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“I did. You refused to discuss it.”

“Then bring it again. Shout, if that will help. You don’t get to buy a woman because you’ve tired of arguing with me.”

He lifts his head. “Some of the outer groves can’t afford another year of waiting.”

He sounds exhausted. By tomorrow I will need the records he has kept for forty years, and I almost tell him to bring them to my room as he always has. Then I see Vai tightening her grip on the bag when he reached for it.

“You’ll make a full statement of what you did. Reivaka will take it from you in the morning. Until I decide otherwise, you have no authority to make agreements for the Ilden.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Go.”

He leaves by the road. I remain beneath the canopy until his footsteps fade.

Through the roots, I feel the old guest room warming. Its moss bed thickens. A shutter opens to admit air, then narrows as the rain blows toward it.

Tauremak is settling her in.

I ask the room for more heat. Her clothes will take hours to dry, and she has already spent enough time shivering.

Before dawn, I find white flowers outside her door.

The guest room lies within the Heartwood, the enormous living trunk at the center of my court. Its corridors usually smell of cedar and damp bark. This one smells of blossoms.

I close the flowers nearest the junction. Anyone walking to breakfast would see them.

Then I reach her entrance and stop.

The vines across it are tightly woven. She has closed them from inside. I can sense the warmth of a body beyond the wall if I let myself attend to it.

I step away without doing so.

On the floor beside the entrance sits a cup. Reivaka has left it there with a kettle and a small jar of tea. I lift the lid. Bitter green leaves.

Bitter tea may be the last thing she wants after that journey. I could have a different kind brought before breakfast if I knew what she liked. My hand has already risen toward the door when I hear footsteps farther down the passage. It is still dark. I lower it.

I put down the lid.

One flower remains beside the entrance, just above the cup. Its petals brush my wrist. I reach to close it, then remember her standing in the rain after I told her to go.

I leave it where she can see it.

VAI

Iwake with my cheek pressed into a folded blanket and my hand caught beneath my breast.

For a moment, I think I’m in the room above the stall. I wait for Tovi to drop the morning trays.

Water ticks against a wooden shutter.

I open my eyes.

The ceiling is woven branches. Pale fungi glow between them. The dress I wore yesterday hangs over a root near the wall, with my coat beside it. My boots stand underneath, with the stockings I peeled off before bed draped over their tops. Reivaka gave me a clean shift last night, showed me how to close the door, and left a bowl of stew within reach of the bed.

I remember eating it with both hands around the bowl because I couldn’t stop shaking.

I remember my husband, too.