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Since arriving a few weeks before, I had passed the hours in exploring the ancient stone building, from the drafty attics to the basement cavern where the laundry was done. As in any structure that had been added onto over centuries, there were nooks and staircases everywhere, passages behind the walls, closets that seemed not to have been opened for decades. While the other girls drank tea and gossiped over games of tabula, I ferreted into those hidden spaces, trying to satisfy the restless curiosity that always pulled at me.

Unlike the girls I had been raised with, daughters of courtesans who lived and worked in pleasure houses across the city of Corlivo, I did not know who my mother was. Each month, on visiting day, the other girls had filed down to the Schola Morum’s stark reception hall to greet the elegant, willowy women with their richly embroidered cloaks covering fine silk dresses, while I sat alone in the dormitory, wishing someone would come for me. From time to time, one of our teachers took pity on me and brought me on an outing to the market. I watched in awe any time one of the graceful courtesans from the great houses glided past the vendors’ stalls with her delicate chin raised haughtily. Any one of them could be my mother, I thought. But if one of them had been, she paid me no attention at all.

As a child, I had invented a hundred stories, each one more fanciful than the last: My mother had been captured by wild men who had taken her away to live on the vast northern plains; she had gone to the Kingdom of Ohrid beyond the eastern borders of the Empire, where she lived in a great tower with a pointed roof; she had run off with a sailor and journeyed beyond the horizon on the southern sea. In all these imagined tales, she returned for me with tears and embraces, and we set out together on an adventure. I eventually grew out of these fantasies, but the desire to know what happened to her had carved a hollow place inside me. Over the years, that emptiness transformed into a restless need to learn as much as I could about the world, as though I might discover the answer to the mystery of my birth if only I found the right bit of knowledge.

The mistresses at the training school could tell me nothing about my mother, except this: The woman who left me at the nursery long ago had slipped a miniature carved ivory figurine of the Goddess into my swaddling garments. I had the precious talisman with me still, tucked underneath my pillow: a physical link to a woman who, I wanted to believe, had once cared about me.

There was a small library on an upper floor of the building, intended for the courtesans’ private enjoyment, although more often than not, it was empty. The afternoon after the Demonstratio, I climbed the stairs with a cup of fragrant steeped ginger root as I had many times before, determined to continue my search. Perhaps I would find some trace of her within these ancient walls.

Light poured in through high glazed windows. The room held a small collection of books, more than I had ever seen in one place, all forgotten by guests over the years or given as gifts to courtesans who had left them behind. On the other side of the chamber, a long line of drawers contained extensive ledgers and records that probably went back nearly to the house’s founding a thousand years before.

I had intended to continue looking through the archived records, but just as on my prior visits, the presence of so many books was a distracting temptation. There were several volumes of lyric love poetry, which I returned to the shelves immediately. I had no patience at all for tales of romance; we had learned many by heart at school. Aside from those, knowledge from books wasn’t a priority at the Schola Morum. Instead, our training had been focused on skills we would need, such as dancing and the conversational arts. This little athenaeum was like a tiny treasure house; it gave me a glimpse of topics and ideas I had never been able to study and fed my need to learn more about the wider world.

I was eager to reexamine a book I had found about the nature and positions of the stars. It had several diagrams I wanted to memorize so that as I stood on the terraces at night I could look up and make sense of the constellations. I pulled the book, Astrolabe, from the shelf and settled myself into a worn brown chair. I turned the wick up on the lamp and savored the thin pages, the gray script, the careful illustrations. The volume smelled old and slightly mildewed.

I found the place where I had last left off, a page with a diagram of the celestial spheres that circle around our world. It showed the wandering stars traveling the circumference of the spheres. Given the choice, I would prefer to be a wandering star than a fixed one. I’d travel throughout the heavens, seeing the world from all angles. I studied the concentric rings in the picture, but I could not make any sense of the notations.

I paged my way through to the end of the book, spending a long time looking at the drawings. By then, the light coming in the windows had shifted, illuminating cobwebbed shelves halfway up the wall. I would need to go back downstairs soon.

