An Apprentice to Elves (28 page)

Fargrimr laughed, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “We're on the anvil, though. And we have a more immediate problem. What are we going to do with this Marcus fellow?”

“Well,” Randulfr said. Then there was a long pause, which Fargrimr let him have. He knew Randulfr thought best as they were now: walking unhurriedly through the woods, leaves rustling under their boots.

He pushed a branch aside for his brother, the foliage turning gently on the stems. A few beads of brightness that somehow dripped through the canopy overhead moved in the broad ferns that hid his legs nearly to the knee. He stepped up onto a moss-covered trunk high enough that the effort made him grunt and found himself in a shaft of daylight. The forest giant, in its death, had torn a hole that let the sky look in.

Fargrimr gave Randulfr his hand and pulled the wolfcarl up beside him. Ingrun sprang up too, her back claws kicking loose a clump of moss. The smell of moist, moldy wood rose from the scar.

Fargrimr held his peace, nearly. A hard sigh got away from him before he could quite swallow it down.

Randulfr put a hand on his elbow. “We'll find a way.”

“We haven't yet,” Fargrimr said, gesturing west to the sea and the Rheans pursuing them—or, at least, garrisoning whatever they had left behind.

Randulfr squeezed, then let his hand fall. “Well, it basically boils down to three options. We can send this Marcus back, we can kill him, or we can keep him captive.”

“Too much work, that last,” Fargrimr said.

“And killing a messenger who came to us under truce is a rather bad precedent. Even if you hadn't given him bread and salt.”

Fargrimr snorted. Some people might have mistaken it for a laugh, but Randulfr knew better. “So we send him back. With an honest message, a dishonest message, or no message at all.”

“Or some combination,” Randulfr said, promptly enough that Fargrimr knew he'd anticipated the conversation at least this far.

“Explain?”

“Would you consider the alliance he proposes?”

This time, Fargrimr surprised himself with a genuine laugh, albeit a clipped one. “I can't afford not to.”

“If there's any chance at all this Verenius is honorable.”

“Trickery in war is not always considered dishonorable, exactly,” Fargrimr reminded his brother. “There's glory to be won with cunning.”

Randulfr bobbed his chin, conceding the point. “In any case. Assuming the offer of an alliance is genuine, or that we choose for the time being to treat it as genuine, we could send Marcus back to his uncle with a request for some sort of surety that if we hold up our end—turn and fight with the expectation that Verenius will arrange things so that his troops are not in position to support Iunarius' line—he will hold up his.”

“It could be an attempt to lure us into combat on unfavorable ground,” Fargrimr said. “With a flank to Verenius, who then turns out to have had a change of heart, which puts him nicely in position to support Iunarius after all. Or—better yet—to save the day at the last moment, deal with his political rival, and
still
return home triumphant with the North in a casket for his emperor.”

“We can't trust him.”

“Of course not.” Fargrimr squinted up at the place where the sky looked back. “And while I haven't met him, I
have
met Iunarius, and I believe him to be an honorable man. But I also believe him to mean what he says. He has every intention of conquering us if we do not surrender. I think he'd
prefer
it if we came in line without bloodshed. What viking wouldn't? But he's got the swords to do something about it, no matter what we think.”

Randulfr cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” Fargrimr said. “You had a plan.”

“More like a tactic,” Randulfr said. “A gambit. I don't know where it would be going yet. But what if we were to send Marcus back with the true message that we are interested—for as you say, we cannot afford not to be—but require assurances and also give Marcus a false idea of our capabilities—because you know he's also here to spy.”

“Stronger or weaker?” Fargrimr said, intrigued.

Randulfr jumped down from the log, his boots crushing ferns and thudding in the leaves. A green smell rose from his footsteps. “Both have things to recommend them,” he said. “It depends on whether we think he's playing a trick on us or not. Weaker would make it seem we needed him more, but it might also convince him we cannot win, even with his assistance.”

Fargrimr jumped down beside him and tried to hide a wince at the impact. His knees weren't up to the sort of jarring he used to take in stride. “Stronger, then.”

