Ricardo korvu Snowflower kanru Tidesheart korvu by-Clayfield stands in a tent in a rocky mountainside field, smooths his jacket, and looks over the collapsible table with its richly embroidered tablecloth, and its two chairs, opposite one another; the fine china tea service; the neat folder of papers; inkwell and pen.
“Will there be anything else, Ambassador?”
He smiles. He is not a young elf, and his face has the cast of long years, a certain mature melancholy, which he wears handsomely. “Thank you, Averi,” he says to the diplomatic sous-sécretaire standing to crisp attention by the entrance flap. “This all looks perfect.”
“Signore.” She bobs her head.
A shame, he thinks. With a solid family name, she’d have gone far in the service already. As it is, she carries the quiet hindrance of a name marked down only as Averi L/V; lignaggio velato, the rubric for those whose family is so besmirched — by relation to traitors, monsters, and the worst kind of criminal — that to disclaim it is less onerous than to rehabilitate it. She has been exhaustively vetted by many eyes, to come this far; he has taken the gentlemanly view that such makes the circumstances of her lineage none of his own concern.
He flips open his pocketwatch. “Time to assemble a welcome, I should think,” he says, and exits the tent, Averi a silent step or two behind his shoulder. Around them, on three sides, the rugged mountainside of one of the Endstones offers up a small grassy plateau before falling away downhill; undeveloped, unsculpted, unbuilt-upon, just rocks and trees, a little idyll.
On the fourth, uphill side, the natural mountainside gives way abruptly to a stark vertical wall.
The Eaststone is a fortress, from whence nobody comes, and into which nobody goes. The dwarves who survived the End did so under the iron, regimented control of their hereditary rulers; in the following turmoil, overthrew and executed them; enjoyed the Four Golden Summers of freedom. And then the counterrevolutionary factions of the Polyfora Tekhnikal slammed their heel back down, fortified the walls and closed the gates; and the Eaststone, to outside ears, fell silent.
One day per year, the elves send the Ambassador to sit outside the gates in a little tent, with a pot of tea. Some years, the gates remain sealed. Others, a representative comes out, sits opposite within the tent. Perhaps takes some tea. The elves ask: does the Eaststone need anything? and the Eaststone says: the Eaststone needs nothing, in tones which say it is insulting to imply otherwise. The elves ask: does the Eaststone want anything? and the Eaststone says: the Eaststone wants nothing, in tones which say this is even worse.
Would the Eaststone like to be friends with the outside world?
This is, of course, the worst and most insulting question.
No, the Eaststone says, and its representative goes back inside.
The Ambassador strolls unhurriedly through the little elven camp, and stands at the established, diplomatically acceptable distance from the heavy iron hatch from which the dwarven delegate might appear, his handful of staff lined up some distance behind him.
“Time, Signore,” Averi says quietly.
“Thank you, Averi.”
They will wait for twenty minutes. If nothing happens within the first ten, nothing will. Either a dwarf will emerge, or not. Either way, by the end of the day they’ll be packed away and double-timed off the Eaststone, camping on the plain between the Endstones for the night. To do otherwise would be to strain the dwarves’ diplomatic tolerance.
The Ambassador stands and watches the hatch, in a relaxed sort of way, not allowing the brutal square-edged loom of the Eaststone to affect his mien. It’s ugly, to the elven mind, both physically and socially; no more than a prison to its occupants, and a snarling threat to the world beyond its perimeter. There is little clue what they think of it themselves, those inmates; the Eaststone’s emissaries are neither inclined nor permitted to indulge in conversation.
After six minutes, there is a series of dull noises from within the hatch, as seldom-disturbed wrist-thick bolts are retracted. The distressed metallic wail of some rotating part. A brief silence.
The hatch swings open, and the dwarven delegate steps out.
Averi has not attended the Eaststone diplomatic contact before; nonetheless, she is a professional, and has undergone the extensive standard briefing.
She does her best not to look to excess.
Dwarven stature follows a bell curve, as do all elvenoid peoples’, the briefing says, with the average dwarven height being approximately two-thirds that of the average elf. Anatomy is proportionate. The silhouette presented by the Eaststone’s diplomatic envoys is, however, deliberately shaped by clothing, in the manner of several high-status historical clothing styles (see footnote 27). Padded elements exaggerate the width and squareness of the shoulders, making the neck appear correspondingly shorter and the head possibly sunken into the shoulders. Padded elements exaggerate the thickness of the thighs. A prosthetic paunch is present; it is unclear whether this is purely padding, or may include concealed storage, possibly for personal protective weaponry (see footnote 28). It’s understood that almost all hair, on the head and body, is currently discouraged as a measure to reduce the incidence and spread of lice within the high-density living conditions within the Eaststone (see footnote 29); however, facial hair grooming was considered an important status marker in those pre-End cultures from which the contemporary Polyfora Tekhnikal claims legitimacy through spurious provenance (see footnote 30), and high-status Eaststone individuals wear solid prosthetic goatees of laminated fibres, of varying stylisation and textural realism (see footnote 31). This may be integrated with a real or ceremonial respiratory apparatus; even when not practically necessary, the Polyfora Tekhnikal’s elevation of proletarian manual labour as an individual and social moral virtue causes the elite to adopt labour signifiers in dress and manner (see footnote 32). Likewise, the envoy may sport protective eyewear and headgear intended to evoke a mining safety helmet—
This year’s envoy sports no helmet, only a shining shaven scalp. Their face is obscured beneath a one-piece apparatus comprising thick, dark lenses, palm-sized and perfectly round, in front of their eyes; a breathing mask which encloses both their entire nose and whole lower face, covering the mouth and fitting beneath the chin; air filtration baffles of some kind, mounted on their cheeks, like some kind of puffy, waxy fungi; and a large artificial beard jutting from the point of the chin, like a curve of a calligraphic comma. The shaping of their clothing makes them wide and square and pear-shaped.
