“You will do as the ambassador says,” Evenna barked at him. “If she wishes to travel by spirit, we travel by spirit. If she wishes to travel by dancing bear, then dancing bear it is.” Turning to Hanna, she said, “Ambassador, how would you like to proceed?”
Hanna considered it. There was a reason no one traveled via spirit except in dire emergency. You were placing yourself at the mercy of their temperament and trusting in the control of their queen. And these were foreign spirits under the control of a queen whose motives were . . . self-serving, at best. Hanna knew she didn’t have anywhere near the kind of power to wrest control from Merecot if the queen intended them ill. She’d be trusting in Merecot’s desire for diplomacy. Yet that was okay.
I did come here to determine precisely that.
“It is a three-day journey by foot across the mountains,” Serk said. “Treacherous terrain, with all the dangers that go with it. If these spirits are to be trusted—”
“You can’t trust spirits,” Coren objected.
Hanna agreed. But it wasn’t about trusting the spirits. It was about trusting Merecot . . . Frankly, she wasn’t sure which was more deadly.
The spirits waited. One of them pawed the ground with its hoof. The chariot was wide enough for all of them, with velvet-cushioned seats. To reject it would be to insult Merecot, which may have been why she’d sent it—to see what they’d do. “It’s a test,” Hanna said. She’s testing to see if we truly want peace. Or to see how gullible we are. “If any of you wish to return to Aratay, I will send a message with you absolving you of any responsibility. But I will ride.”
Evenna snorted. “Our job is to guard you.” Without hesitation, she lifted Hanna out of her chair and into the chariot, then shot pointed looks at the other guards. Bringing Hanna’s wheelchair and their supplies, the others joined her, cramming together on the cushioned seats. They positioned their packs on the floor between them but kept their weapons accessible, though once they were airborne, there would be little they could do.
Hanna hoped she was making the right decision, for all their sakes.
Running up the path, the spirits stretched their wings out, then kicked off the gravel and soared into the air. Hanna gripped the sides of the chariot as it tilted. Wind rushed in her face, stinging her eyes and battering her cheeks, but she kept looking straight ahead as they flew toward the mountains.
They flew high, bursting through the clouds, until around them was a field of whiteness, broken only by mountain peaks, and then they swooped down, flying between the mountains. Outwardly calm, Hanna kept a firm grip on the side of the chariot as she watched the scenery zip past.
On the side of one mountain, she saw an avalanche: earth spirits tossing rocks back and forth, like children playing catch. As the rocks tumbled down the mountain they sounded like thunder. She watched tree spirits rip apart a boulder by penetrating it with roots that thickened and split the solid stone. Air spirits swirled with storm clouds over another mountain.
Semo, she noted, was thick with spirits. Very active spirits.
Perhaps it’s not so safe after all.
Below in the valleys, she saw towns nestled beside rivers. Strips of bare rocks surrounded them, as if avalanches had fallen again and again toward them but had always been diverted. Their fields were dotted with boulders.
She filed all of this away, cataloguing it in preparation for her first report back to Daleina.
They flew for hours as the sun trekked across the sky from one mountain range to another, until at last Hanna spotted a city carved into the side of a white stone mountain. In the late-afternoon light, it gleamed, its turrets sparkling as if embedded with flecks of diamonds—which it probably was. Waterfalls, brilliant blue, chased down the many levels of the city, and gold flags flew from the peaks of the spires. It was a most impressive sight, and Hanna made sure to be properly impressed. Merecot would certainly expect that. In fact, she had most likely instructed the spirits to bring them in from a direction that would best show off the capital city.
It’s what Hanna would have done.
Flying up, the spirits brought the chariot to the peak of the mountain, where a platform of stone extended in a circle around the snowcapped tip. Hanna felt the chill in the air, and felt the jostle to her bones as the air spirits clattered down on the paving stones.
The horse spirits folded their wings and waited as Hanna’s guards climbed out and then helped Hanna into her chair. For one brief moment, she permitted herself the luxury of anger.
I should be walking out of this chariot, and it’s Merecot’s fault that I’m not.
However, she buried these thoughts away as she always did. Others had lost their lives. She’d lost only her mobility. Still, that word “only” gnawed at her.
After the guards had removed all the packs from the chariot, they fanned out on either side of her, at attention, as if they were honor guards. She wished she’d had the opportunity to freshen her clothes. After all the travel, she imagined she looked rather like a crumpled scrap from the bottom of a pocket.
Again, probably exactly as Merecot intended.
The chariot with its spirit steeds ran toward the end of the platform and off it, sailing into the empty air and then soaring up toward the clouds. Hanna watched them as they disappeared.
“Pleasant way to travel, wouldn’t you say, Ambassador?” a woman’s voice said behind her, and Hanna pivoted her chair to see that Merecot—Excuse me, Queen Merecot, she corrected herself; she’d best remember that here—had joined them on the platform.
She looked . . . well, not quite the same as Hanna remembered. She still pictured her as the gawky, arrogant child who had cheated on her exams. Now that gawkiness had stretched to regally tall, and Merecot wore her jeweled gown as if she’d been born to it. Her throat was encased in gold rings, and bracelets worth more than half the houses in Mittriel covered her upper arms. Her dress was black with a single white stripe down the center, to match her hair, and it was studded with diamonds. An entourage of her guards, clad in steel armor, flanked her.
The Semoian and Aratayian guards sized one another up, and Hanna briefly imagined them as dogs sniffing one another. They stopped short of that, though.
“Headmistress,” Merecot said, a note of surprise in her voice. And then she laughed lightly, though the sound didn’t have much humor in it. “Daleina didn’t share her choice of ambassador with me, only your expected arrival date. I wonder if she thinks you’ll grade me. Do I pass or fail?”
Hanna bowed her head politely. “Your Majesty.” She wondered if Merecot would be foolish enough to mention the wheelchair, or if she’d have the presence of mind to guess the probable cause. No, she wouldn’t bring it up—Merecot had always been shrewd. Not subtle, but shrewd. She wouldn’t begin negotiations by placing herself in a situation that warranted an apology.
Instead, Merecot laughed again, warmer this time. “You know, I hadn’t expected my old headmistress to ever bow her head to me. If I’d known that would be a perk of this job, I would have jumped at it sooner.”
“Queen Daleina and Queen Naelin wish for me to recite various pleasantries to you,” Hanna said. “Do you need to hear them, or can we pretend that I said them and proceed to the rest-and-refreshments stage of the welcome?”
“They didn’t really send pleasantries, did they? Just told you to make some up.”
Like I said—shrewd. “True.”
“Then let’s save us both the hassle. I have much to show you, and we have much to discuss, and you have already had a long journey. Really, I don’t want you falling asleep on me while we’re solving the fate of our nations.”
No wonder Merecot failed diplomacy class, Hanna thought. “Before I trust a single word you say, I will need to see Queen Naelin’s children.”