There was a softer thump as Ingrun poured down off the fallen tree like a curl of gray water. She looked at the two men with a single bright wag of her tail, as if to say,
Two-legs are slow!
then set off through the ferns. Randulfr followed; Fargrimr dogged his brother's footsteps.

“It makes it look more likely we'll be able to defeat Iunarius without Verenius' help, so that we bargain from a better position. And it makes it look less likely Verenius will be able to mop us up and claim the credit afterward.”

Ahead, Ingrun broke into an effortless trot. Randulfr picked up his pace. “She scents a deer. Let's see if we can bring back some fresh meat, too. It won't hurt for Marcus Verenius to see us feasting.”

Fargrimr followed. “Gods damn it,” he called after his brother and the wolf, as all their steps came faster, “I was meant to be a fisherman.”

*   *   *

The natural cavern was better than Tin had expected. It was big—unnecessarily big, for the six who would meet there—and rather than being draped in flowstone, it was a dry, arched chamber with a sandy floor.

The aettrynalfar had made a point of fitting the place out in a manner that the svartalfar would find inviting without damaging the natural loveliness of the place, and there was no stone-shaping in evidence that Tin could discern. Certainly nothing that unsettled her like trellish work. Just a table and six chairs, which looked to have been brought in in pieces and assembled. The place smelled of surface beef, beets, cheese, and apples, along with fresh bread that might even still be warm. In any case, there was enough food and ale for hospitality and ceremony's sake. There were lights hung on wrought-iron candelabras, and there were pots of perfectly normal ink and small stacks of perfectly ordinary linen laid paper.

All in all, the aettrynalfar had gone to enough trouble over their hospitality, Tin thought, that there was no manner whatsoever in which the svartalfar could accuse them of derailing the talks with insufficient attention to ceremony. That was good politics, this being the first meeting between the estranged clans in five hundred years.

It was also another stone laid—so to speak—in the foundation that might lead to success in these talks. It made Tin think she might have a friend somewhere on the aettrynalfar side.

The aettrynalfar were already in residence, of course, and had claimed one short and one long side of the rectangular table. Tin would have preferred to alternate the chairs, for less of a sense of choosing up sides and unfurling banners.
Well,
she told herself, as tartly as she'd ever spoken to a whining apprentice,
maybe you should have gotten up a little earlier in the morning, then.

She assumed the alf sitting at the head of the table, white-haired and longer of nose even than Tourmaline, though considerably more spry, must be Antimony. Beyond him, along the back side of the table, were a young female in heavy red wool and a male of indeterminate middle age who was dressed like the sort of scholar who did not concern himself with appearances. His robes were unpressed and threadbare, and the embroidery was beginning to unpick.

Three and three, they were. Besides Tin, of course, there was Galfenol—who would have the other head of the table—and Idocrase, with his record book and his hollow pen wrought by some brilliant glassblower to hold a supply of ink once dipped. His robes were worn shiny where they rubbed the table when he worked. He had tiny crystal spectacles perched upon his (much less magnificently adult) nose.

He looked, Tin thought uncharitably, like a younger version of the aettrynalfar's scruffy scholar. And that, she knew, was an opinion it would most likely be best if she kept to herself.

At least Galfenol looked magnificent. Her robes were brushed and pressed (Tin wondered exactly how her prickly, sometimes precious old ally had managed that—or how Idocrase had managed it for her) and of a watered silk changeant in red and violet. A three-cornered hat, black with gold bullion flourishes, perched on her pale, thinning hair, and gold stalls decorated with pigeons-blood rubies that matched the robes covered her fingertips and nails.

Tin suspected that her own quilted black woolens, even embroidered with silver bullion, and her unfussy (though lethally sharp) halberd leaned against the wall by the door as they came in must mark her in the eyes of the aettrynalfar as a warrior, and probably a barbarian.

She could accept that.

She took the chair closest to the aettrynalfar head of the table, which had the side effect of placing her as far as convenient from Galfenol. Idocrase slid in between them and settled his record book and pen.

