The more Nori brushed, the dirtier she felt. When she had been completely covered in grime, that had just been the way of life. But once she removed the splotches from her tan skin, the clean parts highlighted the dirty ones. With each scratch of the bristly brush, her destination weighed heavier and heavier in her mind. She didn't need to just be clean. She needed to be royally clean.

Not that she knew what for. The last time the king had invited her to dine with him, it had been so he could bully her and feel better about himself. Maybe this time was the same. She remembered her final question to the king.

So which is it? Am I a bully or a sympathizer?

And his answer.

I'm not sure yet.

But Nori was sure now. In the month since that conversation, her convictions had steeled themselves and she had devoted herself to taking care of the needy. She had spent countless hours in the cold, salty crashing of waves, plucking off barnacles like a beggar. She had worked not for prime cuts of fish filet but for fish heads. She had taken two pounds of odorous, stressed meat instead of one pound of quality meat just so that maybe one less kid would go hungry.

She had unlearned every habit from her royally sanctioned childhood in favor of undignified survival. And that undignified survival suited her. Helping others suited her. She was happier living in the orphanage with nothing but the gift she had to give those children than she had ever been as a child with every luxury at her fingertips.

She wasn't a Harper.

Not at all.

But she was afraid she looked like one. The silky blue dress fit her unfortunately well, and she couldn't help but to seem natural in it.

"Woooow," she heard from behind her. She turned to see six kids stacked on top of each other, peering through the crack in the doorway. She had told them to stay out, but those kids had never been very good about rules and boundaries.

"You look like a princess," one of the girls cooed.

Nori sighed.

"Where are you going?" another asked.

"A dinner," she said. She didn't need them to know that it was with the king. That would only spark more questions. Unfortunately, they still had another to ask.

"Will you be coming back?"

The vulnerability in the child's voice brought a tear into Nori's eye, drooping into her lower eyelid and threatening to drop. She managed to disguise wiping it away as part of adjusting her hair. Somehow, she knew that the answer was probably no. Not for a while, at least.

"I…" For a moment, she considered lying. She could tell them that she'd be back tonight. But they had all heard that before. They had all been lied to at some point. She flexed her neck and chin to purge her emotions, put on a happy face, and fought through her sadness for their sake.

"You know I will if I can. But it might be a while. There are some things I have to do."

"How long?"

Nori put her hand to her brow to hide her misting eyes. "I don't know," she managed.

The children pushed the door open and spilled into the room, huddling around Nori in a big hug. Nori looked up so that they wouldn't see her tears.

By some miracle of willpower, Nori managed to go outside to meet the guard. He looked at her, looked back down the road, then looked at her again, realizing she was the same person that he had spoken to earlier. He raised his eyebrows and looked her up and down.

"Clean enough?" Nori chided.

The guard grunted. "Let's go."

Wherever Nori walked, people watched. They turned their heads and stared, not recognizing the girl that had walked those same streets for weeks. They knew Nori as a street urchin, not royalty. Even amongst the well-dressed tradesmen and financiers, Nori stood out. The dress was a beautiful bright blue with billowing silk around her ankles and a flattering fit across her body. She hated it.

As they neared the center of the city, Nori grew increasingly afraid of being recognized. Fortunately, they didn't have to walk past the Urokan embassy to get to the palace. Even the Stags, as distant of cousins as they were, would have been able to pick her out as one of their own. She had scrubbed her anonymity clean off.

The sight of the Monastery filled Nori with hope. She had missed her friends. She couldn't wait to see them again.

"I need to stop at the Monastery," she said. "For perfume. I couldn't get all of the smell off of me."

The guard looked at the falling sun and scowled. "You smell like the rest of us. No time."

"It'll just be a minute."

"No time."

Nori clenched her fist. She could just do it. Even if the dress slowed her down, she could make a break for it. He wouldn't chase her into the Monastery. He wouldn't hurt her. But would that be the behavior of a Harper?

She cursed the king. Even just the thought of meeting him again had her doubting herself. She shook her head at herself and pressed on to the keep, not saying another word of protest to the guard.

Not a Harper.

Not at all.

"Nori. Thank you for joining me." The king stood at the end of the dining table to greet her.

"King Tritsun." Nori bowed her head slightly, keeping her eyes fixed on him. She didn't remember him being so gaunt. So frail. The bags under his eyes. While Nori had spent weeks in the orphanage, King Tritsun looked like he had spent weeks at war. "I wasn't sure if I had a choice."

King Tritsun pursed his lips together. "Sorry you feel that way. But at some point, someone was going to pull you out of that orphanage. Please, sit."

