“Nothing.” The magus shrugged. “Traders still do business here. Trade would go on right up until there was open war; it might not stop even then.”

“And if they knew why we were here?” I asked.

The magus gave me a sharp look before he answered, “They’d probably arrest us and turn us over to their queen.” I gathered that he wanted to leave the rest unsaid.

“And she would?” I prompted anyway.

“Behead us all. Publicly.”

I shivered and rubbed the back of my neck with one hand. Ambiades looked positively green. He was touchy and unpleasant the rest of the day.

It was twilight and traffic was increasing when we approached Profactia. We dawdled until there was no one in sight on the road and then disappeared into the olive groves, where we waited again until Pol and the magus agreed that all of the olive harvesters would have left the trees for the night. We rode quietly through the trees and saw nothing of the town. I was a little disappointed. We returned to the road without being seen. The moon was up. The night air was cool, and we’d pulled our cloaks out of the saddlebags. We stayed close to the trees like robbers and went on until I was almost worn out. Just as the moon was setting, the magus finally turned his horse into the trees to look for a camping site. We ate our dinner cold and slept without a fire.

Pol woke us before dawn, and the magus led us deeper among the trees, following the guidance of his compass in its brown leather case. After an hour or so, when the sun was beginning to be warm, we stopped for breakfast in a tiny open space where several olive trees had died and not been replaced. Breakfast was just bread and more cheese, but Pol boiled water over a tiny fire and made coffee that was thick with sugar. “That will wake us up,” he said.

There was a small spring nearby, and the magus suggested we have a wash before we packed up. Sophos, the magus, and Pol shucked their clothes and splashed ankle deep into the chilly water. After a few hesitations I joined them. I didn’t want them to think I liked being clean, but the cool water was refreshing. Only Ambiades remained on the bank, still wrapped in his cloak while his small cup of coffee cooled in front of him. He’d been quiet all morning and, I realized, quiet the evening before—no taunts for me and no gibes for Sophos. He wasn’t thinking about a bath in the spring, and I was wondering what unpleasant thoughts were on his mind when he jumped like a startled cat. The magus had flicked cold water on him.

“Come wash,” the magus said, and Ambiades stood up and dropped his cloak beside the others on the stream bank. It lay next to Sophos’s and made a very poor showing. The other cloaks were well made but ordinary. Mine was probably one of the magus’s old ones cut down, and Pol’s was a plain military cloak, but Sophos’s was a particularly fine specimen, made of expensive fabric generously cut with a stylish silk tassel hanging from the hem at the back. Beside it, the narrow cut of Ambiades’s cloak was flashy but out of fashion, and there was a line of holes, poorly darned, that ran from neck to hem, where a moth had been eating it during its summer storage.

As he dabbled his toes in the water, Ambiades looked over at the magus and Sophos, who were already stepping out of the stream, finished with their quick wash. His eyes narrowed, and the hair on the back of my neck started to rise. I’ve seen envy before, and I know the damage it can do. Ambiades caught me staring, and his envy was replaced by righteous contempt. If one thing was perfectly clear to him, it was my worthless place in the universe.

“What are you looking at, sewer filth?” he snarled.

“The Lord of Rags and Tatters,” I said with a false smile as I bowed elaborately and gestured to his ratty cloak.

A moment later I was on my back in the cold water of the stream with the sun in my eyes and my ears ringing. Ambiades stood over me shouting something about his grandfather’s having been the duke of somewhere. He would have kicked me, but Pol was there and put a hand on his shoulder to pull him back. A moment later the magus was standing between me and the sun.

“A little circumspection might be wise for someone in your position, Gen,” he said mildly. “Not to mention an apology.”

Well, my position was not a good one, I was willing to admit, but it was easily changed. I pulled my knees up to my chest and rolled myself onto my feet. “Apologize?” I said to the magus. “What for?” I walked away, nursing my swelling lip and licking the blood from the corner of my mouth. I paused to filch a comb from an open saddle pack and then sat on the stump of a dead olive tree to get the tangles and maybe some of the prison lice out of my hair. Pol packed his coffeepot into a bag, and Ambiades and Sophos put saddles on the horses.

The magus stood watching me. After a moment he opened his mouth to comment, and I expected him to suggest I cut the hair off, but instead he asked sharply, “Where did you get that comb?”

I looked at the comb in my hand as if perplexed. It was a nice one, probably very expensive. It was made from tortoiseshell, and it had long teeth and was inlaid with gold at the ends. “I think it’s Ambiades’s,” I said at last. I’d taken it out of his pack.

Ambiades turned so quickly that the horse he was saddling reared in alarm. He left it pulling at its head tie and crossed the clearing to snatch the comb out of my hand. He swung his fist toward my face, but this time I was ready, and he hit my shoulder as I turned away. Still, he knocked me backward off the stump where I was sitting and I landed in the dirt on the far side. I landed safely, but I yelped that my arm was broken.

For the second time that morning the magus was standing over me, this time looking concerned.

“Did you land on it?” he asked, bending down.

“No, the one he hit,” I said. “He’s broken my arm,” which was a dreadful lie, and when the magus saw that, he stalked away in disgust.

He explained to Ambiades, loudly enough for everyone to hear, that if I’d fallen on my arm, I might very well have sprained a wrist and I would then be no use to him at all. “I thought I’d made that clear to you a moment ago.” He punctuated his next few comments with blows to the head with that seal ring of his while I lay and listened to Ambiades yelp and resented being treated like a tool, even a valued one.

Once he had delivered his lecture, the magus left Ambiades to finish saddling up the horses, and went to repack the soap and his razor into his saddlebag. Several times I saw him look up with a puzzled expression, not at me but at Ambiades. If he thought he’d pounded good nature back into his apprentice, he was wrong. I saw the poisonous looks Ambiades sent back.

When Sophos was done saddling his horse and Pol’s, he loaned me his own comb. I told him to his face that he was much too nice to be a duke. He blushed deep red and shrugged.

“I know,” he said.

“So does his father,” snarled Ambiades, leaning down from his horse as he rode by.

It was not a propitious start to the day. Ambiades sulked for most of the morning, and Sophos rode with his shoulders hunched, trying to ignore the tension in the air. I reached up occasionally to check the size of my lip.

At one point I muttered, “You learn something new every day.”

“What are you learning?” Sophos asked.

“To keep my mouth shut, I hope.”

“You mean not bragging in wineshops that you’re going to steal the king’s seal ring?”