All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 315: Playing Nice with the Neighbors

Bee tried to slink back into her seat as the Harkonnestan delegate approached. She didn't have anything against the pudgy man. He seemed polite enough, even if he spoke with a strange accent. But she really didn't want to talk to anyone at the moment.

She had just gotten away from hours of people constantly wishing her a happy birthday and pestering her about every little thing. She had hoped that she would finally have had a chance to watch some of the events in peace, but no, even then, people really wanted to talk to her throughout them.

Unfortunately, despite wanting to, she couldn't just disappear and pretend she hadn't seen the man. She had to attend to her stately duties.

Greeting the delegate with a smile, she resigned herself to the meeting as he sat on the bench next to her. He bowed formally at her acknowledgment.

"How are you enjoying the festivities, Paul?" she asked.

"Right I am, Right I am," he said in a strange manner, his speech repeating more often than not. "Y'all guys take sweepin' something mighty serious around here. I don't know if I quite understand the comprehension of it, I don't, but it seems as though y'all enjoy it mighty much."

Bee kept her face as neutral as possible as she parsed through the words. "Yes," she said, "a lot of these events are rather new pastimes. We've adopted them as tradition as Void's teachings have shown us the way."

Paul nodded thoughtfully. "Right. Mighty worried we were when we heard that the Kingdom had become a bleedin' theocracy." He gave her a sideways glance. "No offense, 'course. There's just too many demon-worshiping cult crazies around, you know?"

Bee groaned. "Of course. We know."

Paul nodded, not seeming offended by her short answer. "Well, just making sure that y'all weren't the crazy crazies over here was only part of my mission. Now that I'm reasonably certain that I won't end up with my head chopped off or anything of that nasty, nasty sort of business, I think we need to talk about a few other things."

Bee nodded. Perhaps she could get something productive out of today after all. "Yes. I hear that your people might be interested in a lot of things we have to offer."

"It's hard to know to tell where to begin, that it is. But you are right there." He nodded. "Let's start with ships. We're gonna need access to some of these ships."

She nodded. It was what she'd expected. The Theocracy's ships were one of their biggest assets, and one of their most coveted ones to boot. Though she did disapprove of the forcefulness that Paul was bringing to the negotiations.

He continued speaking. "Those things are completely turning the world upside-down. Both the travel distance and the safety. Now, I ain't gonna lie to you, I'd never lie. But we are trying to copy them just like everybody else. All the countries are! but our shipwrights say that this kinda thing would take a hundred years to do ourselves."

Bee was shocked by the ambassador's honesty. For him to openly come out with all that Harkonnestan must really need these ships. Though their shipwrights were optimistic with the hundred years prediction. It likely would take way longer, as there just were not things that could be done without Void's direct assistance. Even reverse engineering the ships at all might be impossible.

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"Well," she said, "there are many other things we can offer you as well, but ships are certainly something we can work out a deal on. I don't know if we'll be able to give you them directly, but we'll be able to get you access to them at least."

Paul frowned. "Access? I don't think I understand. Why not just sell them?"

"Well, we can sell some ships. But you understand that they're military weapons, right? In the right hands." She shrugged. "They're just as good at hauling men as they are at hauling cargo.

Paul blinked. "I thought these were civilian ships. Cargo ships? That's what my..." He paused for a second, searching for the right word. One that wasn't "informants" or "spies." "my sources tell me what you've been using to ship all across the globe."

Bee nodded. "This is true. They do work as cargo ships, and that in themselves would make them a great military asset. But there are more to them than we'd like to reveal. However, we are working on a line of ships available for sale. They won't quite be ready for a while yet, but we can always talk about the possibility of you leasing a ship and its crew for some time.

Paul nodded. "Hmm. Yes, okay. Well, if you have a list, we'd like to be on top of that."

Bee nodded and directed him to talk to the church chamberlain, who would be in charge of recording his interest. Harkonnestan had been a good partner to them in trade and diplomacy, so she had no issue with actually getting them a ship sooner rather than later.

"Now, before you ask, not sure what my budget price would be here. There's a lotta things to figure out there. But a lot of the value we'd be getting is information, and, well, we could just reverse engineer a lot of it. We would like to compensate you for the learning and maybe learn it directly without any bad blood."

Bee nodded. "We greatly appreciate this gesture. There are many technologies that we have been working on that we plan to share with the world, and we'd be happy to do so for you as a gesture of goodwill in many of these places. For example"

Bee patted a book on the table in front of her. Paul smiled and pulled out a copy of the same book from his bag. "Oh, I know. I really do want to figure out how you make these books. I've never seen them with such availability, and the letters are all square and blocky. Weird, but if you can make them so easily Now that could change the world."

Bee laughed. "Many of these things can change the world. I just hope the world can survive the changes."

Paul smiled. "Perhaps I'm just an optimist, thinking the best of things, but I think the world will be much better after all of it."

Bee nodded. "Void willing."

Just as Paul was getting up to leave, Bee let out a long sigh. She was hoping that she'd have a few more moments to herself, but evidently, some of Paul's optimism had rubbed off on her. It wasn't even a moment later that a messenger ran up and whispered in her ear.

"High Priestess. The Warden requests your presence. Ocelot. Rooster. Blue Hamster."

Bee frowned at the gibberish before she translated the code, and she stood up. Well, perhaps this would be better than more birthday wishes. But Harold sending news was not always a good thing. The man had a certain knack for finding trouble.

As much as she tried her best not to hold a grudge over what had happened at the demonology school, she wasn't perfect. But she couldn't deny that Harold was a talented operative in the field and a decent magician as well. But she had stepped in and, with the agreement of the Warden, made sure that Harold would not be managing people anytime soon. Still, Susan claimed he was her best operative and, because of that, he had received perhaps an unfair amount of dangerous work. Still, his new class was something that she couldn't help but marvel at.

Void did do incredible things. With her master's assistance, all things were possible. Just looking at who surrounded them now made that clear.

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