The chamber in which Lithilyn was seated was one more familiar to her than her own rooms, in some ways. Only that she was usually used to being seated alongside her mother up on the dias, looking down on the brightest minds of high society in the concession seating below. This time, she was the one down below, set on making a proposal so those with no more claim to knowledge than they–just a better name–could make the final decisions.

  It was an experience that gave her a modicum more sympathy for the many vibrant minds who had stood here before her, especially the minority of them who shared her same worries of overusing their soil killer, most of which had been met with the kind of curt dismissal by their queen that one gave when a pet had been caught acting out.

  “You could have been killed,” Queen Gwyn repeated for what must have been the fifth time in this conversation. Her white hair framed an even whiter face, pale even for an elf from how little she let the sun touch it.

  Next to Lithilyn, Gylig stifled a sigh and opened his mouth but was cut off by the queen’s further bickering.

  “My daughter, torn apart by animals. What of the family name? What of our legacy? All would be forgotten in the face of a tarnish like that.”

  Dramatic, as usual, but Lithilyn had learned not to even insinuate as much. And yet, at last there was a break in the one sided conversation, so she took it with both arms and squeezed with everything she had. “Maybe, but the reward was worth that risk. I am more sorry than words can say of what I did. But make no mistake, I did not do it to slight you or to make us appear weak. We already do,” Lithilyn said.

  A silence tighter than a bow string hung for a moment as Lithilyn decided just how she wanted to broach this next part. Even going over it a thousand times in her head on the way back here, she knew a prepared speech wouldn’t work. The Queen was erratic, prone to whims of emotion and paranoia. This would not be a game of logic, but a play to whichever emotions the queen was displaying strongest at the current moment.

  “We are weak. Regardless of the causes, we can all agree that much. Wielding the strongest weapon is nothing while our food supply dwindles. Morale smoulders, soon to be nothing but ash,” Lithilyn said. “Which is why I took it upon myself to go against you. I know you are afraid, we all are, but in your fear you have let our reliance on the successes of the past push us to radical extremes. I know what it is you want, mother.”

  “Total eradication of the Ooura,” Queen Gwyn took it upon herself to answer. “Nothing less than a permanent solution is viable any longer.”

  “It does have a ring to it,” Prince Rollo muttered from beside her, intentionally too quiet for the queen to hear.

  “And yet,” Lithilyn continued, keeping her focus on her mother, “what you really want is not a means, it is an end. Peace. No more targeting of our hunting parties, let alone throwing lives away on open battlefields for arbitrary expansion. I am not opposed to the ends, but as you know, I do oppose the means. However, I am relieved to report that my first diplomatic mission–”

  The queen snorted, but Lithilyn bit down on her anger and continued anyway. “... my first diplomatic mission with the Ooura has been a success. I have come to an agreement with them.”

  Another snort.

  Lithilyn could actually hear Gylig’s leather gloved hands tightening.

  “They have agreed to a complete cease to raiding, only reserving the right to defend what villages they have left. In return, they proposed concessions from us, though I was successful in negotiating them down to extremely little, considering what they offer.”

  “A proposal? From them? What is their offer? What concessions?”

  Lithilyn smiled subtly despite herself. “An end to their raiding on hunting parties. In exchange, we provide for them nothing more than a few easily replaceable weapons they could never reverse engineer without our infrastructure.”

  “What weapons, exactly?” Queen Gwyn asked.

  Rollo leaned almost imperceptibly forward, betraying his own curiosity.

  Lithilyn took a deep breath, and braced for all her efforts, all the risk she had undertaken in this gamble that even she knew had been an insane act of desperation, to either be realised for the value it held or thrown away for the sake of nothing but spite and fear.

  For the first time in years, her mother actually managed to surprise her.

  ***

  Banon was clad head to toe in so many arapaima scales he looked like some kind of upright-stranding, humanoid lizard. He strode out from the cover of the treeline, his eyes dancing in a dozen different directions.

  He stopped some ten paces from the cart. It was in the exact place the Pyathen’s followup messenger had said it would be, the whole thing shrouded in some kind of dense cloth perhaps to ward away the elements. Or, perhaps, to hide what was underneath until the moment he got close enough. There was a large T shape protruding from under the cloth. If this was a ploy, it seemed they had still brought at least one item that was asked for to ensure he would approach. It had been not even a full week since the negotiations took place. He had to give to to them, the elves were nothing if not prompt when they decided to be.

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  After checking over his surroundings and waiting long enough to be sure there were no itchy fingered crossbowmen in range, he held his hand upwards, three fingers pointing upwards.

  Then, taking painful care with each deliberate step, he crept forwards.

  There were no ground based traps there to ensnare him, just open ground covered in churned up moss from where the cart had likely been turned around. Banon tentatively lifted the covering with one hand, his obsidian knife held in the other. He’d half expected a trap, perhaps soldiers, perhaps an explosion of acid in his face. But instead he found exactly what was promised. The cart was full of crossbows, along with several bundles of bolts.

  Letting the cover fall, he raised his free hand and held two fingers outstretched this time. Moments later, two of his men came bounding out of the nearby jungle. Banon didn’t take the time to look back at them, keeping his eyes fixed on the opposite treeline for any sign of threats. He almost thought he spotted a patch of shrubbery just a little bit out of place in color than the rest, but backup had already arrived, so he let the tiny incongruous details be.

