The four fell silent at Loa's expression.
What kind of truth could make him so serious?
After a long silence, Robin spoke first. "Whatever the truth is, we want to know. Isn't it better to learn the truth and have the right to choose than to spend our lives in peaceful ignorance? Not that our lives are particularly peaceful."
The others laughed.
"All right. Then I'll tell you." Robin's determined gaze made Loa realize she had not said that out of a historian's professional curiosity.
She simply wanted to bear the truth alongside him—the truth Pirate King Roger had refused to speak of, the World Government feared, and even someone as powerful as the Ice Dragon struggled to put into words.
What more could I ask of a wife?
He glanced at the others and saw much the same resolve in their eyes. Only then did Loa begin. "Let me think where to start. Let's pick up with Weber's question."
"Weber, do you remember what the Great Warrior Calgara looked like?" Loa asked.
"Of course!" To Weber, it was no question at all. "He had long red hair and tattoos on his face and arms that only Shandia's strongest warriors were entitled to wear! He was so strong he could kill a Sea King alone. He was a hero to the Shandians!"
"But he didn't have wings, did he?"
Loa cut him off and pointed behind him. "You do. Do you know why?"
Weber fell silent. He was certain the Shandians had never intermarried with the Skypieans. Ever since Upper Yard had been hurled into the sky four hundred years ago, the two sides had been locked in a blood feud to the death.
"And you, Enel!" Loa turned to him. "Because you had no wings, the people of Birka