Nori walked down the length of the table and sat next to the king. Fry bread and a kettle of hot sweet milk tea had already been set out. King Tritsun motioned to the kettle for Nori to help herself.

"How did you know where I was?"

King Tritsun removed his glasses, rubbing his eye with the back of his hand as he suppressed a laugh. "Nori, I've had eyes on you since your first night in Khala, let alone Khaldeer. If something happened to a Harper on my watch, things would end very poorly for me. You've kept me up at night with worry. Diving in with those boats. That's dangerous, but…it seemed well-intentioned."

Nori picked the dirt from beneath her thumbnail. "So you've met with them, then?"

King Tritsun chuckled again, just once, but this one was full of sorrow. He fit his glasses back onto his face. "Daily, I'm afraid. I've nearly run our pantry empty catering their lavish feasts." He motioned at the fry bread. "Thus the poor accommodations. My apologies. I've just been eating this for a few days now—and enough bites at dinner to be polite. Given your recent behavior, I thought you might not mind sharing my struggle."

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Nori stuck one fingernail far enough into another to make it hurt. "Feed them less," she muttered. Seeing the king in his sorry state had robbed her voice of its power.

Again, another chuckle. Again, sadder. "I'd rather go hungry for a year than see my kingdom go hungry for a week. If making them full and happy gives me any advantage in negotiations, I have to make it so. I would have prepared better, but they arrived much earlier than they had originally announced."

"The disruption is the point," Nori mumbled, echoing what she had said when the Stags first arrived.

"Indeed. Although, the extra time might do me some good. The negotiations have been…difficult. Their terms more complicated."

"How so?"

The king scratched the back of his head and then motioned to the kettle and bread. "Please, eat. It looks like you haven't had a good meal in weeks." He sighed. "Not that this is much."

Nori obliged the king, partially out of respect, partially out of her own hunger. But she didn't let him avoid the question. "What were their terms?" she asked as she dipped a piece of bread into her tea.

"Well, at first they came in with unreasonable demands. Even for them. It was everything from our last deal but worse. Everything comes down to their naval dominance versus our landed resources. Our iron, gems, salt, animal fat, furs. They wanted all of these things at double the usual rate, triple for iron."

He tore up a piece of bread, never taking a bite, just letting the little pieces scatter across his plate. "Our refrigerators are our most valuable bargaining tool. They wanted more of those too. General Dashi—your brother, I believe?"

The question was merely a politeness. Nori had no doubt that the king knew the answer.

"He was particularly interested in building a stockpile of those. I believe he's also made a series of…private negotiations. There's not a blacksmith in Khaldeer that he hasn't visited."

"Blacksmiths? What does he want with them?"

The king shrugged. "Perhaps they need the labor to shape the increased iron they are asking for. Perhaps they're checking how we might arm ourselves."

Nori froze mid-sip. "You're not suggesting…"

The king laughed with his belly, this time at the ridiculousness of Nori's statement. "Khaldeer would be lost in a day. I'd never submit our people to that."

He took a sip. "It does make you wonder, though. Why is your brother here? He's never come along for any of the previous negotiations. They usually have a spokesperson, yes, but most of the work is done by the administrators. So why is your brother the primary representative of Urokan interests?"

Nori took a bite and returned to fretting with her fingernails. So this was why the king had invited her. He expected Nori to know some vulnerability of her brother. Unfortunately, there were none that came to mind.

"He's always been the smartest of my family," she said. "Of all my brothers and sisters, he was the only one to not become a Chef. But only because that's god-given. Anything that can be learned, he can learn it. Better than anyone. If he turned his interests to these negotiations last year, then he'd already be the best man for the job by now."

"Blessed in other ways," the king commented. "I can see that. He's certainly made for a worthy adversary, but he has only involved himself sparingly thus far. He let the others do the talking. Until yesterday."

King Tritsun picked up the scraps of bread and dunked them in the tea, sucking the liquid off his fingers. He didn't have the luxury of wasting any food.

"Now they are to bring 'thoroughly revised terms,' as they put it. 'With new items to discuss.' General Dashi seems to have taken the lead. Such was the plan all along, I presume."

"New items?"

"What does Uroko want more than anything?"

Nori swirled her tea around as she considered the question. She didn't want to rush an answer. She felt like she should know better than the king of a foreign land.

"What do they fight wars over?" the king pressed, leaning over the table.

"Independence?"

The king bobbed his head around in consideration. "They've been in many independence wars, yes, but most of those were wars we declared for our independence. No. What Uroko wants more than anything…is land. The one resource that they are definitively limited by."