  Together, the three Ooura pulled the cart away into the safety of the dense jungle.

  ***

  Prince Rollo adjusted his cloak. It was awful, scratchy as could be, covered in mock foliage as it was. But the worst part of all was that it left nothing distinguishing him as the leader of this operation.

  Scattered among the low lying shrubbery near him were dozens of human soldiers, all camouflaged just like him. They’d even taken the time to pile real foliage on one another to some extent, though Rollo had hastily declined when offered. If the difference between him being spotted was being scratchy all over and painted green as he already was, and being green, scratchy, and buried in dirt and moss all at once, he could without doubt say being spotted was the more palatable option. Even their crossbows had been painted as to obscure the glint of metal from any watchful eyes. As dull as the Ooura were in most matters, Rollo had heard enough about them to know their savagery was far from their only similarity to animals. They had the same heightened senses as them also.

  He’d almost thought that one clad in the scale-armor even spotted him, for a moment there, but thankfully even the Ooura were not that perceptive. Even so, Rollo had never given the call to fire upon him, nor the other two that joined him.

  Whoever the one in the armor was, he was clearly a good enough tactician for Rollo to hesitate. Rollo had more than half expected for a dozen or more of them to amble up, dragging their knuckles and knocking on each others heads with sticks like apes. But after seeing how cautious they were, how measured, and most unsettling, how coordinated, he made a split decision and decided against following through with the ambush.

  Those Ooura having a proper counter maneuver prepared for an ambush was unlikely, even with what he had seen. But regardless, three lives was not near enough for him to bother giving themselves away. Besides, when the queen had commanded him to do this, it had been with the express permission to act as he deemed fit. Lithilyn knew nothing of it, of course. And both Rollo and queen Gwyn had been equally unsure whether it would be worth springing the attack to begin with, so why add unnecessary worry to Lithilyn’s pretty head. Besides, starting a marriage off being caught in a lie was woefully unnecessary, and if there was no blood shed here, there need need be no explanations of why he had turned her whole plan on its head.

  From the start, this side-mission had been more about information gathering, and information had been gathered. Oh yes, it had. And more of it had, by quite a bit, than he had thought possible in something as simple as a little hand off of goods.

  As the last signs of the cart disappeared, Rollo pulled out his spyglass–a new Pyathen invention the queen had used as an incentive to convince him his time was best spent sweating in the jungle rather than indulging in the novelty of Pyathen cuisine. Reluctantly, he had conceded that there would be plenty of time for that later.

  For now, using the spyglass gifted, he scanned the treeline those three had emerged from with the kind of amplified clarity only a bird of prey could hope to match without this kind of artificial supplementation. The low ground was empty, as expected–the Ooura always preferred to move in the canopy, like monkeys. The first few layers of branches closest to ground were as well. He scanned yet higher, not expecting to see much either. If there were any scouts watching from afar, they would have likely left by now.

  Idly, he continued his scanning. In honesty, using this new piece of Pyathen ingenuity was reward in and of itself. He could see the grain in bark from so far that when he took away the spyglass, the tree itself was nothing but a fuzzy line to his unenhanced senses. He lingered on spot of bright red that stood out from the greens and browns. A bird. It was a beautiful creature, practically glowing with color, curved of beak and wide of feather. And he could tell all that from such a distance… What advantages this device might present on the battlefield tickled his ambition.

  He smiled, still watching the bird where it was perched on a curved branch that sprung from a tree trunk at an odd angle. It was busy cleaning the long feathers sprouting from its haunches when, to the equal surprise of both Rollo and the bird itself, the branch began to move, startling the bird and causing it to dive away with a squawk.

  Rollo’s heart skipped a beat.

  The ‘branch’ he could now see, had been a bow, and the Ooura holding it was only now visible thanks to the movement. Rollo had been looking right at him. A full sized Ooura, probably twice his own height, and he had been staring at him for minutes without even realizing. Then again, neither had the bird. And in both their defenses, the Ooura’s grey skin matched incredibly closely to the color most tree species bark had in the jungle, and the bastard had been so utterly motionless there was not a chance Rollo would have realized what he was looking at had he not decided to move. He was pretty sure there had even been painted on mottling on the skin to resemble bark even more accurately. Rollo pulled the spyglass from his eye after watching the Ooura leap two branches over, fading out of sight.

  He couldn’t be sure how many more there had been like him working overwatch, but he was certainly glad he hadn’t been forced to find out. He had less than a hundred out here with him, due to constrictions of time and how surprisingly difficult it was to properly camouflage so many. If it weren’t for the Donai having most of these cloaks already made for use by their death droppers, there never would have been no chance at a reconnaissance mission like this one whatsoever, let alone bringing enough that they had even considered turning it into something more deadly.

  He was, however, very curious to hear what the Donai family might think of this new development in Ooura armor. Maybe they knew of its existence already, but maybe not. Perhaps it was a one off, some personal project of this one he had watched leading the charge on taking the cart, and therefore unlikely to become a mass produced norm for the savages, but perhaps not. Even a small chance was still a chance.

  And most certainly worth reporting to the queen, perhaps even the daughter as well. Her idea of what the solution to the Ooura problem was might be impossible in the long run, but she had a strong mind nonetheless.

  A mind who might draw conclusions he could use towards his own ends.