“As long as no one knows whom you’re deeping, then I would also like her to have such honor. I did her great harm once upon a time. Now I can never redress that wrong. But her sons are still in my keeping, and my own way to honor her will be to keep them safe and whole, and help them reach a happy life, if they choose it.”

“Are we friends, then?” asked Keel. “I don’t know what I can offer such a mage as you. My powers are not worth mentioning, compared to yours.”

“It’s not the magery that makes the man, but what he does with it, and with any other opportunity that he is given,” said Wad.

“You say that as if it were an old saying, but I’ve never heard it.”

“I learned it in my childhood, more than fourteen centuries ago, and in another language.”

Keel took in this information calmly. “There are tales in this that someday I’d like to hear. How a man can live so long. How you kept your gates when the Gate Thief took everybody else’s. What harm you did Anonoei, and how you came to be the lover of the Queen.”

“What parts I could tell you, you would not believe, and what you would believe, I dare not tell you,” said Wad. “But I know the service you have done for Iceway, and if it comes to war with Gray, I know that Iceway will have a mighty fleet, only because of your brilliant and devious mind. That’s what you bring to our alliance—your loyalty, your love of country, your intelligence, your resourcefulness, and a deep goodness that Anonoei admired.”

Again a sob caught at Keel’s throat, but then he mastered it. “Few will know, except for you and me, the greatness of Anonoei’s heart, and how faithfully she served King Prayard and the people of Iceway.”

“Everyone will know, if one of her sons someday inherits this kingdom,” said Wad. “But now it’s time for you to place yourself where the fishermen who find Queen Bexoi in the river will come directly to you. Tell me where you want to be, and I can put you there. Or you can go yourself, so that the ordinary witnesses will believe that you were there on business and it was only chance that made you the official into whose hands the fishermen delivered the half-drowned body of the Queen.”

Keel told him a place on the docks where he had a team of workmen refitting a ship for a long voyage. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said. “And I have work enough to keep me there for another ten.”

“Make sure there’s a likely fishing vessel coming in or going out,” said Wad. “The Queen will bump against the side of it.”