“Damn,” I growled. “Godsdamn it.” How could I be so stupid? I had been taught since I was a girl not to do this. I had been told not to be greedy in the god tree, to take only what an opening’s reach allowed for collecting. But, like a dimwit, I had disregarded my schooling and stuck my arm too far in to get it back out.
“I will die here,” I announced as if I had a listener. “Even if the girls think to look for me, none of them can see an opening in a god tree. None of them will be able to step inside and help me cut my way out. I am going to miss the caravan leaving in the morning because no one else on the bloody thing has any Tintarian magic in them. I am a complete and utter twit.”
I spent an hour stamping my feet and jerking my hand aroundinside the bark, nearly losing my knife in the process. I tried prying away the inner bark around my arm so as to widen the opening, but as Magda had always said, the tree’s bark was hard enough to protect its hollowness but moist enough that it would not crack. It was unbreakable.
“Godsdamn it!” I yelled, not caring who heard me. “Fuck me.”
“Is that how you solicit your lovers?” came a man’s voice.
I jumped so hard I scraped my wrist. My head jerked away from the opening to the sight of the Vyggian sliding in through the god tree’s door.
I gaped.
As always, that pale eye’s lid was halfway down, mouth halfway to smiling but not with any warmth, like he was weighing whether or not he could be bothered to speak to a person. He leaned against the opposite side of the inner circle, eye appraising me in the dim blue glow.
I could not breathe. He had not only found me out, in the process of gathering mother’s moss, but I was trapped by my own carelessness. I was at his mercy. And he was too close for my comfort. If I leaned outward and stretched my left arm, the free one, across the circle, I could almost touch his chest.
“If I am being honest, madam midwife, I would have thought you would have little need of such blatantly declared demands,” he went on, his hands lifting to loop his forefingers into the neckline of his jerkin.
“Little need of—what?” I stuttered.
He shrugged. “I have commented on your allure before. You know what I think. Why must you seek out your bedmates by shouting ‘fuck me’ in the street? Or in this case, in the god tree? Is that how you invite men into your bed?”
“You speak rather plainly about my bedding habits,” I said. I was in an undignified, precarious position, but I would not let him see me afraid. I put my shoulders back as far as I could with half my forearm and hand stuck in the tree.
That single eye flitted to my bosom, but it was so quick I wondered if I had imagined it.
“What else would you rather speak plainly about?” he asked. “That you are clearly of enemy lineage and therefore, a spy, or that you gather an outlawed thing? I would think your shameless mating call a safer subject.”
I was near to admitting defeat, to shutting my mouth and letting him carry on his duties and turn me in, when my daft mind finally caught up.
He could see the doorway in a god tree too.
29
NOW: MAGIC
“Ha!” I crowed. “You too are of Tintarian descent!”
Miming approval, he widened his eye and his smile. “Surprised it took you this long. I thought you smarter than that. You must be tired.”
“How dare you?” I said, but my reply was not fraught with fear or consternation. I imitated his even keel, his cool demeanor. His blood was my safety now. “How dare you threaten and terrorize me in past nights? How dare you imply a thing that you yourself are guilty of? You have some nerve,Vyggian. Or should I not call you that anymore? You are no salt man. You are a coastal man, a worshipper of the Farthest Four. Those tattoos of yours should have given it away. God snakes? It is more likely, sir, thatyouare the spy.”
He blinked. “Shall we finally speak plainly with each other?”
I shrugged. My right shoulder’s lowered state made it a lopsided gesture, but I held my chin up high. “You first.”
He straightened from his lean and took the step and a half to close the distance between us. He drew himself near, standing two handspans away, choosing again to lean against the inside of the tree.
I resisted the ludicrous impulse to inhale that salt and soap smell.
He was almost a head taller than me, and our height difference was pronounced by my being stuck in the tree. He peered downward and then said, “I concede that I have my own secrets, but you must first admit that you are in need of my help.”
I hated this. I hated every story ever told to us growing up of a damsel in distress. I hated that I must simper to him or at the least, halfway apologize to extricate myself from the god tree. And mostly, I hated that I had to be that snide and defensive up until this confrontation. I was exhausted by the time I had spent on pins and needles around him.
Sighing, I said, “Please,” and moved back a little to expose the opening.
“Please,” he repeated.
