I nodded again and took them from her. “Thank you, Helga. I’ll get them to True. If Queen Mercy did nothing with them, they probably are not of import. But we’ll let True decide, no?”

She nodded in return and bobbed a slight curtsy, gave me a smile, and started to move away.

I was going to make my trek to my study, which would take half the day in this big castle, but I did not move when Helga turned back.

“I am glad you and our king did not give up on him, Your Grace,” she said, jerking her chin down the hall toward Alfie’s room. “This world needs men like Sir Alfie.”

Wodell’s hero, indeed.

I smiled at her and agreed, “It absolutely does.”

Another bobbed curtsy and she scurried away.

I then decided to give Bronagh and Alfie some privacy considering what I hoped was happening in that room, and thus began the journey to my study.

In order to have something to do as I did this, I untied the ribbon on the letters and folded open the first parchment.

I skimmed it, and then opened the next.

I skimmed that, and on to the next.

It was on the fifth that I stopped dead in the hall.

But only for a moment.

Then I raced to find True.

107

The Healing

The People of Airen

Highgate (Eastern Gate into Sky Bay)

AIREN

Their arrival caused a stir.

No one in Sky Bay, indeed Airen, had seen such things.

And as such, and what it might mean, a soldier had been sent to the Sky Citadel with haste to share the news with the Prince Regent.

They did not get very far into the city, what with the crowds that gathered, and how very hostile the female was.

Although at first some tried to get close, eventually her aggression was such they had no choice but to give them a wide berth and wait for word from the Regent as to what to do with things so fantastical wandering into the Bay.

They had to have something to do with the Nadirii being amongst them.

Nothing that magical ever touched the soil of Airen before the Nadirii came.

It was with great surprise that anyone along the route to Highgate watched the Regent himself riding his steed Caelus like an angry troll dogged his heels, the prince’s black mantle billowing at his back.

His intended, the golden-haired Princess of Nadirii chased behind him, her cloak of purple floating out behind her, its brilliant color stark against the drab colors all around her.

Seeing it, some decided to paint the doors to their homes purple.

And others decided to buy their wives purple cloaks much like that.

Still others desired to rip it from the Nadirii’s neck and burn it.

And behind the Nadirii princess, Cassius’s lieutenants, and hers, and a cadre of others, all went clattering over the cobbles at breakneck speed.