THE NATHA FLOWED UP the mountain, more stream than river, forcing Mia and Quin to abandon the boat. They cut a path through Foraois Swyn, an apricot moon slipping long, eerie shadows between the braided trees.
The Twisted Forest was one of the great mysteries of Glas Ddir. The white-barked swyn trees leaned uniformly toward Fojo Kara??o in the east. The base of their trunks grew horizontally, flush with the ground, forming an easy, low seat. But after a few feet, the trunks shot up sharply at a right angle, like the elbow of an arm reaching toward the sun.
After that, the trees became even more interesting. Twenty feet off the forest floor, the swyn began entwining with other swyn—at least two or three at a time, often more. Creamy white branches twisted themselves around one another like broken fingers, their velvety blue needles forming a thick canopy overhead.
Since girls were not allowed in Foraois Swyn, Mia had never seen the trees before. But her mother, a lifelong lover of all kinds of trees, had drawn pictures for her daughters. “Lonely trees,” Angie would say, tracing the braided limbs. Mia had always thought the opposite. No swyn ever grew alone.
The distinctive shape—the elbow bend and the braiding—had earned the Twisted Forest its nickname, and endless conjecture about why the trees grew in such a way. There were scientific hypotheses: ancient farmers had manipulated the young saplings for timber, or the trees were responding to some kind of magnetic shift in the Earth’s core. But Glasddirans were by nature a suspicious lot, and most suspected magic. The demons of old were an excellent scapegoat. In the river kingdom, demons were blamed for everything.
Mia had always laughed at such ludicrous notions. Now, as she padded quietly along the soft bed of blue needles carpeting the forest floor, she wondered. What if these superstitions bore the seeds of truth, and the trees themselves once held magic? Did that make them wicked?
“As I contemplate who wants me dead,” Quin said, “I keep thinking about the rules of succession.”
“And?”
“If something happens to me, the throne would go to my cousin. Which seems fitting, considering Tristan is the son my father never had.”
Mia detected more than a trace of bitterness.
“It should be Karri,” he said. “My sister was always better than I was at everything—at least everything that mattered. Hunting, archery, swordplay, diplomacy, war games. I was off deboning fish in the kitchens while Karri was crushing our weapons master out on the castle grounds.”
“Perhaps you can change the laws of succession when you’re king.”
“I don’t want to be king.”
“Then you’re the only man in history who hasn’t dreamed of sitting on the river throne.”
“And yet I’m the one who must. Meanwhile, my sister, the most talented swordsman I’ve ever seen, the most gifted politician, the sharpest mind, and the noblest soul, will wither in the queen’s gallery, getting drunk on stonemalt.”
Mia studied him. “You have talents, too. You caught a dozen skalt with a button.”
He laughed. “Ah, yes. Master of the button arts. That’s me.” He added ruefully, “Would that a dozen skalt would save my skin.”
They fell back into companionable silence. After a while, Quin said, “I am good at other things besides catching fish, you know. I loved history. I excelled in theatrical studies—I have a gift for the pretending arts. And I took a particular shine to music.”
“Yes,” Mia said. “I’ve heard you play.”
Was it her imagination, or had Quin’s eyes gone hazy? “I had a music teacher. He was from Luumia, only a year older than I was—his parents were musicians in my father’s court, so he lived in the castle with his sister. She was lovely. We used to take long walks through the grove of plum trees. Sometimes she and I would—”
“I don’t need to hear what you and she would do,” Mia interrupted.
Quin smiled. “Her brother was a musical prodigy. He was also my first true friend. We spent long hours together in the library, playing piano. He told me a pianist should touch the keys the same way he touched a woman: gently. But my father . . .”
He set his jaw in a hard line. Whatever he’d been about to say, he thought better of it. “My father decided the piano was not in my future after all.”
“Quin.” She stopped walking. “What if your father is grooming Tristan to be king? If he really does consider you unfit to rule, he could have hired an assassin to kill you.”
Quin didn’t seem half as delighted by her theory as she was.
“While I appreciate your keen eye for filicide, that does seem a touch extreme.” He paused. “Though I suppose, if my father were looking to hire a skilled assassin, he wouldn’t have to look far.”
He looked at her pointedly.
“Oh. You mean my father.”
She remembered her father’s strange manner when he gave her the journal, and again when he escorted her to the Royal Chapel. Had King Ronan commissioned Griffin to kill his own son?
Or did Quin mean her?
Once again, his conversation with his parents came flooding back to her: he’d thought her dangerous, even then.
“The Hunters only kill magicians,” she said. “That’s the Creed. It’s sacrosanct.”
“You must admit you’re being a touch fanatical about this, Mia. We just saw a Hunter break the Creed and kill two other Hunters. Everyone can be bought.”
“Not my father.”
“Fine, then. One of his men. They were the only people in the Chapel with bows and arrows.”
“Except all the guards! I’m telling you, the Hunters only kill Gwyrach.”
He stared at her, his green eyes reflecting the blue needles, the color of a shallow pool at the base of a waterfall.
“Why did you want to join the Circle? Seems like awful bloody work. For a girl, anyway.” He jerked his head back toward the river. “Your Hunter friend is clearly good with a blade, but I can’t imagine you—”
Mia bent, whipped the knife out of Quin’s boot, clasped it lightly by the tang, and flung it at a swyn tree twenty feet ahead. It sailed through the air like a silver ribbon, slicing into the white trunk with flawless precision.
“Point taken,” he said.
Mia retrieved the blade, using her smock to wipe off the soft white curls of birch bark before sliding it back into the sheath. The prince’s mouth was smiling, but his eyes weren’t.
“You know,” he said. “I’m beginning to regret bringing that knife.”
Chapter 21
Unknowable Parts
THEY WOVE THEIR WAY through the Twisted Forest as the air thinned. Mia was tired, but the crisp alpine wind was invigorating. Though she carried no compass and no map save her mother’s, she couldn’t help but feel like an explorer, the very thing she had wanted more than anything to be.
The prince flumped down on a swyn trunk, effectively spoiling the silence.
“I’m hungry.”
“But the fish—”
“Was hours ago. I am reliably always hungry.” He stretched out his arms, catching the back of his head and staring up at the swyn needles. “Exquisite. It’s like looking at two blue skies.”
She sat down on her own tree trunk. She was hungry, too. Ravenous.
Discreetly she opened her mother’s book. They were loosely following the Natha on its ascent: the river was the clearest strip of ink. She tried once again to rub the page gently with her finger, on the off chance she could court more ink. It was useless.
“I truly hope you are not charting our escape route with that book of nothing.”
She snapped it shut. “Perhaps it’s time for you to catch more fish.”
He flourished a hand at the river. “It would appear the good fish of Glas Ddir are constitutionally unable to swim upstream.”