Chapter Text
He said, "So, pay attention now."
She nodded.
"Yesterday I went to the market," he said, rubbing his fingers quickly against the fingertip of his thumb, one after the other. "I needed fresh eggs, meat for stew and herbs to dry. You know how much I like well-spiced food."
She followed the smooth movement of his index finger as it slid down his nose.
"I started bargaining with the merchant, but he refused to give in. He remained fixed on his price. I would say, forty-five?, fifty-six?, thirty-three?, seventy-one?, but he, no, he always stayed on fifteen."
That row of rambling numbers and words made her giggle. He couldn't resist, and one corner of his mouth pulled up mischievously. He could never remain serious when she laughed.
It was she who sobered up first. He imitated her soon after.
"And how did it end?" she asked.
"I said, Hey, if you don't want to sell, then I don't want to buy, and he goes, Hey, whatever, I'm closing early today anyway because there's a storm coming." He rotated his wrist and his fingers closed in his palm, as if he had crushed something very small in his fist.
A chill descended swooping down her spine.
"There is a storm coming. Do you understand? A storm is coming."
"Storm," croaked Kira, jolting awake. Her ears were ringing again; a distant, somewhat wistful hiss, like when one could hear the sea inside a shell. Kira blinked and saw the outlines of her room at the Academy of Gemstones forming in the faint light of the candle. She grunted and threw herself back on the pillows.
She stretched her fingers, brushing the light fabrics of the canopy. She heard a young laugh trill upstairs and be promptly drowned out by a scolding. Kira looked up. In the room above hers were the attic chambers, inhabited by the servant girls. Kira wondered who had it better: Kira, with her silk canopy and brocade curtains and finely wrought ceramic jug above the carved coffee table, or them, all up together giggling before dawn.
An impression passed quickly through her mind. A light, distant shadow that sounded like Holga's deep laughter, the warmth of her arm around Kira's waist, the scent of laundry of the sheets.
Kira shook her head and banished that thought. She stood up. She cast a glance out the window. The rooftops of Neverwinter were bathed in a milky indigo. The harbor was already awake, with the colorful canvases of the fish stalls and the white sails of the boats. Soon the sun would rise. She was awake by now, so she might as well start her day.
She walked past a padded straw hoop hanging on the wall that had conspicuous knife marks on it. She ignored it.
She opened the closet and appraised her clothes one by one. In the end she opted for a beautiful midnight blue long dress. She tamed her curls by hiding them under a snow-white veil, fastened around a precious rounded headband. Then she opened the jewelry box and rummaged through it without paying too much attention. She fished out some rings adorned with large yellow and blue topazes with which she absent-mindedly bejeweled her fingers. When he was about to close the lid again, she stopped.
Kira remained perfectly still, the gem of her invisibility pendant sending out a winking light.
Kira left it there.
She closed the lid of the jewelry box again and left the room.
She felt that she wouldn't be able to swallow even a spoonful of honey. She would still have to reach the great hall where the young ladies usually gathered to eat their meals, because loitering around the institute without a purpose was always discouraged. Where could a noble young lady possibly go, without a chaperone and at an inconvenient hour?
But -- but it was still a long way to the official breakfast time, which would mark the beginning of her daily public engagements.
That hour still somewhat dark yet tinged with a soft glow, that nameless hour before the beginning of a new day still belonged to her.
Kira felt her own pace quicken and become more feline. Maybe Margarina would be able to convince her to eat something. She always could. Almost always.
Kira realized she was moving at too quick a pace almost too late. She narrowly missed running into one of the teachers, who'd just turned the corner. Luckily, the woman had her nose between the pages of a book and didn't realize that Kira was almost running. Had that happened, Kira would have received a good scolding: a high-ranking young lady did not run. A high-ranking young lady moved as gracefully as a flower swaying in the wind.
Kira gave a little bow to her teacher and went on, politely bringing her arms up to belly level and interlacing her fingers.
Well, damn. Usually her trained hearing was more helpful, and Kira could always pick up the footsteps of the institute's inhabitants, even if dimmed by the expensive carpets that papered every inch of the floor. It was all the fault of that ringing in her ears that still hadn't left her. Kira fought against herself not to do something unseemly like pulling her ear or sticking a finger in it.
She reached the kitchens. After looking around to make sure no one saw her, she slipped inside like a ferret.
