Alba, still cloudy, grew cloudier, despair dropping over her. “Oh…” Was she to be locked away again? Sent to the wilderness anew?

“They’ve agreed.” The heads all nodded enthusiastically. “One is here now to oversee the transition.”

“Oh,” said Alba again, disconcerted by the giddy bobbing of the heads. Were they all so happy to see her abandoned?

“Apprentice, we know you’ve only just awakened, but may we begin? We have been waiting and waiting, and we have matters needing attention.”

What difference did it make when she was discarded again? It was hardly a matter of choice for her. Sighing, pushing herself up, she tried to rise from the bed.

“No, no, Apprentice. Sit. We’ll all come to you. Here.” Arms reached to settle the pillows behind her. “We have a meal for you, as well”—a tray was set at the table beside her—“and we promise not to be overlong.”

Before Alba could fathom what was happening, the sea of heads parted. A petite, gray-bearded figure approached with a parchment in hand.

“On the matter of wheat,” he said with a small bow, “one village has had its crop eaten by locusts, another has lost theirs to drought, still a third had its seed ravaged by mice before planting could even begin.”

Silence.

The heads all looked at her expectantly.

Alba, bewildered, stared at the gray-bearded man.

He leaned, whispering. “We await your decision.”

“I—I…,” Alba stammered. The expectant heads inclined toward her. Were they seeking her advice?

“Does the crown still have its own stores?” she asked, finally finding her voice. She thought back to the parchments Maurus had shared with her. “I seem to remember—”

“Yes.” Another man, eyes red-rimmed and rheumy, stepped forward. He looked, Alba thought, for all the world like he could scarcely stand his own skin. “Palace scribe,” he whispered, bowing his head. He read from a trembling parchment. “Four silos wheat, two silos barley. Three silos millet.”

“Then these grains might be shared with the towns?” Alba, still not sure why these advisors had gathered around her, spoke uncertainly, but the round heads bobbed immediately.

“Yes, yes!”

The gray-bearded man scratched on his parchment. “Will you sign?” he said. Setting the document across her lap and a pot of ink on the table beside her, he handed her a reed.

Alba looked wonderingly at the reed. How long had it been since she’d held one? “My name?” she asked.

The heads nodded.

She dipped the nib. Alba, she wrote. Inky beetle-legs skittered over the parchment, freeing the stores of grain.

“Thank you.” Bowing, the gray-bearded figure darted away, but not before another stepped forward.

“On the matter of making things finer,” he said. “Draining the wetlands to the north of the city, cutting the forest that surrounds—”

“Why would you do that?” Alba, still mystified, gazed at the men.

“It—the land—is not fine. It is filled with mud and mosquitoes. It… it was the wish of the king to civilize…”

Alba considered what she’d learned of the land. “Wouldn’t draining these lands change the river that runs past the city?”