“I don’t know. If I were closer to him… perhaps…”

“I can arrange it, if you wish.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I am to make a list of all the house slaves and Drudges that serve here, and a list of possible replacements for each one, including myself. I could put your name on the list as a kitchen servant or a scrub. We have no need for sewing women in the Gray House, but such transfers aren’t out of the ordinary. I could put several of the sewing women on the list. Someone will just think it’s a mistake, but it wouldn’t be worth remedy. No one would believe for a moment that a Drudge would have any reason for preferring one station to another.”

“If you could do such a thing, it might mean more than you know.”

“I must not know anything.” A sweet smile illuminated his face. “Would that I could. But I will bury this gift of your trust like a squirrel buries an acorn in autumn and take my pleasure contemplating it through whatever is to come.” He gave me his sketch and the rolls of black and gray silk. “Ten of them. In the sizes I’ve written here. To be ready in a week.”

“Be easy, Sefaro,” I said. “May the Light shine on your Way.”

He smiled and returned the wooden token into my hand.

A week later, when I was sent to the Gray House to deliver the banners and take up my new assignment, a different slave sat on the chamberlain’s stool, and I had no token with which to allow him to speak.