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got.” I looked up at her. She picked up the sewing and continued with it as she talked. “I know that you do not like school, but you have to make the best of it. You have to get used to your life the way it is. That’s why I take the teachers’ side. It’s not because I think you are in the wrong all the time.”
    I did not answer. “Could Stirling be moved from Sergeant Markey’s class?” she said then. “I could speak to the headmaster. He’s sensible, and he has always been kind to you both. He would want his teachers to be reported if they are behaving unacceptably.”
    “Perhaps,” I said. “There is another Second Year platoon. I hardly know the teacher, though.” Our school went right up from First Year to Ninth Year—from six years old to fifteen. With two classes for each year, that made over nine hundred pupils. All boys, of course. Girls hadn’t gone to school in Malonia since Lucien took power. “I suppose you could speak to the colonel,” I said, but I knew Stirling would say no.
    “Oh yes,” she said. “It’s not headmaster; it’s colonel. And a class is a platoon.”
    I laughed. “It’s stupid, isn’t it? You have to admit it’s stupid.”
    “Perhaps. Perhaps it’s good training.” She put down her sewing again and went to stir the soup on the stove. I was still coughing. “Leo, are you sick?” she asked.
    “No,” I said. “I just got cold this afternoon, that’s all.”
    But I went to bed still coughing. “I worry about Stirling,” I told Grandmother when she came in to check on him. “I worry that he doesn’t … defend himself. Do you know what I mean?”
    “Blessed are the meek,” she said. “There is more than one way of fighting life’s battles, Leo.” I sighed, turned over, and went to sleep.
    In my dreams I returned to the story that had appeared, to the people and the places from the strange book. I could see the girl and the glittering necklace, and then the prince on that highest balcony with his mother and father as the sun set. I could see them clearly. And then, in my dream, another story began. An old man was sitting alone in an empty house when a stranger appeared at the door.

    A lthough he had been listening for it all week, the doorbell startled Raymond. He had been certain no one would come after all. This was the last day, and no one had come yet. He put down his newspaper and struggled out of his armchair.
    The bell rang again. It always made the glass cases in the hall rattle, now that they were empty. Raymond dampened the nearest one with the back of his hand as he passed, and hobbled to the door. He fumbled with the new locks, muttering, “Just coming.”
    A few feet back from the step stood a middle-aged man. Hewas a gray-looking man—that was what Raymond thought first—gray like steel. Gray eyes, gray shadows of stubble on his chin, gray hair—not through age but naturally that metallic color.
    “Al … er … Arthur Field,” said the man, in an accent that was not English but not quite foreign either. “I have come about the butler’s job.” As he spoke, he held out a hand. And the hand that he held out was his left one. He was definitely not English, Raymond decided. He took the man’s hand gingerly.
    “Come in, then,” Raymond told him.
    The man set about scraping his boots on the doormat. While he did it, Raymond squinted at him, hands on hips. Arthur Field had a heavy cloak about his shoulders, and his clothes underneath were worn as though he had come a long way in them. Raymond caught the glint of a necklace at the man’s throat, but the man pulled up his collar before Raymond could peer any closer. Raymond gestured to the drawing room door, and the man followed him.
    Arthur Field looked even more out of place in the drawing room. He sat where Raymond indicated, in the armchair beside the window, and waited. Raymond lowered himself into the chair opposite.
    Arthur was glancing at the glass cases around the room. “So