When Margarina saw her, her strong, rounded arms froze. Some dough dripped from the wooden ladle onto the table. "Ah, Lady Kira. Again?" she said, harshly.
Kira lifted one shoulder and made a grimace that was anything but graceful. The rusticity of the woman and the place made her feel at ease. Even when she was alone Kira was not so free. On the contrary. When she was alone, she was less free than ever.
Kira approached Margarina. She stretched her neck to peek at what she was doing.
She hoped she'd finally managed to catch Margarina making her famous potato pie. Kira'd smelled the crispy aroma of roasted potatoes coming from the kitchen several times, but each time she'd expected a taste, the pie had always mysteriously already disappeared.
This time, too, she was out of luck.
The table was currently occupied by a huge mold well buttered and covered with bread crumbs. It would certainly be used for the cake that would feed the young ladies. A scent of eggs, butter and vanilla reached her nostrils. Kira felt her stomach open up, but only a little. She stretched out her index finger and tried to steal a taste of the mixture. Margarina let out a hiss and tried to beat Kira's finger away with the ladle, but Kira was quicker and managed to dunk the tip of her finger into the bowl.
"A cunning little forest animal, that's what you are, Lady Kira," muttered Margarina, as Kira stuck her index finger in her mouth and sucked. "A crazy squirrel looking for acorns. I don't know how I can stand you. Do you think this is how a lady should behave? I should report you to your teachers, and maybe today I finally will. Oh, you're lucky old Margarina doesn't have time for such nonsense."
As she muttered like that, her voice resembling the rumbling of a pot left on the stove, Margarina prepared a bowl of lukewarm milk, which she unceremoniously placed under Kira's nose.
Kira smiled. She drank a sip, feeling a little better. Then she rested her elbows on the table.
"What was it this time? That scoundrel, the old Neverwinter lord holding a blade to your throat? Or that barbarian dying in your arms?"
Kira shuddered. Margarina's total lack of tact was both disheartening and charming. It reminded her of something familiar and loved and lost. It reminded her of Holga.
Kira felt a small rebel urge rise within her. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Oh, sure, because not talking about it will make you feel better."
"I'm fine."
"Sure you are. One lie after another. Is that how your parents raised you?"
Both Kira and Margarina became stunned. Kira, who always knew what frivolities to say to entertain gentlemen at a banquet and was an ace at eloquence lessons, lost her words.
"Forgive me, Lady Kira," murmured the cook at last, returning to whisking her mixture energetically. "I'm just a grumpy old woman. You shouldn't listen to me. Who listens to grumpy old ladies anymore? Certainly not smart young ladies."
A moment of silence, then Margarina added, "Oh, listen, have you seen Dorarim, that rascal?"
Kira clutched the warm cup in her hands. She wasn't mad at Margarina. She couldn't have been mad at one of her few, true allies. "Isn't he taking dirty laundry to the laundry room?" she mumbled.
Margarina let out a dismissive sound. "He didn't show up this morning. I don't know what happened yesterday, but I heard Leanna screeching like an eagle, and today the young mister didn't show up, and Leanna went even more out of her mind because she had to carry the baskets loaded with sheets to be washed by herself, and you know how heavy that stuff is. He didn't even show up here in the kitchen to see me ! I'll tell you what that slacker did. Either he overslept, or he pretended to oversleep, or..."
She didn't say, "This time he really ran away."
There was no need to.
Kira swallowed. Dorarim -- had he really, finally run away? She drummed her fingers on the cup. The old Kira, the wild, idealistic little girl always looking for adventure that she'd been so long ago, would not stay to tear herself apart wondering. She would have run to find Dorarim.
But she was now a decent young woman, someone who didn't need adventures or invisibility pendants or portentous mothers or...
Anyway, she didn't have to care. Dorarim was smart, he was able to think for himself, and he was very strong. He could take care of himself. Heck, he could even take care of Kira. If he chose to finally quit his job at the Academy, what could Kira do? Absolutely nothing, that's what. So she shouldn't have cared. She shouldn't have. She-
"If he's not back yet, I'll look for him after class," Kira said.
It was good middle ground.
Margarina shot her an oblique glance. Then she opened the cupboard and pulled out the remains of the honey doughnut from the day before. It was already dry and the crust, due to Dorarim's carelessness in letting it bake too long, was a little burnt.
Kira sighed, grateful, and dipped a slice of the cake into the milk.
