Chade's blast of fury, fear, and frustration preceded all thought, shaking and cuffing me as if I were an errant serving boy. When he was finished, I think it annoyed him even more that I laughed at his onslaught, even as my reaction cheered Dutiful.

Not much can be wrong with you if you can laugh like that! I've never felt such a carelessness of spirit from you. I caught the boy's sense of amazement and wonder.

An instant later, Chade echoed it. What has come over you? Are you drunk?

No. I am whole and well healed. And so is the Fool. But my tale will keep. Does all go well with you? Has our prince well and truly won his bride? Thick has told me a wild bit of tale about a dragon's head on the mothershouse hearth. Is it true? Who killed Icefyre?

No one killed the dragon. It was just his head he placed there. But, yes, it seems to be done and settled, Chade replied with grim satisfaction. Now that we know you are safe, we can sail tomorrow. That is, if Dutiful can find the courage to tell his bride she must come home with him.

I but allow her time to be sure it is her will that she follows in this, Dutiful replied sternly.

I do not understand. Would someone start at the beginning and tell the tale?

And then it was that I heard in full, from both Chade and Dutiful, with excited asides from Thick, of how Nettle had bedeviled and nagged Tintaglia, troubling her dreams and her waking hours, importuning her to pay back the puny humans who had suffered so much so that Icefyre could fly free. Tintaglia in her turn had driven Icefyre much as a pigeon drives his mate to the nest, back to Zylig, where the dragons presented themselves to the Hetgurd still convened there, and then on to Mayle Island and Wuislington.

There the dragons had landed before Elliania's mothershouse. I gathered that there had been some structural damage in the process, but nonetheless the immense Icefyre had forced his way into the mothershouse, where he ungraciously placed his head, very briefly, upon the hearthstones, so that Dutiful's promise to Elliania might be completely carried out.

I thought that Elliania had professed herself satisfied that Dutiful had fulfilled his promise and proven himself worthy of her when he aided in the rescue of her mother and sister. I was a bit confused as to why all this had been necessary.

Oh, she has shown herself well satisfied, for some days now, Chade replied acidly, and I suspected that perhaps Dutiful's virtue had not been proof against the girl's importuning. It is her mother who has proven difficult, much to Peottre's woe. Oerttre told us, before we were even docked in Zylig, that she did not regard any agreement that men had brokered concerning her daughter as binding. She finds it unthinkable that Elliania would leave her home, even to be Queen of all the Six Duchies. She has raised a thousand faults with the arrangement, saying that as she herself was still alive and therefore the true narcheska, all of this was agreed to without the proper consent. She objects to the idea of Lestra inheriting the title of narcheska; she finds the girl unfit to rule after her. And she is horrified at the thought that Elliania and Dutiful's children would remain in the Six Duchies.

Except for our sons, Dutiful interjected.

True, Chade conceded. She had been more than willing to allow Dutiful and Elliania to, that is, to become, to have— He could not find a delicate way to verbalize the thought.

Dutiful was more prosaic. Her mother was willing to allow me to share Elliania's bed. She seemed affronted that anyone might think to thwart her daughter in who she wishes to bed. And the Narcheska Oerttre had offered that any male children so conceived would be given to the Six Duchies. At the age of seven.

There was a mutual silence as they allowed me to digest that idea. It was untenable. None of his dukes would accept an heir thus created.

And now? Now that Icefyre has fulfilled completely Elliania's challenge to Dutiful?

Narcheska Oerttre was impressed. It is hard not to be impressed when a creature of that size lumbers through your home and places his head on your hearthstones. Especially when some of the framework of your door is still around his neck. I could easily excuse Dutiful's youthful satisfaction at this vindication. I think her objections are at an end. And even if she still has reservations, there were enough members of the Hetgurd here to witness it that they will not stand. They now see it as an honor that Elliania will come to my hearth. To “found a new mothershouse” is how they phrase it.

As if she were conquering all the Six Duchies by becoming Dutiful's queen, Chade complained. Yet I could hear the relief in his voice. I foresaw there would be difficulties in future days, as the customs of her land clashed with ours. If she bore a son first, would her relatives be scandalized to see him inherit before her daughters? I set the thought from my mind. There would be enough time to worry about that when it happened.