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“My best guess, and I think the scant evidence supports it, is that he found the caves five hundred years ago.” He rose and looked at the others. “We will leave you to your work, then.”

I suddenly felt that I couldn’t bear it if he left. What if he never came back? “No, please. Please stay.”

“You’d like me to stay?” he asked gruffly.

Don stood up. “Pol, let’s take a walk and see something of this beautiful, terrible city. We’ll leave Anna and Seb to their riddles.”

The two men grabbed their cloaks and left. We heard their footsteps descend the narrow stairs and the shop door close behind them.

A silence hung in the little garret. Downstairs, Tosca was talking to a customer who spoke in a rising and falling volume, so that through the floorboards we caught only “yards of,” “voluminous,” “captivating,” and “two dozen.” The machinery of Corlivo whirred on around us.

I dug through my pack and lifted out the orrery. I set the cube on the table beside a pot of ink and a quill. I unlatched the little compartment at the back and began to remove the brass gears one by one, making a note of each. Sebastianus watched quietly. He picked up several of the pieces and turned them over in his hands, looking at them from all angles. I was conscious of every movement he made.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” I said. “Could you line these up over there?”

“You’re recording the placement of each piece?” he asked.

I nodded.

“All right.” He arranged the gears into an even row, as I had indicated. “Would you like some water?”

“That would be nice. Thank you.”

He poured two cups of water and brought them over to the table. “How did your cloak come to be so dirty?”

“I slept in it for six days, all rainy.” I made note of a calculation. “How was your journey here?”

“We rode toward the eastern border for two days and then camped with a large company of soldiers also traveling that way. I sent a letter by messenger to King Agrias warning him to be wary of his son. Then we waited until nightfall one evening and rode away.”

Our conversation began to run like a swift stream downhill in the springtime. The sun dropped low in the sky, and as I worked, we talked. Although we had lived together for months at his villa, although I had shared his bed, somehow, we had never conversed in this way before. Without betraying the secret of the sanctuary, I sketched the rough outlines of what I had learned of my mother’s flight from Corlivo. I shared things I had discovered about myself on my solitary journey through the forest. He described his loneliness growing up in his uncle’s palace, and how desperate he had always been to please the man who had caused him so much pain. We talked of the things that had brought us joy, our fears, and our secret, shameful moments. It seemed that, gear by gear, we built a bridge over the chasm that had opened between us. We talked on and on until the candles burned low and the room began to brighten with the first hints of daylight.

But it was not until the last gear had been reassembled in the device, the handle turned with a click and a whir, our final calculations had been made, and we contemplated the results, that I said what had been on my mind since he had walked through the door of the little garret.

“I would never have left you, Seb.”

He stood and pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s hard for me to believe that you would want such a broken wreck of a man.”

“I’ve never thought of you that way. I’m sorry, I should have told you something of what I was planning.”

“I’m ashamed of the things I said before you left. And of seeking comfort elsewhere when I thought you were gone. I was just—I was just trying to forget you.”

“Was it working?” I asked into his chest.

He held me tight. “No, it was not.”

WHEN POLLUX AND Don came back carrying a bag of fragrant sweet rolls, they found us asleep together on the little sofa. We woke and tore into the pastries hungrily. The two men had spent the night drinking at one of the few cafés open on the high street, and although they both looked a little worse for wear, they asked eagerly after the results of our night’s work.

I shook my head sadly. “The timing is not right after all.”

“What do you mean?” Don asked.

“The constellation of the Mother would have been visible in the sky, but not the full moon. It would have barely been a crescent on the fifth, sixth, and seventh of Iunius in that year.”

“What does that mean?” Pollux asked.

I yawned. “It means we have nothing to corroborate my idea that Straba’s visit here coincided with his discovery of the caves.”

“So that’s it, then,” Pollux said. “The caves are not here. We move on.”