The drake ferried us all to Erevar, and an uncomfortable journey it was in such company; while I was glad of my personal friends, the unfriends who ranged on the drake’s long back were not only unwilling to be sharing that ride but forced to make do with the leading straps hooked off the back of the saddle, which had not been designed for such a large party. By the time we arrived we were glad to be quit of one another, which meant Ivy and Chester were only slightly annoyed with me when I revealed that I was leaving them.

“Must you?” Ivy said, one hand gripping my stole. “Do you wish to be responsible for the untimely murder of that girl?”

For a moment I contemplated Diantha’s death and was not moved by horror. Ruefully, I said, “Just have Iset squirrel her away in a corner of Kemses’s manse. You need never see her.”

“Really, love, where are you going?”

“To fetch the materials for our demonstration,” I said. “Expect me in five days, thereabouts. You will want to be outside the city, but not too far.”

Chester was watching me now, eyes narrowed. He suspected what I was about, unsurprisingly.

“Make sure there will be a crowd to watch,” I said. “It will be worth it.”

“Morgan,” Ivy said, bouncing the cloth of my stole off my chest to catch my attention. “This secrecy is in appalling taste.”

“I know, my dearest. Not much longer, I promise.”

And with that they were forced to be content. Emily brought me supplies for the journey and I boarded the drake and once again we were aloft. I left my own with my prayers that they would keep the human leaders of Nudain and Ekadet from violence; God only knew what they would make of a city full of humans happily at peace with their elven counterparts. I anticipated many tiresome arguments about the elves conditioning their slaves to be grateful for their state and was shamefully glad to be missing them.

It was good to be alone.

Rare, yes, and I was grateful for that rarity, for I loved the society of my friends and loved ones... had not realized just how fully I’d been holding back from them because of my infirmity and the perceived inevitability of my early death. So much I’d denied myself, and for what? I would have lost the ability to suffer my indignities in private, perhaps, but gained so much that would have enriched my life; had I been destined to die young, I would have done so without really having lived.

I would not trade my crowded life for solitude again. But now and then... to feel the sun on my face and feel the breeze cooling the sweat on my body, in the folds of my skin where my arms and legs bent... to be allowed the peace for my thoughts to develop and then run clear from me until nothing remained in my mind but the joy of flight, the awe of the world unrolling beneath me, the sough of breath in me, breath after breath, a rhythm that proclaimed my living!

I was the prince of elves, and I was alive.

The drake brought me at last to the Door. I slid off its back and considered it, and all the silence of the hours, the days, was in me then.

No room for doubt. I had done this once before. Needs must and I was here again, alone, because a grand gesture was called for and this was the grandest I could improvise. It would be enough, I thought. Reaching with closed eyes and calmed spirit, I carefully shut the Door and unmoored it from its anchor, compacted it, made of it the smallest, most tender bubble.  In the arc of the sphere gleamed a reflection of movement, of a cold winter sky, so much paler a blue.

Cradling it, I returned to the drake. As I mounted, I said, “And now, great heart, I must trust you to make the journey back. This will take all my attention.”

It whuffed softly, waiting for me to strap in. And then it rose, and as it did I sank into meditation, holding in my mind the will and magic that had formed this particular sorcery. If I felt Sedetnet’s hand in it, that was well. It kept mine steady.

Someone must have set a lookout on Erevar’s heights, for our return found a gathering outside the city, and a sizable one, milling in the light of the setting sun. As the drake circled in lazy arcs, I waited for the last of the people to arrive and array themselves beneath the direction of whomever was shouting. The location was perfect: close enough to the coast to have access to the sea, but not so close as to be threatened by the tide, and at the city’s edge. Kemses and Iset were clever folk... they would extend the city to protect the Door, and ensure that our passage to and from the continent would always be overseen by our staunchest allies on either side. And with the Door rooted in Erevar, the other humans of the Archipelago would be forced to come to terms with e Sadar did they want to reap the benefits of the shorter trade route.

