It wasn’t nearly as hard to find the city of Lychee Grove as Bobo had worried it might be. Mainly because, as she, Floridiana, and Dusty forced their way through the undergrowth – the leaves here were really big! – a yellow glow began to light their way. Somewhere on the other side of all these trees, branches cracked, soldiers bellowed, and crossbow bolts thunked into trunks. Another explosion blinded them, and when they could see again, the forest was even brighter than before.

Bobo realized what lay ahead an instant before Floridiana yelped, “Not that way! Turn back!”

She reached out, snatched Dusty’s reins, and hauled on them to stop him. The horse spirit whinnied and reared in shock but settled back down at her glare. Then he stomped the plants around his hooves flat, as if what he’d meant to do all along was clear a path.

Bobo protested, “But that’s the way Rosssie went! Ssshe went to warn the city – oh.”

A little late, she realized another thing, which was that maaaaaybe a city that was being attacked by a whole army might not be the safest place. But where else could they go? Was a burning forest really that much better?

Before Bobo found an answer to that question, Floridiana’s eyes bulged out of their sockets. “And you thought that following her was a good idea?!”

“Oh…um…yeeeeesss?”

Bobo felt the entire length of her body sag. The mage was right, of course. Following Rosie to the city had definitely been a bad idea, something a smarter snake would have known from the start. All she’d wanted to do was to save her friends this time, but instead, she’d nearly led them into more danger.

Obviously sharing her opinion on the matter, Floridiana glanced to the right and left, picked the right for some reason Bobo couldn’t understand, and marched that way with complete confidence. Dusty followed, docile as an unawakened horse.

Bobo swiveled her head between their old and new directions, torn. Shouldn’t she try to find Rosie? Shouldn’t they all meet up so they (and by “they,” Bobo mostly meant Rosie) could plan what to do next? But Rosie had also told her to keep Floridiana and Dusty safe.

That made up her mind. She slithered after them.

When she caught up, the mage was muttering under her breath, “I should have known better than to trust her. Why did I think I could trust her? This was such a terrible idea. Why did I ever leave home? What possessed me to come?”

Bobo’s head hung until her chin rasped along the ground. “Sssorry, I’m ssso sssory, I ssshould have thought it through more.”

“Huh? Oh. No, I didn’t mean you. Although going into a city that’s about to be under siege is not a good idea. But I wasn’t expecting you to think of that.” There was no accusation in Floridiana’s voice. She sounded perfectly matter of fact.

Bobo pressed herself to the ground so hard that even a human could hear her scales scraping over the dead leaves. It was true. No one ever expected her to make good decisions. Because she never made any. The one time someone trusted her to do something important, she bungled it. She nearly led the people she was protecting onto a battlefield.

Floridiana started muttering to herself again. “Which way is safe? Where are we anyway?”

This time, Bobo stayed silent, and it was Dusty who offered, “Didn’t she tell us a story about an abandoned village? The one with those weird flowers that only open for one night? Can we hide there?”

Floridiana spun around, eyes wide with shock. “Don’t be silly! You still trust her? She’s a demon. Every word that comes out of her mouth is a lie.”

Huh? Bobo slithered faster to catch up. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Only you’re still – naïve enough to trust her.”

Naïve? Bobo really couldn’t understand what Floridiana was saying. Didn’t they all trust Rosie? Weren’t they all friends with her? Wasn’t that why they’d come south with her? “You mean…you don’t trussst Rosssie?”

“She led us into an ambush! A freaking ambush! She was plotting all along to betray us!”

“Betray us?! No, no, ssshe wouldn’t! Ssshe’s our friend!”

“She is absolutely not our friend. She’s been plotting something all along. I just don’t know what yet. Because I’m not the thousand-something-year-old demon mind!”

“Demon?” Dusty asked at the same time that Bobo protested, “Then – then – if you thought ssshe was plotting againssst you, why did you come with us?”

Floridiana was the one who’d wanted to come, wasn’t she? She’d begged to be allowed to come. She’d even made a special trip to Bobo’s bamboo stand to plead with them. Bobo was pretty sure she hadn’t imagined that.

