11

“We need—”

“We need,” Tan Batac interrupted, then bit off a piece of doughnut, chewed twice, and swallowed before repeating: “We need those people gone. Dispersed. Out of Chakal Square. That’s our goal.”

Elayne glared at him across the conference table wreckage of disemboweled pastries and half-full coffee cups. Large meetings were anathema to plain talk and quick decisions, so of course Kopil and Tan Batac had brought three associates each this morning, henchmen and -women who sat and sipped good coffee turned bad by conference room alchemy. At least they remained silent, for the most part.

Batac’s entourage were human, all men in various stages of corpulence and decay. One was a Craftsman in his own right, a former Varkath Nebuchadnezzar associate gone in-house. Kopil’s group included an Atavasin snakeling, its scaly body coiled around a transport revenant; a golem bearing a vision-gem for some distant associate; and a young woman from his risk management department. A more diverse crowd than Batac’s but no more reassuring, the young woman’s stare as alien as the snakeling’s gold eyes, the golem lenses, the light within the gem. Kopil’s crowd, naturally, set the Skittersill team ill at ease, and Batac had spent the last several hours grandstanding for their benefit.

“We need,” she repeated, putting more ice into the words this time, “to understand our BATNA.”

Batac blinked.

Kopil translated: “Best alternative to negotiated agreement. The best possible result if we walk away from the table.”

“We know the worst,” Elayne said, leaving Batac no time to cut in. “We force the Skittersill’s transformation, the Chakal Square crowd resists, reality ruptures, unbound demons spill through, kill everything, and contort local space-time into an unrecognizable hellscape. What’s our best alternative, though? Once we know that, we know our fallback position.”

“Best alternative.” Batac took another bite of doughnut.

“We can change the Skittersill wards,” Kopil said, “to a limited degree without causing a rupture. My people ran the numbers.” He nodded to the young woman, who opened a folder and spoke without consulting the papers within.

“We can replace outdated divine insurance and disaster protection schema with privately maintained modern systems. The immediate advantages of disaster protection could be realized with minimal risk: four nines probability of implementation without rupture.”

“Still high,” Elayne said.

“Much lower than any proposal that includes liberalizing the Skittersill property market.”

“Okay,” Elayne said. “At least we can privatize the insurance setup.”

Batac shook his head. “My people need a liberalized market to develop the Skittersill. Without that, privatizing the insurance market only makes the land more expensive to administer.”

“Safety does offer some return on investment.”

“We have figures here—” said Kopil’s statistician.

“I’ve seen the figures. If I go to my board with this, they’ll laugh me out of the room.” He mopped his forehead with a folded handkerchief. “I’d love nothing better than to run a priesthood, dispensing grace for free. But I’m a businessman.”

Kopil: “No one here is arguing—”

“It’s not enough.” Tan Batac stopped, then, and noticed the silence. The statistician stared at him with ill-disguised horror. The snakeling’s forked tongue flitted. The King in Red cocked his head to one side. If he still had eyebrows, one of them would have crept upward. Stars bled out in his eyes.

Elayne wondered how many years had passed since someone last interrupted the King in Red.

Her watch chimed. She pulled it out, glanced at the face, affected surprise. “And that’s break.” She stood. No one else moved. “I for one could use a stroll. Mr. Batac, come with me.”

It was not a question, and before he could say no, she opened the door and waved him out. As the door closed Elayne thought she heard a mountain laugh.

She led Batac to an empty conference room, closed the door behind him with the Craft, and blacked the glass walls.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine. I get it.”

“I am not certain you do. Kopil, I understand. This case dredges up bad history for him. You don’t have that excuse.”

“He has nothing to lose but his pride.” Batac glanced over his shoulder, though the room was empty. “I know how this looks, and I hate it. I grew up in the Skittersill. My family, we’re better off than most who started there, but … the place is a wreck. Rents are cheap, there’s crime. Stonewood refugees clog the streets. These fixes will help. Took me years to get enough people with use rights on my side to even start these talks. But not everyone on my board is there for charity. We have speculators. Real estate cartels. Construction folks. They want profits, and I don’t mean oracles. Some took big loans from ugly banks to buy up use rights to Skittersill land so this deal could happen. If I go back to them—” He pointed to the door. His hand trembled. “If I go back to them and say we got some stuff we wanted but not enough to make this worth their while, they cut and run. My position collapses. All this goes for nothing. You get paid for your time even if these negotiations fall to shit. His Majesty back there, he owns the damn water. What’s he have on the line?”

He was breathing heavy by his tirade’s end, and looked raw as a tree in winter. A northern winter, she amended. Trees in Dresediel Lex never shed their leaves.

“You are afraid.”

“Afraid?” His laugh sounded strained. “I have responsibilities.”

“Your best alternative to an agreement is quite bad.”

“Yes.”

“You can blame this on the protesters. Or the King in Red. You can blame it on the judge, or me, or yourself if you like, but no amount of blame will change the situation. You need a liberalized property market. Very well. Then your best move is to devote yourself to the process. Work with the people of Chakal Square. Decide what your board can offer, because you get what you want through this process or not at all.”

“What happened to, if they’re unreasonable we don’t have to deal with them?”

“They’re reasonable,” Elayne said. “If they break down at the table, we have options—but that’s no more a plan than entering a boxing ring with the hope your opponent will tie his own shoelaces together before you touch gloves. Are we done?”

He nodded. “You set that alarm.”

“It was that, or drag you from the room on even less pretext.”

“You’re a clever woman, Elayne.”

“Base tricks hardly qualify as clever,” she said. “And I try not to make a habit of theatrics. But sometimes ends justify unpleasant means.”

She released the Craft that blacked out the walls and windows. Sunlight returned, and Dresediel Lex beyond and below the skyspire.

“Okay,” he said, and again: “Okay. Let’s get to work.”