Treeline

Sunset-lit mist lies in the valley, drifting like smoke by branches thick enough to be ancient trees themselves, bushy groupings of green leaves at their tips, the trunks wide enough to house a palace. From here, I can see hints of tiny rope ladders and staircases hammered into the wood, people the size of ants climbing between dark pocks, larger winged figures flying.

“Whoaa! That a giant tree village? This place exists? I thought it was just some kinda legendary myth!”

“It’s certainly a sight.” No charred limbs, no half-decimated trunks, or fire swallowing the smaller shrubbery along the valley floor. Tienyo took Treeline, the Woods of Legend, and slayed its spirit, leaving only scrub and rock choking the bleeding sludge of its river between jagged stumps. A desolate place where only lonely owls and skinny wild deer lived.

“Ya got that look on your face again. The ‘everything’s different in the future’ one.”

“Considering there wasn’t much left of it the last time I was here, it’s very different.” I urge my horse along the trail snaking down past scrub and false pine. “But that’s true for just about anything in the world I knew.”

“Treeline was destroyed?” Sister snaps me a sharp glance from behind.

“Yes. Burned to jagged stumps, wasteland, whatever you want to call it.” I widen the gap between us, my horse surefooted enough to make its way easily.

“Even with the woodland’s guardian? I find that hard to believe—”

“Do you now.”

“It’s not that far away, either. We could have marched to reinforce it.”

“We could have—” I meet her eye over my shoulder “—if a certain empress hadn’t sent everyone to Riverrun for a minor skirmish.”

Her lips press together. “You blame me for it.”

“I told you to leave a guard at Nachisi. You didn’t listen.”

“Well, couldn’t you have gone back and changed things?”

“You didn’t want me to.” Mostly because that was where we defeated Tienyo. The sacrifice of Treeline and its guardian was worth the cost, apparently. “But we’re here now, aren’t we?”

I watch her frown, clearly troubled. It’s funny, the difference a century or two makes.

We’re almost at the wood-woven gates in the strong thorny wall by the time she speaks again, the dappled shadows of twilight flickering over bushes and grassy ground. “This time, we won’t fail. Perhaps we made bad decisions there, but we know more than we did then. It will be different, this time.”

“Assuredly.” I halt before the gates as movement stirs above them, a pair of guards peering over to shine down blue-lit lamps—one gryphon, one bowman. Likely companions.

“State your name and purpose!”

I sneeze. “Imperial Princess-heir... gh, Haimilia Dynai, and her Imperial Guardian, Dyste-Eino. We’ve come from Nachisi. Looking for the Sunrise Warriors Akir Thunderaxe and Jeanu Goldquill.”

They murmur to each other for a moment as I fight off another sneeze, the second calling out this time. “Got any seals, or just those clothes? If you’re sick though, we don’t want no plague.”

“It’s not plague, just a chill.” I take out my locket and toss it up, the man nearly fumbling the catch. “How’s this?”

He nearly drops it once it's opened. “I ah, ah yes. My apologies, your highnesses. I’ll escort you the— to the magistrate right away!”

He can’t toss it back quick enough, the gates creaking open to let us through. As our horses plod in, mine eyeing the grass at the roadside, Sels peers at our guide as he bows stiffly and leads the way. “Who put a rat up his pants? It’s just got a super fancy seal and a lady carved in it, and she’s not even naked.”

“It’s a personal item. Father had them made for each of us after Mother died. You’d have to be bold to steal it.”

“Hey, why ya givin’ me that look. I returned it! Even after ya said I could keep it, which means no beheadin’ right?”

“Depends on if anyone would believe I gave my permission.”

She makes a face. “Yeah if I couldn’t find ya I was gonna bury it in the forest or somethin’.”

“Hm, I didn’t get that impression.”

“I was just goin’ out to chuck it when that ugly fissure thing tried to flatten town and then you were there, so I was gonna give it to ya, but then ya nearly got stabbed, and then ya threw up all over me and passed out!”

“So you used it to bribe my guard into taking you with us, instead?”

“Uhhhh....”

