He was a simple man in that way, he thought. Didn’t really want people knowing this about him, it was almost embarrassing. Orane had terrible problems, of crime and filth and poverty—there were maimed beggars and hungry children everywhere. At certain times of day some streets gave off a stench you could apprehend from a distance. The tannery district, the street of the fishmongers. Or just the usual disposing of garbage and human waste from an upper window into the streets and lanes, in the hope that at some point rain would wash it down the central gutter and into the river.

Not all lanes had a central gutter.

Even so. Even so.

You could look up from almost anywhere in Orane and see the golden dome of the Great Sanctuary on its island, lord of all the other sanctuaries. You could see sculptures among the spreading trees in the parks, or glimpse them in the palace courtyard, or those of noble families, looking through the tall iron gates. You could hear music—or poetry!—in the taverns all day and evening long.

That was his world. He would wake in bed in Marina di Seressa’s country home—a better bed than any he’d ever had in Orane—and be aware of how distant he was from his city, and how long it might be before it was safe for him to go back. Marina was there now. Silvy was in The Lamb. His parents were in Orane. Everyone was there but him. He thought about Silvy, patrolling the floor of the tavern, organizing everyone. Doing it calmly, unruffled by almost anything. He missed her.

He was under orders, just about, from Marina di Seressa to use his time here to write better, do work more ambitious than sardonic poems of mock bequests to people he disliked, however much loved those verses were.

He was trying, with limited success.

He was in the garden now, trying to shape words for a different sort of poem. Something about the Maiden, and Chervaux, about seeing her there. Something, something…

But he wrote in taverns amid noise! Or in rooms above them, or walking the city, shaping lines in his head. Here? It was so…it was too calm. He was realizing that solitude, peace, might not offer his own best access to poetry. He liked noise and bustle. Conflict, traded insults, drunken jests, raucous shouts. Unexpected lovemaking. Women laughing! He loved all that. Improvising from a tavern’s long bar amid chaos. Memorizing words he’d just devised, until he had a chance to write them down.

He didn’t know if Jad cared about poetry, about art, or if some abandoned god of the Ancients did, but he knew that here, with no one around, behind Marina’s quiet house, in this wide, grassy space amid flowers, with the forest beyond it, he felt as if there was…nowhere to hide.