Every part of their clothing and regalia is black.
Coloured designs and patterns are minimal. Some patterning and textual designs may be somewhat visible solely as gloss-on-matte; observations suggest that these are paints designed to fluoresce under lighting rich in beyond-visible cryptocolours.
The skin of their scalp and face, which the report does not explicitly mention, is bloodlessly pale. It is the only skin on show; black gloves, as heavy as though they might assist a blacksmith with red-hot metals at any moment, and reinforced with black-laquered metal plates on the backs, shroud the envoy’s hands. Their boots are massive, and gleam dully with likewise black-laquered metal reinforcement, as does the codpiece at their crotch.
It seems comically overdone to Averi, as an affect.
“Ambassador!” the dwarven envoy roars, in a muffled way, behind their respirator. “Good to see you again!”
“Ah!” the ambassador exclaims, cordially delighted, or the professional facsimile of it. “Citizen Silicon-Quicksilver-Titanhaem! It’s been some years, hasn’t it?”
“Ha!” the dwarf says, behind their mask, expansively smug. “You know how it is. Young turks, eager to sweep politics clean, sweeping away anything they can actually reach as proof of virility, no matter what it is! We are old and cunning,” and they slap their outfit’s paunch with both palms and enormous gusto, “and we endure, the likes of you and I!”
They strut — as much as one can strut, when one is short and has enormously padded thighs — along the way to the diplomatic tent, and the Ambassador falls into step alongside them, and Averi falls in step behind; on hand, useful, silent.
“Shall we do the formalities?” the Ambassador says, once the tent flap falls behind them.
“Yes, yes,” the Eaststone envoy says dismissively, waving a hand as they throw themself into the waiting chair. “How dare you running dogs imply that the Polyfora Tekhnikal is anything but perfect and self-sufficient, et cetera. Is that your usual tea? It is?” They groan in a way that’s disturbingly orgasmic, and fumble with their respirator. “Can’t fucking grow it,” they add, in a suddenly much reduced voice, as the filters and close-fitting mask tug down over their chin, prosthetic beard sagging; “worth more than blood.”
The Ambassador pours them a cup, and waves benevolently for them to drink at their leisure. The dwarf sips, obnoxiously loudly, then groans again, wallowing bonelessly in the chair.
“How have things been?” the Ambassador says, seating himself and crossing his legs, casual as if he’s run into an old friend at a bistro.
The dwarf snorts. “They try to get rid of me,” they say dismissively. “Same old nonsense,” and refill their teacup.
“Mm.” The ambassador steeples his fingers. “Word has reached us,” he says in a careful tone, “that there’s been some turnover in the lower cabinets. Certain — factional consolidations.”
“That’s what I said,” the dwarf retorts, eyeballing him, then twisting abruptly in the chair to look at Averi and jerk a thumb at the Ambassador in a get a load of this guy way, grunting. “Same old nonsense.”
“Citizen,” Averi acknowledges his attention hastily, and the dwarf lingers over turning back, peering at her shrewdly.
“What did you do with the last one?” they ask the Ambassador finally, who clicks his tongue.
“Left the service to marry, I’m afraid.”
The dwarf shakes their head, looking solemn. “Well,” they say, as if offering condolences on some awful disgrace, “not this one, eh?”
“Oh,” the Ambassador says, “I think we’re looking forward to great things from Averi. But about these reshuffles—”
There’s a yell, abruptly cut off, and a scuffle outside. The tent flap is abruptly yanked aside, and the first of several more dwarves barrels in, equally black-clad, equally masked, but with a cut to their dress slightly more martial than ceremonial. The Eaststone envoy bolts from their seat.
“Pezmik babyfathers!” they bellow. “What is the meaning of this breach of protocol—”
The lead interloper shoots them in the face with a dwarven handgun.
“Changing of the guard,” they say loudly, through the muffle of their own respirator, as the envoy’s teacup rolls across the rug. “Diplomatic priorities have altered. Elven delegates are instructed to enjoy the hospitality of the Eaststone.”
Averi stands frozen. The Ambassador, precise and cool, leans forward in his chair, to place his own cup on the table with a quiet clink. In the quiet of his movement, the weapon in the dwarf’s hand is loud, making a clockwork ticka-ticka-ticka noise, before it abruptly spits out the shed and burn-tarnished metal skin of a round of ammunition. It clunks, whirs, then clunks again ominously.
“Do you perhaps mean invited?” the Ambassador says coldly.
The dwarf laughs, turns, and points the gun into Averi’s face, its dark and open throat inches from her. She can smell hot steel and gunflour smoke on its breath.
“Do I, Ambassador?” the dwarf says mockingly.
