At the law offices of Godwik and Clutch, Chartji took us to a storage room. Here, by diverse means, had washed up most of the belongings we had lost hold of over the last months: Vai’s carpentry tools and the other traveling gear he and I had abandoned when we had leaped into the Rhenus River; the chests left behind at Two Gourds House with all of Vai’s dash jackets and the clothes he had had made for me; even, astoundingly, the chests Bee had been forced to leave with Camjiata, from which Drake had stolen some of Vai’s clothing.

To my amazement, one of the chests contained all of my father’s journals. The general had kindly sent these items on with a note that read:

It is never too late to change your mind.

Best of all, Bee unearthed the gold and fine linen Caonabo had asked her to deliver to Juba. The cloth shed a smoky flavor, dragon-like, from being packed in with tobacco leaves. “Haübey was meant to wear this finery on his return to Sharagua, but I have decided we need the money more than he does now he has been called back from exile. We can get an excellent price for the tobacco as well. It is no easy task to shelter, feed, and clothe almost one hundred people from nothing!”

The old Hassi Barahal compound where Aunt Tilly had been born had been boarded up in the wake of Camjiata’s defeat sixteen years ago, when the household had dispersed either to Adurnam or to Gadir. With the proceeds from the sale of the gold, Four Moons House obtained the lease for this edifice, which backed up against a gentle tributary stream of the mighty Sicauna River in the northern quarter of town. In the next property over along the bank stood a run-down old villa with a hypocaust system in need of extensive repairs, owned by a Kena’ani shipping clan eager to make an ally of the mansa and his Kena’ani wife and her cousin by offering him use of the building as long as he made the necessary repairs and renovations at his own expense. With the weather rapidly growing colder, the able-bodied set to work to repair enough of the hypocaust system to shelter the cold mages through the coming winter, while the Barahal compound’s buildings were cleaned for the rest of the household.