The massive royal tent was empty save for a few essential people. Somehow, this include me. We all sat at a strategic planning table, complete with a map of the realm, dotted with what looked like chess pieces. They must have been representations of military forces, as it looked like some were scattered across the map, while most of them were tightly grouped on the location where we were encamped. I noticed that while the Queen’s men were all figures of elegantly carved wood, shaped into the royal seal, Hazuzu’s men were haphazard objects, found at the last second. One of them was a coin, another looked suspiciously like a discarded apple core. I suppressed a grin; while it might seem like a slight to other foreign leaders, I was almost positive that Hazuzu chose that himself. He would find that amusing, with his strange sense of humor.

The Queen sat looking at the table in front of her, reading the map the way it was intended, each of the labels facing her. The rest of us had to make do. I sat opposite the Queen, so everything I read was upside down. Hazuzu, at her right side, was leaning over her shoulder, peering at the makeshift pieces we’d been shifting around. The Queen’s captain on her other side stood straight, not sitting at the table like everyone else, but merely peeked at the board from over his nose. He looked both bored and terrified, and I almost admired how he managed to pull off both expressions on his smug face. Alathor, forever the transparent bureaucrat, paced back and in forth, wearing a small rut in the dirt below as he muttered and wrote fervently in his notebook behind Hazuzu. His aura waxed and waned, his mood erratic as he tried to record everything that had been happening. Hazuzu’s aura, however, was just as inky dark as usual, oozing power, and absorbing light.

The Queen slammed her hand onto the table. “Damn it,” she cursed. “He’s picked a damned impenetrable fortress.”

Sage nodded grimly. “The castle of Liara, sitting high in the mountains. It’s been damaged over the years, as nature takes its course, but still impossible to get to. He’d be able to pick us off, one by one, if we try and go in there.”

“Could we send in a stealth team to rescue Callie?” I asked, interjecting myself into the conversation. I was met was hostile glares.

“It’d be a suicide mission,” Sage told me, his mouth pulled into a taut line. “And there’s no guarantee you – or Callie – would be able to get out alive.”

I sighed, defeated, yet still determined. “There has to be a way.”

“There is something we could try,” Hazuzu said finally, his stare blank at the table in front of him. “But it’s risky, too. There’s no telling how he would respond.” He raised his head to look at each of us in turn.

“Well, what do you suggest?” Queen Selissa said, the impatience coming through despite her attempt to even her tone.

“We ask for her,” he said. “We propose a trade. Her for me.”

Each of us startled, taken aback.

“But that would lose us you!” Sage shouted, surprised.

“You’re not listening,” he insisted. “We propose a trade. I’m what he really wants, so he should bite. We arrange a meeting place - a battlefield of our choosing. He’ll expect trouble, surely, but he just might bring Callisto. We would be able to bring her to safety, and then defeat Zaavi.”

“Unless he kills us,” I said, exasperated.

“Yes, unless he kills us,” Hazuzu nodded.

The Queen sighed, resting her elbows on the table and leaning forward, placing her head on her hands. “In the interest of time, it’s the best option we have.” After a deep breath, she rose again, looking around. “How do we send him a message?” She looked to Hazuzu. “A portal?”

Sage shook his head, rising a single finger in suggestion. “No, too dangerous. He could trap us there. Write the letter, and I have a way to get it to him.”

“But wait – have we decided where we’re going to do battle?” I asked. I couldn’t have been the first one to have thought of this.

“That’s already been determined,” Selissa said authoritatively. “I’ve been considering and planning it this whole time you’ve been gone. With my reinforcements arriving this evening by sea, we’ll be able to mobilize to the location as soon as I get word from them.”

“Oh,” I said, settling back down. “Well, that’s good. Kind of important.”

“Write the letter, Selissa,” Sage said pleasantly. “Ask him to come to your spot, bring Callie, and trade for Hazuzu. I’m confident this will work.”

Selissa nodded, gesturing to her captain that she needed a quill and ink, along with parchment. Almost immediately, he came back with the necessary tools. She scribbled some words down, and though if I were to judge by the sound, the words should look like chicken scratch. However, when she presented the finished task, the handwriting and calligraphy was impeccable, down the last dot on every letter ‘i’.

“You all should sign it,” she said. “Add your magical signature so he knows it’s genuine.”

“How does one… do that?” I asked, curiosity winning over my fear of the unknown.

“Um, you… lick… the signature,” she said, embarrassed. “Blood works too but giving someone your blood is highly unrecommended. And unsanitary. Not to mention far more painful than just licking something.”

I watched in disbelief as Sage, Hazuzu and Selissa each took their turn to sign, wait for the parchment to dry, then carefully lick the parchment, presumably on or around their signatures. How positively bizarre.

“Now that that’s finished,” Selissa said, rolling up the parchment and sealing it with a bit of her wax, pressing it with her seal. “How do we send this? The post surely doesn’t deliver there.”

Sage chuckled. “Give me the letter,” he said. “I’ve an old friend that’ll do me this favor.” He waved his hands in the air lazily.

The gentle, small action he just performed elicited a reaction stronger and wilder than I would’ve expected. The North wind came swirling in, screaming past the tent flaps, and ending with fluttering turbulence around Sage, teasing his hair into amusing shapes as a greeting. Apparently when not restricted to Sage’s living quarters, the North wind likes to make a ruckus when able.

“Hello, North,” he chuckled, smoothing out the mohawk he’d been given. “I need you to do something for me.”

North gusted in response, and though I didn’t speak directional wind spirit, I had an idea that it was an agreement. North had been eager to help us pack our bags in his cottage when I’d first seen Sage summon him, so I was sure he’d be willing to do something that was actually important to the ream. Hopefully.

“I need you to deliver a letter to Zaavi the Cursed,” he said to North, resulting in a heavy wind around the tent. “I know, I know, that one. But he’s out, and now he’s in castle Liara, in the mountains. It’s dreadfully important. Could you bring it to him? And if he has a response, could you bring that back, too?”

The North wind whistled a merry tune, fleeting in and around the table legs, nearly threatening to remove the tablecloth. Then, it snatched up the letter in a vortex and swiftly gusted away cheerfully. The air settled in the tent, each of us looking shocked and windswept, as if we’d been kept outside in a storm.

“Let us hope that the North wind is swift,” Queen Selissa said gravely.

“Come, let us get ready for whatever comes next,” Sage said wisely. “At the very least, we should take a nap.”