Clearly both messages had arrived. Someone beside the window shouted, “Look!” and everyone crowded to it to watch the gates of Kingsbury opening to let the King’s coach hasten out behind a squad of soldiers. In fact, it was a procession. The coaches of numerous ambassadors followed the King’s, emblazoned with the arms of most of the countries where Hasruel had collected princesses.

Howl turned toward Abdullah. “I feel I got to know you rather well,” he said. They looked at each other awkwardly. “Do you know me?” Howl asked.

Abdullah bowed. “At least as well as you know me.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Howl said ruefully. “Well, then, I know I can rely on you to do some good fast talking when it’s needed. When all those coaches get here, it may be necessary.”

It was. It was a most confusing time, during the course of which Abdullah grew rather hoarse. But the most confusing part, as far as Abdullah was concerned, was that every single princess, not to speak of Sophie, Howl, and Prince Justin, insisted on telling the King how brave and intelligent Abdullah had been. Abdullah kept wanting to put them right. He had not been brave—just walking on air because Flower-in-the-Night loved him.

Prince Justin took Abdullah aside, into one of the many antechambers of the palace. “Accept it,” he said. “Nobody ever gets praised for the right reasons. Look at me. The Strangians here are all over me because I’m giving money to their old soldiers, and my royal brother is delighted because I’ve stopped making difficulties about marrying Princess Beatrice. Everyone thinks I’m a model prince.”

“Did you object to marrying her?” asked Abdullah.

“Oh, yes,” said the Prince. “I hadn’t met her then, of course. The King and I had one of our quarrels about it, and I threatened to throw him over the palace roof. When I disappeared, he thought I’d just gone off in a huff for a while. He hadn’t even started to worry.”

The King was so pleased with his brother, and with Abdullah for bringing Valeria and his other Royal Wizard back, that he ordered a magnificent double wedding for the next day. This added a great deal of urgency to the confusion. Howl hurriedly made a strange simulacrum—constructed mostly of parchment—of a King’s Messenger, which was sent by magic to the Sultan of Zanzib, to offer him transport to his daughter’s wedding. This simulacrum came back half an hour later, looking decidedly tattered, with the news that the Sultan had a fifty-foot stake ready for Abdullah if he ever showed his face in Zanzib again. This being so, Sophie and Howl went and talked to the King. The King created two new posts called Ambassadors Extraordinary for the Realm of Ingary and gave those posts to Abdullah and Flower-in-the-Night that same evening.