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“Why me?” Vai asks him.

“Your experience. The court needs someone who can bring people to an agreement.”

“I wasn’t applying for a job.”

“No.”

“Did you tell him what I’d cost, or did you start with my qualifications?”

I close my hand around the seal. “He told the guard he was bringing a bride named Vaidemara. The guard sent for me. That is everything I knew before I came here.”

She absorbs that without speaking.

Beneath my feet, old roots stir toward her. The forest has been restless since she crossed the boundary. Now warmth rises through the wet earth where she stands.

Tauremak presses through the roots beneath me, urgent enough to interrupt my attention. For centuries I have felt that old awareness warn of hunger, flood and disease. Now it is tending the patch of ground under her feet.

It has never welcomed anyone this way.

Vai glances down. A white flower opens against her boot.

I close it before Neimura can see.

“I need somewhere to sleep,” she says. “And I need to know what you’re going to do with this marriage.”

“I need to find out how to end the marriage without returning you to the market.”

“Then find out how long I have to stay here, too.”

“I’ll have answers for you tomorrow. Tonight, a room of your own. You decide who enters it.”

“And you?”

“I’ll sleep in my own room.”

Color comes into her face. She looks down at my chest, then sharply back up.

“Good.”

I turn to the remaining guard.

“Fetch Reivaka. Tell her we need a guest room.”

He leaves through the trees.

Vai finally comes beneath the canopy. She keeps her distance from me.

“Is Reivaka another representative?”

“She looks after the paths and the living halls.”

“Has she bought anyone recently?”

“No.”

“Then she’s already my favorite person here.”

A laugh catches in my chest. I have been deciding which room needs warming, which path to open, and she has managed to make me laugh in the middle of it.