-
The story of Neverwinter had never been more tedious. As the professor explained in his monotone voice, faces of the Alliance Lords chased each other in Kira's head, one more anonymous than the next.
Yet she liked history. She had begun to study it in the two years she'd spent as Forge's ward, a time she found herself thinking about often, in spite of everything. But before then she had already been curious about history. She couldn't remember a time when history, stories, hadn't fascinated her. As a child, her every gentle drift into sleep had been accompanied by adventurous and unlikely tales, made up of words that chased each other dripping from his lips like melted butter. Words that were fragrant and crisp and firm, words that might have seemed incoherent and bizarre, words that sounded as if they had been pulled out of an unknown language...
Her ear ringed. Kira shook her head, drawing the professor's sharp attention. What was wrong with her? She couldn't let Dorarim's supposed disappearance have that effect on her. She couldn't allow any disappearance in general to have any effect on her anymore. Otherwise, Kira didn't know what would be left of her.
She made allowances for herself, remembering that she had had a restless night and was therefore a little more emotional than usual.
The professor's voice brought her back down to earth. "Lady Kira? Would you like to tell us what you think of Lord Bann Alagondar?"
"I..." Kira blinked, sporting the most innocent expression she had. "I would like to ask permission to absent myself for a few moments. I'm feeling a little unwell."
That little lie was enough to send an icy chill down Kira's spine. It had been so long since she'd lied that way that she wondered if she still could. Forge had taught her how to make herself pleasant among people one hated, and how to never look like the least noble person in the room. And her years as a young girl among thieves had taught her everything else.
A small surge of pride rekindled unexpectedly in her. Why shouldn't the professor have believed her lie? Kira was a model student, the best in the class. Since entering the Academy of Gemstones three years earlier, she'd done nothing but prove herself diligent and polite. Kira Darvis, recommended by Lord Neverember himself, always mild-mannered, intelligent, never standing out. No one in there would have guessed that she was capable of lying.
No one except Margarina and Dorarim.
The professor narrowed his eyes for a moment. "All right, go ahead," he finally granted.
Kira got up and slowly walked out, a flower floating in the air and all. Then, once she was alone in the hallway, she ran.
She knew exactly where to start her search.
Oh, Kira knew a thing or two about disappearing.
Holga had told her plenty of times about how she had stayed hidden in a little secret compartment in the wall, silent and quiet while the Red Wizards destroyed her home, a little miracle of wits and survival instincts pressed into a baby still in diapers. Of course, Holga never told it that way. Those words belonged to someone else.
"Ugh!" Kira rubbed her palm over her buzzing ear.
She descended the cellar stairs, and then further down and still further down, engulfed in darkness, until among the shadows the light of the boiler room reddened.
Right there, from behind the belly of a burning boiler, peeked two boots filthy with earth and coal. Dorarim stood huddled in a corner, his face buried in his arms, his legs clutched close to his chest. Even so shrunken he couldn't hide his Half-orc size.
Kira felt her own chest open. She removed all traces of relief from her voice and chose to show herself, instead, bright and calm. "Hi," she said, crouching down in front of Dorarim.
He raised his head. The two teeth protruding from his lower lip glistened in the reddish light of the boiler. "Lady Kira!"
The bottle-green skin of his face was smeared here and there with charcoal. Kira moistened her thumb and rubbed away a smudge from Dorarim's forehead. He gave out an annoyed grunt and pushed her hand away.
Kira chuckled, "You have been hiding."
"And you dirtied your dress." He shot an eloquent glance at her skirt and the floor.
"That's okay, I have about thirty more."
Dorarim mumbled something, burying half his face in his arms again. Kira could only hear "... pretty anyway."
"What?" she said, pressing her hand to the side of her face.
"Nothing. Your ear is still ringing. How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine." Kira sighed. "I thought you were really gone." She didn't like how small her own voice sounded. Thankfully, she never had to feel judged with him.
Dorarim didn't hesitate for a second. "I wouldn't leave you!" he shouted, and he sounded so outraged and so sincere that Kira burst out laughing.
He remained serious, achieving the opposite effect. Kira even had to wipe a tear from her eyes. He really knew how to make her crack up.
"I know you wouldn't leave me without saying a word," she said at last, throwing a punch on his shoulder.
"Do you know it, or do you really believe it?"
"You are the most loyal friend I've ever had," she said, and as she said it she realized that she'd been a fool to think that she'd been left, once again, alone.