“I think it’s jussst bad luck,” she said, in as firm a tone as she could manage. “We jussst got unlucky. Our timing was bad.”

“Well, then where is she now?” Floridiana made a show of craning her head and staring all around them. “What safe haven did she scuttle off to while we’re stumbling around lost between a battlefield and a freaking forest fire?”

“Oh! Oh!” Was that the problem? “Didn’t I tell you? Rosssie went to warn the city! ‘Caussse ssshe has friends there.”

“What? No, you didn’t tell us that!”

“Oh, oh, sssorry. Yeah, um, ssshe told me to come back and keep you sssafe, and ssshe’d – ssshe’d – uh….”

Hmm, Rosie hadn’t actually said what exactly she planned to do after she warned the city – but she’d come back for them. She’d never abandon them. She just hadn’t had time to tell Bobo all her plans. Bobo knew it.

“Ssshe’ll come back to sssave us. You’ll sssee.”

“Humph” was Floridiana’s only response.

But she did stop ranting. And her silence, as they continued through the forest, might even have been called abashed.

The Savior of Lychee Grove returned at the head of an army.

As we charged to the city’s rescue, trumpets blaring, banners streaming, spear tips gleaming, the Black Crag forces threw down their weapons and fled. The Earl of Black Crag tumbled off his horse and groveled in the mud. The grateful citizens of Lychee Grove, Missa and Rohanus foremost among them, poured out of the city to shower me with promises of statues and parades; the Lady of the Lychee Tree knelt before me and swore to honor me like her own patron goddess; and Queen Jullia seized Black Crag from her treacherous uncle and presented the fief to me. But I, in my magnanimity, declined all their offers, declaring, “The safety of my friends is reward enough for me,” while adoring crowds cheered and Bobo grinned and Dusty whinnied and Floridiana – okay, fine. Even in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t picture the mage applauding me.

I’d settle for a grudging nod of thanks, I supposed.

And anyway, reality refused to conform to fantasy. The Queen of South Serica, as it turned out, didn’t have an army – at least, not anywhere she could recall it on a moment’s notice.

All she had at her disposal that night were her Household Guards and a pack of useless, quarrelsome courtiers who fell over themselves trying to appear competent. Since the latter collectively controlled more land and resources than the Crown, Jullia couldn’t simply shoo them back to bed or behead them, which meant that her emergency council meeting moved at a bureaucratic pace.

No, even more slowly than that. I’d seen Cassius’ scholars in “action.” It moved at an academic pace.

So I had plenty of time, after all, to inspect Anthea’s replica of Cassius’ palace and tell her how to improve it. Although she claimed that she was more than happy with it, I did catch her frowning at an iron-leaf palm. (A stubby tree that bristled with stiff, needle-shaped leaves, another one of South Serica’s many, many oddities.) I had a hunch that her landscape designer was about to get a new commission.

Eventually, Jullia, her advisers, and her would-be advisers argued their way to a decision, and they dispatched one of her cousins to Lychee Grove. From Anthea’s eye-roll, the man was not selected for his diplomatic skill. No, he met the crucial condition of ranking high enough to hold his own against the Earl, while not being powerful enough to threaten Jullia. He – or rather, his squire – carried a scroll stamped with the official Seal of South Serica, commanding the Earl to cease and desist. Escorting them was a party of Household Guards, there as much to protect the queen’s cousin from bandit attacks, as to stab him if he threw in his lot with the Earl.

Anthea, spoiled raccoon dog that she was, wouldn’t even consider riding along to act as my puppet. I had to fly after the riders on my own two wings, in secret, like a burglar or a spy. I couldn’t even perch atop the royal standard. O, how far I had fallen!

But the instant Lychee Grove came into view, my indignation evaporated.

Normally, the city lay open to the countryside. Katu and I had walked straight out of it into the surrounding forest, that time we went to see the princess-of-the-night plants. Now, however, it was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of – lychee trees! Their roots had torn up the grass and trampled lesser plants into oblivion. They lashed their branches like whips, pelted the Black Crag soldiers with lychees, and squirted them with fruit juices. Attracted by the sugar, bees and ants, both awakened and not, swarmed the soldiers.

