“Thank you.Sorooth and our daughter, Kessie, will occupy it.”
Sorooth smiled.“And Keska, when she is not otherwise occupied.”
Keska blushed.“I didn’t want to presume.”
“Keska, please live with us, or let us live with you.We know you have your own work and your own people, but we would like to be some of them.”Sorooth smiled.
Keska blinked.“You would?What about your family?”
“You are my family.Well, you and Kessie.I honour my parents, but they are not my future.”He lifted her hand to his lips.“That is now and only ever has been you.”
Kessie grinned.“Say yes!You can come to parent-teacher day, and we can spend time in Daycross with the horses.”
“Ah, that’s a big seller, right?”Keska smiled.
“Uh-huh.”Kessie reached for more cookies and then sat back with a sigh.“These are good.”
“So, Hemma, when were you in the stronghold?”
Hemma smiled.“Seven years ago.”
“Why were you there?”
Hemma grinned.“Espionage.The ambassador brought me into sensitive meetings.I was sent to learn from the kitchens and other maids.They thought I was younger than I was and told me everything.My nose told me the rest.”
Sorooth blinked.“Hypersenses.”
“Correct.I know who was spending time with whose wife, which generals were dipping in the pool of the merchant’s daughter.Which warriors were tangling off the sparring field.”
Sorooth sat back.“And then there was a sudden shift in personnel.”
“Correct.”
His eyes glowed.“You tipped them off.”
“Yeah.I didn’t like it, but Ekbert was at stake, so I left a little note in one of the maid’s hands and hoped for the best.Fortunately, she took action, and things were settled before we got home.I just told my handlers that a minder had found me out.It was a few weeks, and they let me out of confinement and back to the creche school for the last few months before I graduated.”
Sorooth asked, “What did you do then?”
“Still in espionage for a few years, then the walls of Uradda fell, and I met Keska and Caska.They found me and some others who were tools of Uradda, and they got us loose.I then helped them sniff out other vents that led to confinement.They saved fifty people that day.No fanfare, nothing on video, just working around the outside of the walls to find those trapped underground.”
Keska smiled.“And you led us to forty-eight of them, including the hidden creche.”
“Smelling diapers does not take a genius.Ekbert was really good at getting through those bars.”
Keska looked at Sorooth and said, “Ekbert found us and said that if we wanted to get out of the hidden labs, we needed his sister.”
Hemma blushed.“Well, we found the labs.”
“When they had been processed at the refugee centre and her brother had postponed his arrival in Hyreno, I was waiting to hire them.”
Hemma smiled.“So, I do my best.”
Keska said, “Did Salat ask you about the float?”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate.”
“Can I order you to do it?”
