Kiggs raised his hand; Melaye pointed the staff at him. “Our faction requests a private consult,” he said.
“Granted,” said Melaye haughtily. Around the circle, the Agogoi raised their fans, speaking privately with their neighbors. My friends turned around on their stools and drew their seats closer together. I knelt and leaned in.
“If the knights are sailing back to Goredd tonight, I should be on that ship with them,” said Kiggs quietly. “I’m needed at home.”
“Understood,” said the old saar.
“I’m not sure you do,” said Kiggs. “I don’t want to leave with these negotiations unresolved. We can’t coordinate a military campaign with that kind of uncertainty. You have to agree on a price. I need to know you’ll be going up the Omiga.”
He and Comonot stared at each other for some moments.
Eskar said, “Ardmagar, stop being stubborn. Give Porphyry what it wants.”
“It wants too much!” hissed Comonot.
“How much are dragons worth?” said Eskar. “Every passing day means more death, means the Old Ard and their pernicious ideology gaining ground. Bend like a willow, Ardmagar. We must learn to do this if we’re to survive.”
The Ardmagar turned red and his lips worked against each other. I half believed smoke might come out his ears. Somehow he swallowed it down. Our party turned their stools back around. Comonot addressed Melaye in a thin, tight voice, like a furious bassoon. “Speaker, I must get to the Kerama. I agree to your last proposal, though it was hardly more reasonable than your first. I will take every saarantras who wishes to accompany me. Your city will supply us, and we will leave as soon as all is in order.”
Melaye’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I have your word, Ardmagar, by Dread Necessity, and you have mine. We must write up our agreement and sign it.” She pointed her staff at a matron, who went to the door and began giving orders to the guard outside.
Comonot bowed sharply and sat down again. “Bend like a willow,” he whispered to Eskar out of the side of his mouth. “You made it sound so simple.”
“It was simple,” said Eskar, unperturbed.
“Indeed. I bent and changed everything. This is going to have consequences.”
A phalanx of secretaries entered the courtyard, carrying portable writing desks and piles of parchment. I leaned down level to Comonot’s ear and whispered, “What did you agree to, Ardmagar?”
He rolled his eyes. “The Porphyrians are to have access to quigutl devices—not merely the right to own and use them, but the right to trade them.” He shook his head. “The Southlands will never be the same. I have altered your whole world in the blink of an eye, for my own gain. I’m not easy with that.”
Kiggs was getting to his feet. “Thank you even so, Ardmagar,” he said, patting the old saar’s broad shoulder. “We’re off.”
Comonot’s eyes flicked from my face to the prince’s. “I will see you both in Goredd, then, when I clasp your hands across the smoking ashes of my enemies.”
“Isn’t that what you’re hoping to avoid by sneaking up the Omiga?” Kiggs said.
Comonot considered. “Yes, but I liked the sound of those words. Interesting.”
Kiggs bowed. The Ardmagar grabbed his head and kissed his cheeks, performed the same awkward operation on me, and turned back to the business of formalizing his agreement. Six secretaries were poised to take dictation, making six copies at once.
We collected Maurizio and left the Vasilikon; Kiggs knew a way out that didn’t involve crossing the Assembly chamber again. When we emerged into the bustling Zokalaa, Maurizio shaded his eyes and said, “We need to leave before we’re trapped here. Sunset might be too late. We load supplies and then we’re off—assuming we didn’t knock a big hole in the ship. I don’t care to contemplate that possibility.”
“Understood,” said Kiggs, his face drawn. “Seraphina and I have only to fetch our things. We’ll see you soon.” He clapped Maurizio on the shoulder; the knight bowed and took off toward the harbor.
Kiggs ran a hand over his face and exhaled. “By St. Clare, I can’t believe Eskar talked the Ardmagar into that. Those negotiations could have lasted weeks. Comonot was an immovable object against Melaye’s unstoppable force.” He tried to smile. “Shall we go together to gather our belongings, or shall I meet you at the harbor? The latter is faster, but the former might be pleasanter.”
An idea that had almost formed earlier (had it only been that morning?) came suddenly upon me in full force, and once I had realized it, I couldn’t unrealize. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” I half whispered, hating what I was about to say. “I can’t travel back to Goredd with you.”
Kiggs’s brows shot up. “What?” His gaze flitted back and forth, as if he could only bear to look into one of my eyes at a time. “I thought you’d given up on gathering the Porphyrian ityasaari. And … and Selda misses you.”
“Not just Selda,” I said, reaching for his hand. He squeezed my fingers. “But Uncle Orma is …” My voice broke. “I might find him if I go with Comonot and Eskar. I have to try.”
Emotion played across Kiggs’s face like light upon water, illuminating the surface and the deeps, the known and the unknown. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine. The busy Zokalaa flowed around us; the sun inched through the sky.
“Of course you do,” he said at last. “And I have to go home and help Selda, and this is how the world runs, pulling us apart over and over again.”
“I’m so sorry—” I began.
“Not for loving your uncle, I hope,” said Kiggs, drawing back and wiping my cheek with his thumb. “I’m not away yet. Walk with me to House Malou.”
We took the hill in silence, the callous breeze cavorting between us. The doorman recognized the prince and let us in; the empty corridors echoed as we walked. Kiggs had unpacked but little, so it took only a minute to gather his belongings. I helped him carry his chest to the atrium, where he paid a scullion to haul it the rest of the way to the ship.
We lingered in the street, emptied by the midday heat. I steeled myself for the goodbye that was drawing relentlessly closer, but Kiggs said in a voice almost comically grim, “I’d like to have seen the Bibliagathon just once.”
I knew of a nearby public garden with a view. I led Kiggs through the sweltering streets, up a slightly overgrown gravel path, and to the end of the garden, where the shrubbery parted and the Bibliagathon appeared below us, its dome gleaming in the noonday sun, its courtyards in cool blue shadow.
“It’s as big as a cathedral,” sighed the prince. “I’ll have to come back. Maybe we’ll come back together.” He lightly brushed my hand with his fingers.
“Orma and I used to dream of that,” I said. My throat tightened painfully, and I could only whisper, “Orma might not be Orma when I see him next.”
Kiggs gripped my hand tightly then. “That has been happening all around you,” he said quietly. “Not just to Orma. Jannoula has been altering the minds of friends. It must feel like the world is all on shifting sand.”
“Promise me you won’t listen to her or let her into the city,” I said. “Keep her out of Goredd altogether, if you can.”
“Of course,” he said, raising my hand a little, clasping it between both of his. “You know I speak for Selda, too. You have two stalwart friends on guard against her. Let that comfort your heart, as mine is comforted.”
I questioned with my eyes. He smiled, leaning in a little, and said, “Because I found you again. However strenuously the world pulls us apart, however long the absence, we are not changed for being dashed upon the rocks. I knew you then, I know you now, I shall know you again when you come home.”
And that was the last thing he said to me before he left. I could not bear to watch him sail away. When I returned to Naia’s, the emptiness in the harbor was palpable still.