“Out!” shouted the king at each entertainer. “Not amusing!”

A juggler stood before him now. The king watched him toss a procession of glass orbs in higher and higher arcs. He thought of how he might have liked to have seen this when he was a boy, but the thought of himself as a boy watching a juggler—the way he used to watch the frogs on the bank—made his discomfort grow more.

He fumed. He rubbed his brow. He shifted in his cushions.

The juggler added another ball. Another. The orbs whirled through the air. Was the king supposed to find this impressive? He did not.

“Out! Out! Out!” he cried.

Startled, the juggler let a globe slip from his hands, the ball shattering into a constellation of shards over the floor. Apologizing, bowing, scraping, he did his best to brush up the glass: a sweep—a handful of glass; another sweep—a palmful of splinters. The juggler vacillated between his desire to avoid the sting of glass and his distress at having made a mess in front of the king; his cheeks grew round with pain and embarrassment.

Sighing, almost smiling, the king leaned on his cushions. This, at least, was amusing.

But as the king savored the juggler’s new act, a commotion erupted at the far end of the room. There was a shifting, a startled murmuring, the advisors lining the walls all moving aside—whatisthiswhatisthis—and a girl in rough peasant clothes burst into the chamber. For a moment, she halted, blinking at the people around her.

The king shook his head. Nonsense. Who thought he would like this? He felt the words no and out begin to form in his mouth. “N—”

But there suddenly was Governor-Advisor, rushing into the room, a gaggle of guards behind him. “Grab her!” he cried. The men bolted to capture the girl.

The peasant girl, fixing her gaze on the king, sprinted toward him. “I am the—” she cried before a guard, catching her, clamped a palm over her mouth. She kicked and thrashed.

The guard swore and clenched the girl more tightly.

The king leaned forward. Now, this, again, was interesting. He watched the flailing peasant. Small as she was, the burly guard still struggled to hold her.

“Apologies to the king.” Governor-Advisor gave the slightest of bows. “We’ll have her removed—”

But the guard, making a Mmmh! noise, grew suddenly purple. He dropped his hand—bright with a crescent of teeth marks—from the girl’s mouth. She squirmed from his grasp.

“I am the or—” she started to shout as she ran again toward the king.

A rush—the guards and Governor-Advisor all hurtled toward her.

The king rose from his cushions. Something about the girl, he couldn’t quite place it, but he felt deep in his innards the churning of dread.

She was as dirty as pond water, her clothes bedraggled and mud-caked. And yet, she had a firmness about her chin, a brightness about her gaze.… She seemed almost… fine. Almost regal. And the way she looked at him… she seemed to see through him.