“Your fellow Girdsmen,” Arcolin said. “You’re not some over-privileged noble, Arvid. You’ve been among common folk all your life.”

“Not this kind of common folk.”

“True. You may find you like them better than you think.”

“Gird has a truly wicked sense of humor,” Arvid said.

“I expect you’re right,” Arcolin said. His own relationship with a gnome clan—finding out he was considered a prince in their terms—must be some deity’s jest. Gird’s? He didn’t know.

Arcolin’s duties as commander kept him busy for the next hand of days, but despite having more than three hundred troops, it felt easier than the year before. Foss Council had always been the most organized and reliable of the Guild League city-states. He also now had the other captains and more support staff along, as well as Arvid to take some of the work of supply off himself and his staff. But on drill night, he went along with Arvid and three hands of off-duty soldiers from the Company.

Porfur and the grange members stared for a long moment, and then Porfur said, “Welcome! Welcome to you all, yeomen of Gird.”

By the end of that evening, all were sweaty and some were bruised. Arvid, walking back to camp with Arcolin, had a spring in his step.

“Not so bad as you thought, eh?” Arcolin asked.

“No,” Arvid said. He rubbed the back of his head. “No … not bad at all.”

A hand of days before Midsummer, Arcolin received a letter from King Mikeli, who seemed more amused than upset at Arcolin’s new status as a gnome prince. He quit worrying about Mikeli’s reaction and instead practiced his gnomish daily with Dattur.

At dawn on Midsummer, he found Dattur waiting outside his tent, having been there—he learned—since the turn of night. “The prince named my debt to Arvid Semminson paid in full,” Dattur said. “Is true?”

“It is so,” Arcolin said.

“Now it is my duty to the prince,” Dattur said.

“Would you like to go north and rejoin your rockbrethren in the stonehold?” Arcolin asked.

“Is not my wish, but my prince’s command,” Dattur said.

“Without practice, I might not learn and remember more of kaprist-islik,” Arcolin said.

“Humans forget,” Dattur said.

Arcolin already knew that gnomes thought they themselves did not forget anything, ever. “Yes,” he said. “We do. To learn kaprist-islik, I need someone to practice with. And I do not know enough Law.” He paused. Dattur said nothing, standing attentively before him. “But kapristi in the north, in the new halls, have no prince with them, and no word from me. Perhaps they need to … to communicate. Someone to carry my words to them and their words to me.”

“If need, estvin send,” Dattur said.