Sir Gorrann looked over the edge with a grimace. “These cranes are holy to our hosts. The Yurkei worship them. They are at once gods and a food source, equal parts in the chain of life.” His eyes too lingered on the brown stains on the rock face. “We shouldn’t stay here long.”
Dinah watched the cranes in silence, her black eyes wide with fascination and fear. The birds eventually calmed down, their wings tucking back, settling into their one massive nest. Dinah thought she spotted the carcass of a horse. It was still moving slightly. Their cries faded, and Dinah spoke quietly. “Cheshire wants me to reclaim my throne. He thinks I am a conqueror. A conqueror without an army.”
“The Yurkei will fight for you.”
“Fight for me,” she laughed out loud. “They hate me. The Yurkei will fight for Mundoo. They have no interest in fighting for me. Have you seen their faces when I walk by?” She saw them then, their glowing blue eyes following her every move, their brows knotted in fury. “And there aren’t very many of them, not compared to the Cards.”
“Have you ever seen the Yurkei fight?” replied Sir Gorrann. “One Yurkei can best four Cards.” He shook his head. “They move with an unnatural swiftness. It’s unnerving.”
“It’s still not enough,” she corrected him. “If it did happen, which I’m not saying it will, how could it… happen?”
Sir Gorrann took his time phrasing his careful reply, one eye trained on the simmering crane nest below. “Cheshire has been meeting with Mundoo for a few days now.”
Dinah bit her lip. So that’s where Mundoo had been going.
“They are still hammering out an acceptable treaty. From what I can gather, in return for fighting for yeh, they will get all their lands back inside the Twisted Wood, and a promise that we will never try to take them again, by any measure.”
Dinah shook her head in amazement. “What are we talking about? Just a few hours ago, I was a prisoner of the Yurkei, and a few weeks before that, an outlaw, and before that a princess!”
Sir Gorrann shook his head. “Yeh never were just a prisoner.”
“Maybe I just want to be a prisoner! Or a nobody! Maybe I just want to stay here and live a normal life. Have you considered that?”
Sir Gorrann’s golden eyes studied her face. “Yeh don’t want that. I know yeh.”
Dinah felt a blush rise up her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. What you’re telling me is that I’m to lead an army to Wonderland Palace that will surely be defeated? Am I correct? You’re saying that I should lead this fray all in a doomed attempt to sit on a throne because my mother once sat there?” Her voice was growing ever louder, more and more agitated. She felt the fury rising in her chest, the black boiling. She leapt to her feet. “Look at me, and tell me—who am I, Sir Gorrann? Who do you see when you look at me? Do you see my father’s daughter? Do you see Cheshire? Do you see a whimpering girl, or a Yurkei warrior? A spoiled princess? A conqueror? And who are you? A lonely man? Do you hope for a crown upon your head, Sir Gorrann?”
She was yelling now, and she could hear the agitated squawks from below as the birds began to stir once again. Thousands of wings began to flap in the night air, the stirrings of flight.
“Shut yer mouth, girl! Be quiet! Do yeh long to be pecked to death?” Sir Gorrann was growing agitated as well. His face was contorted with an anger that seemed to light up the valley. “Yer acting like a child, that’s what yeh are! A spoiled brat who has been given everything! And now, a man brings an army to yer feet and yeh aren’t sure what to do? That’s not for me to tell yeh! I’m just a dirty Spade, a tracker, a broken man, I know yeh see that!”
They were furious with each other now, yelling in whispers, their sentences overlapping, spit flying from their mouths. Sir Gorrann’s forehead pulsed with a purple vein. “Who am I, yeh ask? I am not who I once was, a man with a wife and a daughter. We become who we must to overcome pain and to make things right again! Everything I have done, I have done to get justice for my family! I have not brought yeh this far to have yeh ask someone else what yeh should do!”
Sir Gorrann pointed to one of the vertical rock faces that divided the west and east sides of the valley. His small fire had thrown its light, and their large shadows danced across it. “I know who I see! No matter what Cheshire said, yer still the same person that yeh were before yeh came upon that tea table. It’s not his arrival that has changed anything; it’s just yer understanding of the past. There’s nothing I can tell yeh, but I would say to look with yer own damn eyes!” He began walking toward the sloping path that led down to the valley. “I’ll say goodnight, for yer in a right mood. And if yeh don’t be careful, those birds aren’t going to stay dormant.”