Expatriates’ Order

The Expatriates’ Order is Shai’s community of exiles and outcasts, a group that survives outside Navon’s borders and eventually offers its strength to the kingdom that banished many of its members. Its identity rests on a striking double refusal: the members live beyond Navon’s rules and obligations, yet when danger reaches their mountain home they reject hiding and take up arms. Their progression from a forest community to a proposed military ally makes them a challenge to Navon’s treatment of deserters and a practical answer to the kingdom’s shortage of defenders.

Origins and Work

Shai describes the group’s work to Mabel Peloponnese in deliberately flexible terms: they are a sort of bounty hunters or mercenaries, paid for tasks that others do not want to handle. Their services include rescuing people, capturing murderers, and recovering stolen money. The work is framed as bureaucratic service rather than a conventional army’s campaign, and Shai’s pitch turns on its usefulness: the group could fight for Navon, provided it received money. Mabel, who has been trying to get away from him, stops to hear him out. The exchange presents the Order not only as a band of armed outcasts but as a group accustomed to making its skills available in return for practical support.

That transactional beginning contrasts with the later offer to defend Navon without payment. The group’s methods and aims are not fixed: it can take paid assignments, but Shai can also argue that a threatened community has reason to fight for a threatened kingdom. The distinction matters because the Order is not introduced as a standing royal force. Its members gather outside the kingdom’s authority, and their service has to be negotiated rather than assumed.

Life in the Forest

For several weeks, Mabel lives with Shai and his men in their forest home. The members hunt in the morning and return with dinner for the community; they share the same food and resources. The camp includes wives and children, and the group is described as small, with no more than one exile or criminal in any one family. Its domestic routines create a recognizable communal life amid displacement, rather than reducing the outcasts to an armed group alone.

Yet the camp’s social order is also described as make-believe: its members pretend to relationships that do not exist and to a life that is not real. The passage holds together two truths about exile. The group builds routines and a home from shared daily work, but those arrangements cannot undo the histories and separations that brought its people there. Over time, the band grows beyond its original small size. Anyone may join, and no one leaves; the camp is characterized by the absence of rules, ties, obligations, duties, and labels. For Mabel, who has spent that time among them, this way of life becomes more than a temporary shelter. On returning to Navon, she recognizes that she has become part of something like it.

The Order Under Attack

The group’s refusal to be passive becomes explicit when Balthasar’s men approach the mountain. After someone urges everyone to hide, Alastair rejects the idea and calls on the Order to get its guns, declaring, “We are the Expatriates' Order, we don't hide!” He distinguishes Mabel from the people expected to fight by telling her that she can hide, but she does not simply accept that protection. The words define the group through action: its members answer danger together rather than disappear from view.

They decide to shoot at the soldiers while they climb, aiming to stop them before they reach the top. Some attackers nevertheless make it through. Archers remain concealed among the rocks and on the roof, striking targets, while other members face Balthasar’s men on the ground. Mabel asks to use a weapon from the arsenal, making her own decision to join the defense rather than watch it from safety. The Order’s response is therefore collective but not uniform: its members organize the defense, while Mabel asserts her place in it for herself.

Alliance with Navon

Shai later brings Mabel to Navon’s castle to propose an alliance to Navi Spyridaki. He says he has convinced the deserters to join the Navon King's Army, arguing that the group is numerous and that both sides need help to win the war. The offer reverses the meaning of the deserters’ earlier exclusion: people treated as offenders and criminals may become defenders when their homes, like Navon, are threatened.

Navi questions whether he can trust men who have let the kingdom down before. Shai answers that the circumstances have changed: the exiles’ homes are now under threat, and they want to protect them. He makes the argument reciprocal rather than charitable—Navon needs the men, and the men need Navon—and accepts responsibility for the people he is defending. When Navi warns that they might get out of control, Shai insists that this will not happen. He also acknowledges the political obstacle: the ministers and counselor may oppose an unprecedented arrangement, so Navi needs time before giving a final answer. The encounter establishes a proposal, not a completed agreement.

Mutual Protection and Significance

During the later preparations for battle, Shai’s men help move villagers from danger to the castle for shelter. The villagers first wake to noise and fear another attack by Tzara; instead, they find members of the Order guiding them to safety. This assistance makes their collective defense extend beyond the mountain camp and the exiles themselves. It also gives concrete form to the alliance Shai advocates: the group is already protecting Navon’s people, even as the kingdom’s decision about formally accepting the deserters remains unsettled.

Shai tells Navi that his men are doing this for Navon, but that he personally needs Mabel to survive the coming battle. His request connects the Order’s public commitment to a private concern, without making those motives identical. As Navi arranges to move the village and gather the army, Shai asks him to ensure Mabel is among those protected. Mabel, however, questions whether she can leave the soldiers to face the danger while she takes shelter. The contrast brings the Order’s open-ended belonging into contact with Navon’s wartime duties: the group can offer refuge and solidarity, but Mabel must still decide what her own obligations require. Through that tension, the Expatriates’ Order represents both a life beyond Navon’s punitive categories and a force capable of joining a defense those categories had once denied it.