He didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “Yer Highness, there is a conflict between two of the warriors. Ju-Kule and Freyuk are about to come to blows. Yeh must come quickly—their quarrel will surely end in even more divided loyalty amongst the Yurkei.”
Dinah nodded her head and with a click of her tongue sent her steed galloping toward the camp—a small city of circular white tents that held a thousand Yurkei warriors and, so far, about three hundred rogue Cards. Wonderful, she thought, another problem, another small battle. Planning a war, it turned out, was very complicated and took months to prepare. She bit her cheek nervously as she thought back on all the conflicts that had followed her down from the mountains.
The night she had accepted her fate as Queen, after she had descended from the Yurkei Mountain, she had, along with Sir Gorrann and Cheshire, climbed up into Mundoo’s tent. The fear had returned when she stared up at the ladder, but this time she had something other than survival at hand—she had reasons to live: vengeance and the throne. As the ladder billowed out behind her, Dinah forced herself to climb without fear. I am the Queen. Almost immediately after they began their tense discussion, it was very clear that each member of the war council entered with their own agenda. Mundoo longed for his people’s complete autonomy and independence from Wonderland Palace. In return for his people’s support in battle, he demanded the release of all their former lands back to the Yurkei, all the way north from the Ninth Sea up through the Todren and to the East, from the Twisted Wood until the end of the Yurkei Mountains. He also decreed that a representative of the Yurkei people was to sit on the Queen’s council, once established, and would have a vote in Wonderland’s affairs that both did and did not concern the Yurkei. It was a steep price to pay for her army, one that she would surely feel later if she was indeed crowned Queen. Part of the Yurkei lands included Ierladia, her mother’s hometown, the largest Wonderland stronghold in the North. The negotiations over Ierladia had taken three days, but in the end, a compromise had been reached. Mundoo agreed that the citizens and buildings of Ierladia would remain unharmed under Yurkei rule. While the Yurkei would ultimately own the city, Ierladia would still function as it always had—by doing trade and commerce with Wonderland Palace. The Yurkei would then reap a hefty portion of their taxes as the owners of the city. Tax was a strange concept to the Yurkei, but eventually they seceded to Cheshire’s plan.
Dinah’s newfound father came with his own set of demands: he would take his seat as the Queen’s main advisor, and the head of her council, and he would remain in charge of all of the Cards, as well as the acting Diamond Card in charge of the treasury. His powers would increase to include a seat on the Yurkei council and he would have the power to hold or release prisoners at his will. Without expressly saying so, Cheshire made sure that he would be the most powerful person in the palace, aside from the Queen. Bah-kan wanted lands within Yurkei territory and a royal pardon for his desertion of the Cards, and he would have it, but only if he agreed to be Dinah’s personal bodyguard until she was crowned. Sir Gorrann said that he would negotiate with Dinah alone, but so far he had remained silent and impassive, wanting nothing apparently.