“What are you doing here?” said Victor’s secretary, whose name was Lewis.

As Iona stood up she unobtrusively slipped the object into her jacket pocket. “Waiting for Victor,” she said as innocently as she could manage.

“He’s not here.”

“I realized. When will he be back?”

“He . . . hasn’t come in for two days.”

“Is he unwell?”

“We don’t know. He . . . we haven’t heard from him.”

This was intriguing.

“What did you want to talk to him about?” said Lewis. “I might be able to help.”

“I’m looking for someone and I think she works here. Her name’s Alyssa?”

“No, there’s no Alyssa here,” said Lewis—but then a thought seemed to strike him and he held up a finger. “Hang on.” He left the office and returned to his desk. Iona followed him: he was opening a large-format notebook. At the top of each page a date was marked. It was a diary.

Lewis found the page with today’s date. It listed all the day’s meetings. They had all been neatly crossed out, a single ruled line obliterating the text. Lewis turned back one page—the days immediately before were the same, all crossed out. Iona counted back the days. There were seven days on which everything had been crossed out. Victor hadn’t been in for two days but he’d been canceling all his meetings for five days before that.

Lewis turned back a couple more pages, stopped, and ran his finger down a page. He tapped a line near the bottom of the page where something had been belatedly squeezed in, a single word: ALYSSA. Next to it was a time, right at the end of the working day.

“So he met her?”

“Seems like it.”

“Do you remember her?”

“Sorry—a lot of people pass through this office.”

“Thank you,” said Iona and left.

* * *

The morning wore on but still the king lay in bed. He had woken up early with bad dreams, but instead of getting up he lay there, thinking.

Clarence entered, carrying the morning letter. He stopped and dropped the letter onto the floor.

“I’ll read it later,” the king said, without turning over.

“You should stay up to speed,” Clarence replied.

“I’m sure they’re on top of it. What do I even do anyway? I said the other day that I never made any tough decisions—but I never make any decisions.”

“Nonsense. Only last week you decided on the design for the new street maintenance building.”

“From a choice of two. Either of which would have been fine.”

Clarence trotted to the side of the bed. “Come on. Rise and shine.”

“I’m trying to get some peace and quiet, Clarence.”

“Your city needs you, you can’t just lie in bed—”

Clarence bent down, clamped the bedsheets between his teeth, and pulled. The king gripped the sheets and pulled back. The sheets tore down the middle, forcing the king to get out of bed and seek some clothes.

“The city needs me to do what?” said the king furiously as he searched for some underpants. “I stay up here all day, I only really talk to you and these guys—” Here the king indicated one of his attendants, who had just arrived with his trousers. “I read all about people’s lives but am I connected to them? I bet to them I just seem distant, like I don’t care—”