“You can?” Arin didn’t think she was lost, but it was difficult to be sure. “I’m traveling to Semo. I heard the passage through is north?”
“Only a mile more. But you’ll want to cross at dawn. The Semoian spirits are fussy—they think everyone who crosses at night is an invader, and they tear them apart.” The woman swung back and forth, and her poofy hair swung with her.
Arin wanted to reach out and grab her, but the woman didn’t seem worried about falling. “Definitely don’t want to be torn apart. Thanks. Are you the canopy singer I heard?”
“My name’s Sira. I was preparing the trees for sunset. Everything changes for them when dusk comes. They can’t drink the sunlight anymore, and different birds and creatures scurry across them. I always thought it must be scary for them, so much change every day. So I sing to comfort them.”
“Yeah, night can be scary.” Arin wasn’t sure what else to say to such a speech. And it was true that nights alone in the forest had been terrifying. Suddenly, she didn’t want Sira to leave. “Where do you go at night? Do you have an extra place to sleep?”
“There’s only enough room for my mother and me, and sometimes my brother, when he comes to visit. But now he’s gone to Semo. Oh! There are others on their way to Semo!” Sira smiled even brighter. “You may wish to join them. I’ll take you to them!”
She scampered squirrel-like over the branches, and then swung from a rope to the next tree, laughing as she swooped through the air. Arin hurried to follow as Sira swung from rope to rope, tossing back the ropes each time. It reminded Arin of when she and Daleina were little, before Daleina went to the academy, when they’d race all around the trees. She soon found herself laughing too, until at last Sira stopped on a platform.
To the north, the vast oaks and pines switched to slender birches. In between them, not far away from Arin and Sira, campfire smoke snaked up to the sky. “Mother is with them,” Sira said, “either advising them or yelling at them. Possibly both. You’ll be welcome by their fire.”
“You aren’t coming too?” Arin didn’t love the idea of approaching strangers, despite the fact that Sira had been a stranger ten minutes ago.
“My feet won’t touch the forest floor until it has stories to tell me. I’m not done with the trees yet.” She said it so matter-of-factly that Arin bobbed her head in agreement, as if this statement made perfect sense.
Arin glanced back at the figures around the campfire—she counted four. Three were seated and one stood, but it was impossible to see more detail than that. She turned back to ask Sira another question . . . but the canopy singer was already swinging back through the trees and then climbing, without ropes or ladders, even higher toward the precarious treetops.
My first canopy singer, Arin thought. And she was just as strange as I’d always imagined. It was known to take a special kind of person to spend their lives so high up that the branches might or might not hold your weight. I liked her, though.
Arin located a rope ladder descending from the platform, and she climbed down. By the time she reached the forest floor, the sun had set, and the brightest light was the campfire.
She walked toward it, telling herself to be brave like Daleina. In the distance, she thought she heard the soaring voice of the canopy singer, but the wind stole away half the melody.
By the time she reached the campfire, only three figures surrounded it: two men and a girl who looked to be Arin’s age. Of the three, the girl was the only one who looked up at Arin’s approach. She had blue and black hair drawn severely into multiple braids, and she wore a cloak pinned at her throat with a brooch shaped like a tree with flame-red leaves. She studied Arin with pale gray eyes. Arin stared back, not even sure why she was staring, except that no one had ever looked at Arin so intensely before. Most times, no one notices me at all. Except to note she was the queen’s little sister.
“Hey, I know you!” one of the men said. “You dosed me with sleeping powder!”
Arin blinked, tore her gaze from the pale-eyed girl, and looked at the two men for the first time. I know them! Both of them! The one who had spoken was Renet, Erian and Llor’s father, and the other was one of the champions. It took her a minute to remember his name: Champion Havtru. “I’m sorry about that,” Arin said. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“Guess it was. But you didn’t have any right to endanger my kids.” He was glaring at her, which didn’t seem like a good start. He looked like the kind of person who liked to yell. She wasn’t overly fond of being yelled at. She much preferred it when everyone liked her.
Maybe I should have stayed up in the trees and waited for dawn on my own. But her gaze drifted to the campfire, where skewered meat was already beautifully browned.
The pale-eyed girl touched Champion Havtru’s sleeve and spoke in his ear, too softly for Arin to hear. The champion nodded. “Join us, child,” he said. “We have plenty. And tell us why you’re so far north on your own.”
“Queen Naelin sent me,” Arin said, sitting before Renet could object. “I’m to meet her and Champion Ven in Arkon. We were traveling, then got separated. I’m to rejoin them.”
Champion Havtru squinted at her. “Which is it? She sent you or you were separated? Doesn’t seem like Champion Ven to lose a traveling companion.” He scratched at his beard, and Arin couldn’t tell if he was being curious or if she seemed suspiciously nervous.
I’m supposed to be with them—that much is true. Just because she very strongly suspected Daleina had convinced her champion into bringing Arin home and deliberately leaving her there . . .
The girl lifted one of the skewers off the fire and handed it to Arin.
“Thanks,” Arin said. She blew on it once, then bit into it. She winced as it burned the top of her mouth but didn’t stop eating. “I’m Arin.”
“Cajara,” the girl said softly. Her voice was light and sweet, reminding Arin of a puff pastry. If Cajara were a food, Arin decided, she’d be a dessert.
“Still don’t get why you’re here,” Renet said.
And Renet would be the sour lemonade, before any sugar is added.
“She’s here now,” Cajara said, just as softly as before. “Can’t she travel with us?”
“Renet has a point,” Champion Havtru said, “or could have a point if he weren’t being surly about it.” He pounded Renet on the shoulder, a little too hard to be just jovial. “It’s dangerous crossing into Semo these days. Are you sure that’s where you’re wanting to go?”
Yes. No. Maybe it’s just where I have to go. “Queen Naelin and Champion Ven could be walking into a trap. I can help them.”
“You going to put everyone in Semo to sleep?” Renet asked sarcastically.
It actually wasn’t a terrible idea, though she didn’t have that much of the sleeping powder with her. She’d mostly brought potion-laced charms to slow down spirits. She just shrugged and continued eating. At least I’ll be well fed when I sneak into Semo. “Why are you all going?”
“To escort Ambassador Hanna home, once her work is done,” Champion Havtru said, “as well as Champion Ven and Queen Naelin, if they’ll come.”
“She took guards, didn’t she? Why does she need an escort?” Arin could guess the answer: Because it’s a trap. So before anyone could answer, she pressed on. “Sounds like we’re here for the same reason. Maybe we should travel together.”
Please say yes.
If she traveled with them, they could get her past the border guards. Plus she’d be safer with a champion and . . . a candidate? Was that what Cajara was? She glanced at the girl again and saw Cajara was looking at her.
Cajara blushed and looked down at her hands.
“Are you a candidate?” Arin asked her.
Cajara shook her head without looking up.