“What we’d planned to,” Ponu told him. “Let almost everyone settle in. Not that many non-Valdemarans came through, and most of those were the dissidents and the hostage children.” He squinted at the late-afternoon sun. “I think the Dolls have the children separated into a single group, and the dissidents in another.” He glanced over a Doll that was standing at his elbow. It had pleasant features sketched on the canvas of its face with sepia ink, and a straw hat with a feather on its head.

“We do, Ponu,” said the Doll. “We should decide what to do with them.”

“I think we should at least send the hostages back to Valdemar. From there they can go home.” Kordas let out his breath in a gusty sigh. “Although things are not necessarily going to be good at their homes, either.”

“No,” Ponu agreed. “There’s a huge power vacuum now, and all those subject Kings are going to be trying to fill it. And I imagine there’s a general or two in the south, or with one of the legions nearer to what’s left of the Capital, that will be getting some lofty thoughts in his head. Still. They should be with their families, unless their families are so dysfunctional they don’t want to go back.”

That triggered a thought in Kordas’s weary brain. He turned to the Doll. “Please let the other Dolls know that fighting or bullying among the hostages is to lead to the offender being shoved into a half-empty grain barge and locked in for a couple of candlemarks. And if he misses a meal, too bad. He can chew on some wheat.”

“Oh,” said the Doll, sounding . . . happy. “It will be done.”

“ . . . and they’re not coming after us,” Isla repeated for the third time, still sounding dazed. “Not even for revenge.” The littlest boy stirred in her lap, looking like he was perfectly accustomed to being there. The other two were cuddled up against Kordas, listening wide-eyed to every word. Isla had told them a few days ago who their parents were, back when he was still in the middle of being Healed. The littlest, she had told him, had said “Hooray!” and nothing more. The eldest had looked straight at his sibling and said, “Told you so.” They all had taken the news in stride, she’d said; the only thing that distressed them had been his condition, and when Alberdina assured them he would be all right, they settled in to their new reality a lot better than he had. The fact that they were settling right in as if they all had been a perfectly normal family was, he thought, a good sign.

“No one knows it was me, Beltran, and Merrin,” Kordas reminded her. “Only the Dolls, and they’re all here with us. Nobody is going to come looking for us. Why would they?”