping vegetables, plucking feathers, boning fish, grinding ingredients in mortars. Some of the mortars were stone, but the ones for spices were metal, with a metal pestle that made a constant soft ringing in the background. There were quiet moments in every day, but I had not arrived at one. Woodchoppers and spit boys, roasters and carvers, dishwashers—all were busy. Beyond the bank of roasting ovens, doorways led to passageways that led to more kitchens. There was an entire room for the sauce makers, the boiling kitchen. There was a pastry room and a room where the bread rose and was baked in special ovens. Attolia’s palace was nowhere near the size of the emperor’s, but more than a hundred were employed in its kitchens—and that didn’t include the servants who carried the food up to the tables in the main hall and out to various smaller dining rooms and to me on a tray in my apartments. It was no surprise that one extra boy-at-all-jobs and sandal polisher had not seemed out of place.
No one looked up at me, and at first all the faces were unfamiliar. Some of the ones near to me I began to recognize. Tarra was chopping herbs—I could smell the rosemary. Semiux was boning a lamb, but the ones farther away were indistinct. Someone bumped into me from behind, Zerchus, pushing past with an enormous bowl filled with honeycomb that he thumped down on a table. The honey reminded me of the nutcakes Costis and I had longed for during our days of eating only caggi.
A young woman I didn’t recognize bustled up to me, wiping her hands on her apron. “Did you want something?” she asked briskly.