The sea breeze renewed Nori like an elixir of youth. It had a magical way of sweeping away her pains and worries, filling her with energy and the smell of salt. That breeze was the best part of her childhood. It'd be one of the only things she'd miss.

She closed her eyes and took in the sounds and smells of the dock. They were grating and odorous and raucous and overwhelming, but they were so full of life. So rejuvenating. Weeks away from Khaldeer had made her miss the chaos of the city. She was excited to get back to Ambrosia City, the most chaotic of them all.

"'Eeeeey, I see her comin' in," Sauter said as he pointed out beyond the harbor.

Nori opened her eyes and searched for the Preserverance.

"I don't see it," Sutton said. Nori looked at him and stifled a giggle. The bookworm had taken to wearing a rather feminine wide-brimmed sunhat. Sauter could barely stand to be seen with such a ridiculous display.

"Ah, your city eyes can only see as far as ya can hold a book," Sauter grumbled. He took a swig of something that was almost certainly not water. "And ya can't see what I see in her. True love, that is. Coming up on our Harper friends now…"

Nori spotted the boat as it approached the Harper flagship. It was ugly on the open water and uglier next to the expertly-made Urokan craft. An ugly spot of black rose from the corner of one sail, the other sail looking like a map with its splotches of brown and green. Sauter had replaced the rotten boards, but he hadn't bothered to match colors, leaving it a mess of tans and beiges and walnut and mahogany. But in that mess of wood, there was one board that would stand out like a beacon if it wasn't mostly submerged at the front of the boat. In the daylight, when the ship crested a wave and showed its belly, the board sparkled. When the sun set, its glow permeated the water like a halo.

"And here comes the inspector," Sauter commented as someone took a small rowboat to the Preserverance and boarded it. "Yes, yes, we've followed all your rules. Not too many fish. No little ones. No big ones either. Just a bunch of middle, middling fish, just as you'd like, your lordship."

A group of passing sailors laughed at Sutton's hat. He paid them no mind. He had a reason for the hat, and no amount of snickering or jokes could ever penetrate the shield of Sutton's reasoning.

"Ship comin' in," Sauter called out as the inspector left on his rowboat and the Preserverance let a bit of its sail down. "Let's see if your plan worked."

Nori walked over to a little hooked rope attached to a winch, yanking it for some slack.

"Ya really think you'll need the hook?" Sauter asked.

"I'm optimistic."

The Preserverance dropped its anchor as it approached, swiveling until its side was flush with the dock. Nori waited until the first rope went around to moor the boat to a pollard. She didn't wait for the second. She jumped, hook in hand, her body tensing up as it submerged into the cold water.

"Be careful!" Sutton called out as he peered over the edge.

From below, Nori heard Sauter laugh. "You've never seen this girl in the water," he laughed. "She's like a damn fish."

Nori let the boat come to her as the sailors tightened the mooring lines. She studied the frontmost submerged boards of the ship, waiting with anticipation for the results. Two countering waves met beneath the boat, lifting it two feet in the air.

Nori smiled.

"Sauter!" she called out. "Get a gaff hook ready!"

"It's that big?"

Nori laughed as the ocean settled and sprayed her. "It's as big as Sutton's hat!"

The boat rose again, revealing an acorn barnacle that grew four feet wide, the meaty creature within the shell being the size of Nori's torso.

"By the Bhante!" Sauter exclaimed as he caught a glimpse. "She's only been out there but the four days!"

"I knew it'd work," Sutton said with a proud chuckle.

"Keep it down!" Nori yelled. "We don't want too much attention. Sutton, man the winch. Sauter, get that gaff hook!"

Nori pushed forward through the water, using one arm to distance herself from the boat as he slipped the point of her hook into the edge of the barnacle shell and started to pry it off. At first she was gentle, but then she discovered she could hack at it without damaging the board. She shouldn't have been surprised—the wood was effectively a goddess.

After Nori wedged her hook along a third of the shell, the barnacle's weight started doing the rest of the work, gravity peeling it from the ship. She went underwater and reached into the barnacle, getting her arm in up to the elbow before wondering if the unnaturally large barnacle had an appetite beyond sifting, and lodged her hook in one of the internal bends of the shell. She gave the rope a tug to make sure it was secure and swam back out to the surface.

"Pull, Sutton!" she yelled.

