Lithilyn was shaken harshly out of her daze, though she wasn't really sleeping, just closing her eyes and focussing on the endless tapping of the rain on the soft mesa ground. The strong hands gripping her shoulders as she came back into herself were attached to a blurry face in the dark in front of her. It was Gylig, she realized quickly, her friend and long-time confidont when it came to the awful’s of politics. Likewise, he often complained to her about the many peculiarities of commanding as a military man while also dealing with the scruples of aristocrats with no knowledge of how it even felt to stand on the mesa, let alone the intricacies of what it took to keep people alive in the jungle.
He was also the only man who all at once held the same sentiment she held for reform, had the right expertise to lead the guarding force of this deceitful mission, and had enough political pull to not be strung up and tortured for disobedience the moment they returned to the Donai spire city without a hearing… should they succeed and be able to return at all in the first place.
She was pulled sitting by him, and found shrugging off the disorientation harder than expected. Maybe it was in the dense air always hanging in the jungle, maybe it was the ever-present sound of shifting bodies around them of those standing guard and keeping a perimeter, or maybe it was just the darkness that was disorienting her. The real answer she didn’t want to realize, was that it was probably fear slurring her thoughts and warping her sharpness of mind. But letting in any admittance of that fact might just be the last nudge that crumpled her.
“What is it?” she whispered at the shape of his angular face, chin so prominent it curled even slightly upwards.
“We have one man missing,” he whispered harshly, face lit only by the flickering of the blue flames from black torches carried by the star-men that surrounded her at all times.
“You mean taken or killed?” Her voice came out half-chewed, still trying to fully reawaken her reasoning skills.
He twitched before meeting her eyes with grave ones. “We can’t be sure of anything. If it was a swamp lion, we might not have heard it happen if it ended quickly. But that’s an awful coincidence, considering where we are.”
She nodded to his intent, just as sure as him it could have been one of the Ooura responsible. Even one of the overzealous children from earlier would have had the size and overwhelming strength to pull one of theirs off into the night. An Ooura child roughly equalling a Pyathen in size would still be much stronger, simply denser in their physiques. But gone without notice? Well, that was the part that made her by far the most uneasy. “Did anyone witness anything?”
“One. The man who the missing last spoke to.”
“And?”
“The missing man left the camp to relieve himself, and then he just didn’t come back.”
She ran a finger through the tag ends of her richly curled hair. “Is this really something worth waking me up? It’s not that something like this isn’t worth my caring, but isn't this a problem you should have a better solution to than I do? I need rest if I’m to have any chance of speaking to them tomorrow.”
He closed his eyes and winced, only barely discernable in the darkness. “You would have been right. But we found a body.”
She was silent, realizing what he meant. An animal would have been a lot more likely to drag the corpse off into the night than to leave it anywhere it could be found.
He went on when he realized she was waiting for clarification from him. “The corpse was left for us to find on purpose, I believe. It is difficult to speak it, what was done to him.”
She was suddenly thrice awake as a moment ago. “Then don’t. Don’t speak of it.” She stood, suddenly intent on scanning their ranks, studying the oval-shaped perimeter formed by about half of their total number, while the rest slept their shift.
“Should we call it off? We can still reconsider.” He was responding to her apparent alarm, but what he mistook for fear was really just her state of thinking things through amid the stressful circumstances.
“No,” she said, suddenly stilling, stuck staring at one of the blue flames burning beside her. “If we leave without making terms here, my mother's plans will go through. I will be married and our name joined to a human one for the first time in the first time in the kept histories. Which means my mother, in return for handing over half our power and me along with it, will get enough manpower to accomplish her plan, a complete crusade to kill every water system in the Ooura’s territory.” She turned her attention back to Gylig and abruptly leaned in close, whispering now as not to be overheard. “You know as well as I that we must try, even if it costs all of our lives. Queen Fyri is blinded to the fact that her solution is the source of our dwindling food resources to begin with, her ears infected with the worms wriggling in her council. If we let her get her way, there will be an era of starvation and famine. One that innovation cannot catch up with.”
He looked unsure, she thought, despite having come all this way with her. “I have followed you here because I believe what you do, but even if we can reach a peace agreement with these monsters, how can we subvert the marriage going through? I can’t pretend that as we get closer to climbing up into that tree that I’m not beginning to rethink things.”
She shook her head, honestly at a loss. “One thing at a time. If we can convince the Ooura, perhaps maybe we can even convince my mother that peace is the way instead of selling everything meaningful and burning anything that gets in her way.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
He shrugged. “That may be the plan, but it all resides on whether we’re not all torn to pieces the moment they have us cornered and on unfamiliar ground.” He made a half-hearted gesture at the hulking dark shape that was the massive Mew tree holding the Ooura’s so-called chamber of rites. “I honestly think we’ll have an easier time here than with her, once the queen knows what you have done.”
