Poison Tree (22 page)

What next?
Jeht wondered as he followed his queen back to the strange campground where he had been living for the last several days. He smiled to see the one called Mark waiting for them, looking relieved.

He tried to suppress the smile, which seemed like it might be weakness, but then couldn’t.

His queen spoke to Mark in their language before she sat heavily on the bench and pulled Quean into her lap. Quean had fallen asleep in the car and was still sleepy-eyed.

“My tribal name is Kral,” she explained in her strangely musical accent. He understood every word she said in his
language, but the flavor of this place was even in the way she spoke. “We are not a large tribe, but we are respected enough that if you wish, we can visit the main camps, and we can probably find another tribe that would be willing to take you in. It may take a few days to arrange that trip, so you have some time to decide.”

He nodded but did not yet speak, because he could tell she had more to say.

“You have another choice,” she said. “You can stay here, as part of my tribe. You have seen that the world here is … different than in the Mistari camps. It is not as violent, but it can be even more complicated. Staying here would be hard. You would need to learn many things. You will always be Mistari, and now that I am a queen in my own right, you will always have the right to return to the main camps. But you can also be an ambassador. There are not many places where Mistari children can look for help. You learned that the hard way. I plan to change that.

“Think about it,” she said. “It’s your choice.”

What next?
“Ben” wondered as he fiddled with Alysia’s smartphone. He popped the SIM card out of the back and replaced it with another one he had prepared. A few minutes later, he had uploaded the software she would need to receive instant mobile updates on everything going on in Frost.

“See?” he said. “Easy.”

“Sure,” she answered. The ironic response was high praise, and he knew it. It meant that she hadn’t completely
understood his explanation of how the system worked—especially the encryption, which he was particularly proud of. He liked stumping her. “I assume you still want to hang back from the meeting today?”

“Yes and no,” he answered.

She gestured for him to continue.

“The SingleEarth IT department asked me to go to the meeting as a technical consult,” he explained. “Apparently when I planted my file in their system, I did too good a job. They like Ben a lot.”

“What
is
your real name?”

He loved it when she asked that. It made him laugh every time.

This was the first time he’d been able to see her face when she asked, which was neat. She really cared, for some reason. “You’d have to ask my mother that,” he replied. “I think you call her Sarta.”

Oh yeah, the wide-eyed reaction was absolutely worth it.

“I almost forgot,” he said, moving on as if he hadn’t left his fearless leader flabbergasted, “we got a request from Onyx to install some Wi-Fi in their guild hall. I know you have a soft spot for the new leader, and I’d love to bug that place—”

“I’ll do it myself,” Alysia interrupted.

Ben hadn’t figured out all her cues yet and wasn’t able to tell when she was going to play nice and when she was going to play practical, but he figured there was a fifty-fifty shot that Frost would soon have an awesome audio-and-video feed of all the important spots in the Onyx Hall.

In response to a low beep, he glanced back at the computer
that constantly scrolled through jobs going in and out of Frost. Dealing with the messages had become more complicated since the big showdown at Onyx, as Frost’s new leader had wasted no time declaring her vision and pulling guild members after her with the charisma of a black hole.

May you live in interesting times
, a fortune cookie had told him once. The little strip of paper was taped to his monitor now. He looked at it and smiled, thinking,
You have no idea, cookie friend. No idea at all
.

“Sure, Boss,” he said, typing as he spoke. “It’s your choice.”

A
MELIA
A
TWATER
-
R
HODES WROTE
her first novel,
In the Forests of the Night
, when she was thirteen. Other books in the Den of Shadows series are
Demon in My View
,
Shattered Mirror
,
Midnight Predator
,
Persistence of Memory
,
Token of Darkness
, and
All Just Glass
. She has also published the five-volume series The Kiesha’ra:
Hawksong
, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and a Voice of Youth Advocates Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Selection;
Snakecharm; Falcondance; Wolfcry
, an IRA-CBC Young Adults’ Choice; and
Wyvernhail
. Visit her online at
AmeliaAtwaterRhodes.com
.