by P. M. Biswas
Nala grunted. “Your presence in our home is offensive.”
The elf, who’d disappeared from his window, opened the door at the base of the tree. He had indigo-hued skin and lively, dancing gray eyes. “I wouldn’t say that. It isn’t offensive. It’s interesting.”
Wonderful. So Tam had been promoted from object to freak show.
“I stayed at home to prepare for my wife’s birthing ceremony, even though everybody else went to court,” Ato said. “But this is too fascinating to resist. I must see what His Majesty has to say about his son consorting with a human.”
“We weren’t consorting.” Tam grimaced as Ato joined their little parade. “Don’t make it sound like some forbidden romance.”
“Is it?” Ato asked eagerly. “Now that’d be a scandal!”
“There is no scandal,” Tam said firmly. “There could never be a scandal. Goodness, you lot are just like the queen’s courtiers. Gossipy and petty.”
“Not petty.” Ato smirked. “Just gossipy.”
“Ah, yes,” Nala said pensively. “The humans have a queen. Was it the crown-wearing female in the procession that brought you to the Wanderwood?”
Tam blinked. And blinked again. “You could see us? Miles away? From all the way over here?”
“I am a Sentinel,” Nala restated, like that explained everything. Her arrow was still up, frequently jabbing Tam between the shoulder blades. Hadn’t Nala gotten tired of holding that bow fully drawn for the hour or so that they’d been trekking through the woods? Tam had trained with the spear for years, but even she would tire at holding a spear aloft for that long. If Nala was not averse to sharing her training regimen, Tam would very much like to inquire about it.
“Yes, that was our queen,” Tam said absently, distracted by the prospect of improving her endurance. Mayhap the elves could be learned from, if this negotiation was successful. “I’m an envoy, I suppose.”
“An envoy,” Nala said darkly. “That means more of you want to enter the Wanderwood.”
“Er. Sorry? We kind of have to. I’ll tell your king everything, I swear on my honor.”
“It claims to have honor,” Ato said, amused. “We shall see.”
“Yeah?” Tam said defiantly. “I’ll make you see.”
“Fighting words.” Ato’s amusement didn’t fade one bit. Curse him.
Tam picked up on a distant hubbub that gained in volume as the trees became even huger, till they were colossal pillars on either side of her. The hubbub gradually became distinguishable as voices, convivial and plentiful. There was music in the background that was an airy admixture of the flute and the lute, a melody without any rhythm, the notes seeming aimless and incidental but blending together in what was unmistakably a song.
That must be the elven court, then. Tam had envisioned a solemn gathering of pontificating philosophers, not unlike Loren with his platitudes, but if they had music at court, then surely it couldn’t be as morose an affair as Tam had pictured.
Tam’s pulse sped up. She would soon be seeing what elven society was really like—not just isolated assignations with princes and Sentinels, but the culture itself. She’d be the first human to ever do so.
Beyond the next copse of trees was a gigantic square filled with elves.
Tam stumbled to a halt. Nala’s arrowhead almost impaled her from behind, but Tam simply could. Not. Budge.
It was just… those elves. So many elves.
Young elves. Old elves. Musicians with fiddle-like instruments in their hands. Mothers shepherding flocks of children along. Girls and boys giggling as they ran about, waving sticks of some type of candied fruit, their mouths sticky and laughing. Here, an elvish man unspooled a bolt of transparent cloth as other elves oohed and aahed at it, and there, a woman with a sharpening stone offered to sharpen what must be kitchen knives. There was no currency changing hands. There was no money. There was only sharing and smiling and singing.
Tam’s heart squeezed within her. Because now she understood. It was only now she truly grasped that the elves were people. People like hers. There were differences, aye, but the differences weren’t important. They weren’t nearly as important as the similarities.
This was why Tam had to succeed. Because she could succeed. It wasn’t inconceivable that the humans and elves could find peace together—therefore, they should. There was no excuse for Tam to go back to her queen and say that an alliance was impossible because the elves and the humans were just too different.
They weren’t. Now that Tam had seen it, she couldn’t unsee it.
