The carriage arrived at the Wadee estate gate at the fifth bell of the morning.
Gerffron watched it from the upper window of the cedar bedroom, where he had been awake for approximately an hour doing the specific, restless thing that people did when they had slept badly not from anxiety but from an excess of thinking — turning over the same material repeatedly, approaching it from new angles, arriving at the same conclusions and then checking the conclusions again to make sure they were still solid.
They were still solid.
He went downstairs.
The carriage was a palace carriage — the formal kind, with the royal household's livery on the door, sent the evening before at the court's instruction because apparently the court had decided that the Wadee consort, while deemed qualified to serve as primary liaison for an international diplomatic delegation, was not to be trusted to arrange his own transportation to the royal docks.
He looked at the carriage.
He looked at the royal livery.
He thought, with the specific, dry amusement of a man who had developed a comprehensive ability to find things funny that were not actually funny:
So we trust him with the Veldrathi delegation but not with the logistics of arriving to meet them. Excellent. Very coherent policy.
He got in the carriage.
The preparation had begun the day before, when he had presented himself at the palace's formal administrative wing for the briefing that the court's diplomatic secretary had arranged — a comprehensive, three-hour session that had covered the Veldrathi delegation's official composition, the formal protocol for receiving foreign delegations of this tier, the specific agenda items that the delegation had formally registered, the background on the Veldrathi-Zenos relationship including the Torvin matter's current judicial status, the anticipated sensitivities, and the list of names and titles for each delegate.
He had sat through all three hours.
He had taken notes just like he used to do when he was pursuing his post graduation degree in the business school in Hyderabad.
His notes were organized in the specific, dense shorthand he had developed over two and a half years of reading — a system that compressed the maximum information into the minimum space, that could be reviewed quickly and reconstructed fully, that had been refined through the accumulated practice of someone who had nothing to do but read and had therefore become very good at reading.
The diplomatic secretary — a man of fifty-five named Corvath who had been doing this job for twenty years and who had the specific, world-weary patience of someone who had managed difficult briefings before and had decided long ago that patience was more efficient than frustration — had watched him take notes and had then, about an hour in, begun speaking slightly faster.
By the third hour he had been speaking at his normal pace again.
After the briefing, Gerffron had gone to the formal wardrobe consultation — another palace instruction, because the court had apparently also decided that his existing wardrobe required input — and had been fitted for the formal liaison's attire: the Zenos court colours, the specific cut of an official representative, the combination of formality and approachability that someone had decided was the correct register for this particular occasion.
The charcoal coat was not appropriate for today.
He had stood in the wardrobe consultation room in a deep navy-and-gold combination and had looked at himself in the mirror and had thought: you look like you belong here.
This was either a very good thing or a profoundly unsettling one.
He had not decided which.
After the wardrobe, he had spent the evening in the estate library with the archives that Gorgina had unlocked — the Veldrathi diplomatic correspondence, the border territory records, the specific documents that covered the past five years of the relationship between the two kingdoms — reading with the focused, unhurried attention of a man who understood that the preparation he was doing now was the thing standing between him and everything that Teivel expected him to fail at.
He had read until the lamp oil ran low.
Then he had gone to bed.
Then he had not slept for an hour.
Then he had slept for four hours.
Then he had woken up and gotten in the palace carriage.
The royal docks occupied the capital city's eastern waterfront — the formal docks, distinct from the commercial ones, built for the specific purpose of receiving vessels whose arrivals were diplomatic events rather than logistical ones. The architecture said this clearly: the wide stone apron, the formal approach avenue, the banners of the Zenos empire flanking the avenue's length, the specific, staged quality of a space designed to communicate to people arriving by water that they were arriving somewhere that considered its own reception of them to be significant.
It was cold.
It was early spring, but the dock's proximity to the water and the morning hour combined to produce a cold that was more honest about the season than the afternoon light's recent improvements had suggested.
