As Iona pondered this question her eyes went to the door of her cell. Through the small grille window in the center she could see the back of a citizen’s head. It had been posted to stand guard. This meant long, long hours of doing basically nothing: standing and staring straight ahead.

This seemed a considerable waste of processing power. Surely the sensible thing to do was to put the guards to work on the problem of escaping the cage.

Maybe whoever had set this thing in motion was sensible.

Iona walked to the door, put her mouth close to the grille, and quietly said, “Starlit sky.”

The guard told her it was in the midst of processing data and asked if she would like a progress report.

Iona said she would like this very much.

* * *

The king sat by his window and stared out across the city. He had told everyone he was not to be disturbed but as usual Clarence assumed this didn’t include him. The cat paced in and out of the chambers and sometimes the king could hear him talking to someone outside. The bureau was still searching for more of Alyssa’s associates. Clarence seemed to believe this was why the king was looking out of the window, that he was thinking about where traitors might still be lurking. But he wasn’t thinking about that at all.

Clarence hopped up to the windowsill and shared the king’s view.

After they’d both been sitting there a while in silence, the king said: “Maybe it’s time to let someone else have a go.”

“A go at what?”

“Being king.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Why’s that ridiculous?”

“Who else could do the job?”

“Anyone. What do I even do? Why do we even have a king? Everything runs itself.”

“That’s not true.”

“Well yeah, you run most of it.”

“No no no. I just advise.”

“You could advise someone else, doesn’t have to be me.”

“What would you do?”

“Lots of things. I’d like to get into research.”

“Research?”

“Yeah, just . . . finding out how things work. We’re always making the city bigger and bigger and it seems like we never stop to think about, like, things outside the city—”

Clarence was staring at the king like he’d brought up a distasteful subject.

“It was just an idea.” The king took off his crown, turned it over in his hands. “But I did wonder, though—who would I be if I wasn’t the king?”

“Well, this is what I’m saying—you’d have nothing to do.”

“I don’t mean what would I do. Everyone calls me the king. If I wasn’t king, what would my name be?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know everything,” said the king insistently. “Why haven’t I got a name, Clarence?”

“You don’t need a name.”

“Everyone else has got a name.”

“Then we’ll get you one, if it makes you feel better.”

The king went back to looking out of the window. He knew he had a name. He just wanted to see if Clarence knew it.