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affected me?
    And, gods, which was worse?
    But he held out a quill to me, and I shook myself out of my stupor. He was offering to teach me the higher order symbols, right now, and why didn’t matter.
    I took the quill and sat beside him, and he started writing. I copied the symbols— honor, star, power, council —as quickly as he showed them to me, soon forgetting my embarrassment as I leaned closer to see the order of the lines. These symbols seemed lovelier than their lower order counterparts, more fluid.
    More surprising was how often my father’s voice came back to me. It had only happened sporadically before, but today I remembered sounds for three of the first five symbols the prince showed me.
    He sketched something and pushed it toward me. “That means spit . Not exactly the excitement you expected, is it?”
    I blinked. “I thought the higher order symbols were . . . more dignified than the lower order.”
    The prince laughed. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But you can write anything in the higher order writing, and a lot more easily than in the lower order writing too.”
    The symbol he’d written had two spouting curves that might represent water arcing from a man’s mouth. It was hard to imagine that helping me read my heart-verse.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” I told myself out loud as I traced my dryquill over the page, imitating the prince’s strokes.
    â€œNo, the vertical line is first,” he said. I tried it again, then dipped my quill in the ink. The result was incomprehensible.
    Mati laughed. “Don’t press so hard on the second line.” He hesitated, then put his hand over mine and guided my quill. “Just let it flow . . . like that.”
    My hand shook so badly that I had to try five times before I got the symbol right.
    The prince cleared his throat. “Now, ten times to make it stick. See, I’m not as bad as Laiyonea.”
    I smiled and wrote the symbol again.
    â€œIn the higher order sets,” said the prince, “there are a lot more precise symbols to choose from. Especially when it comes to things like bodily functions.” He snickered.
    I’d never had to write about spitting before, but now that he said it, I realized that I wouldn’t have known how. Though there were lower order symbols that represented star and council and the other higher order symbols he had shown me, there was no lower order symbol for spit . “If the higher order symbols are only for the king and prince—”
    â€œAnd Tutors.”
    Now, it was true that the Tutors learned higher order script to teach the next generation of rulers. But only the king, as High Priest of Gyotia, actually used the higher order writing for its true purpose: communicating with the gods. By law, Tutors’ writings could only exist here in the Adytum, and had to burn in the firepit each day. Failing to burn even one page could mean death.
    But Prince Mati did not seem to appreciate the difference,so I only said, “If the Scholars aren’t allowed to know the higher order symbols, how do they write about . . . bodily functions, if they need to?”
    He grinned. “They use the lower order symbols creatively. They actually pride themselves on that. They have competitions to see who can come up with the best euphemisms. Laiyonea showed me a report once on a priest found ‘mouse against rooster’ with a temple slave.”
    I frowned, trying to untangle the meaning, and blushed when I did.
    Prince Mati laughed. “Remember that day in the Library? That letter was King Makal asking Suna for relief from his bowel troubles. Even the Scholars wouldn’t have known what to make of that one.”
    â€œI remember that you laughed,” I said. “Actually . . .” I paused, but something about the intensity of his attention made me feel at once safe and precarious, like balancing on the cleaning