Salute the Dark

Stenwold opened his mouth to retort, as though this was the Collegium Assembly, but the character of the silence told him that his words were not wanted. For a long while the Dragonfly lord stared at the ground, and not a single one of his followers moved. Autumn leaves, came a voice in his memory. Green and red and black and gold.

‘The place is not mine,’ Felipe Shah said at last. ‘I am but a prince amongst princes. The Monarch alone must give you our answer.’

‘It is then possible to secure an audience with… with the Monarch?’ Stenwold felt as though he was walking a fragile tightrope of etiquette. The Commonweal was vast, the Monarch doubtless distant and mighty. How many such baffling audiences would he have to sit through, how much time before he could put his case? Could the Lowlands last that long?

Felipe Shah’s melancholy did not break, precisely, but there was a curious spark in his eye, a slight creasing about his face, as though he nonetheless saw that something in his view was amusing. Looking around, Stenwold saw an identical expression on all the courtiers’ faces, a polite and pointed fixedness of feature.

At last he saw that one Dragonfly face remained composed and still, and then he understood.

With the greatest possible care, Stenwold stood up and made a low bow before Inaspe Raimm – teller of the future and Monarch of the Commonweal.

‘I… am a fool,’ he confessed.

‘That understanding is the first step to wisdom,’ the Monarch replied softly. ‘Perhaps Prince Salme Dien has not spoken to you of the proper role of a prince of our Commonweal. It is not to be heaped with honours and raised high, but to stoop low, to bear burdens for the people that the prince must serve. So it should be for a prince, and so much more for a monarch.’

‘And I am fortunate to come and find you here when…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Or you knew, and came here especially to meet what the Lowlands would send.’ He had no scepticism left. Here in this ephemeral court they had finally drained him of it.

She nodded slowly. ‘I have enjoyed our meeting, Stenwold Maker.’

‘But if I had known… I have requests…’

‘I am glad for your ignorance, then. I know already what you would request.’

‘What I came all this way to ask…’ he put in, feeling that he was teetering on the very edge of propriety. ‘Please, let me ask it.’

‘Even if we are bound to refuse?’ she said, and he gaped at her.

‘But you can’t know what I intend to ask you.’

Her face remained very composed, solemn with melancholy. ‘We already know, Stenwold Maker, but if it would help you, please speak your requests. Let there be no possibility of doubt between us.’

He had by now lost track of Commonweal opinion, whether he was being honoured or just very rude. He was struck suddenly with a great sense of urgency, absurd considering the long journey here, the distance involved. ‘We fight the Wasps even now, as they march on our cities. We lack strength to fight them, our enemies – the enemies of all of us, the Wasp Empire.’ The words came spilling out from him unsorted and jumbled, but still he pressed on. ‘I know from Salma the injuries they did to your own people, the bitter years of war, the principalities they stole from you with their treaties and their demands. I am a fool, perhaps, but not such a fool that I cannot see common cause. The Empire’s armies run thin, for they are fighting on all fronts, pushing outwards. They are mad for conquest. A Commonweal force that marched or flew east now could reclaim all that you have lost, and the Wasps would have no strength to resist you. And while they recoiled from you, their strikes at us would also weaken. They would be stretched until they snapped.’

He finished, slightly out of breath, waiting anxiously for her response.

It was too slow in coming. ‘Help us,’ he begged. ‘Help us, and help yourselves – please.’

Inaspe Raimm lowered her gaze. ‘You do not understand. We cannot do as you ask. It is impossible.’

Stenwold made sounds that he could not force into words. At last he said, ‘But… even a modest force?’

‘We cannot retake the lost Principalities,’ she said, simply. ‘The reason is very clear: we have signed the Treaty of Pearl. Those lands were ceded to the Empire.’

Stenwold felt his mouth fall open, staring. ‘But they forced you to sign that treaty. You cannot have signed it willingly. Twelve years of war…’

‘I signed the Treaty of Pearl,’ she told him, and the hint of emphasis in her voice silenced him. ‘It is a shame that I myself shall continue to bear, and pass on to each monarch that succeeds me. True, we were dragged to it through a sea of our people’s blood. True it was a device of the Empire that they themselves would not pause for a moment before breaking. But that is not material.’

‘I don’t understand…’ he began.