Perhaps it’s not so safe after all.
Below in the valleys, she saw towns nestled beside rivers. Strips of bare rocks surrounded them, as if avalanches had fallen again and again toward them but had always been diverted. Their fields were dotted with boulders.
She filed all of this away, cataloguing it in preparation for her first report back to Daleina.
They flew for hours as the sun trekked across the sky from one mountain range to another, until at last Hanna spotted a city carved into the side of a white stone mountain. In the late-afternoon light, it gleamed, its turrets sparkling as if embedded with flecks of diamonds—which it probably was. Waterfalls, brilliant blue, chased down the many levels of the city, and gold flags flew from the peaks of the spires. It was a most impressive sight, and Hanna made sure to be properly impressed. Merecot would certainly expect that. In fact, she had most likely instructed the spirits to bring them in from a direction that would best show off the capital city.
It’s what Hanna would have done.
Flying up, the spirits brought the chariot to the peak of the mountain, where a platform of stone extended in a circle around the snowcapped tip. Hanna felt the chill in the air, and felt the jostle to her bones as the air spirits clattered down on the paving stones.
The horse spirits folded their wings and waited as Hanna’s guards climbed out and then helped Hanna into her chair. For one brief moment, she permitted herself the luxury of anger.
I should be walking out of this chariot, and it’s Merecot’s fault that I’m not.
However, she buried these thoughts away as she always did. Others had lost their lives. She’d lost only her mobility. Still, that word “only” gnawed at her.
After the guards had removed all the packs from the chariot, they fanned out on either side of her, at attention, as if they were honor guards. She wished she’d had the opportunity to freshen her clothes. After all the travel, she imagined she looked rather like a crumpled scrap from the bottom of a pocket.
Again, probably exactly as Merecot intended.
The chariot with its spirit steeds ran toward the end of the platform and off it, sailing into the empty air and then soaring up toward the clouds. Hanna watched them as they disappeared.
“Pleasant way to travel, wouldn’t you say, Ambassador?” a woman’s voice said behind her, and Hanna pivoted her chair to see that Merecot—Excuse me, Queen Merecot, she corrected herself; she’d best remember that here—had joined them on the platform.
She looked... well, not quite the same as Hanna remembered. She still pictured her as the gawky, arrogant child who had cheated on her exams. Now that gawkiness had stretched to regally tall, and Merecot wore her jeweled gown as if she’d been born to it. Her throat was encased in gold rings, and bracelets worth more than half the houses in Mittriel covered her upper arms. Her dress was black with a single white stripe down the center, to match her hair, and it was studded with diamonds. An entourage of her guards, clad in steel armor, flanked her.
The Semoian and Aratayian guards sized one another up, and Hanna briefly imagined them as dogs sniffing one another. They stopped short of that, though.
“Headmistress,” Merecot said, a note of surprise in her voice. And then she laughed lightly, though the sound didn’t have much humor in it. “Daleina didn’t share her choice of ambassador with me, only your expected arrival date. I wonder if she thinks you’ll grade me. Do I pass or fail?”
Hanna bowed her head politely. “Your Majesty.” She wondered if Merecot would be foolish enough to mention the wheelchair, or if she’d have the presence of mind to guess the probable cause. No, she wouldn’t bring it up—Merecot had always been shrewd. Not subtle, but shrewd. She wouldn’t begin negotiations by placing herself in a situation that warranted an apology.
Instead, Merecot laughed again, warmer this time. “You know, I hadn’t expected my old headmistress to ever bow her head to me. If I’d known that would be a perk of this job, I would have jumped at it sooner.”
“Queen Daleina and Queen Naelin wish for me to recite various pleasantries to you,” Hanna said. “Do you need to hear them, or can we pretend that I said them and proceed to the rest-and-refreshments stage of the welcome?”
“They didn’t really send pleasantries, did they? Just told you to make some up.”
Like I said—shrewd.“True.”
“Then let’s save us both the hassle. I have much to show you, and we have much to discuss, and you have already had a long journey. Really, I don’t want you falling asleep on me while we’re solving the fate of our nations.”
No wonder Merecot failed diplomacy class,Hanna thought. “Before I trust a single word you say, I will need to see Queen Naelin’s children.”
“Of course,” Merecot said. To one of the guards, she said, “Fetch the children. We will be conducting our discussion in my audience chamber.”
Hanna swallowed back myriad other questions—were the children well, how soon could they be returned, and what had Merecot been thinking by doing something so idiotic. Instead, she schooled her expression into polite interest and, pushed by her guards, followed Queen Merecot of Semo into the castle.
Daleina has a vicious sense of humor,Merecot thought.That’s a surprise.She plastered a welcoming smile on her face—which felt as fake as the smile on a mask—as she ushered Headmistress Hanna into the castle.
AmbassadorHanna, she corrected herself.
Honestly, she didn’t think Daleina could have picked anyone who would have irritated Merecot more, or set her more on edge. She felt the flesh between her shoulder blades itch as if it were being prodded by the tip of a knife, but it was only the ambassador’s gaze.Full of disapproval, undoubtedly.Merecot half expected to be confronted by a stack of exams and report cards and then lectured about all her academic failings.
I would have passed if I’d tried, she thought. She simply hadn’t deemed it worth her time to bother.Clever of Daleina not to tell me whom she was sending.The missive had stated only that an ambassador would be arriving within the week. So when the headmistress of her old academy had been lifted out of the chariot, looking about one hundred and fifty years old with her startlingly white hair and thousand wrinkles, Merecot was... surprised. Even shocked. Perhaps displeased.Pissed off,Merecot thought.
And guilty.
