The ambassadors and their delegations crowded around the tables. Dunbarth took a brimming cup of nectar. He tasted the vintage, found it good, and wandered over to inspect the food. From there he spied Kith-Kanan standing at the edge of the garden by himself. Food in hand, the dwarf strolled over to him.
“May I join you, noble prince?” he asked.
“As a guest you may stand where you want,” Kith-Kanan replied genially.
“An interesting session this morning, don’t you think?” Dunbarth pulled apart a capon and gnawed at a leg. “This is the most progress we’ve made since we first convened.”
Kith-Kanan took a large bite from an apple and regarded the dwarf with some surprise. “Progress? All I heard was a lot of contentious talk.”
The dwarf flipped up the brim of his hat in order to hoist his golden goblet high. He drained the nectar and wiped the sticky liquid from his mustache. “Reorx bless me, Highness! Diplomacy is not like a hunt. We don’t track down our quarry, pot him, and cart him home to be eaten. No, noble prince, diplomacy is like an old dwarf combing his hair—every hair that comes out in his comb is a defeat, and every one that stays in his head is a victory!”
Kith-Kanan chuckled and looked around the garden. He missed the weight of a sword at his hip. And even more, he missed the sights and smells of the forest. The city seemed too bright, the air tinged with too much smoke. Odd, he’d never noticed those things before.
“What are you thinking, Highness?” asked Dunbarth.
What was he thinking? He returned his gaze to the dwarf. “The praetor’s wife is rather short-tempered, and the praetor himself never speaks. You’d think the emperor would have more able representatives,” Kith-Kanan commented. “I don’t think Lady Teralind does their cause much good.”
Dunbarth looked for a place to throw the capon leg bone, now that he had cleaned it of meat. A servant appeared as if summoned and collected the refuse. “Yes, well, smooth and subtle she’s not, but a lot can be accomplished by sheer stubbornness, too. Prince Sithas…” Dunbarth quickly recalled to whom he spoke and thought the better of what he had been about to say.
“Yes?” Kith-Kanan prompted him.
“It’s nothing, Highness.”
“Speak, my lord. Truth is not to be feared.”
“I wish I had Your Highness’s optimism!” A passing servitor refilled Dunbarth’s cup. “I was going to say that Prince Sithas, your noble brother, is a match for Lady Teralind in stubbornness.”
Kith-Kanan nodded. “It is only too true. They are much alike. Both believe they have right always on their side.”
He and Dunbarth exchanged some further pleasantries, then the dwarf said an abrupt good-bye. He wanted to mingle with the others a bit, he said, and wandered off aimlessly. But Kith-Kanan could read the purpose in his stride. He shook his head. Dwarves were supposedly bluff and hearty, but Dunbarth was more subtle than a Balifor merchant.
The prince strolled off on his own, among the head-high hedges of flowering vines and the artfully molded sculptures of boxwood and cedar.
The vigorous spring seemed to have followed him from the wildwood to Silvanost. The garden was a riot of bloom.
He thought of the clearing where he and his little family had lived. Had the bees built their hives in the hollow oak yet? Were the flowering trees dropping their blossoms into the pool that was the entrance to Anaya’s secret cave? In the midst of all the splendor and majesty that was Silvanost, Kith-Kanan remembered wistfully the simple life he had shared with Anaya.
His reverie was broken when he rounded a corner in the hedges and found Hermathya seated alone on a stone bench.
Kith-Kanan briefly considered turning and avoiding his former lover, but he decided that he couldn’t hide from her forever. Instead of leaving, he went up to her and said hello.
Hermathya did not look up at him, but gazed off into the blossoms and greenery. “I woke up this morning thinking I had dreamed you returned. Then I asked my maidservant, and she said it was true.” Her voice was low, controlled, and her hair shone in the sunlight. She wore it pulled back in a jeweled clasp, as befitted a high-born, married elf woman. Her pale arms were bare, her skin smooth and unblemished. He thought she was even more beautiful than when he’d left Silvanost.
She asked him to sit. He declined.
“Are you afraid to sit next to me?” she said, meeting his eyes for the first time. “It was once your favorite place to be.”
“Let’s not bring up the past,” Kith-Kanan said, keeping his distance. “That’s over and done with.”
“Is it?” Her eyes, as always, caught and held him.
He was intensely aware of her, as near as he was, and she stirred him. What elf could be so close to her flame-bright loveliness and not be moved? However, Kith-Kanan no longer loved Hermathya; he was certain of that.
“I’ve been married,” he said pointedly.
“Yes, I heard that last night. Your wife is dead, isn’t she?”
No, only changed, he thought. But he replied, “Yes, she is.”
“I thought about you a great deal, Kith.” Hermathya said softly. “The longer you were away, the more I missed you.”
“You forget, Thya, I asked you to flee with me—and you refused.”
She seized his hand. “I was a fool! I don’t love Sithas. You must know that,” she exclaimed.
Hermathya’s hand was smooth and warm, but Kith-Kanan still pulled his hand free of hers. “He is your husband and my brother,” he said.
She didn’t hear the warning in his statement. She leaned her head against him. “He’s a pale shadow of you, as a prince…and a lover,” she said bitterly.
Kith-Kanan moved away from the bench. “I have no intention of betraying him, Thya. And you must accept the fact that I do not love you.”
“But I love you!” A tear trickled down her cheek.
“If that’s true, then I pity you. I have passed into another life since we loved each other, years ago. I’m not the headstrong young fool I once was.”
“Don’t you care for me at all?” she asked, her face anguished.
“No.” he said truthfully, “I don’t care for you at all.”
One of Dunbarth’s dwarven servants came running through the maze of hedges. “Great prince!” he said breathlessly. “The speaker is recalling the assembly.”
Kith-Kanan walked away and did not look back at Hermathya, though he could hear her crying until he reached the entrance to the Tower of the Stars.
When he was out of earshot, Hermathya clenched her eyes shut, squeezing the tears from them. “So be it,” she hissed to herself. “So be it.” She picked up the golden goblet Kith-Kanan had left nearby and bashed the soft metal against the marble bench. The goblet was soon a twisted, misshapen lump.
The afternoon session dragged on as the three sides tried to decide who would govern the proposed buffer state. It was a tricky question, and every suggestion that came up was debated and discounted. Clerics and guildmasters from the city grew tired of the endless discussion and drifted away, thinning the crowd in the audience hall. After a time, Praetor Ulwen’s head nodded forward. His wife looked like she wanted a long nap herself.
“I can’t agree to give away mineral rights or crop-growing rights,” Teralind said testily, for the third time. “How do you expect our people to live? They can’t all herd cattle.”
“Well, your idea to have enclaves belonging to different nations is no solution,” Sithas said, tapping the arm of his chair to emphasize each word. “Instead of one large disputed territory, we’ll have scores of tiny ones!”
“Separate communities might be the answer,” mused Dunbarth, “if they are able to trade with each other.”