Venice taught me that wealth liked to dress loudly. Authority did not always bother. I arrived by water with sixteen bolts of silk packed beneath waxed canvas. Crimson. Indigo. Gold thread. One bolt so finely woven that the Apprentice refused to touch it without washing her hands first.

There was once a locomotive works in a city that never existed. You could hear it before you could see it. Hammers. Steam. Steel wheels rolling across iron tracks. Foremen shouting from elevated platforms. Cranes swinging boiler plates through clouds of black smoke. Hundreds of men reported before sunrise.

In a kingdom that never existed, there was a road that almost nobody traveled from beginning to end. It crossed two mountain ranges. Three rivers. A forest people avoided after dark. And enough empty country to make a man question whether civilization had been a temporary experiment. The king used the road for one reason. Messages. Not ordinary messages. Orders. Contracts. Warnings. Requests from governors.

In a kingdom that never existed, behind walls that looked as though they had been built to keep out both armies and salespeople, a young ambassador arrived carrying a sealed letter. He had traveled for six days. Two horses had gone lame. One wheel had broken. Rain had turned the northern road into mud. And now, finally, the towers of the king's palace stood above him. The ambassador smiled. He had made it. Or so he thought. The first guard barely looked at him. "State your bu