Now that Tam had seen it, she had to carry through.
Her mission was achievable. So Tam would achieve it.
The resolve crystallized within her as if it were carved into her very being, a covenant engraved upon the foundation of her soul. She would make this work. She had to. She had no choice.
“Is… is this a court?” Tam asked. “It looks more like a marketplace.”
Ato indicated the group of blue-caped elves flitting through the throng, bearing rolls of parchment on which they were directing the civilians to press their thumbs. “This is a vote,” Ato said, “for which the residents of the Wanderwood have been summoned. It is not compulsory to participate, but almost everybody does. As incentives to attend, feasts, markets, and celebrations are often held alongside the elections. So yes, this is a court. It just happens to coincide with a marketplace.”
“E-elections?” Tam boggled. “But isn’t there a king? You just said there was a king.”
“There is,” Nala replied. “But he is not a tyrant. In matters of policy, King Eras consults with the general populace. Routine laws that have gone unchanged for eons need not have votes cast for or against them, but any new changes must be approved by the citizens.”
“What about the king himself?” To Tam, this was astounding. “Does he occupy the office uncontested, or can he get voted out?”
“He can. Once a decade, there is a vote to reaffirm his position as king. If there are those who are unhappy with his reign, they have the opportunity to stand against him in an election. His throne is not his, but the people’s. He is merely their representative.”
Tam was floored. While Emeraude sometimes organized votes amongst the ministers on contentious topics, the ministers themselves were not elected. They inherited their roles by birthright. As did the royalty. It was a system that Emeraude was not overly fond of, but that she did not reform.
Did that make Emeraude a tyrant? Tam didn’t think so. She didn’t like to think so. If it hadn’t been for Emeraude, Astaris would have been destroyed ages ago. Emeraude knew that. Surely it was why she maintained her own power and the system that justified her having that power. It was all for Astaris.
It had to be.
“Rivkah!” cried Ato when he spotted an elvish woman who was heavy with child and clad in a cheerful yellow dress. She was chatting away animatedly with a cluster of youthful mothers and fathers, their children tugging demandingly on their clothes. “Should you not be resting? If you have cast your vote, I will escort you home!”
Rivkah—evidently Ato’s wife—swept her gleaming russet curls aside as she turned to him. “I’m pregnant, Ato, not infirm. I shall go home when I please. Don’t tell me what I should and should not do. Besides, what are you doing here? Did you not claim you were decorating the baby’s birthing room?”
“I was,” said Ato sheepishly. “A-and it’s nearly done! But there’s been a bit of an, ah… how shall we say, a bit of an incident, and I simply had to see what King Eras would do about it.”
“A human?” Rivkah caught a glimpse of Tam beyond Ato’s shoulder and became hushed. “Oh. Oh my.”
“Precisely.” Ato bounced on his heels, not dignified as Tam had expected all elves to be, but boyish and jolly. “You can’t blame me for shirking my duties, can you?”
“You’d have found an excuse to shirk them anyhow,” Ato’s wife said dryly. “Nala, I must say, you’ve made quite
the discovery.”
“It was but my duty.” Nala, seemingly losing patience with the saccharine domestic bliss being flaunted before her, prodded Tam again. “Pardon us, Rivkah and Ato. We must go to the king.”
So saying, Nala frog-marched Tam ahead of her across the square, toward a platform on which Tam could only just make out a seated figure.
As Tam passed by, the elves saw Tam’s humanness and quieted, their frivolity transforming into unease and curiosity. There were some who only gawked at her, while there were some who nudged each other and murmured into their companions’ ears, likely commenting on this or that aspect of Tam’s alien appearance. There was mistrust in their eyes, a mistrust that cast Tam as other, as foreign. By the time Tam had crossed the square, its festive atmosphere had ground to a halt.
Tam almost felt remorse for ruining it.
The platform on which the king sat was a raised, symmetrical clump of tree roots, one of which twirled upward, widening into a vaguely chair-like structure. It was on that chair that the king was seated, and it was from there that he presided over the court.
