The Evertrue party departed in the morning. Eyre promised that nothing would befall Chester for his actions against Roland and Powlett; Chester promised that he wouldn’t need protection, and by his speaking look gave me to know that I was not to do anything that required protection myself. Kemses, as always, indefatigable, and Rose, eager to be gone… and the drake, last of all, nudging me with its nose before stepping away from us and springing into the air. I gave thanks that someone had improvised a harness for its passengers and wished them well.

“That’s that, then,” Ivy said, leaning against my side. “When do we leave?”

“As soon as possible.”

We passed through the Door into summer.

Before us spilled a field of short bronzed grasses, reflecting the sun in eye-watering flashes when the wind stroked it: that same breeze caressed us, sultry with the perfume of the sea, stinging our nostrils with salt and heat. Near the horizon a few palm trees bent and swayed, too far for the rustle of their hard leaves to overcome the sound of the surf. I had not loved the Archipelago when I’d first arrived, associating it only with fear and peril… but when Ivy exclaimed, “Oh, but tell me we might have a summer house here!” I saw it with fresh eyes.

Tchanu guided her horse up alongside Ivy’s. To me, she said, “She likes it?” And when I translated, she laughed, quiet. “Tell her she will like Nudain, perhaps. We built into the cliffs… the ocean, it comes in.”

On hearing the elf’s words, Ivy said, “That sounds beautiful!”

It did, and as we had agreed to travel to Nudain first, to enlist the aid of Tchanu’s household, I said, “Lead the way.”

We were a small group: behind Tchanu, Ivy, Amhric and I rode abreast. Kelu was once again behind me in the saddle, and Emily rode with Ivy, as had become her custom on our journey to Vigil. A group of ten guards had been selected from the various blood-flags, and so we traveled encircled in its protection; but I had brought my staff, and the glass shard, because there were defenses I refused to delegate. I welcomed the warmth and the presence of the sea; the landsense whispered things to me now that I had been hard-pressed to apprehend previously, of the pressure of the water against the rocky bones of each island, of the shivering interplay of currents between each of the isles, of the wind that had touched so many distant places before flooding my lungs with faint memories.

“It does not belong to us,” Amhric said. “But it knows you.”

Opening my eyes again, startled, I glanced at him. He smiled, and I found myself smiling back.

“We could be friends,” I said. “Serala and I.”

“You could be,” he agreed. “And you will.”

“Have you ever had a mango?” Emily was asking Ivy.

“Goodness, I haven’t. What is it?”

“A sort of fruit. Round and yellow. Shaped like a bean.”

“Is it tasty?”

“I don’t know!” the genet exclaimed. “No one ever let me have one. I am going to have one this time!”

“Well, Morgan? Are mangos worth waiting for?” Ivy asked me.

“He wouldn’t know,” Kelu said. “Slaves aren’t given good food, and humans here are slaves too. Just a better class of slave.”

“Then the king will know,” Emily said. “Sire? Are mangos good?”

The expression on Amhric’s face made him less of an icon to gather awe and more a person like the rest of us. He was not young as humans counted time, but in that moment I could see that as elves did, he was not far out of his young adulthood. Even Ivy laughed to see it. “You like mangos!”

“A king who likes mangos,” Emily murmured, ears sagging in bemusement.

“Why not?” Kelu said. “They have to eat too.”

“I do like them,” Amhric confessed. “So perhaps when we reach Nudain….”

Hearing the name of her domain brought Tchanu into the conversation, which I explained.

“We have mango trees,” Tchanu said, and I translated. “And you shall have as many as will content your hearts. And stomachs.”

Nudain owned half of Aravalís, the largest of the Archipelago’s islands; this dominion it split nearly perfectly with Suleris, whom I had not wanted to approach without support from Tchanu’s blood-flag. By her reckoning, the seat of Nudain was some week and a half from the Door’s locale, and while there was no road to ease our passage the ride was an easy one. Serala’s tropical heat and bright, clear skies felt like a benison after the weeks of Troth’s cold rain, and we rode as if on holiday. While I missed the drake and found my thoughts straying often to the fate of the Evertrue mission, even I began to relax beneath the influence of the climate. Tchanu remained reserved but now and then one glimpsed hints of her appreciation for the absurd… and of course, as companions for any journey I would have always wanted Ivy and Amhric. Emily was fine company as well, and Kelu by her very presence brought the memory of Almond with her, and if that was a bittersweet addition both of us, genet and prince, would not have had it any other way.

I knew that our arrival at Nudain would presage the revolution on the Archipelago, and that it would be tiresome and require us to gather all the blood-flags of the islands and demonstrate, repeatedly, our dominion over them. During the silences that fell between our conversations, I began polishing a speech to deliver to Nudain’s elves about how there would be no more slavery—that their humans and genets were no longer property, but free agents—and how this was not negotiable. I hoped they would be willing to discuss their objections to this proposition in a reasonable fashion, but I also began to plan what I would do in response to intransigence, particularly if it became physical or even, God preserve us, violent.

This speech had become so real an event for me that the actual events that befell us caught me completely by surprise… and I was not the only one. We’d been enjoying the sixth day of our idyll when an ambush sprang at us, and that they’d accomplished this from so little cover as to require invisibility was even worse, for it led us to believe our attackers to be elves.

But they were not.

Forty armed humans spooked the horses, dragged Tchanu’s guards down, and crashed into the center of our party, and I had barely the wherewithal to land well before five of them had me thrust into the ground. The hooves of my rearing mount flung clods of earth at me as they scythed into the ground far, far too close to my face, and hands snatched my wrists, crossing them together for what I knew would be rope.

Over the tumult, I barely heard Ivy’s indignant protests. But it was Kelu whose snarl shook me from my torpor. “Morgan, you’re the damned prince and they’re using magic!”

“Right,” I said, dry. I closed my eyes and gathered all their spirits in my hand, and then dug my fingers into them.

Humans in Troth had known nothing of the potential within them, living as they did in a magical poverty difficult for the humans of Serala to imagine. From birth, the humans of the Archipelago recognized the wells of their power… because elves were forever ripping that power from them.

Their reaction to my play was, unsurprisingly, to become frenzied with rage. I had enough time to consider my complete lack of foresight before one of the humans holding me down slammed my head into the ground hard enough to separate me from consciousness.