The two archers standing guard in the Calacas tower were sweating as they stood at rigid attention. Tegestu let them sweat. In this late summer heat, they would not sweat alone.
With eyes narrowed against the blinding glare, Tegestu looked through the shimmering waves of heat at the treaty pavilion set carefully in the no man’s land between Neda and the Elva lines. He picked up the long tube of his spyglass and braced it on the embrasure, and the picture leapt into focus: he could see parties advancing from both sides, flags of truce above their heads, heading toward the pavilion and the day’s negotiation. He saw the black-hooded, scarlet-gowned figure of Fiona walking among them, her head high as she looked warily toward the other party. Why had she involved herself in this?
Ostensibly, he knew, it was to guarantee the good faith of both sides. But Tegestu also knew that she hated Tastis and his people, though he had never known why. Was Necias using her to pressure Tastis with the threat of vengeance from above? But if so, why would she agree? Unless, of course, she had been ordered by her superiors to cooperate. Or unless she was pursuing some hidden motive of her own.
Tastis, Fiona had reported, had refused an Igaran embassy. Tegestu knew from the reports of his spies that a miracle-working woman had appeared in the town claiming to be from another world; he knew that she had been invited into the Brodaini quarter and kept secure. After that there had been no word of her whatever.
But wait — hadn’t there been a report of a freak accident in one of the towers of Tastis’ Keep? Some kind of lighting storm, the word had gone, with a spectacular display of lighting in the sky surrounding the city, that had also hit the tower of the Keep....
Tegestu had heard of lightning once before, recently, on the day when Fiona had used her witchery against Captain Pantas’ archers, and brought the old barn crashing down. Had the Igaran ambassador to Neda-Calacas been forced to defend herself against Tastis’ people? Was that why Fiona was filled with such hatred?
It seemed a likely possibility. He would ask Cascan if he remembered the dispatches from those early days, and which tower had supposedly been struck. If it had been the tower used to house important prisoners, Tegestu would have his answer.
Not, of course, that the answer would seem to be worth a great deal at the moment. Tegestu blinked sweat from his eyes and peered through the long glass as the two sets of negotiators disappeared under the sun canopy they’ve been using for the talks.
This meeting represented the first resumption of the talks in several days. Tegestu sucked in his lips and tried to ignore the heat that enveloped him, tried to think. His mind ran hopelessly in blind alleys; he could find no answer.
The negotiations had been going on for two months, right through the summer. In another few weeks the autumn storms would begin, beating on the coast for a month while every ship ran for a safe anchorage — and then, after the storms, would come the strong cold winds from the north, bringing Elva ships choked with soldiers and weapons.
His people in Calacas were as ready as they could be. Food had been slipping in regularly, bundled on the backs of horses and mules, all provided by contractors happy to exchange their produce for the inflated prices Tegestu was paying, and moving safely through the gates because the mercenary captains who were supposed to be patrolling the walls had proved bribable. Tanta was also sending food from his base at Laptillo, where he could buy it legitimately. Messages moved back and forth easily enough, either by swift men on horseback or by even swifter small galleys slipping out past the blockade at night. Tegestu was well aware of developments outside his city walls — as perhaps Necias wanted him to be, since they were not encouraging.
Amasta had barricaded herself in the Brodaini quarter of Arrandal and was letting no one in or out, claiming as her reason the danger of local unrest. The forces of Arrandal had little hope of forcing her out, and she had food for a year. On the other hand, she had little chance of taking the rest of the city should the need arise, since it had been filled with a new draft of the militia, large numbers of mercenaries, and even baronial forces hired for the occasion — undisciplined men for the most part, but fighters. Amasta and the Arrandal Brodaini were, in the end, little more than hostages to Tegestu’s good behavior. Elsewhere, the forces on the islands and in the countryside had withdrawn successfully into garrison and were for the moment physically safe, though isolated; but in reality they were in much the same situation as Amasta.
The exile Brodaini elsewhere in the Elva were also stalemated. They were firmly in control of their own areas, but would never leave them without permission of their overlords. None of them would be accompanying the Elva forces overseas; they would all remain in their quarters, prevented from action by swarms of newly hired native soldiers. Perhaps a revolt would be successful here or there; but it would not succeed everywhere.
The only Brodaini force free to act was Tanta’s. Perhaps, with Tastis and Tegestu assaulting the Elva army from the front while Tanta cut their lines of communication and attacked from the rear, the Elva army could be smashed. But that would result in a war of extermination, perhaps ending in the death of every Brodaini in exile. It was a step Tegestu was reluctant to take — he would, he concluded bitterly, surrender first.
Seen from the tower, the two parties involved in the negotiation had arrived in the central pavilion. Tegestu had no clear idea what was on the agenda for today, but he knew the talks were proceeding slowly, in part because neither Tastis nor Necias trusted the other enough to attend in person, and instead used deputies whose actions were easy enough to disavow if they proved inconvenient. Tegestu wiped a bead of sweat from his nose and focused on the distant pavilion.
He was accurate reports on the other parties, principally from Tanta and Astapan, the drandor of Prypas, who had their sources within the Prypas government; there were also occasional reports from Amasta and a more irregular source within Necias’ household, a servant who was occasionally in a position to overhear something, who passed on what he heard to one of Cascan’s spies, and who thought he was actually working for the government of Cartenas, where the servant had relatives.
The negotiations, as far as Tegestu had heard, had not produced a great deal of substance. Tastis had demanded independence for himself and his Denorru-Censtassin, which Necias had refused. Necias had demanded instant and unconditional surrender, which Tastis had refused. They had then sat down to negotiate what would, in the end, be a surrender, but which would, Tegestu suspected, avoid the word and stigma of “surrender” but go by another word. “Armistice,” perhaps, was a word neutral enough to eventually work as a compromise.
What to do with Tastis and his aldran? Tastis wanted to return, of course, to his old allegiance, but the Neda-Calacas Government-in-Exile said no. Tastis had then hoped to take his folk out into the baronies to carve out a duchy for himself, but that proposal had been quashed quickly enough — there was nothing more guaranteed to unite the baronies than the Elva unleashing fifty thousand homeless warriors on them. And so the current answer seemed to be to somehow split up Tastis’ people, and there it hung. The Elva were less than enthusiastic about taking even small numbers of them into their service, lest the revolutionary virus infect their own Brodaini; and the alternative seemed to be to force them to become mercenaries abroad, preferably with Tastis and his aldran being sent in the opposite direction, a proposal Tastis was resisting, and which had problems of its own insofar as small wandering bands of mercenary Brodaini were going to cause trouble wherever they went.
None of this was final and the proposals changed with every session as Tastis’ aldran and Necias’ committee of ambassadors hewed at every proposal. And all the while, Tegestu was waiting for only one development that, if it appeared, would give him freedom to move once again. If, at some point in the negotiations, the Elva was willing to concede the possibility of allowing sovereign Brodaini territory somewhere on the continent, then Tegestu could approach Necias with his own proposals. It would mean trading Calacas for something else, but at least it would be for something real.