The day passed in feasting, and eventually, enough tenuous goodwill built between them that both the ice shoals and Embla dismissed their better-armed retinues. Entertainments crushed the snow of the clearing until it was packed ice and slush around the bonfires. Borean drums competed with the strings and dancers of Lebion, intermingling pleasantly, clashing at odd angles. General good humor followed full bellies, and unsurprisingly, the sea-shoals could hold their drink. 

Embla, on the other hand, drank her wine watered away to nothing, and had to be reminded to eat, so intently did she watch their enemies from beneath her veil. As night approached on that long day, their uniformity at last peeled away like the layers of their furs and seal skins. She began to understand each one. 

At her right hand, Rebelard, her father’s closest advisor and her own, quizzed her softly. “Their leader?” 

“Haret of the Nava.” She answered. “An old man, for a shoal.” He was crossed in scars and half blind, like the most rancorous of apex predators. Yet for this he was no less of a threat. He took drink and sustenance with the entitlement of an undefeated warchief, and leered without pause at the servants who pleased him. “He has a curiosity for our thawness of blood, favors rose wine and glory. He will be weak to flattery and bravado.” 

Rebelard tutted, then gestured. 

“Titulus of the Riveners.” Of the five, she liked him best, but that was not a surprise. “A clever and watchful man, with summer silk for speech. He seems wise, perhaps sincere. Fond of wine, women, word games, and keeping the peace.” She said this last with some savor. 

Rebelard was more wary. “A well-spoken enemy often has daggers in his teeth.” 

“Mm.” She nodded. “A shoal still, is he.” 

Her eyes moved down the table as he indicated the next two.  

“Mirosha, the Maiden of the Arderns.” Embla frowned. 

The she-shoal was sharp-eyed and acerbic, handsome and pristinely well-kept except where she blacked her long blonde hair in oil and soot until it shone. There was something unsettling about her, a keenness that pressed beyond bloodlust and reached for pain. 

“She is vain and bloodthirsty, and her ax has something to prove. While she watches the dancers, her eyes return again and again to our lords and ladies. I do not trust her.”

“And her brother?” 

“Cole leads the Black Thunderers. His mood and temperament are as unpredictable as the name.” She’d seen him move from joviality to menace in the breadth of a moment, and he of them all had the most difficult time tempering his impulses. Raiding is for taking, he’d said rather inarticulately when they first broached truce terms over lunch. He’d looked her up and down as he said it. “He lusts for thrill and impulse, lusts after me, and prefers to take rather than accept what is freely given.” 

On her other side, Annette, the Captain of her Queensguard scoffed into the lip of her cup. “He accepts our wine and feast-food freely enough.” 

Embla made a move to stifle her laughter, remembered the veil, and let her hand drop. “Why, Annie, don’t you know he’s entitled to those trifles?” She returned dryly, and Annette rolled her eyes. 

Rebelard cleared his throat, and Embla made a point of looking abashed, before she remembered again that she was wearing a veil. A veil she was beginning to hate. “Right. The last.” 

Her gaze found Edutch of the Fawkes at the end of the Borean table, watching the festivities coolly from behind a chalice of, according to her servants, very dark red wine. 

“That is Edutch of the Fawkes, sharp-eyed as an old woman at the scrying bones.” She said testily. 

He was as young as Mirosha and her brother Cole, as well-spoken as Titulus when he spoke at all, and not half so scarred as Haret. He watched her with ice chips in his eyes, frustratingly difficult to read. 

“He is temperate, I think, though slow to trust. His gaze follows everyone and sticks to no one. He favors our darkest wines, honeycomb, having his back to the fire.” 

“Weaknesses?” 

She bit her lip. “Arrogance.” 

“Arrogance?” Rebelard sounded surprised, near as Rebelard could be surprised. 

Embla nodded absently, watching him from the safety of the veil. It was the way the warchief’s mouth twisted up when certain words were spoken, by his people or her own. Like he knew better. And maybe he did. 

“Yes.” She repeated. “Arrogance. But still, he strikes me as reasonable. Among his people, that may be a weakness all its own.” 

“Mm.” Rebelard murmured thoughtfully. “So?” 

“Titulus and Edutch may be the most amenable to truce-talks. Cole,” she felt her mouth shift down of its own accord, “may be pliable to flirtation and proposals of marriage. Mirosha cannot be approached at all.” 

“No?” He mused. “I gather from her a penchant for paranoia and power. Perhaps she seeks a prestigious marriage, or can be turned to infighting?” 