As political ploys went, it was heavy-handed, and I knew it would engender some resentment. But I was not willing to give the safety of Vigil into the hands of the likes of Diantha. And the demonstration, I thought, would serve.

Chester was waiting just where I wanted him, standing where the Door should be anchored. Behind him was Amhric, prepared to offer more power to the working if power we needed. Ivy stood to one side, though God willing we would need her abilities not at all.

“Closer,” I said to the drake. “But not landing.” And it obeyed, curvetting in the air and then maintaining an awkward hover by flying into an ocean breeze. I looked over the side of its neck and saw Chester with his arms lifted, because of course he knew what I was about.

I leaned over the edge with my burden and opened my hands.

Down drifted the bubble that represented our link to the continent... without which we would be forced to endure several months on the Archipelago until the winter seas calmed enough for us to journey back. The Door, which had been made by a prince, could now only be manipulated by a prince... or whomever that prince granted permission. As the bubble fell, I opened my heart and mind and the working, felt his hands grasp mine in an invisible communion.

It drifted down, too heavy to be affected by the breeze. The witnesses gasped, for it shone abruptly like a lamp, softly at first, and then brightly, like the sun from behind clouds. There was something of Vigil’s coolth in the waves that flooded from it, and the sounds of distant voices, of the clangor of stone and metal. High magic, shared between elf and human: forever, because to allow him into the enchantment now was to allow him permanent access to its workings. Even lacking the grounding in magical theory the rest of us had achieved through our fevered studies in the athenaeum, the group gathered as witnesses could sense it... could see it with their eyes as an elven prince gave up a spell and let it visibly fall from his hands into the lifted hands of a human.

Limned in the copper light of the setting sun, Chester reached upward and gathered the bubble into his hands... and then anchored the Door. It flared awake, reflecting coin-sized sun on the horizon, shivered... stabilized. A shocked silence. And then a cheer that became a roar.

By the time the drake found a clear space to land and I walked to the gathering it had become an impromptu celebration. I ignored the politicos I’d arranged the entire demonstration to woo to join my friend instead, who was sitting in what he’d hoped would be an unremarkable corner where he could recuperate from the weight of the working.  Sitting alongside him, I said, “A headache, I imagine.”

“Like I’ve been drinking my way through the student quarter in Evertrue,” Chester said with a short laugh.

I chuckled. “Me too.”

“You are insane, Locke.”

I snorted. “You knew what I was planning the moment you saw the drake fading off over the horizon.”

“A little before,” he confessed. “Give me some credit.”

“I think I have justly proved I have, and do!”

“Ugh!” He rubbed his temple. “Not so loudly.” And at my noise, added with a low laugh. “All right. You have. And thank you.”

I mmmed and said nothing, content, and would have continued to say nothing had Ikaros not found us. As it was, I didn’t manage to find my tongue before our guest did.

“I would have believed it was a trick,” he said, the words slow to come. “Something you staged to make us believe you trusted us.”

“Except?” Chester asked for me.

“Except I find you here together, looking like mules kicked in your heads.” Ikaros smiled crookedly. “That is camaraderie that can’t be faked.” He drew in a breath, sighed. Resignation, I thought, as he released his conception of the future he’d hoped for. “I’ll talk to the others. Prince Locke.” He inclined his head to me, and to Chester, and left us to our aching heads.

“You see?” I said. “That simple.”

“I should smack you, Locke.”

“You’re welcome to try. In your condition, you’d miss.”

“In your condition, it wouldn’t matter.”

And there we would have remained in ridiculous misery had Ivy not found us and thrown up her hands. “The two smartest men in the Archipelago and you don’t even think to find me?” At our blank looks, she wiggled her fingers. “Women’s magic. Heals the ailing flesh. Remember?”

“Don’t blame us,” Chester said. “It’s the university. It educates the common sense right out of a man.”

“Luckily for you it does no such thing for a woman. Come here and let me fix that so you can enjoy your party.”