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“You,” Ragnar said in surprise. “You are a blind man.”

“That is one of many things that I am.”

“Extraordinary. I couldn’t be sure before. Even now I confess I half-suspect you of acting.”

“It can be difficult to prove a lack, Prince Ragnar, though I suppose I could arrange it. I hope you will not demand it, however.”

“My brother is a better host than that,” Princess Corinna declared. “I suspect your story is a most wonderful one, Katta, and well suited to the library.”

Libraries are always tantalizing things, for gifted though I am, I cannot read the inked page. But I have had many pleasant hours in such places, listening to others recite. To have a meal there, however, was a new experience. The chamber was an upper-story room with a wooden floor and book-lined walls on three sides, with windows interrupting the stacks. The windows were open this afternoon, and breezes fluttered the tapestries upon the fourth wall. Tables wide enough to spread many volumes filled the floor, and servants shifted heavy oak chairs to accommodate four people to the accompaniment of grunts and scrapes.

Seated, we enjoyed salmon, bread, cheese, and tea. The cheese was not altogether agreeable, but the bread and tea were pleasant, and the salmon took me back to my youth.

“You may be wondering why the king is not seeing you,” Princess Corinna was saying.

“I am too unacquainted with your land to wonder at such things,” I said honestly.

“You are either ignorant or diplomatic,” Prince Ragnar said. “As I am neither I will say it openly. The old king, our grandfather, having outlived the old queen and his mind shaken by battle, abdicated for his son after the wars of unification. The new king, Corinna’s and my father, was ravaged by plague, the same plague that killed Corinna’s mother the queen. As such Soderland is a kingdom in limbo, with its true king a barely conscious shell of a man, and its old king too unsteady to retake the reins.”

Corinna interrupted, her tone gentle but insisting on commanding the conversation. “We were but children at the time, Katta, is it? Ragnar took command of the army, and I of the court, and we stretched our advisors to the limit. We defied all expectation by avoiding a civil war. Ragnar is my elder, you see, but he was fathered out of wedlock and cannot inherit the crown. I am a woman and thus considered by many fools to be ill suited to rulership. One day I will be queen, but that day is a long way off.”

“Yet,” Ragnar said, his voice harsh, “my half-sister is queen in all but title, and I am her right hand. No matter how many scheming nobles try to divide us. So there is no disrespect intended in meeting you ourselves. An audience with our father or grandfather might be . . . counterproductive.”

Northwing blinked, returning to us. A rustling in one corner confirmed my guess we were now observed by rats. “No need to apologize for how you handle things,” Northwing said. “You wouldn’t believe how many ways people are governed. Most of them bad.”

“Ah,” said Corinna, “thank you, sir, Northwing . . . yes?”

“Yes,” said Northwing, not trying to deny the assumption of masculinity.

“Well,” Corinna said, studying us two foreign “men,” “that is our strange country, and welcome to it. You are quite a mystery to us. How did you come to be here?”

“Katta can tell it better,” Northwing said at once, laying a great burden on me but also the freedom to arrange it as I would.

And so I told how we befriended an inventor of Mirabad, who had flown a balloon to the steppes and landed among the Karvaks, our people’s neighbors, and how later we set off to explore more of the world at Haytham’s side. I pretended primitiveness and emphasized our sense of wonder at the mighty places of the West.

I had the impression Corinna and Ragnar were not quite believing in the primitiveness, and that they sensed the numerous gaping crevasses in the path of my tale. “And so you flew alone?” Ragnar asked. “No other balloons?”

“Just us,” I said. “Though the Karvaks of the steppes were interested in adopting Haytham’s methods.”

“We may be interested ourselves,” Corinna said. “Well, you must be tired. Servants will show you to your rooms. I will warn you openly that we are cautious, and until we are sure you are harmless and truthful, you will be guarded. Otherwise, you are guests of the Crown.”

It was not such a bad thing, to be a guest of the Crown. We were afforded fine meals, which, although sometimes strange, were an agreeable change from tough, dry traveler’s food. I normally avoid meat, but there was a paucity of vegetables in Kantenjord in the winter. To compromise I developed a taste for goat cheese.

Escorted, we were able to explore the Fortress and the city of Svanstad, which was quite a pleasant place aside from the ubiquitous odor of fish—fresh fish, dry fish, rotting fish, rotting pickled fish prepared as some mad substitute for food, and so on. We toured the Swan cathedral with its ethereal-sounding choir and the street of the traders with wares as unexpected as Mirabad coffee and Amberhorn incense. We walked along the waterfront, and Northwing described a delirious variety of ships—knarrs, longships, clinkers, caravels, galleys, plus two dhows and a sleek galleon from jungled Kpalamaa. I enjoyed the descriptions much as you might appreciate tales of imaginary creatures, for my home has long been the heart of what some Westerners call the Continent of the Young Sun, and I have rarely heard the ocean.

Back at the Fortress, Northwing and I discovered that a couple of the servants were sufficiently adventurous to share our beds, though we did our best to keep such activities quiet so as not to trip over any local taboos. We saw nothing of Corinna after the first day, but Ragnar was a compassionate if irritable keeper, pressing us for information on every land we’d seen and, I believe, poking at the gaps in our stories.

Late on the third day, much recovered, I discovered in my meditations a recurring feeling of guilt. With the session ended, I knocked on Northwing’s door.

“Wait,” Northwing said, and after a minute let me into her room. It, like mine, was as richly appointed as the interior of a khan’s tent. I sat upon the floor, as did Northwing.

“Northwing,” I said, “do you feel we should be moving on?”

“Is that what the lamb said to the slaughterer?”