So this was King Eras. Loren’s father. He did have Loren’s aristocratic features and flaxen hair, but unlike Loren’s not-quite-there abstraction, Eras was very much present, his eyes as keen and discerning as a hawk’s.
“Sentinel,” the king addressed Nala even as his gaze settled calmly on Tam. “I see that you have brought us a guest. The trees told me that you would be arriving with company, but they neglected to mention that the company was human.”
“Your Majesty.” Nala inclined her head. “Before we proceed, I ask that you place additional guards on the human.”
“You’ve done an exemplary job of guarding her yourself. But you are correct. We cannot take a chance. Guards,” he said, and Tam leaped about a foot in the air when elves with weapons melted out of the nearby trees. She hadn’t seen them there. They couldn’t have been there. “Take up positions around the human,” Eras instructed, and the guards obeyed wordlessly. “Nala, you may proceed with your report.”
Nala lowered her bow at last, slinging it across her back. “This human calls itself Tam. It alleges that it is acquainted with Prince Loren, who it says saved its life. It also penetrated the defensive perimeter around the Wanderwood, piercing our illusory spells and reaching the Pool of Healing, where it says it first met the prince. Since a breach of our defenses is of the utmost concern, I brought the human to you myself. Else it would have roamed about within our boundaries and potentially caused damage to our home. It may be a saboteur.”
“I’m—I’m not a saboteur! Also, I’m not an ‘it.’ How many times do I have to say that before you—er.” Tam realized that she was in the presence of a king, and that sassing Nala in front of him may not be the best idea. “Your Majesty. My apologies. I’m Tamsin Bladeborn, a human from the, um. Humans.” Gods, that was a pathetic introduction. Not to mention that Tam was struggling to look past the barricade of ridiculously tall elves caging her in. All she could see from where she stood was Eras’s eyebrows. She couldn’t talk to eyebrows. “Your Majesty? I’m rather short, in case you hadn’t noticed. So could you maybe… ask these very dashing guards to part enough for me to see you from between them?”
There was an odd coughing sound from the king. It reminded Tam of Loren’s laughs. Sure enough, when Tam rose on her tiptoes and craned her neck to try to catch his expression, the king had a hand pressed to his mouth, as if hiding the edges of a smile. “Move aside, Mayka, Ronil. Give the child a gap through which to see.”
Child. On the one hand, Tam hated being called a child. On the other hand, it was a step up from “it.” As the guards parted for her, Tam gave the king a little wave. “Hello! Er, as I was saying, I’m Tam. I’m on a mission of peace. My queen, Queen Emeraude, sent me to you as a herald, to establish safe passage for her diplomatic delegation.”
“Well, Tam, human from the humans,” Eras echoed her wryly, and Tam winced at having her poor phrasing thrown back at her. “Why should I believe that a queen would send an adolescent as a herald? And if she did, why should I respect a queen that uses children as pawns?”
“I’m not a pawn,” Tam snapped, before recalling that she had to be civil. “S-sorry. I’m a willing participant. A volunteer, even. The queen gave me this task because I was the only human to have met an elf.”
“Prince Loren,” the king said. “My son.”
“Yes. If… if you don’t believe my version of events, please call on the prince to verify my tale.”
“That’s what she says, Loren,” said the king, and like the guards, Loren just manifested out of the crowd, coalescing like a ghost. Creepy bastard. So he’d overheard everything but hadn’t bothered coming forth until now? How considerate of him to abandon Tam like that. “Is it true? Did you bring a human into the Wanderwood without permission?”
“I did.” Loren was straight-backed and nonchalant, crossing his hands idly behind his back, like he was in the middle of a relaxing morning stroll.
Tam wished she had that much composure when defending her own rule-breaking. She tended to stutter incurably when confronted by the queen.
Eras rested his chin on his palm. He didn’t look overly distraught either. It could just mean that he trusted his son, or that he wasn’t as bothered by Tam as all the other elves clearly were. It could also be his age; he was among the very few elves who had wrinkles, which meant he was older… and wiser. That might be what had gotten him elected as king and why he didn’t refer to Tam as an “it.” Maturity must have tempered his prejudices, just as Emeraude’s maturity had tempered hers. “And why did you do that?”
