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"Aye, your Excellency." Qutuz suddenly looked anxious. "Why? Would you rather I hadn't?"

"No, no. It doesn't matter. I doubt Marquis Balastro would kidnap you and torture you or offer you lickerish Algarvian lasses to find out what Hadadezer had to say. It's only that…" Hajjaj's voice trailed away. He was more than a little horrified to find himself on the edge of tears. "Wasn't it the saddest thing you ever heard?"

"That it was," his secretary said. "Poor fellow hasn't a clue. By the way he made it sound, his king hasn't a clue, either. Not a clue in the whole kingdom, or his Excellency wouldn't have come crying to you."

"No, none," Hajjaj agreed. "Ortah's been able to stay apart from the rest of Derlavai too long. Nobody there knows how to do anything else." With seeming irrelevance, he added, "I read an account once of an island the Valmierans- I think it was the Valmierans- found in the Great Northern Sea."

Qutuz's eyebrows rose. "Your Excellency?" he asked, obviously hoping Hajjaj would make himself clear.

The Zuwayzi foreign minister did his best: "It was an uninhabited island- uninhabited by people, anyhow. It was full of birds that looked like big doves, doves the size of dogs, so big they couldn't fly. If I remember rightly, the Valmierans called them solitaires, or maybe it was Solitary Island. I haven't thought of it in years."

"Why couldn't they fly?" Qutuz still sounded confused.

"They'd lost the need, you might say. They had no enemies there," Hajjaj replied. "The Ortahoin, who've lost the need to deal with their neighbors, put me in mind of them."

"Ah." Qutuz still didn't seem altogether clear about where his superior was going, but he found the right question to ask: "What happened to these big birds, then?"

Hajjaj grimaced. "They were good to eat. The Valmierans hunted them till none was left- they couldn't get away, after all. The island wasn't very big, and they couldn't fly to another one. All we know of them now, we know from a few skins and feathers in a museum in Priekule." He paused. "If I were you, I wouldn't tell this tale to Hadadezer."

"I promise," Qutuz said solemnly.

***

When Pekka walked into the refectory in the hostel in the Naantali district, she found Fernao fighting his way through a Kuusaman news sheet. What with the news sheet, a Kuusaman-Lagoan lexicon, and, almost incidentally, the grilled herring and scrambled eggs and hot tea in front of him, he was as busy a man with breakfast as Pekka had ever seen.

Somehow, he wasn't too busy to notice her come in. He smiled at her and waved the news sheet in the air, almost upsetting his teacup. "Habakkuk!" he exclaimed.

"Aye, Habakkuk." Pekka turned the word into a happy, three-syllable squeak.

"That is brilliant sorcery. Brilliant, I say." Fernao spoke in classical Kaunian so he wouldn't have to pause and search for a word or two every sentence. "Sawdust and ice for strengthening the landing surface the dragons use. More magecraft, drawing energy from the ley lines to keep the icebergs frozen in warm seas. Aye, brilliant. Sea fights will never be the same, now that so many dragons can be carried across the water so quickly."