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It took Kuriag Dikaksunora three more days to tell them what he was up to. When they finally learned, they did not from Kuriag but from Asmoan, who came to eat and suddenly let out a:

“But when did you decide to leave, Excellency?”

The elf barely concealed a grimace.

“I don’t know yet. A week, perhaps. Tomorrow Atasiag will be released from prison and the wedding will take place. Cili’s priest is due to arrive this very evening. I’ve reserved the best room in this inn for him.”

“Have you already… made the purchase?” the Agoskurian asked with a knowing look.

The Legitimate cleared his throat and looked at Lessi before nodding.

“Yes. Tomorrow, I’ll send the Xalyas to pick out the horses. I think they’ll do a better job than anyone else.”

Everyone was listening, and the words suddenly made more than one person sit up and take notice. Dashvara stood up slowly.

“Uh… Excuse me a moment. Who’s gonna give us the money to buy these horses?”

The Legitimate looked at him defiantly.

“I will.”

Dashvara nodded. This was consistent with what Api had said.

“What do you ask for in return?”

This time, the Dikaksunora flushed and looked away before fixing his eyes back on the Xalyas lord.

“Your service,” he replied.

Dashvara arched an eyebrow.

“That’s a vague answer.”

Slowly, the elf left his spoon in the empty plate.

“Can I talk to you in private?”

“Of course.”

After sharing a puzzled look with his companions, Dashvara followed the Legitimate into his room. The bed was covered with books. He closed the door behind him and crossed his arms, waiting for an explanation.

Kuriag seemed to regain his confidence as he walked across the room to the window. He said in a firm voice:

“Atasiag promised to free you and buy you whatever was necessary to get you safely to your home, but he himself confessed to me in prison that, at present, he could not afford to spend such a sum of money. His business, as you might expect, is under attack from all sides, even from within. He has been accused of being involved in an illegal trading organization, and according to him, the evidence presented could only have come from prominent members of the Dream Brotherhood. His best escape is to return to Titiaka. The Yordarks are on his side. And so am I. I promised him that, if he returned to Titiaka, I would lend him my vote on the Council for a year. And I offered to pay his bail so he could return to the Federation. Once there, whatever the Republican judges decide, they can’t do anything to him, at most forbid him from entering Dazbon.”

Dashvara listened from beginning to end and said:

“You post bail for Atasiag Peykat. And you fulfill his promise with your own money. I don’t know whether to be suspicious of such generosity or to kneel down and thank you.”

Kuriag Dikaksunora stirred.

“You won’t have to kneel. With the bail… I bought all of you, too.”

For a moment, Dashvara thought he had misheard. Then, he didn’t know whether to take it seriously or to laugh at such a joke.

“I will release you,” Kuriag hastened to say, before Dashvara could reply. “Actually, right now, I don’t want to go back to Titiaka. Not with everything that’s happened. I need time to think and… I thought a trip to the steppe would take my mind off things. I will know the land of my… of my naâsga,” he smiled shyly, “and, in exchange for your protection, you will get not only horses and weapons but also my support from Titiaka… when I return.”

“A trip to Rocdinfer to take your mind off things,” Dashvara repeated, and he laughed. “I must admit you surprised me. Why on earth did you buy us from Atasiag? Just by paying us for the horses and swords, you would have earned our protection for the trip.”

Kuriag sighed slightly.

“In fact, it is mainly a political matter. If I went to the steppe without an official escort, I would create a scandal in Titiaka. A Legitimate travels with his servants. I couldn’t leave just like that. It would be—”

“A scandal,” Dashvara completed, thoughtfully.

“Yes.”

“And, tell me, wouldn’t it cause more of a scandal if it got out that you bought the slave who killed Rayeshag Korfu?”

Kuriag shrugged.

“No at all. From what I understood, you were only defending your master. As a matter of fact, your value as a guard has increased since the events in the Arena. Gowel Alfodrog, the ambassador, told me that Rishag Kondister had offered to buy you from Atasiag for six hundred crowns. And Faag Yordark raised the price to a thousand.”