Dorarim couldn't have done that to her. Not him. Despite all Kira's efforts to mask it, Dorarim knew what loneliness meant to her, perhaps because he himself had experienced it.
He had known it soon after he met her, with that unerring instinct for uncomfortable truths and feelings one would gladly do without. From the moment Kira had interceded for him with the Academy principal, clearing Dorarim of a wrongful accusation and earning him a job there, Dorarim had always stood by her side.
Damn, last week Kira had awakened in her nightgown in Dorarim's arms, and was lulled back to sleep by his rough voice murmuring, "Hush, it's all right, I found you before they noticed you went out in the night, I'll take you back to your room now Lady Kira, shush, nothing happened, you're safe now, just sleep."
And still...
"You didn't say you really believe that I won't leave you," he bitterly said.
"Come on! It was between the lines."
"I can't read between lines. I just can't read at all. Not an intellectual, this one."
Kira hurled another punch at his arm. It hurt a little, but she hid it. Dorarim really had firm muscles. "Why did you hide here?"
He twisted his mouth. "Yesterday I broke a crappy vase while cleaning. Leanna yelled at me, and I can't believe she got pissed off about the vase, because it was really ugly. She got pissed off because she's a bitch. I told her that if she was so fucking pissed about her own stuff, she might as well yell at her husband instead of lashing out at me."
Kira burst out laughing again, holding her stomach. After a few moments even Dorarim's gloomy expression relaxed, and he joined Kira's laughter.
"Is that all?" she finally said. "It's nothing serious, Leanna will have forgotten it by now. She hates doing hard work alone more than she hates you," she added softly. Both were aware that in fact Leanna hated Dorarim well enough, she as well as a sizable portion of the Lords and Ladies Dorarim wiped snot-stained handkerchiefs for. And all just because Dorarim was a Half-orc. Filthy bastards.
That was one of the worst parts of her life in the upper ranks of Neverwinter. All that politeness, all that hypocritical decorum.
But that was all she had, now.
"Let's go back," Kira said.
Dorarim's gaze grew grim again. "What if I don't?"
Kira spread her arms wide. "This --this is where you live. It's your place."
"Nice shitty place." Dorarim scratched the shaved hair at the nape of his neck. He stood up, his slouching limbs tensing. "Before I met you, I spent so much time wandering around without a place that was mine. And before that? What I thought was my place really wasn't. I don't mind putting myself back in the search. I'm not afraid."
Kira saw flashing in his eyes a light that was familiar to her, and that she herself had taken a long time to extinguish in herself: the adventurer's light.
"No," she said in a half-voice. Her arms, her legs seemed to weigh like boulders. Panic began to occlude her throat.
"What do I care about being a labor worker for life, Lady Kira? Because if I stay here and always put my head down and do well, that's the most I'll do. I won't be rewarded more than that."
Her stomach twisted. She thought of all the injustices Dorarim had to endure every day, the little snubs, the worst and heaviest jobs he was given just because no one believed he was due anything better. And she thought of all the injustices that she forced herself to observe in silence, the frivolous little snubs of her Academy classmates, because she was the plebeian lady, Kira the former thief, Kira the fatherl-
"Enough, Dorarim," she said, getting up. "You're losing your temper again."
"Don't you ever feel like this isn't right?" he continued, becoming increasingly heated, two dark green flecks on his cheeks. "Us, you and me here. It's wrong. It's more than wrong, it sucks."
"It's my future," rebutted Kira. A future she had chosen for herself, a safe and comfortable, though not always exciting, prospect, and... and if she'd stayed there, if she'd been fully accepted among the nobles of Neverwinter, she would have been in no more danger. She would not have suffered.
Little did the song that whistled through her heart matter.
"Well, excuse me, my lady," blurted Dorarim, "excuse me if as a child I never dreamed of shoveling coal to warm nobles' butts while they took jasmine tea."
"Well," she said, suddenly flaring up as she remembered the tea she'd sipped a few days earlier, "I don't like jasmine."
"Madame doesn't like jasmine?"
"No, madam thinks jasmine sucks."
He remained deadly serious for a moment. Then, as if unhappy about it, he let a sneer escape.
Kira smoothed her skirt. "If you leave," she said softly, "what will you have left?"
He took half a step toward her.
Oh, no. She shouldn't have asked a question of which she feared the answer.