The greetings were as formal, drawn out, and stiffly pleasant as any alf could have hoped. Tin learned that the person on her left was, in fact, Antimony. The ones across the table were Orpiment (the elder) and Argyria (the younger). Tin was reminded anew that the aettrynalfar had been so profoundly angered—or perhaps damaged—by their split with her own ancestors that they still named themselves in defiance three alvish generations later.

The forms had not diverged too much in that half a millennium, or perhaps the aettrynalfar were putting on an archaic show of manners to prove to their cousins that they were not barbarians after all. The ale helped with everyone's unease a little. Tin remained too unsettled to manage much food, but she pushed it around her plate in accordance with the ritual. The conversation at this point was polite trivialities.

There were no servants present. When they were all done with the main course, the youngest aettrynalf—Argyria—cleared the table and stacked the dishes on a ledge across the cavern. More ale was poured, and water as well.

At which point, six estranged alfar stared at one another briefly, as much at a loss as if somebody had asked them to garland the moon. It ended when Galfenol shot Tin a look, and Tin found her courage somewhere at the bottom of her belly and took it up toward the task at hand.

“Mastersmith and Mother-by-Honor,” Tin said to Antimony, having learned the proper form of address from Alfgyfa, “your courtesy in agreeing to meet with us is much appreciated.”

Antimony showed crooked teeth. He was a skilled enough diplomat that it even passed for a smile. “It is our delight to welcome our cousins, Mastersmith and Mother, if they are willing to again admit of the relationship.”

Tin smiled as if the bait had been a pleasantry. Beside her, Idocrase never raised his eyes from his record book. Tin could feel Galfenol's bristle all the way down the table. And Galfenol, of course, was also a Master and also a Mother, and outranked Tin in age, though her caste was lower.

“There were disputes between our great-grandmothers,” Tin said. “A feud that has separated our houses in times of trial, when perhaps we could have been of service to one another.” She paused a moment to let both sides of the table think about that. “Now, though, we are
not
our great-grandmothers, and I would like things to change. I will be plain, if you will let me.”

Argyria huffed into her collar, but held her peace. Given the glance she got from Antimony, it went well with her that she did so.

Tin glanced at Galfenol and saw Galfenol gallantly controlling herself. Very well, then: Tin had the floor.

“Trade,” she said. “For a start.”

Antimony inclined his head. “And what else?”

Tin drew a breath. “You have an alliance with the men of the surface.”

“An agreement,” Orpiment corrected. But there was a crooked smile under his crooked nose.

Tin let herself laugh. “Very well. We, too, have an agreement with them. But would it not be beneficial for the three civilized peoples of the North to come to some formal arrangement that benefits us all?”

“You're calling the surface men civilized?” Argyria said. Tin could tell that Galfenol agreed with her, but wasn't about to side with an aettrynalf over one of her own. It was a small blessing, but a valuable one.

“You're talking about an alliance that could pull us into a war with the invading men,” Antimony said.

“Those invading men might not stop at the cavern entrances,” Tin said, while Idocrase's glass pen scraped on paper.

“Let them come,” Argyria said. “They won't find us.”

Tin registered a polite beat of skepticism and shifted her attention to Antimony, who was regarding her steadily, with an interested expression. Waiting to see what she would do, she realized. Waiting to see how she might respond to the challenge.

She sipped her water. More ale struck her as a very bad idea. “I would rather have neighbors who are not driven by conquest,” she said. “The Northmen—oh, they have their culture as vikings and reavers, to be sure. They are not precisely peaceable neighbors. But between raids, they come home to their farms. The Rheans are professional soldiers who make conquest and taxation a way of life.”

“Some would call it civilization,” Orpiment said. Tin suspected he might be arguing for the sake of arguing—or arguing simply because she was a svartalf—but he kept a polite and interested tone, as if he honestly did simply wish to see what she would say to his assertion.

“Some would call the trellkin a kind of civilization, too,” Tin retorted. “But they have a disturbing tendency to eat their neighbors. So too these Rheans.”