And he wasn’t lying. Asking her mother to see sense would be arguably a harder task, especially given she had already come to an agreement with the Enka. Though that was her fault entirely for not consulting Lithylin whatsoever. Which lead to their predicament now.
Negotiating with the Ooura on her own was the last resort.
Princess Lythilyn refused to accept the marriage to the human prince, but not out of petulance, nor hatred like her mother's constant comments suggested. She would just rather see the palace she had grown up in topple and fall before she would sell off partial control of it, and their dynasty by proxy, not to mention Lythilyn herself, like some trinket. It was just politics, exactly like her mother had taught her. She genuinely believed this was the only way.
They certainly weren’t here, in the dead of night, inside the beating heart of their enemy out of compassion for that very enemy, despite their purpose here also being to the Ooura’s favor, whether she could make them understand that or not. How compassionate could you be for a race of monsters that had millennia of history terrorizing her people? Forcing generations to lock themselves in their spires and maintain constant self-imposed lockdowns within their own white walls for the safety it brought. A miserable life it was, to see the jungle so clearly from afar yet to so rarely experience it for herself.
Much less as she was now, barefooted and hardly more than naked because… well, tradition. So much tradition that even the original histories on the origin of the practice had rotted and decayed, and apparently gone uncopied.
No, her endeavors here could only be stomached when thought of as a worthy sacrifice. Even if she failed, even if her and her entire guard was murdered, it would be worth the chance to stop her mother from going forward with the campaign. And in honesty, she would die with at least the knowledge that her death was one more hindrance in those plans. Every year, there were fewer grazing animals hunted, less wild meat and forage to be found. It was eating at the base foundations of their society. Her mother and the more deeply entrenched political proponents of eradicating water systems simply hadn't been willing to see the truth of what was happening yet, since food shortages were only a problem for their lower class so far, quite a few of whom being the very hunters who were coming back unsuccessful more and more often. Something had to break, and soon. On top of all that, there was the constant cloud hanging over their hunting parties as of the past few years, thanks to the new phenomenon of ambushes conducted upon them without warning, presumably by Ooura, though they never left any trace or leads to confirm it.
Regardless, she was sure it was them. She even had a hunch that the one who initiated contact with her yesterday had something to do with it. He certainly gave off the feeling of feigning cooperation while working in the opposite behind the scenes, unlike the louder one that tried to interrupt the first contact meeting, who, like most of them, was much less subdued about his feelings towards her people. She supposed it hadn’t gotten that one very far besides beaten half to death by the more measured one she negotiated initial terms with.
Savages. All of them were savages.
And yet she needed their help, and them hers, for what little that counted in her conscience.
“I wish I could say I don't know what you mean…” she trailed off, staring up at the unnatural monolith. Of course, besides the chambers hung among its branches, it was natural, just not quite within reason of what the mind could understand to be so. Even though she knew it had a top, and had likely seen it during the journey here, it felt endless, like its shadow wouldn’t end even at the horizon. There was an ambiance to it as well. A warm touch on your soul just for being in its presence.
Lythilyn muttered a quick prayer to her moon-mother and moon-father, foraging the threads of belief out from the tangle of her soul again. And again, she asked for silence, peace, for something to end instead of begin.
She believed just as anyone, but it was an entirely different thing to be in the presence of one of the ancient messengers, perhaps even the Emissary herself. Just like the Enka with their stone ‘statues’, however, she doubted the Ooura had any idea the significance of what stood in their forests.
She took one more moment to consider before turning to him again. “Wake all the guards. They can take shifts sleeping after tomorrow's negotiation.”
“Are you sure?” he said.
“Yes, I want our entire number to be seen standing. But not aggressing. They will not show more than their readiness to the Ooura.”
“Yes, princess.”
“And Gylig?”
“Yes?”
“Two men follow the one every time one needs to relieve himself. Crossbows armed. If we have a single new development, I want to be woken again. For now, though, I do need to rest if I'm to have any hope of negotiating a peace with a language barrier in the way, without even speaking about everything else…”
He nodded sternly. “And we will watch over you while you shall. Sleep among the stars tonight my lady. The jungle is too dirty a place for a queen.”
“Queen one day, maybe. And even then, just of one spire.”
“It could be worse.” And he motioned at the huge tree the circle of elders and chamber of rites were held upon at the center of the clearing. “It will be worse tomorrow, but we will get through it. After that, it's only the palace and time.”
She gave him an affirming nod and then motioned for him to leave. She returned to her bed, knowing her implied agreement to that prospect was a lie. Her eyes shut just after Gylig passed by the ever-present torch bearers to begin waking anyone sleeping and rallying them into good posture.
The palace and time, she repeated in her mind, staring into the blackness inside her own eyelids. More time under the scrutiny and foul of her mother. More time shut inside white walls, watching all the green living in every direction around her.
The raindrops had gotten faster, fatter too, slapping instead of spritzing, making sleep an even less likely prospect.
She ushered the nightmares in. Maybe they would make her feel better.