Embla grimaced. “I do not trust her, and I would not doom my people to marry her. She’d slit my throat at the wedding altar and call it an offering to their gods.” 

He snorted softly, his heavy, salted brows rising. “Do not trust any of them, my Queen. What of Haret?”

“Haret,” she sighed, coming back to herself, “is of an age where offered comforts may outweigh the heaviness of his blade. Perhaps he can be bribed with land and women and a full belly.” 

Rebelard stroked a hand down his graying beard. “Very well. Where shall you start?” 

Embla glanced at her advisor. The lines in his face had grown deeper, but he’d lost nothing in his eyes. “Titulus, I think. His gaze cuts glass; maybe I can pry insights out of him.” 

Rebelard grinned absently. “You are your father’s daughter.” 

Gods, but she hoped that was true. 

***

This part had been painstakingly arranged. Embla knew she had no reason to fear, her Queensguard had been over it again and again. But it was only Knives’s warm weight against her knees that calmed her. 

They’d claimed a rough crown of snow and earth uphill from the clearing, chosen for it’s easily defensible position against a sheer drop and the rather remarkable view it gave of the palace. She’d ordered every torch lit on the fortress grounds for that evening, and the white marble walls shone like the face of a goddess against the velvet horizon. It should stun even Cole into silence if she played it right. 

Embla fought down a nervous nausea as she took her seat.  

The space was set with just two fur-draped chairs and a hot fire, with rough-hewn railing at its back to protect from the steep drop. Here she would wait to meet each warchief. Over her right shoulder, either Annette or Kellen would stand in parade rest, flame licking off their livery. At her feet, Knives and Tambre already lay, ears pricked toward the clearing where revelry painted the treeline in noise and cheerful flame. 

Titulus emerged from it, coming up the hill along the snow-cut path, with his shadow behind him, and Embla settled into herself. 

The warchief climbed into the clearing, competency in his light-footed step, and he smiled charmingly at her while his eyes roamed. They took in her minimal guard, her dogs, the grand view of the palace in its high place, just over her shoulder, and missed nothing. Behind him, his shadow settled against a tree, watching Annette blithely. 

“Truce-queen.” Titulus said through his teeth, and gave a small, polite bow. It was not very deep, but it was more than she expected to get from the rest. “What a lovely view.” And he nodded toward the palace, dropping into the seat across from her entirely at his ease. 

“Thank you, Lord. Though I’ve heard it’s truest beauty was seen in the summer centuries. Fountains of warm water and banners of living flower and ivy.” Embla’s mouth twitched down behind the veil, but she kept her tone cheerful. “All that is behind us now, I’m afraid, isn’t it?” 

He arched a brow. Close, she saw that he was older than she’d approximated, a faded roguishness to features that had seen hard fighting and harder living. “May I ask, whose idea was it to bring us here one by one? To set us before the palace framed so perfectly against the night?” 

It was a pointed question, and it put Embla’s hindbrain on guard. He enjoys games, she thought, and most men she knew also enjoyed explaining them to women. So she schooled her voice into girlish playfulness. “I’m afraid you will have to blame my love of aesthetics for that, Prince Titulus. Or my art tutors, who taught me the value of a beauty in all moments.” 

He tapped a few fingers on the arm of his chair, head tilted to the lilt in her voice. “Your art tutors?” There was something curious and goading in the words. “Not your political advisors? Rebelard de Ingesh? Or your own cunning mind?” 

Embla forced a delighted, empty giggle. “Shame, Lord. You’ve caught me. If you already knew the answer, why did you ask?” 

Titulus’s smile grew even more cunning, even more charming, cutting into the notch he’d found in her facade. “To see if you would lie, Queen. Naturally.” 

Embla was glad the veil shielded the quick wave embarrassment that swept up her cheeks. 

He seemed to notice it anyway. “I wouldn’t hold it against you. If I were some of my brethren, I might not have even noticed.” Then he gestured around them. “This meeting place, that view, the playful voice with which you engage me, even your veil. Half-truths, if not outright lies.” 

Embla snorted softly. She grit her teeth over the flood of nerves from this first small failure in diplomacy, forced herself to let it slip away. She would have to take a different tact. More direct, maybe. There was something familiar about the ice-lord, almost comforting. Something that reminded her of her father, when she was quite young. A man who saw in shades of gray. 

So she reached up and pulled back her veil, and his shrewd gaze traced her features in the firelight. 

“Ah, there.” He said approvingly. “There is honesty.”

Embla folded her hands in her lap, and took a studied breath. “What say you of peace, Lord?” 

