He stepped back and bowed to her. It was an unpretentious, entirely modest movement. In The Noniad it might have taken half a page. There was no time for him to make any kind of speech, but despite over twelve books of Ortus celebrating his verbosity, he did not seem the type of man to make one; all he said was, “Many thanks, and farewell. Spirit-guide of the Fifth, can you send us four to the shore’s edge?”
“Easily,” Abigail said. She stepped forward and put one hand on Protesilaus’s and Ortus’s shoulders, and she peered through her thick glasses at them, and said quickly: “Are you—”
“For the Seventh,” said Protesilaus.