As I put Astrolabe back, a thin volume caught my eye. There was nothing at all written on the leather binding, but when I opened it, I saw the word Geographica penned in thick strokes on the inside cover. A small piece of parchment fell out, and I picked it up. Both sides were filled with inked letters in the same strong hand, faded but still legible. The writer had added what must be a signature at the end: six thick characters spelling out the name Straba. I turned it back over, but as with several other manuscripts in the library, the words were unfamiliar. I had just replaced the note in the front cover and turned to the first chapter when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

Kyra flung herself through the door. Her curly hair was already pinned up in braids and coils secured with little flowered clips.

“I thought you would be up here!” She was breathing heavily. “Beatrix is looking for you. You’re very late. Everyone else is ready for dinner!”

I stood up quickly. How had I let so much time pass?

“We have new dresses. They’re nice.” She glanced around the dusty room. “Have you found anything?”

“I keep getting distracted.” I slid the book hastily back onto the shelf and followed her out of the room. “But it’s good for me to have something to do. Another week of nothing but wine and tabula and I’ll be ready to leap off the grand terrace.”

When we reached the candlelit dressing room, I saw that the other girls were nearly ready, all arrayed in their beautiful new dresses of floating silk. Several of them were in the final stages of having their hair arranged. Vesta, tall and slim, serene in blue, with her golden hair wound into a crown of braids. Camilla, shorter, curvaceous, vibrant in deep green, her curtain of long black hair twisted up and pinned, and her mouth open in a hearty laugh. Luna, wearing a yellow that set off her warm olive skin, nodding in agreement with everything Camilla said. Marina, pale and quiet in a pretty peach, studying the small stones on the nearby tabula board with her usual intensity. The room smelled of tallow and lavender.

“Anna! Where have you been?” Beatrix, our dresser, was a tall, lanky woman with bony elbows and chapped hands. “You will never be ready in time. And you had better hurry up too, Kyra.”

I took one of the soft towels she held out to me. “I lost track of time.”

Beatrix shook her head in disbelief. “Don’t stand there gaping at me. Get into the bath!”

I did as I was told.

HALF AN HOUR later, long after the other girls had paraded downstairs with Kyra glancing back with a worried look on her face, I, too, was ready. A final glance in the looking glass showed that my honey-colored hair was nearly dry and pinned into hasty braids. Tirae did not wear the elaborate makeup of full courtesans, but Beatrix had applied a cream that somehow sparkled and infused my skin with a soft glimmer. She had darkened my eyebrows and lashes to show off my bright green eyes, brought out a bloom on my pale cheeks, and applied a shine to my lips.

“That’s the best I can do with so little time. Go!”

I hurried down the grand staircase to the first floor and ran along the hallway, my pink tunic swirling around my ankles. As I neared the arched doorway to the terrace, I heard a commotion. I drew near to the wall. Two voices were raised in an argument.

“I’m surprised that you would show your face here,” a man said in a deep, coarse tone.

“Surprised? My goodness, why?” The other voice was smooth and higher pitched. “I realize you spend so much gold here that you nearly have your own floor of the building, but others can enjoy the pleasures also. It’s not like you discovered the place.”

There was a guttural sound, a ring of metal, and then a small shriek.

I crept forward and peeked around the corner. The imposing, one-eyed Archidux had Lord Clemens Fabius pinned against the stone wall with the jewel-handled walking stick pressed to his chest. While Lord Clemens was taller, the Archidux was thicker and broad-shouldered, and he seemed to be using his considerable leverage to hold the other man in place. In his left hand he gripped a silver knife. Clemens Fabius appeared terrified.

I stepped back quickly before either of them could notice me. I had never seen such a thing before. I turned around and to my relief saw the matron coming in from the terrace with a quick, determined stride.

“Anna,” she said, “by the Goddess, why are you never where you are supposed to be? Everyone is about to sit down to dinner.”