The servant stopped at the entrance to a private dining room, where Lord Everess sat with a man Silverdun recognized as Baron Glennet, who held one of the highest posts in the House of Lords, and an elderly woman he didn't recognize. They were sipping on a floral broth that smelled wonderful.
Everess and Glennet rose when Silverdun entered, and the woman nodded. Her sash identified her as a guildmistress.
"Am I late?" asked Silverdun.
"Not at all," said Everess, pumping his hand. "Right on time!"
Silverdun bowed. "Baron Glennet I know by reputation, but I'm afraid the guildmistress and I haven't had the pleasure."
"Of course," said Everess. "Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun, may I introduce Guildmistress Heron, our illustrious secretary of states."
"I hardly think myself illustrious," said Heron. "The foreign minister exaggerates, as is his wont." She was elderly, just this side of ancient, but her eyes shone with intelligence. She cast a slight disapproving glance at Everess, who did not miss it. Silverdun liked her already.
"Come, Silverdun, sit," said Glennet. "We've much to discuss!" Glennet had a long reputation as a conciliator; he'd engineered any number of compromises within the House of Lords, and between the House of Lords and the House of Guilds, two bodies that could scarcely agree on the time of day, let alone governance. He too was old, but his exuberance gave him a semblance of youth.
"I'm afraid my conversational skills have atrophied in recent months," said Silverdun, sitting. A waiter noiselessly placed a bowl of broth in front of him.
"Ah, yes," said Glennet. "The aristocrat monk! I'm pleased we were able to steal you from your contemplation for dinner."
"It would appear that monastic life does not suit me," said Silverdun, a bit embarrassed and trying not to show it.
"Well, you are to be commended for attempting such an ... unusual path," said Heron. "But I believe that the wider roads are wider for a reason, if you take my meaning."
"Of course," said Silverdun, taking her meaning and liking her somewhat less as a result.
"I'm just glad Baron Glennet was able to pull himself away from the card table in order to join us," said Heron.
Glennet's easy smile faltered. "We all have our little sins, Guildmistress." Not "Secretary."
Secretary Heron was about to comment further when waiters appeared, removing the broth and replacing it with roasted quail, in a sauce of raisins and bee pollen and a liquor Silverdun couldn't identify. He took a slow bite and waited for someone to tell him what the point of this dinner was. Not a social gathering, to be sure, as Everess and Heron clearly disliked one another.
Glennet dabbed at his chin as though it were a fine art. "Secretary Heron," he asked, "what news have we of Jem-Aleth? Has his social life improved at all?"
"No," Heron said primly. "Our beloved ambassador to Mab continues to be politely tolerated at court, mostly ignored, and never invited to state dinners. Or teas. Or children's spinet recitals."
"He told me that a city praetor invited him to a mestina once," said Everess, "but it was one of the bawdy type and he left ten minutes in."
"Yes," said Secretary Heron, rolling her eyes, "but what Jem-Aleth didn't tell you is the that only reason Praetor Ma-Pikyra invited him in the first place was that he'd confused him with somebody else."
Silverdun watched the back-and-forth, mildly interested in the idle chatter, but his thoughts were more concerned with the reason for his own presence here. "I knew Jem-Aleth in school," he said, reminding them that he was still in the room. "Nobody liked him then, either. The reason for the Unseelie cold shoulder may be personal as well as political."
"Quite the contrary," Everess said, unable to allow Silverdun to have useful information that had not come from him. "Before last year's Battle of Sylvan chilled our relations with our Unseelie neighbors substantially, JemAleth was quite well liked in the City of Mab. Though whether that's a com pliment to Jem-Aleth or an insult to the Unseelie, I can't say." He chuckled, looked around for an answering chuckle, got none, and plowed ahead. "Regardless, we've received not a whit of useful information from him in a year. He sends his dispatch each week, filled with scraps of information culled from publicans, maids, and would-be courtiers and sycophants, but even if there were anything useful buried in them, we have no method of responding to them in ... useful ways."
Everess shot a glance at Silverdun and narrowed his eyes, smiling at Silverdun as though he were a prize pupil. "And there could not be a more urgent time to follow up, I fear. Don't you agree, Silverdun?"
All eyes turned to Silverdun. He flashed his trademark charming smile, but he found Everess's look discomfiting. What was Everess getting him in to?
"I've been indisposed, Lord Everess," he said after a long sip of wine. "Perhaps you'd care to educate me."
Everess sighed, annoyed.
"You are aware, perhaps, that the Seelie Kingdom was nearly dragged into a full-scale war with Mab last year. You were there when it happened, after all."
"I seem to recall, yes."
"And you recall further that during the course of that altercation, the Unseelie unleashed a weapon so powerful that it destroyed the entire city of Selafae in a single blast?"
Silverdun's smirk faded a bit. "Yes. I remember that as well. The Einswrath, I believe they call it?"
"Yes," said Secretary Heron, scowling. "After the Chthonic god of war. Most unseemly."
Everess ignored her. "Then you are aware, Silverdun, that things have changed."
"Here we go," said Heron, her scowl widening. "Foreign Minister Everess's stock lecture has begun in earnest."
Now it was Silverdun's turn to ignore her. "What things, exactly, have changed, as you see it?"
Everess clenched his teeth, looking at Silverdun as though he were a child. "Everything, man. The balance of power, the status of relations between our kingdom and the other nations of the world and other worlds. The very nature of warfare itself."
It was true, Silverdun knew. The implications of a weapon powerful enough to level an entire city were enormous. No one, however, seemed to agree on what those implications might be. But clearly Everess was about to tell him.
"Go on," Silverdun said.
Everess reached for a glass of brandy, took a generous swallow, and launched into what Silverdun assumed was the stock lecture to which Heron had referred. "Certainly you can see that we have reached the end of an era, Silverdun. A cornerstone of propriety has been annihilated before our eyes. Your compulsory army days were long after my own, but you were certainly taught as I was: cavalry, battle mages, infantry in evenly spaced lines politely slaughtering one another on the battlefield. All those pretty tactics and stratagems, all those brilliant battles of old, always applicable. We used them against the Western Valley upstarts the first time they rebelled; we used them against the Gnomics a dozen years ago, and against the Puktu barbarians in Mag Mell a thousand years before I was born. But now all that has come to an end."
"I understand what you're saying, Everess," said Silverdun. "But what of it?"
"If Mab had one of those things, then she's certainly got more of them. We can only assume that she hasn't got a flying city full of them, or we wouldn't be having this conversation today. We'd be in an Unseelie work camp fetching water, or we'd be ashes in a hole somewhere."
"It tells us nothing of the kind," said Heron. "I believe that what it tells us is that she hasn't got any more of them."
"What this tells us," continued Everess, "is that the kind of war we were trained to fight has become obsolete in a single blaze. This new weapon of Mab's means that an army is no longer necessary at all! All one needs is a trebuchet and a tailwind and he can lay waste to anything he sees fit, from a safe and happy distance."