“You could just walk away, couldn’t you?”

“I can be rude to you, but not to Uyodor H’aekeem.” Her tone remaining precisely neutral, she neither mocked her father’s name nor celebrated it. “Or did you mean I might strike out on my own?”

“Some do. I did, of necessity.”

“I knew I liked the look of you, at least a little. You have a silly swagger about you that is entirely unconvincing. Anyone brave enough to sashay through our territory like that is either a one-off nutter or an ally worth cultivating.”

“I may be neither,” he said, and wanted to add, or I may be something else again. He tried to focus on her without blinking, though his tear ducts tended to empty at inopportune moments.

She leaped to her feet as if she had caught wind of salacious thoughts. “I’m too full of energy, I can’t sit still for long,” she said to him. “I don’t want you to leave yet, for I have a lot to accomplish while you’re here, but I have to run, run my limbs to exhaustion, or I will claw myself to death.”

“Highly strung, are we.”

She bared her teeth at him. He went on more neutrally, “Are you permitting me to stay or prohibiting me from leaving?”

She didn’t answer but went leaping down off the ledge, a wave of golden coins pulsing through the scatter of falling leaves.

He did not feel he wanted to push his luck.

The tree elves came out from behind their pot. He had forgotten about them.

“She’s in a lather,” said Twigg.

“Never seen her quite like that,” said Stemm.

“Have we heard something we ought not hear?” said Twigg.

“She’s too smart for that; she will have known we were quivering back here like mice,” replied Stemm. “But nobody trusts what we say anyway, so who cares?”

“Is it like that?” asked Brrr. “Is Uyodor H’aekeem so driven? So unyielding? Would he care that much if his oldest daughter renounced her obligations?”

“And do what?” asked Twigg. “Run a nursery school for malformed forest creatures? It’s inconceivable. Ivory Tigers live to thrive, and they thrive through keen military readiness. She can have no other notion for herself. It’s not allowed.”

“She’s touched in the head,” said Stemm. “Of course, don’t listen to me, I’m a dolt-bolt, what do I know?”

“Well, I know what they think,” said Twigg. “It’s all honor and tradition and how things are done. And how they’ve been done for the past twenty chieftainships. Their elegant history of independence weighs on them, their own style of yoke. Slaves to themselves. Do as well as we have always done! Don’t be the weak link in the chain of our ongoing history. What a lump of cold congealed pottage it all is, at least to me.”

“Shall I leave or shall I stay?” It seemed demeaning to ask advice of tree elves, but Brrr was caught in indecision.

“Makes no difference to us. Stay, enjoy our cooking. Leave without permission, and we have Lion stew on the menu for the evening. Your choice. It’s a free woods.”