A side door opened and a tall, skinny man with a hooked nose and a big stack of papers walked through.

"Nori, this is my treasurer, Gaden. He's my right hand when it comes to these matters."

Gaden nodded to the king and then to Nori before sitting opposite her and spreading his papers out on the table. The king stood and paced behind his associate.

"Land…is the new item. The reason they have been so unreasonable in their demands. They presented us an offer based on precedent that we could not accept. Now, they'll give us acceptable terms on that front while making a demand that they've never made before. They'll ask for land. That's why your brother is here."

The door to the kitchen opened and a Chef stepped through. Nori recognized him by the platter of cooked octopus that he carried, but couldn't recall his name. She could only remember the wonderful taste of his meal and the story of his mother dying on the rocks.

The Chef placed the platter on the table out of reach of the three people who occupied it. Nori considered the placement for a moment but had other pressing questions.

"Are you sure they will ask for land?"

Gaden looked up at the king and they exchanged a little laugh. "I know more than that. I know what land they'll ask for," King Tritsun said. He motioned at Gaden, who dug out a sketched map and turned it around for Nori to see.

"We heard an account of Urokan cartographers along our western border," Gaden explained, the deepness of his voice making Nori jump when he started. "This is our best recreation of their markings. As you can tell, they were most interested in this mountain pass."

"Are you familiar with the western geography of Khala?" the king asked.

"Somewhat," Nori answered. The answer would have been the death of her mother. She must have spent a small fortune on tutors, but Nori had never been a particularly good student, and maps bored her most of all.

"Well. Our border with the Platter is long, but it is mountainous. While there are many ways over the mountains, there are only three that are viable for sustained trade. We have one along the north coast."

"Favorable conditions, unfavorable location," Gaden added.

"Too far from any population centers to be of much use. And then we have our middle pass…"

"Better location. Far worse conditions," Gaden said. Another Chef dropped off a large serving bowl of salad.

"And then we have the cream of the crop. Our southern pass, which you should be familiar with."

Gaden pointed at the spot, but he didn't need to. It was covered in scribbled notes.

"Now, that path has a fork. There is the main, widely accessible path into The Platter main. And then there is a smaller, more crooked path south to Palm Coast. Of course, Palm Coast has its place in the Urokan history books. Shielded by mountains to the north and east, with just a single well-maintained road to The Platter out west. It went over to Uroko as part of the terms of the Unification War, giving them a staging area to import goods from the islands and trade with the rest of the continent."

Gaden pointed at the markings that had been scribbled from the southern pass down to Palm Coast. "We believe they want to expand the path."

"And they'll ask to control the land where it connects to the main southern road," King Tritsun finished. "Controlled by the Urokan military. That's why your brother is here."

Nori stared at the map, trying to make sense of it all. "Why?" she asked.

King Tritsun sat down and sighed. "We have theories that we'd like to share with Grand King Flambé, but he has ignored our kestrels thus far."

"Uroko's always been his blind spot," Gaden added.

Tritsun nodded and continued. "Although what concerns us is how this will affect our trade with the rest of the continent. If they establish a toll, it could force us to the less favorable northern passes."

Nori studied the map. "They'd have you surrounded," she observed, thinking she had made a startling revelation.

But King Tritsun and Gaden just smiled at each other.

"As if that matters," King Tritsun said.

"They don't need to invade us," Gaden said. "We're already under their control."

A group of servants entered carrying bottles of wine and set them around the table.

"Will this be enough?" one of them asked.

King Tritsun nodded. "Yes. I've asked that they bring a reduced party. This should be fine."

Alarm bells went off in Nori's head. She sat up straight and gripped the arms of her chair. "What is happening?"

"They wanted to surprise us tonight with their request for land." King Tritsun popped his neck as if preparing for a fight. "We wanted to prepare a little surprise of our own."

Gaden laughed as he hid the map beneath his other papers. Servants continued to pour out of the kitchen, setting the table with plates and silverware and fancy wine glasses.

Nori looked at the door, her mind screaming at her to make a run for it. This wasn't an invitation. It was a trap. She was his prisoner for trade. Maybe she always had been. "Am I your bargaining chip?"

Nori expected to see a sinister grin. An evil laugh. His heinous plan revealed.

But instead, he frowned with disappointment. "No, Nori. You're free to leave. But if you stay…"

King Tritsun looked at Gaden, who nodded back at him.

The king took a deep breath.

"I was thinking we might hand over some of the negotiations to you."

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