“Yes, that went badly. When he realized he was supposed to be dead and therefore should have been cremated, he very calmly sat down and finished the job. The whole building went up with him.”

“That’s when we went to ground,” Victor said. “We worried the fire might be traced back to us.”

“How did he start the fire?” asked Iona.

“You know when you rub two sticks together very fast?” said Alyssa. “Well, that—but with his hands.”

* * *

The king’s entourage surrounded him as he prepared to leave the tower—twenty-five of them standing two deep, giving him about two meters of clearance on all sides. These ones could be trusted, he told himself. They came into his chambers every day: they had ample opportunities to kill him if they wanted to, yet they never had. He felt sure they would protect him.

The king didn’t make small talk or eye contact with his attendants. In recent days he had become very conscious of how he appeared to his subjects. He didn’t want to offend or patronize them. Maybe they would interpret his silence as aloofness and grow to hate him for that reason. Maybe they all hated him already. Maybe the only reason they hadn’t killed him was they felt too afraid.

The king stole a glance at the faces around him. They seemed dutifully impassive. He could read nothing in any of them.

The king sighed. “Come on, let’s make a move.”

The party stepped forward in unison and out of the front door.

The king emerged to find there was still a small crowd holding vigil outside the tower (didn’t they have anything better to do?) and they responded to his appearance with astonishment. They followed him even when his attendants told them not to. And they were joined by others. The king heard shouts of encouragement and hollered felicitations. He hadn’t come out here to seek their love or adulation. He just wanted to walk down the street.

* * *

Iona emerged from the mouth of the mine shaft with Alyssa alongside her. From the old mining site it was only a short walk to the wall at the edge, and as Iona walked toward it she looked past the trees and up at what she’d always thought of as the sky. After all, it had a sun in it and clouds and sometimes it rained. But it struck her now there was no place where the wall ended and the sky began. The dome above their heads gave the illusion of day and night but it was not the sky.

“How big is this cage?” said Iona.

“That’s a question that doesn’t have a straightforward answer,” said Alyssa, “because the inside is bigger than the outside.”

Initially this didn’t make sense to Iona—but then it did. “We’re always expanding the city, and yet the wall is always the same distance from the city limits.” There was about half a mile of woodland in between, and as far as she could remember, there always had been.