The Reign of Trees by Lori Folkman

speaking out against the king was treacherous, she did so anyhow. He was not her king after all. “Your father is arrogant, rash and dangerous. You would do well not to follow his example.” She expected to be reprimanded for her words, but Donovan did not reply. “Surely you can see the harm he does to your kingdom.”
    “I see no such thing.”
    “Well surely you see how his demands against my father are unreasonable. My father has great wealth. You must be asking too great a sum if he refuses to pay it. Convince King Henrick to request a lesser amount then I may go home and this war may end.”
    Donovan stood and paced across the room, turning his back to her. She assumed she had angered him, but when he finally turned to her, his face showed no emotion whatsoever. “This was never about money, Illianah. It saddens me you think Deltegra is so desperate as to start a war for a few thousand gold pieces. And that we would do this to you—take you away from your throne in order to add more coins to our treasury. We would never ask our soldiers to lose their lives for money. This is about the truth.”
    “The truth?” She did not know what he was speaking of.
    He looked at her carefully, as if his eyes were trying to reach into the depths of her soul. For once, she did not force herself to break eye contact. “I assumed you knew, Princess. How could you not? But the longer you have been here and the more I have seen your unskilled deviousness, I have begun to wonder: do you know what has happened to our trade agreement with your father?”
    The trade agreement? Illianah knew very little about it, other than Deltegra was to provide timber to Burchess.
    Just as she was about to claim her lack of interest in this area, she remembered hearing in the days before her wedding how Deltegra had broken their agreement; two shipments of wood had not been sent. The commoners were complaining that work had come to a halt at the shipyards of Pontic . With no wood, there was no work. With no work, there was no food. The workers from Pontic had begged her father to do something. But then the wedding took place and Illianah had given no more thought to the breech of the trade agreement. “You broke the agreement. That is what started this war,” she realized, although it still did not make much sense. Why would Deltegra provoke Burchess?
    “We did no such thing. When the last snow thawed, our laborers were again in the mountains, harvesting wood for Burchess. In April, we sent our scheduled shipment, but our wagons and horses never returned. Nor did our men. Soon, a letter came from Burchess, warning us of our breech in contract. The shipment never arrived in Freidlenburg. We quickly went in search of our missing caravan. A dozen men and double as many horses had vanished without a trace. We suspected foul play, but no evidence was found: not even a drop of blood in the forest.
    “We wrote to King Gregory and insisted the shipment had met with disaster on its way to Freidlenburg. He was understanding, however, he required the next shipment come a week early. We did as he asked. We sent the next shipment early and sent a small group of soldiers to protect the caravan. But again, the entire fleet vanished. No wood. No horses. No men. King Gregory was not so understanding this time. He accused us of lying and said that such a large number of men and horses could not disappear without it being whispered of among the gypsies and robbers. He put us on warning: we had but a fortnight to provide the shipment to Freidlenburg or it would be considered an act of war.”
    Donovan paced for a moment and then turned back to Illianah. His eyes were black with pain. “Your father was right. Two shipments could not disappear without a single forest thug knowing of it. We sent our best hunters and scouts into the forest between here and Freidlenburg. The wagon train was not attacked anywhere along the route. They were attacked when they reached