He started on the crank—slower than Nori would have liked. She helped him along, grabbing the rope and kicking off the boat with her legs. The barnacle peeled off faster and faster until it finally detached, swinging with the rope as it sank. Nori and Sutton pulled and pulled and pulled and managed to get it close enough for Sauter to hook with his pole. It took all three of them to bring it to the surface, the winch holding it in place.

"That's gotta be twenty times the size of any I've ever seen," Sauter marveled.

Nori climbed the ladder, panting through her wild smile. "Let's get the cart. And cover it up. We don't want the Urokans seeing it just yet."

Sutton and Gaden stared at each other across the king's dinner table. Sutton pushed his glasses up, prompting Gaden to unconsciously pick up his own glasses from the table and fix them onto his long, crooked nose.

"You're the boy Picea has been talking about," Gaden said.

Sutton swallowed loud enough for the rest of them to hear. Nori looked between the two, their similar demeanors sparking a revelation.

"You're Head Chef Picea's husband?" Nori asked. King Tritsun laughed to himself.

"Luckiest man in Khaldeer," Gaden said as he returned his attention to his papers.

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Nori blinked. Picea could throw the man like a spear.

Sutton mirrored Gaden, looking over his own stack of papers. "So everything else is in order, then?" he asked without looking up.

"All vulnerabilities have been handled," Gaden said into his papers. "Except this last one, of course. Thank you for the second set of eyes. On this and on our logistics. Picea never lets me look at her inventory papers. She says I'd think less of her."

Sutton blew raspberries in response. "Well, they were a—" Sutton realized he might be toeing a line that he didn't want to cross. He cleared his throat and sat up. "They were an experience, to be sure."

A guard opened the door. "They've just arrived at the palace."

King Tritsun nodded. "Let them in. We're ready." He looked at Nori. "Aren't we?"

Nori looked at the three bookish men and thought of the fearsome Stags that approached. She smiled. "Ready for battle."

They took their seats and tidied up their papers until Dashi entered, his entourage in tow. He smirked at Nori's presence.

"Had a nice little trip out to the wilderness?" he asked. "Ready to come home?"

Nori just turned away from him, looking across the table at King Tritsun. Her heart beat as quickly as it had during their first negotiation. But this time, it beat with excitement, not dread.

"Come, sit," King Tritsun said. "We've been at these negotiations long enough and the cold days are coming. Let us be done with this."

The Urokans sat, leaving a chair between them and their opposing counsel. Dashi eyed Sutton with curiosity, trying to figure out the meaning of the new arrival. Gaden noticed and took it upon himself to explain.

"This is Sutton. A bright mind from Ambrosia City. He's noticed some…discrepancies in language. Certain vagueness at times. We'd like to iron these out before our final agreement."

Dashi scoffed and looked at Nori. "Sure. Once we've settled the matter of my sister."

"Of course," King Tritsun said. "Nori?"

Nori smoothened out her yellow jacket. She had come as a Chef, not as a noble. The days of dresses were behind her. She wet her lips as she turned to face her brother.

"I will be returning to the Academy of Ambrosia," she stated.

Dashi chuckled once, then twice, then the quiet laughter rumbled and shook him. "Good for you, Nori."

Nori couldn't stop her confusion from showing.

"You've always acted according to them," Dashi said. "Whether that be in subordinance or in defiance. I hope you're doing this for you."

Nori's lip twitched. "This was supposed to be a lesson?"

Dashi smiled as if he had done nothing wrong.

"Then you're still a Harper to your core," Nori said. The Stag leaned forward with a scowl. "Treating other people's lives as negotiation pieces. Minimizing them to numbers. Here's one for you. Give them the tuna as if I had returned to Uroko. Do that, or this will be the last thing I ever say to you."

"You can't be serious."

Nori turned back to the center of the table. She smiled at King Tritsun, her lips tightly sealed. He smiled back.

"Well then," he said. "Now that the family matters have been settled, let us discuss these last items…"

The negotiations went by in a blur. Nori let legal terms and numbers and arguments pass through her, just smiling at herself and sitting in silence. She felt Dashi's eyes on her again and again. Each time, it just made her smile more. It wasn't until the end, when the quill of the midnight kestrel was in King Tritsun's hand and the final dotted line was in front of him that she heard the last bit of negotiations. The last bit of trickery.