Now I understood why Missa and Rohanus walked to work without fear of assassination, and why Miss Acina the lychee seller displayed her wares in the open-air market! Because when the Lady of the Lychee Tree got angry, she could control all the lychee trees in her fief to do this.

A little chirp of – surprise? Amusement? Awe? – escaped my throat, causing a Household Guard to jerk his head up. This one must have been a mage, because he wore a bronze seal at his waist. But, as usual, his quick magical scan didn’t pick up anything odd about me, and his gaze returned to the scene before us.

As well it should, because that was when a bee spirit queen ordered her hive to attack. They coated a squad of soldiers with their bodies, crawling all over them and stinging and – and burning them? Wisps of smoke rose from the soldiers’ skin, and they began to howl.

The Black Crag army, however, did know how to fight against trees. A volley of crossbow bolts shot through the air, stuck into the trunks, and exploded. Before the Lady of the Lychee Tree could stop them, the mindless trees waved their flaming branches and spread the fire to their neighbors.

At this point, the queen’s cousin, wise man that he was, lifted a hand and halted his group’s advance. An owl spirit Household Guard nudged his horse forward and reported something. I didn’t catch it, but everyone’s gazes turned to a clump of mounted, armored people waiting on a knoll. Above their heads, a standard hung limply, too heavy for the breeze to lift.

Perhaps Jullia had chosen this particular cousin for more than just a balance of influence and lack of threat after all, because he kneed his horse’s sides and charged.

His voice rang out across the battlefield: “In the name of the Queen, I command you to cease this madness!”

The Black Crag soldiers hesitated, in case their commanders were about to order a ceasefire, and the bee queen seized that opening. Her swarm stung and burned another squad, who rolled around on the ground screaming.

On the knoll, the Earl of Black Crag slowly turned his horse to face the queen’s cousin. As the Lychee Grove Earth Court’s sparrow and butterfly servants had said, he was in his forties, not so young for a human. He was the lean, athletic sort, his skin tanned to a dark bronze. At our approach, his guards closed ranks around him.

The queen’s cousin reined up perhaps ten feet away, surrounded by the Household Guards. The mage prepared his seal without taking his eyes off the other side.

“Cease this madness, Black Crag!” repeated the cousin, still pitching his voice to carry. “Would you plunge the kingdom into civil war?”

The Earl scoffed. “Cease? I think not.” Raising his own voice, he bellowed at his soldiers, “Attack!”

Another volley of crossbow bolts thudded into wood and exploded.

“In the name of the Queen! Stop this madness!”

At the cousin’s gesture, his squire unfurled the scroll and held it aloft. A Household Guard shone a lantern on it so everyone could see the vermillion stamp.

“It is the Queen’s will that you stop!” the cousin shouted. “Here is Her Majesty’s royal command, sealed by her own hand!”

“Lies! You expect me to believe that is real?”

“Send your mage to verify it, then! But do it quickly, because for every moment that this battle rages, more good humans and spirits commit treason against the Crown!”

That gave pause to the Black Crag soldiers. The fighting faltered once more. This time, the lychee trees, too, stilled their branches as the Lady of the Lychee Tree observed the development.

Although the Earl gnashed his teeth, he had no acceptable excuse for refusing to verify the seal stamp. At his bark, his own mage rode forward. The squire met him in the middle and held the parchment steady, while the mage coated his seal with seal paste. I assumed he’d stamp his forehead to enhance his vision or something – but he brought his seal down smack on top of the queen’s stamp!

The sacrilege! The lèse-majesté! What was he thinking?!

The queen’s stamp blazed with light. A golden beam shot into the night sky and exploded like a firework.

Without a word to the squire, the mage put away his seal paste, rode back to the Earl, bowed in the saddle, and reported what everyone already knew: “It is Her Majesty’s true seal, Your Grace.”

The Earl backhanded him across the face.