"Lady Kira, you-"
Kira grabbed his arms. "Look, let's go back to the kitchen," she said cheerfully. "You get just a scolding and then it'll be as if nothing happened."
"I can't believe you're such a coward."
"Margarina even left you some of yesterday's cake. She's always complaining about you, but she loves you."
"The girl who fought for me with the principal when no one believed me wasn't a coward."
"It'll be as if nothing had happened!"
Dorarim looked at his shoes. "Okay," he finally spat. "It'll be as if nothing had happened."
They headed toward the kitchens in an awkward silence. Kira opened her mouth to fire off a few jokes to improve Dorarim's black mood. She closed it again.
In a way, it was because of her that Dorarim was in that situation. In every possible and imaginable way, in fact. Dorarim was staying there for her, and this partly terrified her, and partly filled her with a strange euphoria that exploded inside her chest like a shooting star.
Maybe she could have taken Dorarim by the arm. When they were right in front of the kitchens, Kira extended her hand. But just then she heard two agitated voices coming from the other side.
"Wait," she murmured, grabbing Dorarim's wrist before he could open the door.
He released a questioning sound.
"Just wait." Kira pressed her ear to the door.
"...started bargaining with the merchant, but he remained fixed on his price," Leanna was saying, her voice an anxious mumble.
Margarina, tense, retorted, "How much did he offer you?"
"Forty-five, fifty-six, thirty-three, seventy-one."
Forty-five, fifty-six, thirty-three, seventy-one. Something trilled in Kira's mind. An emotion that she had tried and tried to erase, but that came back to her, always. She should have walked away. She should have played it cool and walked away.
Kira's body adhered completely to the door.
"Fifteen?" said Margarina.
"He pocketed it and cheated me."
"Oh, there really is a storm coming."
"A real storm."
Before she knew it, Kira had thrown the door wide open. Margarina flinched. Leanna's eyes became as huge as a toad's.
"Who's calling for help?" said Kira.
"What the fuck?" said Dorarim.
Leanna wiped her palms on her apron. She lifted her chin toward Dorarim. "Finally you have decided to reappear. Come on, I have no time to waste, help me take the sheets to the river."
Ah, no, Kira was not going to play along. She advanced toward Leanna. "I'd like to know the name of the person you were talking about," she said, summoning all her calm.
"We were just talking about the guy who sells fish across the street, Lady Kira," said Margarina. "Just useless things. Things that don't concern a lady."
A lady.
That was what triggered something inside Kira. An irrepressible push catapulted the words out of her mouth. "Someone is a prisoner somewhere and is asking for help. Who is it?"
"I don't know what you are talking about, young lady," Leanna said.
"I know what you were saying," insisted Kira. "The language you were using -- I know it." Against her better judgment, against her will, she still remembered. "There's no use pretending." Gods, and she knew so well when someone was pretending! "Who has been kidnapped and is calling for help?"
The two women remained in sepulchral silence. Then Margarina focused her eyes hardened from the years of work she'd spent locked within those walls on Kira. It seemed to Kira that their dark twinkle contained a question: do you really want to end up like this too?
It was like Margarina was challenging her.
Margarina said, "I don't know the name. But I know something."
"You fool," Leanna mumbled.
Margarina raised her hand, fingers outstretched, and then cut the air as if holding a knife. "I know he's a relative." She curled her fingers as if forming a small swirl. "A musician." She touched her nose. "A madman." Finally, she slipped the nail of her thumb between her teeth. "None of the three."
Kira's heart was torn open by a thunder.
In her mind the rules, the sounds, the vocabulary, the coded gestures of a language as old as the world unfolded. Because as long as the world had existed, so had thieves.
A relative. A musician. A madman. None of the three.
In other words, a thief. A Harper. A hero. All three of those things.
"No," said Kira, and since that couldn't be possible, she asked again, "Where?"
"The relatives at the market talk and talk and talk about everything and nothing, bargaining to no avail. Everyone knows, though, that if you want to find the freshest fish you have to ask Neverpassing."
"No," Kira said again. She felt like she was inside one of her horrible dreams. Then she added, shocked and almost annoyed, "No!"
"Like it or not, that's the way it is, young lady. You can run all you want, but Mr. White-bearded Wise Man has wings on his feet."
"That's enough," Leanna intervened. "You're talking a lot of nonsense, and I want nothing to do with it."
She tried to wriggle out by slipping between Kira and Dorarim, but Kira grabbed her shoulders with such a sudden gesture that everyone was speechless for a moment.
