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He asked her, “Why did the Ghullim allow me to approach, when you clearly approve of your own independence?”
“You showed no sign of being a threat to our security.”
He had to acknowledge they had read him correctly, but still that seemed an incomplete answer. “Are you looking for something from me? News about the Emerald City, say? It is some years since I was in Shiz, where EC goings-on were always the hot topic.” He did not add, And I left in disgrace, but he imagined Muhlama H’aekeem was smart enough to guess his shortcomings.
“We have a network of informers, should we need a key piece of classified information. Anyway, it was I who gave the signal to let you in.” She rolled onto her back so he could see the bits of torn autumn leaf, red maple and lavender pearlfruit, caught in the hot white-gold of her under-trunk fur, spangling it like jewels, from her neck to her loins.
“But why?” He found he had to lower his volume or he was afraid his voice might break.
“Diversion,” she said. “Do you mind?”
“How could I mind?” he replied. “I was going nowhere special, so I could hardly be diverted.”
“I mean diversion for us. For me. A distraction from the daily efforts of our military readiness. A distraction from the threat of becoming the Chieftess, which is an obligation I have no wish to accept.”
“Can’t you simply refuse?”
“Refuse your duty to your father? To the tribe he governs?” She let her tongue hang out of the side of her mouth, playing corpse. “Only in death. Have you no concept of fathers?”
“No,” he admitted. “Mine never remembered to come round.”
“Lucky beast.”
“Him or me?”
She turned her head toward him; her chest was still exposed in the sunlight. It was all he could do to keep his eyes trained on her eyes. “If you have never enjoyed
the paternal correction as administered by your own father and master, how will you qualify to be a father when it’s your turn?”
“I didn’t know I would need to supply qualifications to become a father.”
Again, she laughed. “I suppose there is really only one application procedure,” she admitted. “Touché. But in actual fact—what is your name?—I signaled you should be brought into the circle so that the subject might be changed. I was arguing with Uyodor H’aekeem about matters of state. Our words were sharp, and I didn’t want to lose my temper. In general it isn’t considered seemly among the Ghullim, and for a chieftain’s daughter to discredit her father’s position by second-guessing him—well, it isn’t done.”
“You could just walk away, couldn’t you?”
“I can be rude to you, but not to Uyodor H’aekeem.” Her tone remaining precisely neutral, she neither mocked her father’s name nor celebrated it. “Or did you mean I might strike out on my own?”
“Some do. I did, of necessity.”
“I knew I liked the look of you, at least a little. You have a silly swagger about you that is entirely unconvincing. Anyone brave enough to sashay through our territory like that is either a one-off nutter or an ally worth cultivating.”
“I may be neither,” he said, and wanted to add, or I may be something else again. He tried to focus on her without blinking, though his tear ducts tended to empty at inopportune moments.
She leaped to her feet as if she had caught wind of salacious thoughts. “I’m too full of energy, I can’t sit still for long,” she said to him. “I don’t want you to leave yet, for I have a lot to accomplish while you’re here, but I have to run, run my limbs to exhaustion, or I will claw myself to death.”
“Highly strung, are we.”
She bared her teeth at him. He went on more neutrally, “Are you permitting me to stay or prohibiting me from leaving?”
She didn’t answer but went leaping down off the ledge, a wave of golden coins pulsing through the scatter of falling leaves.
He did not feel he wanted to push his luck.
The tree elves came out from behind their pot. He had forgotten about them.
“She’s in a lather,” said Twigg.
“Never seen her quite like that,” said Stemm.
