I thought of Lady Dalimu, who had been sentenced to regrow the poisoned orchards of Forsaith. Her task had been impossible.
The night before, I might have thought thatthistask was impossible. But now I knew better.
“I agree. How many would you like me to regrow?”
“You will know when you are done,” Spider said. She pushed herself up out of her chair, striding over to the doors and opening them. As she walked, the last three Dogs fought their way free of the vines ensnaring them. Sagam called after her, but she continued to walk away.
Even though she walked on two legs, I was sure I could see eight legs carrying her. I blinked, shaking my head.
Sagam immediately spun, as Gotuye and Asahi rushed into protective positions around Tallu. Sagam searched the back of the room, his sword ready.
“Your Imperial Majesty, what happened?”
General Saxu was shouting out in the hall, but I heard a crackle of sound and the building shook. Spider, apparently, did not take well to being questioned, nor to someone threatening her or her people. There was more shouting, and I took a few steps into the hallway.
Behind me, Tallu answered, “We have made a deal with the Pirate King. She will provide us information if my consort does a task for her.”
“What task?” Sagam asked.
His suspicion wasn’t unfounded. The Pirate King was an unknown quantity, and our knowing that she was Spider did not make her easier to understand or more trustworthy.
In the hall, vines wrapped General Saxu and his men. They were pinned against the wall, their swords hanging uselessly at their sides as they struggled against the strength of elven magic.
“Prince Airón, help us,” General Saxu said. Spider was already at the doorway to the building, framed in brilliant light by thebright sun outside. She looked golden, the tendrils of vines waving around her.
“You do not have to do this. I have seen your fate,” she said.
Her voice was soft, conciliatory, and I wondered what fate she had seen that made her offer me the option of escaping the deal she had just struck. She turned, her long braid spinning with her, and then she and her men strode out into the swamp.
No. If she wanted trees, I would give her as many as she needed until she set Tallu free. Until he was whole for the first time since he’d been cursed.
I turned back to Saxu, raising my wolf’s claw and cutting him and his men free. He fell to the ground, his leg giving out. Commander Rede rushed to him, helping him to stand. I found General Saxu’s cane trapped in the vines and when I pulled it free, parts of the vine came with it, bits of plant that stuck to the wood.
“Why didn’t you use electro magic against her?” I asked.
“We tried,” Commander Rede admitted. “She danced through it like it was nothing.”
“She was faster than us, and her magic stronger.” General Saxu frowned, shaking his head. A leaf that had been caught in his hair fell to the floor.
“Is that what all elves are like?” one of his men asked, hushing to a whisper when Rede looked at him sharply.
“What deal did you strike with her?” Saxu asked with the certainty of a man who knew a deal had been struck. Perhaps he had been on enough battlefields to see when his commanding officers had made a decision that might cost him and his men a great deal, or that might demand they make peace even with the bitterest enemy.
“She will give us information, but she requires that I find her something in the forest.” I kept my words vague. What we wanted from her wasn’t Namati’s location, but Saxu didn’t need to know that.
Saxu nodded, his expression already firming. “Commander Rede, go with the prince?—”
I shook my head. “There was a reason she askedmefor it and not Tallu’s army. I will go alone with some of the children here.”
“His Imperial Majesty will not allow it,” Saxu warned.
“His Imperial Majesty understands the stakes just as much as I do,” I said, then decided that perhaps it wouldn’t be wrong to lie. I could always say she had double-crossed us as expected. “Without Namati, how will we ever fight Bemishu and Kacha?”
Saxu narrowed his eyes, the frown between his brows growing deeper as he gazed at me. He was a smart man. Perhaps I was foolish for hoping he would believe the lie Tallu and I insisted on telling. Something in my tone had put him on alert.
He suspected we were not interested in Namati, that we had some other goal in Tavornai, but I was the emperor’s consort. He could not question me, not in front of his men, even if he did it only through implication.
I turned and saw Lady Chaliko standing further down the hallway. Today she was wearing golden makeup of the same shade Riini had been crushing the day before, both hands clenched in the fabric of her skirts. Her eyes widened as I began approaching.