I smiled. “You mistrust our hosts?”

“I’ve seen what’s become of Haytham and the balloon, Katta. I’ve just now followed birds to where they’ve got both. He’s recuperating—a guest, like us—and Princess Corinna is pressing him for information. Soon Ragnar will know our story is too thin. Haytham’s much too proud of himself not to talk, and talk, and talk, especially with a striking woman hanging on his arm.”

“What have they done with the balloon?”

“They are studying it, attempting to sniff out how to use it. They haven’t figured out the brazier yet, but they have some sort of magic-workers on the job. We’re cooked.”

“Hm. I have heard from my nocturnal companion Thom that these local magic-workers, called Runewalkers, have been prophesying a great war with an army coming out of Spydbanen, the northern island. I suspect Corinna is in a hurry to turn Haytham’s arts to military use. Is the vessel otherwise repaired?”

“I think so. They’ve patched the canvas.”

“Very well,” I said, “I suggest we make our exit and rescue Haytham from the wiles of good Princess Corinna.”

“He may not thank you.”

I shrugged. “Let’s find him a less dangerous princess, somewhere in the wide world. Now, Thom told me much about secret passages hereabouts, and earlier I believe I tapped my way to finding an access point.”

“My own bedmate, Hedda the head of the household staff, has promised to lend us horses whenever we want. As everyone is busy with preparations for the feast of Saint Kringa, it should be easy to sneak off.”

“A pleasure working with you, Northwing.”

“You’re not so bad for a monk, Katta. Let’s go.”

As we traversed the secret corridors to a spot prearranged with Hedda, I reflected on the ethics of our actions. One the one hand, we were abusing the hospitality of royalty and playing with the hearts of others. On the other hand, we were prisoners, and we had chosen confederates who were quite willing to help us. I decided that circumstances demanded such actions but that I had acquired a karmic burden thereby. I must look for a way to repay Soderland in the future.

To repay Soderland seemed no sad thing as we rode through the back gate of the Fortress, an access that led directly out into the countryside. Leafless trees swayed and creaked, snow sliding off them in tiny avalanches. Hares padded swiftly away from our horses. Pines made a shimmering sort of sound in the breeze. The afternoon cooled, but its chill air pleased me more than the smoky closeness of the Fortress. Northwing took us swiftly across fields toward Haytham’s location, as the crow flies.

We attracted stares from farmers and wayfarers, or so Northwing informed me. She’d previously told me that the occasional person of brown, black, or red hue could be found in Svanstad, but none who looked quite like ourselves.

Once away from habitation Northwing began chanting and slapping a small drum. There was something frightening about the sound. I can’t claim to truly know what the shamans do, but I know Northwing was communing with mighty powers of nature, and that it was no peaceful discussion but a fierce cajoling.

Snow fell. As the sun set, it came down in waves of tiny frozen kisses on my skin. The wind swirled these so they would converge in all directions at my face.

“Sight is quite obscured,” Northwing said at last, voice normal.

“I will take your word for it!” I said. We were already passing through thick drifts.

“The farm is up ahead, and I know which window to knock at. Be ready!”

I was ready, but at the first several knocks Haytham ignored us. At last I rapped with my staff. The window was simply a small opening with a thick shutter over it, which Haytham soon parted.

“Katta! Northwing!”

“What’s keeping you so distracted from your own rescue?” I said.

“Uh, designs for improvements to the balloons,” Haytham said.

“Love poetry for the princess,” declared Northwing. “Yes, I’ve been spying on you.”

“She
is
very striking,” Haytham protested.

“I have noticed,” Northwing said. “Hurry. This is our chance to escape.”

“Thank you for coming for me,” Haytham said, gathering his few belongings, mostly books. “Are you all right, Northwing? You seem ill.”

“It’s a great effort to bring the snows. We’re mostly trained to bring good weather.” As the shaman spoke, Katta helped Haytham climb out the window. Northwing added, “But there’s more. When I opened myself to the spirits, I sensed many more of my ilk in these isles.”

“Shamans?” Haytham asked.

“No, people who hate goat cheese. Of course I meant shamans! There are many, up in the north. I can’t tell who, but I can detect them by the eddies they leave. Never mind, let’s get to the balloon.”

There were two guards by the barn of
Al-Saqr
, and they were isolated from the rest of the farm by the quiet thickness of the snowfall. Their breathing, by contrast, was loud, and their sweat pungent. Haytham and Northwing tackled one, while I employed my staff to knock out the other. I proceeded to gag his companion. We dragged both inside. Luckily no one was working at the balloon or its gear. Haytham strode over to the brazier and said, “Haboob.”

The efrit billowed out of his vessel. “O mighty mariner of the air! Your sojourn on land has proven most dull for a poor, neglected efrit.”

“Never mind that,” Haytham said. “Are you fit to work?”

“Of course, O paragon of explorers—”

“Yes!
Yes
is a perfectly good word, short and sweet, that you could stand to learn.”

“Or,” sniffed the efrit, “perhaps I need a continued rest.”

“Speak as you wish,” sighed Haytham.

The barn, Northwing informed me, was designed for the escape of a balloon, with a heavy crank allowing the rooftop to part. I naturally took the job of opening the roof as the others piled in whatever equipment they could manage.

When the canvas was full, the others called to me—and not a minute too soon, for the soldiers of Soderland were now running toward the barn. I heard Prince Ragnar’s voice among them, crying, mystifyingly, “Do not harm the princess!” I leapt into the gondola, staff ready to repel the men, wildly whacking away weapons as we rose into the night. Sometimes a blade or arrow pierced the felt. I was peculiarly happy.