Samur stared at him. “If Dame Maggie wishes to institute formal alliance talks between the Confederation and the Consortium, she should send an actual ambassador. But if this is a personal appeal for an alliance between the Consortium and the Confederation, it’s at least creative.”
Rupert could see Grytt on his periphery, standing in the open door. He supposed she had heard most of this exchange. Even from the center of the yard, even surrounded by sheep, her mecha audio receptors were sensitive. He could well supply her expression—the crossed arms, the scowl—without turning to look. He made a wait, don’t interfere gesture, out of his own viewing ball’s projective field, and heard her disapproving huh.
Rupert discarded formality on a rush of irritation. “This is not some kind of political pretense, Samur, nor some excuse on my part to re-establish communications between us. I am relaying the message as Ivar relayed it to me—”
“From a fairy. Honestly, Rupert. Just say you got your information from Maggie’s intelligence networks and have done.”
There was a time Rupert could have kept a blandly polite smile pasted to his face for hours, a useful skill he’d first developed under Thorne’s old king, Rory’s father, who had tended toward obstinacy and a surfeit of poor ideas, and which he’d later honed to a survival art on Urse with the Regent Vernor Moss, who had been ambitious and intelligent in equal, dangerous measure. Now Rupert crumpled that polite smile into a grimace and leaned close to the viewing ball.
“From one of the entities invited to your daughter’s Naming, yes.” It was hard to say if they had been one species; they had not matched, except in the apparent humanoid femaleness of their presentation. “You do recall their attendance, and the gifts they conferred.” All but the twelfth, who had whispered her gift to the infant Rory.
“I recall they attended because you invited them, and they were seen once and never again. Why should one of them reappear now, to Ivar of all people, bringing some doomsday warning? It seems very inefficient, doesn’t it? And rather fantastic.”
The floor creaked. Grytt was abnormally heavy, being a good portion mecha and therefore metal. It was a little alarming how quietly she could move.
Samur must have thought so as well; she recoiled as Grytt thrust her face over Rupert’s shoulder. The fern on Samur’s desk prismed through startlement, with a flash of embarrassment, before flaring straight into outrage.
“Grytt! I thought we were alone, Rupert, what is this—”
“Oh, stuff it, Samur.” Grytt had been Samur’s body-maid once, and before that a Kreshti reconnaissance marine. She had since raised one renegade princess and lost half of her body to an assassin’s bomb and survived the coup on Urse, and therefore suffered no anxiety about formality or diplomacy. “Weren’t you listening? Expansion’s a pretty word for invasion, and the fairy just said this weapon’s going be their reason to come after all of us. War isn’t good for anyone. You’re better positioned to get that information to the right people than we are, so do that, can’t you?”
Samur drilled Grytt with a look that, had it been directed at him, would have curdled Rupert’s stomach, and been followed by an argument. Grytt proved immune to both. Samur’s face, and fern, cycled through a flush of anger and embarrassment before settling into a sullen acquiescence. “Then what will your job be, pray tell?”
Grytt raised her remaining eyebrow. “Us? We’re just the fairy messenger service. Our job’s done.”
“Grytt,” Rupert said, in a warning tone that he anticipated would have no effect whatsoever on its object, but which would signal to Samur that she did not speak for both of them. He leaned forward, and arranged his features into what he hoped looked like earnest appeal. “We also need your help.”
Samur’s fern turned entirely orange, shot through with pink, at odds with her gentle head-tilt and her even more gentle, “More help?”
Rupert was not fooled. He watched her eyes, and they glittered, hard as obsidian and just as sharp.
“We, I—the Confederation—” Rupert paused. Requires was not the right word, despite its accuracy. Samur would not respond well to demands. “We would like to meet these xeno allies of yours.” The possessive pronoun was also not the correct word—the allies were Samur’s by association, because Samur had recently married into the Larish family (a second cousin, in no danger of inheriting the chief operating officer’s title, but still on the governing board), thus cementing an alliance with the Merchants League for Thorne. “We would be grateful if you could, perhaps through your husband, arrange a meeting.”
“I suppose the fairy told you about our treaties with the Harek Empire.”
Our. Rupert controlled a wince. “She did not. I surmised that Larish would secure a trading partnership with new markets and partners, whoever they might be. You just told me which one. So. Could you arrange a meeting with the Harek Empire?”
“We. You claim to speak for the Confederation? As its ambassador?”
Rupert was so very thankful Kreshti ferns did not register emotions across quantum-hex viewing balls. He composed his features in his best blandly sincere expression.
“Yes.”
Samur raised both eyebrows. Her smile grew teeth. “I have met the Confederation’s ambassador, Rupert. You look nothing like her. You used to be better at this. Lying to people, I mean.”
“I am out of practice.” Most of his negotiations concerned whose turn it was to do laundry, and Ivar and Grytt did not require polite prevarication. “And you have only met the Confederation’s ambassador to the Thorne Consortium. We don’t have an ambassador to your xeno allies yet, but I am certain that Dame Maggie will make the necessary appointment official, when she is informed of the fairy’s message, and the implications, and of a need for the post.”
“And you’re sure it will be you.”
“I am certain no one else will volunteer for the job.” He also intended to badger Dame Maggie relentlessly until she capitulated.
“The Vizier of the Confederation of Liberated Worlds.” Samur’s smile slipped again into a brief, genuine amusement. Then it scabbed over and fell off, leaving a crooked expression, drawn up tight at the corners. “And what is my daughter’s involvement in this?”
“We don’t know that she is involved,” said Rupert. “The fairy said nothing about it.”
“Of course she is.” Samur folded her hands neatly on the desk. The fern shifted into sunset hues. “As you have pointed out, Rupert: the fairies have been concerned with Rory since her birth. I cannot see some other reason they would send an emissary now, though why they came to you and not to me. . . .” Samur snipped off whatever else she meant to say. Suspicion sharpened her voice. “Has Rory returned to Lanscot?”