CHAPTER 22
NEGOTIATION TACTICS FOR FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC SOIL
How Amma was meant to speak with the conclave of elves afterthat, she had no idea, but she told Damien with what little confidence she had left, negotiations would be taken care of because the alternative was turning into a mewling, pleading puddle, and holy gods, what would become of her then?
She tried to rub the redness out of her face as she was walked through the winding forest path the elves made their homes along, though more likely she was only successful at worsening it. Squeezing her eyes shut to still her heart, there was an image imprinted on her mind of Damien looming over her, the way his lip had curled up as he said things that should have been terrifying, how his eyes knew exactly what to look for, the recognition when they found it, and then the surprised pleasure at discovering what she couldn’t hide.
An elf was saying something to her, and Amma blinked her eyes back open. She stuttered out an apology, and tried to listen, absently rubbing her wrists. Her senses were flooded again, every inch of skin too sensitive, sounds distant and muffled, but she’d been brought to an archway carved out of a tree completely foreign to her that was as wide across as a dining hall, and the wonder at that was enough to get her head back on straight.
She touched the bark as she was led beneath it, and then all at once remembered: quoteria. She must have read the name somewhere, seen a drawing of one, remembered some obscure fact, but that’s what these massive trees were called, the name whispered in the back of her mind, and she nodded to herself, ready to face the conclave.
As if it had been some kind of joke played on her, the elves of the Gloomweald were perhaps the easiest negotiators Amma had ever dealt with. Intrigued by their circumstances, though, she couldn’t stop asking questions once she was with the conclave, a group of seven apparently very important elves.
Without the fairyheart painted all over them to give off that brilliant glow, the elves had skin that varied widely from one another but were all shades that matched perfectly to tree bark. Some were as vibrant as cherry trees, others as pale as birch, and some deep as walnut. Each willowy and tall, they even moved smoothly, like branches bending in the breeze.
They were also rather talkative, answering Amma’s questions about how long they’d been in the Gloomweald—apparently, forever—and what they were attempting to do. “So, you just decided to…stage a haunting?”
They sat at a round table that had been grown from the center of the trunk in the room carved out of the massive quoteria tree’s insides. Lora’iel nodded, a pleased smirk on his pointed face. “Brilliant, I know.”
Well, no, she thought, the plan had fallen right apart when Damien happened upon them, but then there were very few blood mages, and she herself and most of the people she knew had been afraid of the Gloomweald her whole life.
“We only wished for peace and quiet, and we’ve had exactly that for a few centuries,” an elven woman called Sea’nestra said. “However, in the last moons, or, well, how long has it been again?”
The comparatively shorter elf who been the one to fetch Amma was standing just behind the woman and piped up, “Thirty-three years.”
“Apparently that long,” said Sea’nestra, “we’ve been pestered by the crown, of all things.”
At that, Amma had made a thoughtful sound. The Gloomweald was purportedly haunted, but if this was the truth, it was largely harmless. Laurel, half-elven herself, had braved the very edge of the Gloomweald back when they were just thirteen and retrieved the fairyheart mushrooms. She had reported nothing happened to her at all, but there were others, people who disappeared, and then more who came back frightened to their very core, shaken for weeks, some never truly recovering.
“What do you mean, the crown?”
“Those useless Holy Knights,” said Cora’endei, proving she had much more in common with Damien than either of them would like to admit. She attended the meeting but didn’t sit on the council, glowering from the edge of the room. “Human men and women, casting stupid, human spells to rid this place of the spirits we’re putting on.”
“Giving them a fright largely does work,” stressed Lora’iel, holding out his hands, the residue of the fairyhearts still on him and giving him a shimmer. “The mages who come try this and that, blessed by Turlecki or Qreefontoc or whichever god is the current favorite with you people.”
Amma recognized the names of the gods, neither particularly nice ones, but at least they weren’t of the twenty-five cast into the Abyss.
“And then the mages are followed by huntsmen and loggers,” Sea’nestra told her, “who we also scare off until we, well…don’t. We just need somethingmore.”
That was when Amma had an idea, something that might satisfy them all, and after a fair bit of bargaining, she was brought back to the makeshift cell.
“How did it go?” Damien asked miserably. He was sitting on the cot, head resting on a fist, and Kaz mimicked him at his side.
“Great!” Amma clasped her hands behind her and bounced up onto her toes, trying to cover the embarrassment that nagged at her at seeing him all over again. The guard who had escorted her back opened the cage.
Damien stood as if he weighed twice as much and dragged himself out, sneering at one of the original guards and making them wince. Kaz was right behind him, and mimed after the blood mage, and the second guard actually skittered back into the bushes.
“So,” Amma told him, “we don’t have to stay here forever or die or anything.”
“We would have done none of those things under any circumstances anyway,” he groused.
“I know, I know, but we agreed to very reasonable terms. The elves have graciously offered some food and to act as an escort to the edge of the Gloomweald—”
“—we donotneed—”
“—using their elven journeying skills, so it should only take an hour or so instead of a full day and a half,” she stressed.
Damien narrowed his eyes then nodded.