I shake my head, following our escort along the trail of gnarled roots towards the largest tree, a beautiful wrinkled old giant so large I can’t see around her to the other end of the darkening valley. Trickling streams run between roots under the feet of munberry bushes, the last calls of bell-ringer birds echoing with flashes of golden feathers. A peaceful place.

Most people peer down at us from lamp-lit wooden bridges, few passing along the ground trails. Quite a few gryphons perch on branches, curious younger fledglings flying past making Sels’s ears perk.

“Hey, I thought ya said there weren’t a lotta gryphons around here.”

“Not in Nachisi.” I bring my gelding to a halt at the base of the trunk, a closed door lit by twin blue lanterns set between gnarled roots. “Treeline is the city of the gryphons, there are more of them here than there are humans. This might be where Jeanu hatched.... I can’t remember if it was here or one of the smaller villages further north. He always took any excuse to visit, in any case.”

Even an urgent summons to Nachisi....

“Ah— just let me announce you.” The guard pushes through the door, leaving us standing there holding our horses, an oversight which sister clearly judges from the look on her face.

Fortunately for us, a servant comes out a moment later—a young woman in an airy dress with a kind smile. “Welcome, your highnesses. Let me take your horses for you— the magistrate will be seeing you soon, please go on inside.”

We do so, our things taken care of by the other servants as we’re ushered in to the warm central chamber, one girl even handing me a spare handkerchief.

“Thank you very much.” I take my place behind sister, blowing my nose as she folds easily onto her knees before the horse-sized gryphon magistrate.

His large owl-eyes look about as disapproving as she does. “...Welcome, Princess-heir and Guardian.”

I sneeze again. The change in temperature isn’t helping me here.

“Thank you, magistrate,” sister says primly.

“May I—” he doesn’t quite scowl at another round of nose-blowing, but his tail is flicking “—ask why you came to visit Treeline? Have plans for your official instatement changed?”

“No, magistrate. We are here because of the troubling business concerning Akir Thunderaxe and Jeanu Goldquill....”

As she lays things out, I let my attention drift to the walls decorated with woven tapestries, hung lamps throwing everything in a calm blue-white light.

“Hmph, they thought there was fissure activity. We haven’t seen anything to suggest it. ‘A chill’, they said, as if that was enough to justify it.”

I watch him fluff his mane of gold-brown feathers. “None of you have sensed anything in recent times?”

The words of old Madam Kasanma come back to mind. A chill in the northeast, hm....

“The wood’s guardian would let us know, and we have seen no sign.” He huffs, sleek black-lion tail flicking. “There is no reason to worry. Our people are well, our woods healthy. They will find nothing.”

“Then why have they been gone three days?”

“To vest themselves of the shame of telling us we were right, I expect. Who knows where they went to.”

“And where did they last go to?”

“To the grove.” Sister gives me a look. “You weren’t listening, were you?”

“Forgive my wandering attention, my mistress.” I bow piously. “Then I suppose, magistrate, it sounds like we’ll be heading to the grove.”

“I have told you there is nothing there.” He stands, pompously fluffing out his feathers and his considerable girth. “And I will not give you permission to go there, in any case.”

Is that so. I raise my eyebrows politely, the effect somewhat negated by my nose choosing to drip. “You don’t own the grove. Only Kukunoshi can choose who does or doesn’t enter.”

“And it is our duty to keep our woodland free of all and company trampling through our most sacred grounds.”

I wonder.... “You’d deny even the Princess-heir and her guardian?”

“You are not heir yet,” he declares, looking down his small beak at sister, before turning to do the same, but more judgementally, to me, “and you renounced your claim to the throne, cursed-prince. Unless the Emperor orders it, you have no authority here. You can wait here for your friends, or find they’ve gone to another village. And that is my final word.”

“You don’t have much respect for those above you, do you.” Sister stands smoothly, her cool demeanour not quite as impressive as it will be, but still apparently enough to make Magistrate huffpuff twitch. “You should know, I don’t forget a slight, Magistrate.”

She turns, not a bend in her spine, and walks out. “Come then, my guardian. We shall take our leave.”

And later tonight, we shall ignore his ruling, is what she doesn’t say.