“She was dying,” Loren said. “As per our laws, a living being cannot be allowed to die if there is recourse to save it.”
The onlookers—among whom Tam spotted Ato, watching avidly—breathed a collective, audible sigh of relief, as if Loren’s actions were now wholly justified. What, they hadn’t believed Tam when she’d said Loren had saved her life, but they believed Loren?
Then again, he was their prince. And right now he was acting like it—his chin up and his spine unbowed with the pride of an aristocrat who was convinced he had done no wrong.
“But if that was so, why did you not tell us?” Eras spread his hands. “We could have aided in her rescue.”
“It was—it was very urgent.” A faint pink tinged Loren’s cheeks. “She was—her body was—not that I was paying attention to her body,” Loren blurted, and Eras arched an eyebrow.
“Indeed?”
Loren was growing pinker by the second. “But her body was shredded by bladed weapons, some of them poisoned. I had to take immediate action.”
Like the blades that poisoned Borik and led to his amputation. Tam shivered; Loren had saved her from that too. He’d saved not only her life, but her limbs and her use of them. An unwilling gratitude lodged itself just beneath her tongue, prompting her to say thank you.
For once, Tam listened to that prompting. Tact was not her forte, but this was a diplomatic endeavor, and the least she could do was voice those icebreakers that did come to her mind. “Thank you,” Tam said, and Loren’s eyes flicked to her before flicking hastily back to his father.
What, couldn’t Loren even do her the courtesy of looking at her? Tam scowled at him, but Loren wasn’t paying her any attention. His stance had grown tense, and if Eras took note of that, he did nothing about it.
Instead, Eras said with a dangerous equanimity, “Still, you could have alerted us after the most critical phase of the healing had finished. You could even have apprised us of what had transpired after she left the woods. Why didn’t you?”
Loren cleared his throat. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Cleared his throat again.
Tam hadn’t a clue what was going on, but she decided she liked it better when Loren was floundering for explanations like a real person and not sticking his nose up like a fairy-tale prince.
“There must be another reason yo
u engaged in this highly unusual subterfuge.” Eras’s piercing eyes narrowed as he considered his son. “Could it be that you made a mistake in the healing process? A mistake you were too ashamed to confess to?”
Loren’s pinkness had deepened into an outright red. “She wasn’t supposed to come back,” Loren mumbled, then glared at Tam like this was all her fault. “Why did you come back?”
Tam seethed. Anger simmered within her at such unfair treatment. So Loren had only healed her because of some antiquated law and not because of any innate decency. So what? That didn’t mean he had the right to be rude to Tam like this. “Why did I come back? Because I’ve been sent here, that’s why! It’s not like I wanted to come back. I was just as happy about not having to see your pasty face again as you were about never seeing mine!”
Loren spluttered. “My face isn’t pasty!”
“No, I bet you think it’s fair.” Tam snorted. “Fair and oh-so-handsome. As if.”
“Loren,” chastised the king, and Loren startled, looking appalled at having spoken like that in public. The elves in the square were ogling Loren as if they barely recognized him.
Tam grinned in triumph. If she could claim to have an area of expertise, it was getting people into trouble—mostly by baiting them into speaking their minds.
“I see,” said Eras, like Tam and Loren’s exchange had been consequential and meaningful and not just a blatant exhibition of mutual spite. “My son, could it be that you have bonded with this human?”
There was a ringing silence.
Loren appeared to have been petrified into a pillar of salt. The elves in the square appeared to be having a collective out-of-body experience. They all wore expressions of such sheer, flabbergasted disbelief that had Tam been a court artist, she would’ve been compelled to paint those expressions. Even Ato’s jaw was hanging open. This probably far surpassed his hopes for a romantic scandal.
As for Tam, she was—
What was she feeling? Frothing-at-the-mouth wrath was there, that was for certain. Righteous indignation at having been dragged into some mystical union, against her will and without her say-so, was there as well.