He reached toward the microphone and turned it on.
The hall became still.
Ieronim leaned slightly toward it.
When he spoke, Kimia understood immediately why people rumored he had smoked since adolescence.
His voice sounded like wet gravel ground slowly against stone.
“Let us dispense with the usual discussions and formalities.”
No opening pleasantry. No invocation of the Compact. No acknowledgment of delegates traveling thousands of kilometers.
Just that.
Ieronim looked across the hall.
“We must think of a coherent response to the situation developing abroad in Tilmuhl.”
The voice scraped through the loudspeakers.
Heavy. Old. Human.
He paused.
“That is why we are here.”
Then he switched off the microphone and sat.
The entire hall remained silent for perhaps two seconds too long.
The chairman adjusted his papers.
Kimia almost admired the violence done to the agenda.
Then: “By direction of the presiding House, the second session of the Val Salian Diet is called to order.”
No credential debate. No procedural amendment. No preserved shellfish.
Tilmuhl appeared immediately.
Map.
Again.
But altered.
New overlays. New estimates.
A title:
REVISED GENERAL STAFF ASSESSMENT
The Val Salian Royal Army had apparently spent the night doing arithmetic.
Kimia sympathized.
The first presentation concerned deployment.
Yesterday:
seventeen to twenty-one days.
Today:
sixteen to twenty if preparatory measures began immediately.
Twenty-three to twenty-seven if no measures began within seventy-two hours.
A Dinnish representative spoke almost instantly.
“Why does four days become seven?”
The General Staff officer at the lectern, a yinglet with tar-black fur and intense white eyes that commanded attention, answered: “Because of shipping allocation changes after zhe seventy-two hour point.”
“Commercial?”
“Yes.”
“Can it be requisitioned?”
“Yes.”
“Then why include it?”
“Because requisition creates second-order delays in fuel, food and civilian cargo movement.”
The Dinnish representative frowned.
“So the ships exist.”
“Yes.”
“But using them creates another problem.”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful.”
Nobody laughed.
The screen changed.
Aircraft readiness. Ammunition. Medical stocks. Replacement engines. Rail availability.
The Heart reduced potential war to columns.
Kimia followed easily.
Too easily.
Kilcane.
The numbers almost seemed luminous with relation.
This linked to that. That delayed this. This required six trains. Six trains displaced agricultural freight. Agricultural freight displaced consumer goods. Consumer goods became political irritation. Political irritation became pressure. Pressure became-
Stop.
She pressed the pencil down.
Listened.
The discussion moved into geopolitics.
That word made Kimia tired before anyone began.
A Beletan delegate asked what direct military support for Olissingen would look like abroad.
Not logistically.
Politically.
Would the Heart be understood as honoring an ally? Protecting shipping? Protecting resource concessions? Expanding influence? Attempting regime containment? Invading under commercial pretext? All simultaneously?
An Ivenmoth foreign minister answered carefully.
“Interpretation will differ by state.”
Someone from Baramor: “That is diplomatic language for yes.”
The minister did not smile.
“It is diplomatic language for interpretation will differ by state.”
An Akalosi lord asked: “If Eauritsstad crosses first?”
“Then our position is stronger.”
“How much stronger?”
“Significantly.”
“That cannot be measured.”
“No.”
“Then why say significantly?”
“Because this is diplomacy, not ballistics.”
That earned laughter.
Ieronim did not laugh.
The horned figure beside him remained motionless.
Kimia watched him for half a second, then the map again.
A Green Reach representative argued that failing to support Olissingen after formal guarantees would damage every security agreement the Heart held elsewhere.
A representative from Auhei replied that entering a war over ambiguous guarantees could damage them more.
Dinnlan wanted clarification of what constituted an attack triggering obligations.
Eastwall wanted clarification of whether sabotage by nominally independent groups counted.
Someone else asked what happened if both sides blamed the other and neither account could be verified before fighting widened.