Dashvara gasped; he couldn’t believe his ears. Had he missed something?

“These Titiakas are crazy.”

Kuriag Dikaksunora smiled.

“Officially, I bought you for one thousand five hundred. But, the others, I only bought them for three-hundred. Except the Honyrs: Faag Yordark wouldn’t sell them for less than five-hundred each. And Raxifar… well, Raxifar, I bought him for much more,” he coughed. “In any case, it is a perfectly reasonable expense, given my family’s wealth.” His smile widened at Dashvara’s overwhelmed expression. “All things considered, you are the Resurrected One and the last King of the Eternal Bird.”

And I suppose you’re looking forward to being the master of such an illustrious character, Dashvara muttered inwardly.

“Awesome,” he said. “So, in short, we take you for a walk on the steppe and pray that the Essimeans don’t fall on us, then we bring you back. And that’s it, isn’t it?”

“Right.”

Dashvara nodded.

“Then I agree.”

“Just one more thing,” Kuriag observed, his voice indecisive. “You’re going to have to stop by the embassy… this afternoon, for example… to formalize the sale.”

Dashvara stared at him.

“Now I don’t agree,” he grumbled. “Are you going to mark us?”

Kuriag looked away nervously.

“It is necessary, as you must understand—”

“To hell with that,” Dashvara cut him off sharply. “Figure out how to make the sale official any way you want, but not with those marks.”

Irritated, he opened the door and left the room. Asmoan had already left, and Lessi blinked when she saw Dashvara’s expression. She knew everything, he realized. His irritation suddenly dropped like a sack of lead. He sat down at the table and said:

“The Dikaksunora promises us horses and weapons if we escort him across the steppe.”

Everyone looked at him curiously.

“That sounds like good news,” the captain commented, in the tone of one who is already prepared to listen to the problematic side of the case.

“It is.”

“Yes. Then why do you look as if you’d run into a bunch of Essimeans, boy?”

Dashvara sighed and glanced down the hall. Kuriag Dikaksunora had closed the door. No: he had left it ajar. He rolled his eyes and let go:

“In order to make this trip, your son-in-law needs, or thinks he needs, to tell everyone that we, his escort, are his slaves. Which he did without consulting us, of course. He bought us from Atasiag in exchange for his freedom on bail. And wait, there’s more, because he also bought the Honyrs from the Yordark and Raxifar from the Korfu. To celebrate, he now wants to brand us at the embassy.”

A long silence followed his words. Makarva let out an incredulous laugh. And others followed suit. Orafe roared:

“He can go brand his mother! I’d rather die than go into that embassy.”

The captain rose from the sofa, calmly rolling up the sleeves of his uniform.

“I think it’s time to have another good talk with my son-in-law.”

Dashvara saw him walk away down the hall and knock softly on the ajar door. A few seconds later, it closed behind him.

“I can’t believe it,” Zamoy said after a silence. “This guy isn’t even my age. And he now wants us to call him master?”

“Nooo, just ‘Excellency’ will do,” Dashvara laughed sarcastically.

They waited with some trepidation for the captain to return. It took him an eternity, but he finally came out with Kuriag Dikaksunora. The latter had an indecisive expression; the captain, on the other hand, seemed fully satisfied. He approached and said:

“Xalyas, it’s not a damned mark that’s going to separate us from the steppe.” He laid a fatherly hand on the Legitimate’s shoulder. “A little mark on the arm in exchange for the steppe. It’s not a bad deal. Let us all go to the embassy.”

Dashvara stood petrified. Okay, Kuriag wasn’t a bad guy, he had a respectable Eternal Bird, and he would surely keep his word, but… hell, he was a Dikaksunora, a Titiaka, and the son of the Slave Master. As Sashava would have said, where was the Xalya dignity?

Repeating the order, the captain got the other Xalyas to stand up with a grunt. Dashvara did not move an inch.

“Dashvara,” the captain called out to him patiently from the front door. “Kuriag will not betray us. It is my Eternal Bird that tells me so. Come on, what does a damned mark matter?”