His wise eyes brightened. “Is that why you started with me, Queen? You think I am more amenable to peace?”

“Aren’t you?” 

He shrugged a shoulder. “I am not opposed.” 

“May I ask why, Lord?” 

His expressive mouth pursed. “Maybe because I am not as young as I used to be. I miss my homeland. My wives and husbands. My children and my children’s children.” 

“May be.” She inclined her head. 

His gaze darkened. “Or maybe we’ve glutted on bloodshed and bounty long enough, and our greed tempts the gods of fortune.” 

Another truth, delivered with a bitter edge. 

“Or,” he settled his own hands in his lap in a nonchalant mirror of her own, “I simply know when we’ve been bested.” 

Embla did not let a muscle of her face move at that. They were not beaten, not yet. It felt like the kind of question meant to test. “Do the warchiefs know you crave peace?” She redirected. 

His mouth soured. “Crave is a strong word, Queen. They know where I stand, if that is what you mean.” 

“And they don’t care that you disagree?” She asked dubiously. 

“Where I come from,” he strolled a gaze along the horizon, the palace, then to the circlet of Queendom in her hair, “we are not ruled by blood. Every shoal worth their salt can have their own opinion, as long as it does not distort their loyalties.” 

“Which are?” 

“Each other.” 

A trickle of annoyance and despair mingled strangely in her chest; her nostrils flared. “Then you are ruled by blood, Lord, if you cannot change your allegiance to it.” 

He grinned, like she’d landed a blow and it delighted him. Like they were sparring over trade agreements and not apocalypses. Embla swallowed a chaffing lump in her throat. 

“How likely is it, then? Peace.” 

His laugh was dry. “Not at all likely. Shoals bleed. Raid. War. We know very little else.” 

“Perhaps you wish to know something else.” Embla leaned forward, leaned into the notch she’d carved into his facade. “Farmlands where a man could live peaceably. Forests where he might hunt. Space enough for his husbands and wives, his children and his children’s children. Food enough for the coming age of ice.” 

A look she had not expected passed in Titulus’s eyes. Startled, almost. Wounded, regretful. She had the strangest desire to reach across the space between them and comfort him. “Lo, though I wish it could be so, Truce-Queen.” 

Embla swallowed again, forcing down the knot of despair at the base of her throat. “You would not accept such a fate?” 

His brief softness retreated behind a sardonic grin. “Surely I would, but not at the cost of my loyalties. A shoal still am I, Queen. You will have my vote among my people, but if they will not have peace, neither will I.” 

Embla frowned, retreating, settling back against her seat. She cleared her throat.“Would you – would you share advice then? About your fellows.” 

It seemed this was a topic of great amusement to the shoal-prince. He cranked his brows and grinned like a mischievous badger. “Gladly. They are a predictable bunch. Haret is even-tempered if his pride’s not rankled. Cole is a lout. He’ll do as his sister says.” 

“Mirosha?” 

He frowned; it was almost a wince. “Mirosha, yes.” 

“And Edutch?” 

“Edutch.” A flicker of fondness came and went on his proud face. “A reasonable man, but do not take his reason for want of peace. He was not always leader of his clan – a mother and two sisters died first. So there is still much room on his war belt for glories.”

A brief moment of silence passed. Titulus watched her with his cunning, calculating eyes, and finally, Embla spoke. “Your…candid words are a boon.” 

Something in her tone struck him; she watched his mouth draw down into a thoughtful frown. “Do you know,” he said quietly, “I have five daughters of an age with you? I cannot imagine them sitting at a war table with the likes of Mirosha and Cole.” 

Embla grew uneasy at the pity in his face. “Age matters little between peace and war.” She whispered. 

And like a twig snapping in a still wood, he seemed to come to his senses, measuring her again as an enemy royal rather than a young woman. “We are a hard people, Queen. Don’t let my civilized tongue and charming manners fool you. Perhaps it was unwise you saw me first.” Then he rose, shoving off with his hands on his thighs. She rose as well, and had to snap at Knives when she offered him her hand. 

Titulus gave the animal a bemused glance, but he took her hand, even bowed slightly over it. “May the gods of good fortune smile upon your cleverness.” 

“And yours, shoal-prince.” She agreed, offering him a curtsy. 

Then he was gone, he and his shadow snaking down the path, and Embla slumped back into her seat, petting Tambre’s ear compulsively as she chewed over his words. 

A heavy, comforting hand squeezed her shoulder and she gave Annette a brief, conciliatory smile before reaching up and repinning her veil.

“Who is next?”