˚₊‧✩ ˚₊‧꒰ა ʚིᵋº̣̥͙̣̥͙ᵌɞྀ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ✩‧₊˚
Arashi Mori did not sleep after the meeting.
This was not unusual. Sleep, for Arashi, had always been a negotiation conducted on his own terms, arrived at when his body decided it had earned it and not before. Tonight his body had decided it had not earned it, which was its own kind of information.
He sat cross-legged on the flat stone outside his quarters with his katana across his knees and the night air of Thessaloniki moving quietly around him and thought about the map.
Not the note. The map.
The note was simple. Four words, either true or a lie, and the difference would reveal itself in time. Notes could be written by anyone for any reason.
The map was something else.
The map was skill. The map was patience. Whoever had drawn it had stood at the edges of their territory for long enough, in enough different positions, to construct something that accurate. That was not a single afternoon's work. That was weeks. Possibly longer.
Which meant they had been here, watching, before they left the note. Which meant the note had not been an impulse. It had been a decision made after observation, after someone had looked carefully at everything the settlement had built and then chosen to announce themselves rather than report back.
Arashi turned that over.
He stood up. He sheathed the katana.
He was going back to the eastern marker.
˚₊‧✩ ˚₊‧꒰ა ʚིᵋº̣̥͙̣̥͙ᵌɞྀ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ✩‧₊˚
The hillside at night required a different kind of attention than it did in daylight. Arashi moved through it without sound and without light and reached the eastern marker stone at the second hour past midnight.
He stopped.
Someone was sitting on top of it.
Not hiding nearby. Not approaching cautiously. Sitting on the marker stone itself, legs crossed, eating something from a small cloth wrap, looking up at the overcast sky with the relaxed expression of a person enjoying a perfectly pleasant evening.
He looked at Arashi.
Arashi looked at him.
"Oh good," the stranger said, with genuine relief, as though Arashi were a friend he had been waiting for. "I was beginning to think nobody was coming. I have been out here for two hours." He held out the cloth wrap. "Do you want some? It is cheese. I brought too much of it and now, it has lost some of my interest."
Arashi did not respond.
"Not a cheese person?" The stranger lowered the cheese. "Fair enough, that makes two of us now." He dusted his hands on his coat and looked at Arashi with grey eyes that were doing considerably more work than the rest of his expression suggested. Taking inventory. Filing things away. Deciding things. "You are one of the guards, yes? The ones who do the eastern patrols?"
Arashi said nothing.
"Right," the stranger said. "Not a talker. That is fine. I can talk for both of us." He slid off the marker stone and straightened his coat with the unhurried ease of someone who had not just been caught alone in the dark by a person carrying two swords. "My name is Kostas Emilios. I left the note. And the map, which I am quite proud of actually, I have not done cartography since I was twelve." He tilted his head slightly. "You are going to take me to whoever is in charge, yes? That would be ideal. I have things to say and it would be more efficient to say them once."
He reached into his coat. Slowly, which suggested he understood the swords. He produced a folded piece of paper and held it out.
Arashi looked at it without taking it.
"It is the Queen of Nephoria's written instructions to me," Kostas said pleasantly. "Detailing what I was sent here to do. I thought it might be a useful opening to the conversation." A pause. "It is not a flattering document from my perspective but it does establish credibility, which seems more important right now than my reputation."
The hillside was very quiet.
Arashi looked at the paper. Then at the stranger. Then, after a long moment, he turned and began walking back toward the settlement.
He heard the stranger fall into step behind him almost immediately.
"Wonderful," Kostas said, to the night air. "Lead the way."
˚₊‧✩ ˚₊‧꒰ა ʚིᵋº̣̥͙̣̥͙ᵌɞྀ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ✩‧₊˚
Dilwyn was awake when they arrived.
He took one look at Arashi and the stranger behind him and then at the stranger more specifically and said nothing for a full five seconds.
Then: "Inside."
The stranger followed him into the meeting room with the same easy manner he had apparently brought to sitting alone on a marker stone at midnight eating cheese. He looked around at the lamps and the maps on the walls and Evren in the corner watching him with sharp blue eyes and Coem by the door with his eyes gone full amber, and his expression said: interesting.
Not afraid. Interested.
"Sit down," Dilwyn said.
The stranger sat. He put the folded document on the table in front of him but did not push it forward yet.
"You left the note," Dilwyn said.
"And the map," the stranger said. "I mentioned the map to your guard. I am proud of it."
Dilwyn looked at him for a moment. "You were sent here by the Queen of Nephoria."
"Yes."
"To infiltrate our settlement."
"That was the assignment," the stranger agreed. "Learn your numbers, your capabilities, your intentions, report back so Her Majesty could plan accordingly." He folded his hands on the table. "I have not sent a single report."
"Why?"
The stranger smiled. Not the performed smile of someone managing a situation, something more honest than that, something that looked almost like he found the question genuinely amusing, as though the answer were obvious and he was surprised to be asked.
"Because this is more interesting," he said.
Dilwyn stared at him.
"You were sent to spy on us," Evren said from the corner, very carefully, "and you decided not to because it was not interesting enough?"
"Not 'not interesting enough'," Kostas said. "More interesting the other way." He leaned forward slightly. "I was sent here because my Queen believes you are a threat that needs to be eliminated. I have spent three weeks in your settlement without your knowledge, and what I have found is that you are not a threat. You are a people living your lives in the mortal realm minding your business, which you have apparently been doing for four hundred years while Nephoria periodically works itself into a state about it." He looked at Dilwyn. "My Queen is planning a war on nothing. That seems like the kind of thing that should be stopped."
"And you want to stop it," Dilwyn said flatly.
"I think it would be a good idea, yes."
"Why," Dilwyn said, "would a council member of Nephoria want to stop his queen's war?"
Kostas was quiet for a moment. The easy manner stayed, but something underneath it shifted, the way the surface of water shifts when something large moves beneath it.
"Because," he said, "I was raised to believe you were monsters. I came here expecting monsters." He looked around the room, at the scarred table and the mismatched chairs and the maps on the walls and the people who had built four centuries of survival in a world that was not theirs. "I found none."
He pushed the document forward.
"Read it," he said. "Verify the seal. And then tell me why I would hand you the proof of my mission if I intended to complete it."
The document sat on the table between them.
Evren was looking at the stranger with an expression Arashi recognised: the look she got when she was calculating something she had not yet arrived at the answer to. Coem had not moved from the wall. Dilwyn had not moved at all.
"One more question," Dilwyn said.
"Of course," Kostas said.
"Three weeks," Dilwyn said. "You were here for three weeks without us knowing."
"That's what I said, yes."
"Where were you staying?"
A pause. Something in Kostas's expression suggested this was the question he had been hoping would not come up.
"There is an olive tree," he said, "approximately four hundred metres east of your southern boundary. Very old. Excellent cover. Slightly less excellent as accommodation, but one adapts." He straightened his coat with the dignity of a man who had attended formal council meetings in this same coat three weeks ago. "I have slept in worse places. Not many, but some."
Evren stared at him. "You are a council member of Nephoria."
"Yes."
"You slept under a tree."
"Unfortunately," Kostas said.
Evren made a sound that was not quite a laugh.
Dilwyn looked at the ceiling briefly. Then back down. Then he reached for the document.
Kostas sat back and waited and said nothing, which was, Arashi thought, the most interesting thing he had done all evening.
˚₊‧✩ ˚₊‧꒰ა ʚིᵋº̣̥͙̣̥͙ᵌɞྀ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ✩‧₊˚