Gerffron stood at his designated position — briefed by Corvath, confirmed with the ceremonial protocol officer, marked on the floor plan with the specific, slightly excessive precision of a palace administration that had developed its formal reception choreography over three hundred years and was not going to depart from it for anyone.
He stood at his position and looked at the river.
The sea was doing what sea did in early morning — moving through the city with the indifferent, continuous patience of things that had been moving long before the city and would continue moving long after it, reflecting the overcast spring sky in the flat, pewter way of water on cloudy days.
He breathed.
He thought about the delegation's composition.
He thought about how comfortable he had become in this world. He had become so comfortable that currently he is leading a team to welcome the eminent dignitaries from the neighbouring country, Velderath. How swiftly the time flies!
It feels like as if it was yesterday that he had taken his life and the very next second hwe found himself in an unknown body already in the middle of a marriage ceremony with a woman whom he didn't even know. But with the passage of time, he was able to navigate through this world--saved a poor soul from slavery; was punished because of it and eventually received freedom from that punishment. He gained his allies in his own way, and now here he is, currently, waiting for delegates of Velderath. Come to think of it, wasn't Styrmir supposed to be in Velderath? Did he visit Zenos? Flashes of memories few months back during his drugged state went across his mind, he shook his head to throw them off.
He had wanted to look for the person who had rescued him from almost getting abducted. He wanted to give his thanks and show gratitude for saving his life and dignity.
He had thought about the inn room — the coat on the chair, the boots by the door, the two words he had left on a piece of paper — and about the face he could not reconstruct from the blur, and about the quality of the hands, and about the specific, familiar quality he had identified in them that he had filed away and not examined.
He thought about this now, standing at the royal docks in the navy-and-gold formal attire, watching the sea.
A throat was cleared behind him.
He straightened.
"Consort Wadee."
He turned.
The Prime Minister of the Zenos court was a man named Deldric Harren. Gerffron had confirmed this specifically because the coincidence would have been too much — who was sixty-seven years old and had the specific, dense authority of a man who had been the second most powerful person in the empire for twenty-two years and had learned to communicate his authority through posture rather than performance.
He stood beside Gerffron and looked at the river.
"The ships will arrive within the half-hour," Harren said.
"Yes," Gerffron said.
"You are prepared."
"I am," Gerffron said.
"You have reviewed the protocol documentation."
"Twice."
"You have the names and titles confirmed."
"Yes."
Harren looked at him with the eyes of a man who had been assessing people for sixty-seven years and had arrived at a very high accuracy rate.
"This is your first diplomatic function," Harren said.
"Yes."
"Your appointment surprised the administrative tier."
Gerffron looked at the river.
"I imagine it did," he said.
"You are not what they expected."
"What were they expecting?"
"Something easier to predict." A pause. "Best behavior, Consort Wadee. Courtesy at the appropriate moments. Accompany the delegation — do not leave them unattended, do not allow the schedule to drift, do not give them occasion to feel that the Zenos court is less interested in their concerns than Veldrath is in ours." He paused again. "Curry favor where it can be curried without compromising the court's position. Understand the distinction between the two."
Gerffron nodded.
He thought: I was in my first year at business school when I died. I did not finish the degree. I did not finish the degree because I was pushed to death by none other than my own blood related cousin, Birsha.
He thought: And now I am standing at the royal docks of an empire I arrived in by soul-swap, representing a court I was once imprisoned by, waiting to receive a delegation from a country I have never visited, about to greet the residents of that country.
He thought: Deepak Sehwal, if you could see this. Was it worth it? The ending? The way you ended?
He thought about the computer lab at seventeen.
He thought about the whooshing of air as he had jumped down from the terrace of his boy's hostel.
He thought about the specific, terrible waste of a person who had been trying to outrun something that was always behind them.
He thought: I do not know if the ending was worth it, but what came after the ending —what came after the ending has been worth staying for.
The sea moved.
A shape appeared at the far curve of the waterway.
Then another.
The Veldrathi delegation ships, rounding the bend, their banners clear against the overcast sky.
Gerffron straightened his back.
He composed his face.
He was ready.