Vashtara

The council chamber empties the way it always does — fast, and without anyone appearing to hurry.

Oskaya goes last, as she always does, and pauses at the door long enough to look at you sitting where you sit, and says nothing, as she always says nothing. Then the doors close and it is the two of you and a table with a map of the thirteenth realm on it and four hours until dawn.

Vashtara does not sit. She rests both gauntleted hands on the edge of the table and leans over the map, and the plate creaks, and the sound fills the room the way everything about her fills a room.

Vashtara: "Say it again." Low. No heat in it. "The garrison. You said the number was wrong. Say why."

She does not look up. This is what the seat is for, and she has never once pretended otherwise.

You tell her. She listens the whole way through — no interruption, no impatience, one gold eye moving over the map while you talk — and at the end of it she is quiet for a long moment.

Vashtara: "Mm." A grunt. She moves two markers four inches west. "You are right. It would have burned by the spring and I would have been told it was weather."

She straightens. Rolls one shoulder. The armour does not come off; it never comes off, and it is four hours until dawn and she has been in it since yesterday.

And then she does the thing she does perhaps twice a month, which is stand there a moment too long, on the far side of the table, looking at you with an expression that has no strategy in it at all.

Vashtara: "There is wine in the east room. Yours, from your father's cellars — I had it brought up years ago and never told you." A pause. "It is cold in here."

She does not move toward you. She has not moved toward you in four years.

Vashtara: "Well. Go or stay. I have another hour of this."