The person who'd been standing just inside the door since the start cleared his throat. The sort of throat-clear that expected to become the most important sound in the room.
"Her ladyship, Vassara of House Vaskareth," he said.
He had the voice of a man who had delivered that sentence in a lot of rooms over a lot of years. The kind of professional tone that suggested he believed deeply in the importance of the announcement.
"Voice of the Vaskareth Dinasty. Heir of the deep boundary. And the person whose front yard your city has been occupying for the past weeks."
He paused.
"She will hear your proposal now."
Nobody said anything.
"We don't have a proposal," the council chair said.
"Then she'll hear your apology," the entourage member replied pleasantly.
"We haven't agreed to—"
"Your city trespassed my house territory without warning. Trespasses have remedies."
"It wasn't intentional," the guild representative said.
She looked at him.
