Madam Zizinda, in the meantime, had placed pots with hot pâté on our table. As for the other events of the evening that followed, someday I will commit them to paper, when I sit down to write my tourist guidebook: The Finest Taverns of the City of Echo.

My second foray into society took place two days later. Sir Juffin returned home very early, even before dusk. I was just about to have breakfast.

“Tonight is your debut performance, Max!” Juffin declared, confiscating my mug of kamra without waiting for Kimpa to pour him his own. “We’re going to test your progress on my favorite neighbor. If old Makluk still says hello to me after our visit, we may conclude that you are ready for independence. In my view, you can already manage very well on your own. But I’m not being objective: I’m too eager to put you to work.”

“But just think, Juffin; he’s your neighbor! You’ll have to live with him afterward.”

“Makluk is kind and inoffensive. Moreover, he’s practically a hermit. He found society so unbearably cloying while he was the Long Arm for the Elimination of Irksome Misunderstandings at the Royal Court that now he can endure the company only of me and a few elderly chatterbox widowers—and that very seldom.”

“Are you a widower?”

“Yes, more than thirty years now; so it’s not a forbidden topic. For the first twenty years or so, though, I preferred not to talk about it. We marry at a ripe age, and, generally (we hope), for a long time. But we are accustomed to suppose that fate is wiser than the heart, so don’t fret!”

And so that I would fret as little as possible, he seized the second mug of kamra, which, I must admit, I had wanted very much myself.