Veldrath — The Walls — Dawn
The sun came up and the continent was in the same place it had been before the sun came up.
Neither force had moved.
Lorenzo had been on the wall since the fifth hour, which was the hour the first of his soldiers had appeared on the parapets in the specific, quiet way of men who had been woken and given their position and had gone to their position, and who were now doing what Northern soldiers did when they were at their position with something to look at — looking at it, without the amateur's need to comment on it, without the civilian's impulse to make noise that confirmed they were alive. They looked. They waited.
The western force had not moved from its position at two thousand yards. The Earth-Shakers had not been deployed from their frames. Cassius had not descended from the basalt platform.
The southern force had not advanced beyond the plateau narrows. Varkas was still in the golden litter, which had been set down some time in the early morning — the carriers had placed it on the flat ground at the approach road's edge, and Varkas appeared to have slept in it, which was either genuine comfort or the most precise political statement of nonchalance Lorenzo had encountered.
Kael was at the wall's midsection, beside Lorenzo, with the morning's assessment. He had been on the wall since the fourth hour. He looked exactly as he always looked. Kael had a quality that Lorenzo had come to rely on without fully understanding — the quality of appearing the same at the fourth hour of a wall-watch in a surrounded city as he appeared at a routine briefing at the council table in Ironhold. It was not that he felt nothing. Lorenzo knew better. It was that what he felt was entirely separate from the information he was presenting, and the information was always what the situation required.
"Western force is static," Kael said. "No change in the column formation since first light. The Engines are in transport configuration, not deployment configuration." He paused. "They came here to be seen. Not to fire."
"Not yet," Maren said. He was on Lorenzo's other side, six feet of arms-crossed attention directed at the western horizon.
"The southern force has sent a rider," Kael continued.
Lorenzo looked at him.
"He arrived at the south gate at the sixth hour. He was alone. He carried a white flag and a sealed message, and he asked to speak to the Emperor."
"What does the message say."
Kael produced it. The seal was already broken — Lorenzo had authorized Kael to break sealed correspondence in the field if immediate intelligence value outweighed protocol. The seal was the golden sun of the Sun Empire's chancellery, and the letter inside was four lines long, written in the hand of someone who wrote very good letters very quickly, which was in itself information.
Lorenzo read it.
To Lorenzo, Emperor of the North, from Varkas, Emperor of the South —
I have come a very long distance and my back is beginning to register its objections. I propose a conversation. You, Cassius, and I. Inside your walls — I have no doubt you can find a room. The armies stay. I give you my word on the South; I imagine you can manage Cassius.
I came because someone asked me to, and I will explain who when we are sitting down.
Breakfast would be a pleasant touch, though I understand if the siege rations don't extend to that.
Lorenzo read it twice. He handed it to Kael. Kael read it once. He handed it to Maren. Maren read it and looked at the southern force.
"He's been here before dawn," Maren said. "He positioned in the dark. But he waited until the sixth hour to send the letter."
"He gave us time to see both forces first," Alexander said. He had arrived at the wall while Lorenzo was reading. He was looking at the litter. At the figure in it. "He wanted us to have the full picture before the offer arrived. So we understood what we were accepting when we accepted it."
"Which is what, exactly," Maren said.
"A conversation," Lorenzo said. "Which is not a battle."
"The conversation could be a way to hold us inside the walls while the western force moves," Cavel said. He had arrived shortly after Alexander. He always arrived shortly after Alexander in these situations, which was a pattern Lorenzo had noticed and taken as its own form of information.
"The western force has Earth-Shakers," Lorenzo said. "If Cassius wanted to breach the walls, he would not need us to be distracted. He would deploy and breach." He looked at the western force. At the Engines in transport configuration. "He came here with eight Engines and he hasn't deployed a single one. That is restraint. I want to understand the reason for it."
He handed the letter back to Kael.
"Send the rider back with my answer. Yes. Inside the garrison hall. The armies stay." He looked at Alexander. "And I need Cassius to agree."
"Cassius won't agree to an invitation from you," Alexander said.
"I know," Lorenzo said. "So I need it to come from Varkas."
Alexander looked at him. He was processing the shape of it — the architecture of the thing Lorenzo was constructing, the geometry of three parties and what each of them needed from the other two.
"I'll write to Varkas's chamberlain," Alexander said. "He has one — the man who receives letters before Varkas does. If the invitation comes through the chamberlain it reaches Cassius as a southern proposal, not a northern one."
"How long," Lorenzo said.
"An hour," Alexander said. "If the chamberlain is as good as I think he is."
"Do it," Lorenzo said.
Alexander went.
Lorenzo stayed on the wall. He looked at the three armies on two sides of the city. He looked at the arithmetic. He looked at the note in his armor and the casualty document in his armor and the weight of both against his chest.
Then he went downstairs to find out if the garrison's kitchen had anything that would pass for breakfast.