To their surprise, they managed to find their way back to the tower quite quickly; there were directions signs they didn’t notice before. The Dean expected them dressed in new clothes, shaved, and with much better food; food he had prepared himself and arranged nicely on a new table. They had even the luxury of more chairs. The group sat and started eating with much appetite. When fresh, the elven produce was delicious.

“We’ll take our friend’s portions to go if you please. Lau and Diago stayed behind for various reasons. Cleaning the room, checking the horse, and so on,” explained Istaìnn while gorging himself with cheese and fruits.

“Yes, I was told about that monster,” smiled Faredhiel. “Of course, take all the food you want. You can pack them in the napkins; I don’t have any packages. By the way, I gave instructions so that you have complete access to the cantina, no charges. I hope you can excuse our… not so luxurious accommodation.”

“No problem,” replied Feyra.”I bet our University would be the same without our strict discipline and all that help staff.”

“Sure, sis, it would be bad if it was not good,” joked Heya. “But letting that apart, I want to ask you something, Mister Dean, a fundamental question. I barely saw any girls around. I hope you don’t have some segregation laws… I can tell you this will break my sister’s heart; she thinks very highly of you, elves.”

Faredhiel was visibly upset.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the truth is we have only a handful of girls among our students… It’s a sad situation, and we hope in time….”

“In time, what?” snapped Feyra abruptly. “Just open the access!”

“The access is opened, of course, it is!” protested Faredhiel. “They don’t want to come, that’s the problem. It started with his grandmother. She was the first to abandon our university, returning to the Ohst for her studies. Now we have over ninety percent of the female students going abroad to the dwarves or posing as humans and going to your cities. Less than two percent come here, unfortunately. Our school has the best teachers, still, but somehow the girls have other parameters in mind too.”

“Hmm,… let me guess,” said the spy. “Hygiene? Running water? Unclogged toilets?”

Feyra elbowed him hard in the ribs.

“Can you please tell us about the magic? This will stop him from being so mean and unpolite. I apologize on his behalf.”

The spy agreed vividly.

“Yes, please, tell me about the magic. What is it, how does it work, and why can’t I do it all the time?”

“Magic is a sort of a life-force field, something every living being contributes to. Some people are born with the ability to use this life-force. For elves, it’s a common feat. There are very few elves that cannot do magic, but I might have mentioned before, what is common is not rare. The vast majority of the elves can only perform weak spells or have a general empathy toward the vegetals. Humans are a different story. Most humans cannot do any magic at all; that’s why humans don’t even believe in magic. A human magician appears once a century or so, but when they appear, they are always, and I mean it, always, powerful. Yet, to master such power demands years of training. Wait, I see what you want to say: you did some magic very easily. Of course, because your survival depended on it and your instincts took over. Afterward, your ability disappeared because your mind lacks the training to use it properly. This is not a bad thing, though. Doing magic is a powerful sensation; you can let yourself drunk by it and absorb too much life force, with dire consequences. Imagine, by instance, that you do a spell near them, the princesses, and you take energy from their life force. If you lose control, they’ll become two mummified carcasses in a matter of seconds…”

“Providence forbids!” gasped Istaìnn. “Let’s start training; I don’t want to hurt them!”

“We’ll start tomorrow. Take a day off, relaxing always helps with magic. Keep this in mind, if you want to do magic safely, you have to relax. Meanwhile, let me tell you about the big plan. The Others will come from d’Ornia. It’s the shortest way to here, but still, it is a long way. I’d say fifteen to twenty days in a forced march. We’ll harass them at every step, bleed them until they flee or die.”

“Do you know when they’ll attack?” asked the spy.

“I suppose as fast they’ll be able after they take d’Ornia. We have maybe a month or two.”

“Do you have any armed forces?” asked Feyra

“We might not have an army like the City has, but every elf worthy of this name has martial training and an ELB.”

“What’s an ELB?” asked Heyra.

“Oh, yes, you couldn’t know. It’s short for Elven Long Bow. Every elf knows how to shoot and ELB. We’ll just all march against the invaders when the need arises. And we have the dwarven dirigibles to transport troops, and our magic, strengthened by the Forest.”

“Hm…,” frowned Heyra. “Isn’t this a little… I don’t know, like putting all the eggs in the same basket? We need to have a plan B and prepare on all fronts. I didn’t saw any guards around your University; an assassin could just walk in. We could train some of your students to become a guard regiment. We have two excellent warriors with us: Lau and Diago. Also, we two can help with our technical expertise. For instance, we can improve the dirigibles, turn some into weapon platforms or surveillance ships to spy on the enemy movements. We could fill one with fuel and send it to the Archipelago to ask for reinforcements. Our brother and most trusted allies are there, we have to warn them as soon as possible, or they might fall for the Regent scam.”

Faredhiel frowned and remained silent for a minute, looking lost in thoughts. After he took a long sight, he went to the platform, to his desk, opened the same deep drawer, and took a silver tray, a bottle of blue liquid, and a small metal rod, probably gold.

“Please join me,” he asked. “I want to show you something.”

As soon they were near him, he hit the tray with the rod in a rhythmic sequence. A dark wave went through the liquid, and when it cleared, a face was looking at them for the tray.

“Yes, Faredhiel, what do you want? Be short, please, I have a business meeting in an hour.”