Dashvara met Yira’s eyes. Seeing her nod imperceptibly, as if to encourage him, he sighed and stood up.

“Raxifar, it will be better if we go.”

Akinoa had not moved either.

“A small brand,” Dashvara insisted. “We already have two. One more won’t kill us.”

After a few seconds, without a word and with an inscrutable face, the tall black man straightened up. Good. Dashvara took one last look at the Xalya women before following his brothers and Kuriag.

Outside, it was raining hard. By the time they got through the Dragon District and into the embassy, their uniforms were sticking to their bodies and their boots were squeaking. Kuriag, of course, was well protected under an umbrella, a gift, he said, from the ambassador.

After a brief glance at the document the Legitimate handed them, the Ragail opened the portal and the steppians stepped inside. Dashvara immediately felt like he was back in Titiaka. The large white building with glass windows, the two fountains and the gardens were strongly reminiscent of the Diumcilian capital. The presence of the Ragail made him nervous. There were at least twenty of them in the covered part of the courtyard. The worried glint in the captain’s eyes did not reassure him either. Of all the steppians here, Dashvara was the only one with a weapon.

“This way,” a Ragail pointed to them.

They passed through a small side door into an empty room where, after waiting a moment, three officials appeared, one with the long-awaited counter-seal of Atasiag Peykat, another with that of the Korfu, and yet another with that of the Yordark. They lined up and the officials placed the counter-seal before another arrived and imprinted the Dikaksunora seal on their arm: a blue bird that ironically reminded Dashvara of the Eternal Bird.

When the product was introduced under his skin, he felt in addition to the usual tingling a strange discharge that caused an itch in his arm. That was all they needed now, that they had been poisoned or who knows what, he thought, worried.

“Whatever you’re feeling is normal,” the official said, looking satisfied as he noticed the steppians’ surprise. “When it comes to this kind of technology, the Dikaksunora have always been ahead of the other Legitimate families. They use multifunctional seals.”

He didn’t elaborate on these “functions” and hearing him talk about them was the last thing Dashvara wanted at that moment. Finally, they took them to another room, where two young Ragail brought them a pile of uniforms in the blue and white colors of the Dikaksunora. Three tailors were busy cutting them up and fitting them all. That really reinforced Dashvara’s worrying feeling that he had gone back months and was back in Titiaka. When all this transformation was over and they went out into the courtyard, it was no longer raining, and the puddles were shining under the timid rays of the sun.

“Are they really as good a warrior as you say?” a voice asked.

Standing on the main stoop of the embassy, an obese man with long curly hair gazed at the steppians with that typical appraising look of Titiaka citizens that Dashvara was more than used to. Next to that mastodon, Kuriag Dikaksunora looked like a child.

“They are very good,” the elf affirmed, “and I could not wish for better guides to escort me across the steppe.”

“Ah, you were born with an adventurous spirit, young man. But I understand you perfectly. If I were younger, I probably would have gone with you. Travelling opens the mind. But I fear you have not chosen the safest place for your first great journey.”

“This is not my first great journey,” Kuriag assured. “I have traveled to Ryscodra before. In the capital, you can’t walk down the street without a good escort, if you don’t want to be attacked and killed by purse snatchers.”

“By the Serenity!” the ambassador gasped, though he should probably already know all this. “But I am not going to detain you any longer. I wouldn’t want to delay the preparations for the wedding.”

“Indeed, I must still give the priest a welcome.” Kuriag bowed to the ambassador. “I can only be grateful to you for facilitating my use of your carrier pigeons and servants.”

“And, I, for one, feel honored to have had the opportunity to help you, Excellency.”

With such a body, he could hardly bow, but he tried anyway. After a few more formalities, Kuriag Dikaksunora walked down the stoop and past his new servants with the poise of a young Legitimate. After a moment’s hesitation, the steppians followed him to the gate. It was only when they passed through that Dashvara began to relax. They were back in Republican territory. At last.