"Oh, one more thing," King Tritsun said. The Urokans groaned. "There was a recent hold-up in the harbor. Khalyan sailors had removed some barnacles from the ship while at sea and prepared to cook it in a stew. When they came into port, the Urokan inspector tried to add the weight of the barnacles to the overall weight of the catch, arguing that they needed to discard some of their fish for passage."

"Barnacles?" Dashi asked impatiently. "We're seconds away from being done with weeks upon weeks of this nitpicking and mundanity, but now you want to talk about barnacles?"

"Sorry, I meant to bring it up earlier. And it's not really a matter of barnacles. It's more about keeping the peace and keeping things moving in the port. Uh, Gaden has the note, we can pin it…"

Gaden made a show of digging through his papers as if he didn't know exactly where it was. As if it hadn't been written and rewritten and rewritten again to be ironclad. He found it and gave it to Dashi, who looked over it for a single second before sighing and tossing the paper back on the table.

"Fine," he said. "I'll tell the inspector not to harass ships for barnacles."

Gaden cleared his throat. "We'd prefer it to be codified."

Dashi sighed again and handed the paper to his associate. The associate leaned over the paper, muttering to Dashi as he read. "Khalyan vessels will not be subject to the search or seizure of sea life that grows on the surfaces of the vessel while at sea, nor will these growths be counted toward catch quotas." He handed it back to Dashi and nodded. "Just for the sake of preventing a future argument, I would amend it to not include crustaceans so that crabs do not fall under this."

"Barnacles are crustaceans," Sutton said. The presence of a Urokan general couldn't diminish Sutton's confidence when he had a fact.

"Write no crabs, then," Dashi fumed. "Fix it, let me sign it, and let's be done with this once and for all."

Once the papers were signed and stacked and sealed away, Dashi took one last look at Nori. "It was good to see you," he said. "And I do mean that. But eat something, will you?"

Nori smiled, but she did not speak. He would have to earn that. The Urokans left and the Khalyan Chefs entered with plates of delicious barnacle meat the size of steaks. They ate together in celebration, the wine pouring freely as they toasted their victory.

Hours later, well after dark, she stumbled her way across the plaza, leaning on Sutton, and made her way up the stairs of the Monastery. She stopped outside Sutton's door and gave him a hug.

"Thank you, Sutton," she said. He froze up. Going over meticulous legal language was second nature to Sutton. Receiving a woman's touch was not.

"You're the worst Chef of all of us," she slurred. "But you have a magic that none of us do."

"Thanks?" Sutton squirmed out of her grasp.

"No, thank you."

He pushed up his glasses. Nori couldn't tell if he was blushing or if his cheeks were just flushed from the alcohol. "This was a great academic achievement. I can't wait to tell Mr. Hodgens about it."

Nori snorted and shoved Sutton's shoulder, rebounding herself to the other side of the hallway. "Nerd."

"Not an insult," he countered. "Good night, Nori."

"Good night, Sutton."

She skidded across the wall as she walked down the hallway to her room. She heard the voices inside before she opened the door. She took a second to compose herself, entering the room with a smile.

Blanche sat on her bed, and Archie sat on Nori's. Nori was grateful for the separation, but they still jumped and turned at her arrival as if they had been caught.

"How'd it go?" Blanche asked.

Nori smiled and nodded. "We celebrated."

Archie scooted over and patted the bed next to him. Nori stumbled over and plopped down, leaning against him. He wrapped an arm around her and squeezed.

"I'm proud of you, Nori," he said.

Nori struggled with that. "You two did all the work."

"That's not true at all," Archie countered. "Blanche and I played our part, but this is all you. It started with your generosity. Besides, we're a team. We'll always look out for each other."

Nori leaned into him and smiled.

"So there's still a couple weeks of summer left," he said. "Have you decided if you're coming with us?"

"I'll stay. Teach some of the soup kitchens how to prepare barnacles. Maybe I'll travel with the Khalyans down to the Ambrosial Summit. My dad will be there. Can you imagine if I went to the parade and marched with the Khalyans?"

She laughed, and even though Archie had never met her father—and she hoped he never would—he laughed with her. He stood and helped lower her flat onto her bed, the world spinning with her drunkenness.

"What about you two?" she asked. "Are you still leaving for Sain tomorrow?"

"We pushed it back a day. We received a special invitation. A sort of going away party."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Picea wants to take us out to dinner before we leave."

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