“Good evening, Dernariel. I present to you my guests, the princesses of Ohst and my cousin, Istaìnn Quevedo. I’ve told you about him. The one with magical talent.”

“Nice to meet you!” replied the face in the tray.

“Can you give me a resume of the Archipelago situation?”

“You’re talking with the Archipelago?” asked Feyra, amazed.

The elf nodded and raised a finger to his lips, demanding silence.

“All is well for now. The news hadn’t arrived here yet. I suppose they will hit every day now. The coup was almost forty days ago; that’s the time a fast ship needs to arrive here, even with the Current on their side. But for now, all is calm and business as usual. The prince and his tutors visited a shipyard yesterday. The coffee harvest will be bad, so the prices will be higher than last year, the bread-fruit yield good, though, so it will be cheaper, the rubber stays the same. No wild dhodhos stampedes yet, but there are scout patrols in the forests just in case.”

“Thank you, Dernariel. I will call you back. Faredhiel out.”

“Dernariel out.”

The connection closed, and the tray showed again just the bluish liquid.

“What you’ve seen is one of the most tightly guarded elven secrets,” said Faredhiel. “We’re allies now, so I decided to share the secret with you. You see, people think that we, elves, live here in the Forest and don’t ever leave it. This is not quite true. We still need many things from other countries, and our most esteemed neighbors, the dwarves, can only offer a limited range of products. We need rock-oil from Ohst, cattle from d’Ornia, rubber, coffee, and bread-fruits from the Archipelago, textiles from the Autarchy, and so on. But we want to be discreet, or else we would become walking circuses. Some of us live among you, disguised, and do commerce, and a lot of our girls study in human universities, as I’ve said before. Each elf who goes abroad has such a communication device. Through one of them, we found about the Others. It was a fellow elf who was exploring the South for a possible remote location to install our plantations. The island he found was perfect; the only snag was that it had a military camp on it. It was the basis from which the Others launched their attacks. My friend managed to hide and spy on them for a while. His last report was about an imminent attack on d’Ornia. Then, we lost contact; I’m afraid he was discovered and killed.”

“Let’s rewind the story a little!” asked Heyra, with slight angst in her voice. “You wanted to do what, on that island? Plantations of what? Our plants are copyrighted. There are century-old realm-trade agreements in place everybody respects, and you just want to infringe our copyrights and pirate our plant breeds?”

“Well...,” stuttered Faredhiel.

“That’s rude, sis,” jumped Feyra to defend the elves. “Don’t you care about that poor elf explorer who made the ultimate sacrifice to give us the news? We’ll sort the copyrights problem another time.”

“Or we could sort it just now,” proposed Faredhiel. “You’ve seen our communicator. I will give you permission to study and replicate it. I will let you use it freely until then and ask my fellow elf from the Archipelago’s Capital to help you. You can call your brother and your allies in the Islands through it. I understand that those Great Families of the Archipelago are different from the nobles of Ohst.”

“They are trustful, yes. We all descend from the First King’s family; there’s a blood oath between us. We will be loyal to each other forever,” told him Feyra.

“Then, you could ask them to send troops to the City to help you conquer it back. Or make them send the troops to d’Ornia, to attack the enemies from behind while we engage them from the front. Or plan your escape to the South if things go south. A lot of possibilities at your disposition, on one condition. Let us establish our plantations in the South, give us a copyright exception. We will keep the production to a minimum, for our consumption. What do you say? An instant communication device, for an insignificant dent in your market shares.”

The girls were hesitating, and the spy even more.

“My folks are in the coffee, you know. If some cheap hybrid appears around, they’ll be out of the business. And there are a lot, a lot of people employed in the coffee industry, I’d rather say it will not be a good idea to let them cultivate coffee.”

“As much as I like elves, I agree with him,” said Feyra. “Even if an instant communicator would be fantastic to have…”

“Well, you know, that’s what negotiations are for,” replied Faredhiel. “Offer a counteroffer. This deal can be arranged in minutes if you want. I’m the highest elven official; my signature is the law.”

“Well, for us, it will not be so easy; after all, we’re only heirs for now. But if we could contact the Governor of the Archipelago, on the other hand…” proposed Heyra. “He has signature powers. If you let us talk to him and our brother, we could come together in an arrangement. My suggestion would be that we let you cultivate the bread-fruit, because it is not a big deal, and we can let you buy a limited quantity of coffee and rubber without taxing it.”

“I must insist at least for one rubber plantation,” replied Faredhiel. “Free and unlimited bread-fruit tree access and one rubber plantation, fifty square miles, for elven use only. This is the most reasonable offer in the universe. And I’ll give you free access to our communicators, the right to copy them, the right to conscript all the students – not that I think they can be of any help – and I will name Rheldoriel, my assistant, as your attaché. He will see you get whatever you need.”

“Look,” said Heyra, “This is a significant step to take. Can we think it over, and maybe meet again in the evening? Anyway, we need to bring our friends some food now.”

“Then the meeting is adjourned!” stated Faredhiel solemnly. “Meanwhile, I’ll teach some lessons. I have to take a group of students and show them how to brew beer. For some reason, it’s one of the few classes they don’t skip. So, cuz and you’re your highnesses, until we see each other again, I bid you a perfect day.”