Page 18 of Arrows

Queen Ryllis took a step forward. “Would you like to discuss terms?”

“Also I don’t like conversations with armies pointing sharp objects at me,” Lorre interjected. “I really do think you should send them away.”

The Chief Minister folded her arms. “We need our strength.”

“That’s your warning,” Lorre told her.

“Or what? What would you do?” She waved a hand: encompassing the lines. “Would you destroy us? Kill everyone here on this spot? To make your point?”

Queen Ryllis said, horrified, “Lorre. You wouldn’t.”

General Freye appeared to be considering it, given that the everyone under discussion meant the enemy.

“I don’t like killing people. Too messy. Not to say I wouldn’t, but I don’t feel like it just now. But…” Lorre glanced over, across the field. His gaze found Van, and lingered. He grinned, suddenly: mischievous, kittenish, younger in the same way he’d been with sex-fluffed hair, fleetingly accepting a foot-rub. He did a theatrical finger-snap.

Light built. Flared. Shone from armor, spears, swords, harnesses.

It burned outward. It did not cause harm, not that Van could tell—but from this side of it he saw the Penthii army shudder and stumble and stagger, blinded.

“I like light,” Lorre said conversationally, “and fire. Someone gave me a very useful idea about reflections and sunbeams, last night. Would you all like to see what I can do with the sun? Or would you like to leave now?”

His voice was low, lazy, self-assured. It carried across the world, over lines and camps. Everyone heard.

No one else got the reference to last night, Van hoped. He damn well hadn’t told Lorre about sunshine on oceans for this. He wasn’t sure whether to blush or apologize.

The Penthii lines trembled. Lorre turned up the white-hot radiance more.

The lines broke. Soldiers fled. In shambles. Giving way before a magician, a youthful sapphire armed with sunbeams and confidence.

In a matter of moments the Penthii Chief Minister stood alone, facing the Queen of Averene, and General Freye, and Lorre, who was now playing idly with a yarn-ball of fire, and the extent of the Averenish army behind that.

She said, unflinching, “Would you like our surrender?”

Lorre made a shower of fire-flowers flare and rain down and vanish, above everyone’s heads. “That’d be nice.”

Queen Ryllis looked at him, and outright sighed, and said, “Minister Amara…we don’t mean you harm. We never have. Can we speak? Just us. Together.”

Chief Minister Amara was older than the young Queen of Averene, hair hidden under sun-cloth but lines around her dark eyes, and at her mouth; she turned to look at the clamor of Lorre’s rushing river, at the abandoned hills behind her, the abandoned shields and spears. She turned back, and her gaze swept over Queen Ryllis: resigned, determined, considering options and her people and her home.

She said, “Yes. We can negotiate, you and I.”

The world heard, and breathed out, a shudder of reprieve. Ven felt it in his shoulders, his knees, his gut, all the way through his boots. He saw it, sensed it, as the susurration spread.

They did not have to fight. They did not have to kill, or die. Not today.

“If you would like advice about rivers and the land,” Lorre began.

“From you,” the Chief Minister said, “no.”

Queen Ryllis looked at him kindly, and said, “Thank you for the assistance, Lorre, but no,” and turned to the General. “If someone could bring a table, and writing-paper…”

Lorre looked at them—at the conversation, the negotiation, the compromises and healing that would happen without him, which he was not a part of—and then looked away. He bent, and touched the earth at his feet; the last of the torn-open fractures had finished mending. The grass kissed his fingers, before he straightened again.

When he turned back, toward the army and Van and Milo, who had not been dismissed, he did not move with quite the same flawless grace as usual. Van wasn’t sure anyone else could tell. But he’d seen the Sorcerer of Averene flop tiredly onto a bed, the night before; he’d seen Lorre kick a table and wince and then heal himself. Something of that was at the corners of blue eyes just now.

He responded before thinking about it. A tiny shift of weight, not even a step forward.

Lorre saw him do it. And visibly debated the response, for a split second. Then put out a pretty hand, languid, and beckoned him.

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