Alba, wiping her eyes, started. “Do not be afraid…,” she repeated, as Maurus nodded. “She told me the same. Or—I dreamed she did. I think she meant”—she gestured to her bed—“I might die.”

“I think she meant something else,” he said. “I think she meant this. Now. I think this is why—even though the priests might need you to take her place, they cannot call for you to be returned. You’ve been asked to stay.”

Alba glanced about. “Here?”

Maurus nodded. “When the advisors saw all you’d written below about the king and the realm, and even the twins who’d been abandoned, when they saw how much you understood about the land and its people… they wrote to ask if you might stay. To guide them, at least for a time, in all the decisions.”

“Me?” Alba touched her brow. Her head ached with injury and disorientation.

“There’s no heir.”

“No, there is,” Alba said. “But…” She glanced around the vast chamber, its cold white walls. “She doesn’t want this.” She looked at Maurus and the sea of nodding heads. “I don’t want this,” she whispered. “I’m not a king.”

“You needn’t be a king,” he said. “And you needn’t stay forever. But even the priests have not read as much as you. As a group perhaps, but not one all himself—”

“You have,” Alba interrupted. “You’ve read all I have. You brought the parchments to me.”

“But you,” he continued, “you listened to people, as oracle, you listened to what troubles they face. I know how you always tried to show people the better path in their future—yes”—he said over her shaking head—“the oracle told me how you even ignored the waters, how you paid attention instead to who people were when they stood before you. She told me how you always strove to help and give hope to those who came to you. Think how you might help so many now.”

Alba trembled. “I don’t want to be king,” she said.

“The oracle told me to tell you, too, oh, now I remember, Mirrors can be instruments of light. Do you know what she meant by this?”

Alba, quiet, did not answer. “I’m not meant to be king,” she said in a smaller voice.

“Advise us,” said one of the nodding heads. “We have not found the king. At least advise us until he can be found. For instance, right now, a line of supplicants waits on the steps. Should we send them away as the king bid us do? Or would you, as oracle, as former oracle-apprentice, wish to hear them?”

“People are waiting outside?” Alba asked.

The scribe with the regretful, rheumy eyes stepped forward again. “Two score and six,” he read from a tablet, hesitating, looking searchingly at her. “One seeks assistance with his shop lost to fire. Another begs clemency; the theft was accidental, he says, the donkey he stole so much like his own—”

“Why do they wait in the sun?” Alba asked. “Surely we can help with these things.” Pushing herself up from the pillows, she took Maurus’s proffered arm. She stood unsteadily.