“Yes,” Kieri said. “Or rather, I believe the gods healed him at my request.”

“The light,” the Knight-Commander murmured.

Kieri sighed. “I would rather have told you after talking to my elven tutor. I am not sure how much of what happened was due to my elven blood and how much to the human powers I inherited. But … there was light.”

The Knight-Commander snorted. “That is like saying ‘There was blood’ after cutting a pig’s throat.”

“You tell it, then,” Kieri said. “Perhaps you saw more of it than I did.”

The Knight-Commander’s version went into details Kieri thought he could well have left unsaid. From their arrival in Riverwash to the Pargunese arrival, the king throwing his son in the river, all of it, including every detail of Kieri’s own actions. “The light was not exactly the same as elf-light,” the Knight-Commander said. “Not so … silvery. And no sense of being out of time or place, as when the Lady extends her realm. Commonplace things stayed commonplace. We were all startled into stillness, to be sure, but it was not the same as enchantment.”

He went on to detail Kieri’s appearance during the healing itself, the way the elf-made dagger flashed light, and the wound closing. “Then our king appeared unsteady; I expect it was the power he had used, drained from him.” He went on, detail by detail, including the reactions of the Pargunese lords, the Pargunese soldiers, and what he had heard from the Halverics when he interviewed them later.

“You talked to the soldiers?” Kieri said. “I did not know that.”

“You were exhausted,” the Knight-Commander said. “I wanted to know what others had seen, to be sure I had not missed anything. You are as near as can be to a Knight of Falk, Sir King. Your deeds must be reported in our archives as well as those of the kingdom. I am of a mind that this is proof of Falk’s favor, and you should have your ruby, vows or no.”

The Council stared at him.

“If the Council needed proof that you were not just a soldier, not one to bring the waste of war here, this is more than enough,” the Knight-Commander went on. “You risked everything to bring the king of Pargun here—to try to convince him of the need for peace between these two kingdoms—to give him a chance to make such peace—and spent your own strength to save his life.” He looked directly at two elves, who for once seemed abashed. “I wish you had seen it. He is the king we hoped for.”

“Now all he has to do is marry and get an heir,” old Sier Hammarrin said, all too audibly. After a startled moment, a nervous chuckle spread around the table.

“As to that,” Kieri said, “I have been, as you all know, busy learning this kingdom. I assure you, I have not forgotten its need for an heir.”

“You’re not going to marry that Pargunese girl just to keep the peace, are you?”