"Do you know anything else, Leanna? If you know something, anything, you must tell me." Kira's lips trembled. She shook Leanna hard.
"All right, damn kid. At the family lunch at Grandma's house, the cousins drew a nice picture. That's all the relatives said. Now leave me." The woman freed herself from Kira's grasp, giving Kira a shove.
Then, as if waiting for nothing else, Dorarim reacted. "Hey!" he shouted, teeth gritted, pushing Leanna out of the way. "Watch where you're going. You might dirty Lady Kira's shoes."
Leanna became purple with rage. "You insect, how dare you? That's too much, that's the last you've done to me. I will talk to the principal. From tomorrow you can forget about working here again."
Dorarim pounded his fist on his sternum and thrust his chest out. "Fucking finally!" Then he took Kira by the hand and dragged her away.
Kira realized only after a while that he'd taken her outside to the Academy's outdoor garden, away from prying eyes.
The cousins drew a pretty picture at lunch at Grandma's house.
A sign traced in chalk had appeared somewhere on a wall in town. A sign directed at those who spoke cant.
Dorarim crouched under one of the rattled windows of the laundry rooms. He still didn't seem to know quite where to put his legs. He grabbed Kira's wrist and pulled her down in front of him. She curled up on the cold grass, her thumbs beginning to twirl in an imitation of her thoughts.
"Now you must tell me what in the nine hells happened," Dorarim said.
Kira feared her tongue was too dry to speak. "There is news spreading in the community of thieves and rogues. A big-shot, very famous among their ranks, is being held captive by Everlasting."
Dorarim made the grimace he sported when Kira tried to explain arithmetic to him. "Where would they have said that?"
"They spoke thieves' cant, the secret language of the rogues."
It was so reductive to call the cant a secret language. Such a small expression wasn't enough to contain the colors of its unusual vocabulary, the quickness and elegance of its gestures, the incisiveness of each sign -- nor the way a heart could beat fast when, passing on the street, one saw a hand peeking out of a cloak in a signal of impending danger, or when you found a somewhat strange circle traced in chalk on a wall and knew that you were never alone. That someone like you had been there, and that someone else like you would always be there.
Thieves' cant was a dynamic language, by its very nature as changeable and adaptable as the lives of those who spoke it. It was a cluster of many traditions belonging to different groups and many rules solidified over time. Kira knew several versions of cant, and the one in which she was most fluent was a very special variant spoken by two people alone. One was her, and the other-
"Wait," Dorarim said, scratching the back of his head. "If they spoke this kind of code, does that mean that they... they are rogues, too?"
"Or they were, or they know someone who is. Leanna must not have wanted to expose herself in front of us."
"Well, I'm not that surprised, because... Wait, that bitch Leanna dares to treat me like that and then she's just a rogue?" Dorarim thought about it for a while, just half a second. "Not that there's anything wrong with thieves and things like that."
Kira had to stretch her own lips to force herself not to smile.
"Anyway, when did they name Everlasting? I haven't heard that name at all."
"They didn't pronounce it. It's just the opposite of Neverpassing. And it's also..." Kira grimaced. "...My dead mother's family name."
Zia Everlasting.
Although Kira'd heard her mother's name associated with that last name only very few times, that combination was scratched into her head.
"Well, shit," Dorarim said eloquently.
"But it must be a coincidence," Kira added in a flicker of forced enthusiasm. "And what they were saying can't be true unless there is another known character who is a thief, a Harper, and a hero at the same time, and who is somehow connected to the Everlasting family. Because otherwise... because otherwise..." Her enthusiasm faded and she sagged even more.
"Otherwise?"
Kira always tried so hard not to think about that name, let alone pronounce it. Yet, in a funereal voice, she was finally forced to say, "Otherwise they'd be talking about Edgin Darvis."
Dorarim sniffed up. Kira could see when, two seconds later, the realization sank in. "Ah. Ah! Edgin Darvis in that Darvis kind of way. Your kind of Darvis."
"Yeah." She rubbed her arms.
"Lady Kira. Your father has disappeared into thin air and he hasn't shown up for three years. I think it might be him."
"Impossible," she replied quickly, "because he ran away with someone who would never put him in danger."
"Nobody is that infallible."
"That man is."
"Ah. And who would that be?"
Kira gritted her teeth. "Xenk Yendar," she said, chewing on the letters.