It’s not a terrible idea.Not only would Hanna be able to determine whether Merecot was sincere in her plea for help, but she might be able to gather information that would lead to a successful rescue. “If Merecot truly wants our assistance, she won’t hurt our ambassador.” Daleina looked to Naelin.
“If,” Ven emphasized.
“I should go now,” Naelin said. “I’m their mother.”
You’re also a queen, Daleina wanted to say, but she didn’t because she didn’t think it would help. Naelin hadn’t forgotten she was queen, or that they had no heirs.She simply doesn’t care. Her children come first.“This is the safest way to proceed, for them and for Aratay.”
Naelin had never hated before.
Not like this.
This... felt like the hatred of the spirits. She wanted to rip the very mountains from the ground and bury Merecot beneath them. But she knew Daleina was right. And Headmistress Hanna was right. Even Garnah was right.
It could be a trap.
And if she went, without any plan or preparation, she could be killed and her children doomed. But if she were to be patient and agree to send an ambassador... she might learn a way to rescue Erian and Llor without springing whatever trap the northern queen had planned.
And yet everything inside her screamed,Save them now!
She desperately wanted to. Wanted to find the person who thought it was okay to take her children, to take their hair, and show that person just exactly what it felt like to have something taken from them.
Quite simply, their blood.
But she had to be smart and careful. She had proof they were alive, or at least almost proof, and it would be foolish to rush in and jeopardize the chance of keeping them alive.
How she was tempted, though...
“We send Headmistress Hanna,” Naelin ultimately agreed. “She confirms they’re there and sends us a report as quickly as possible—the second she knows they’re alive. Then I go in and save them, either by helping with the excess spirits in Semo if this is not a trap or by force and guile if it is one.”
Garnah clapped her hands like a gleeful child. “And then you kill Queen Merecot?”
“Yes,” Naelin said and met Daleina’s eyes.She has to see we can’t show mercy this time. What Merecot did wasn’t just against me; it was against all of Aratay. It was an act of war, and as Daleina said herself, it must be answered.
She saw the younger queen’s shoulders sag and then straighten. Naelin waited, not breaking eye contact. At last, Daleina said, “Yes, then we kill her.”
Chapter10
The air was still. No breeze.
The rain didn’t fall. It misted in a weak drizzle that only dampened the canopy and didn’t reach the forest floor. Grayness obscured the sky.
Fires wouldn’t light quickly. Even the most skilled woodsmen had to strike multiple sparks before anything would catch, which shouldn’t have been the case, given the lack of a proper rain.
Fruit rotted before it ripened, or failed to ripen at all.
Across Aratay, the people counted their canned fruit, preserved meat, and sacks of flour—and then counted again, hoping they had missed something that would help when the cold struck so that they’d be able to feed their families through the winter, but knowing it wouldn’t be enough and that counting wasn’t changing the fact that the harvest had failed.
That the queens had failed.
As she traveled north as the new ambassador to Semo, Hanna could feel the anguish coating the land in a musty gauze that dampened all joy and darkened all colors. She had coached Queen Naelin as much as she could before she left, but the new queen was too powerful and already too set in her ways on how she used her power. It was why heirs were always found as girls, to be trained while their minds were still malleable. With half a life already in hand, Naelin couldn’t just shake the foundations she had built that informed who she was. And yet that very foundationhadbeen shaken—her belief in her ability to keep her children safe—and now her emotions leaked through every time she wasn’t consciously blocking them, even in her sleep.
While she fretted, the land fretted too.
In all honesty, it matched Hanna’s mood as well. Shewantedto believe this wasn’t a trap, that Merecot was merely desperate on behalf of her people, that the children were alive and unharmed and would be returned safely to their mother... but after all she’d seen and everyone who had died, it was hard to believe that everything would be all right. That it even mattered what Merecot’s intentions were. She felt as if she’d used up the last vestige of her optimism during the queen of Semo’s invasion.It died while I watched children die.Over the years, she had watched too many die, and yet this somehow felt worse.
Because betrayal always hurts more than random violence.
Wrapped in her thoughts, Hanna traveled north without talking to the four guards who accompanied her about much more than practicalities: would she be more comfortable sleeping in a hammock or on a platform, did she feel she could wheel across this bridge, would she wait while they attached the safety harnesses to her chair, could she be patient while they fetched the basket for her to ride in. She was aware it was not simple to travel through the trees with an old woman who couldn’t walk, even with a chair adapted to the forest, and she prided herself on keeping any complaints about her own discomfort to herself and handling her aches and pains as best she could.
