by Robin Roseau
“Thank you.”
* * * *
We were well prepared. This time, I dressed for the occasion, dressing as if for court, or as best I could without the jewels and other trappings, and I wore my hair simply, not having a proper maid to help me with something far fancier.
Talith was waiting for us. We greeted in a professional manner. She looked nervous, but we had a little space, so I asked her, “Are you all right?”
“Mother says ‘yes’ to dinner. I didn’t realize your invitation included Liri and Chanmosh, but they’re also coming.”
“Excellent. I liked them. Did you want to bring your cousin?”
“Is it otherwise all women, or will the men on your staff be there?”
“All women.”
“I’m torn. We could set your assistants on him.”
I laughed. “It’s your choice to invite him or not.”
“I think not, but maybe there will be other invitations.”
“If we’re still here, or if he visits Barrish.”
“I think he’d like that.”
“Good. Lead the way.”
We walked together, but I wasn’t in a flirty mood. Truth be told, I was actually rather nervous. I was terribly afraid this was their final opportunity to yell at me, and I had already made up my mind I wasn’t going to put up with it.
I’d prepared. We’d printed a hundred placards, explaining the situation, and half the embassy staff was waiting to distribute them all over Dennaholst. We had signals arranged, and people watching for them. I could get the word out before the council could stop me, unless they were watching the embassy staff and arrested them during the meeting.
I hoped it didn’t go that far.
Talith brought us to the council chambers. The guards distributed themselves. My closest staff remained nearby. And I moved into place.
The entire council was there. I thought staff was probably light, but it didn’t feel like some sort of secret tribunal, especially as my guards outnumbered theirs, and I’d seen no sign they had more waiting.
Then Prime Minister Githien banged his gavel. Two guards closed the doors behind me. He waited for silence and then said, “Princess Darfelsa, thank you for attending this meeting.”
“Thank you for inviting me.”
“I understand you have an opening statement.”
I nodded. “I don’t know how much Minister Silmarion has said to you. I also don’t know if he is generally an honest man or would lean the explanation to his advantage. I make no accusation, but I am going to explain things in my words.”
“I am sure the Minister of Commerce has relayed your encounters accurately,” replied the Prime Minister. “But please go on.”
“Will you indulge me, Mr. Prime Minister?” I asked. “Perhaps I should be quite complete.”
“How long will this take?”
“Not long, but more than a minute or two.”
“Go ahead,” he said.
I nodded. “Thank you. Then this is what I propose. I will explain a little about myself. Then I will talk about recent history of our countries from my perspective, which may not remotely match yours. I will then review my meetings with Minister Silmarion, again from my perspective, which almost certainly does not match his. Finally, I will explain my position and offer one or two more comments. Does this plan please you?”
“Tandel,” said the PM, “she seems far more reasonable than you have indicated.”
“Give her a chance,” said the Minister of Commerce.
“I think I shall. Go ahead, please. But can you tell me how to properly address you?”
“We can exchange that information,” I said. “I called you Mr. Prime Minister.”
“You can also simply say Minister Githien, if you like. We’re being formal today. But Mr. Prime Minister is good.”
I nodded. “You should say either Princess Darfelsa or Your Highness. King’s Envoy is also appropriate, but it’s not a title I really hold close to myself and may not realize you’re talking about me.”
“Do you have a preference between these?”
“No, Mr. Prime Minister. Both are properly respectful.”
“Thank you, Princess Darfelsa.”
“Just Princess also works, the same way you might use Minister.” He nodded. “All right. About me. I am 18, and deeply aware I am most likely the youngest person in the room, and in some cases, a third of the age of some of you. I have spent the last three years in Charth.”
“A ceremonial role?”
“Not at all. Oh, I was invited to events my peers weren’t, but day-to-day, I was simply another member of the ambassador’s staff. I engaged in the sort of duties many people in this room have probably performed at one point or another.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister. It was an opportunity for an education, and not a token arrangement.”
He nodded. “How sure are you it wasn’t a token arrangement?”
“Positive. I was called Darfelsa most of the time. No tiaras allowed.” There were a few snickers. “Our ambassador is a former head of a road crew, Mr. Prime Minister.”
“Ambassador Cuprite,” he said.
“Correct.” I talked about my duties for a while. “You see?”
“I believe I have an accurate image.”
“Excellent. Let me cover our shared history. We have a long, fruitful history of shared prosperity, but a decade ago, or perhaps somewhat more, that begin to shift.” I then outlined the ways it had slipped. No one spoke, but Ms. Pelonden had documentation waiting, and she passed it out to the ministers and even a few of the aides. No one had much to say.
I finished and said, “This has well-served Gandeetian interests, but it is my opinion each of these agreements was lopsided, and when taken as a whole, well, perhaps you can see the situation from my side.”
I didn’t pause long enough for anyone to jump in. “Minister Silmarion and I have met several times. None of our meetings have been cordial. Ms. Pelonden has more documents for you.”
She passed them out, and they included a list of every insult or slight the minister had delivered. She gave Minister Silmarion’s copy last.
“I’m not going to repeat any of the things he said to me. I am only going to say that it is clear your minister has no respect for me and probably is deeply insulted I have the temerity to stand up to him. Furthermore, I consider it deeply unlikely he and I could ever establish a good working relationship. When my father sees this list, Mother and I will spend hours calming him down.”
No one spoke. The room was absolutely silent.
I nodded. “From my perspective, the relationship between our two countries is deeply strained. I do not know why Lord Marlish accepted these various agreements. I do not know why my father let him. I believe it was a death of a thousand cuts, each of them sufficiently small that no one added it all together until finally one of the cuts was so deep that Father sent me. Not having the history in pieces, I went through all of it and came to my own conclusions.”
I paused. “At this point, I would love to invalidate every agreement made in the last decade, and I still need to look further back, but when it became obvious we wouldn’t come to any agreements on anything, I stopped looking. I would do exactly that, invalidate everything, but some of those agreements actually addressed issues that needed to be addressed. The job of renegotiating everything from the beginning is huge, and I deeply hope Father sends a real ambassador to do it. But as far as I’m concerned, if we cannot agree to review every agreement made in the last decade, there’s no reason for me to be standing here today, unless it’s simply so you can yell at the foolish woman who wouldn’t be bullied by your Minister of Commerce.”
I paused. “I have my final comments. Then if you want to yell, go ahead.”
“We have no intention of raising voices, Princess Darfelsa.”
“I have no intention of being bullied, either personally or as the representat
ive of my father and my country. If we have any continued trade between our countries, it will be on an even, fair footing, fair to both sides.” I leaned forward. “We’ve been packing. That process will continue until early next week. We have set Wednesday as our departure. Mr. Redhouse assured me we can leave early Wednesday morning.”
“Princess Darfelsa,” began the prime minister.
“I don’t bluff, Mr. Prime Minister. It very well may be that you’ve already written to your ambassador in Barrish about what a silly, stupid woman I am. It may very well be that Father is sending someone to take my credentials away and return me for a good paddling of my backside, figuratively speaking. Or it could be I’ll get home, and my father the king will yell at me while asking me what in the world I thought I was doing. He may not ratify a single thing I’ve done here. But tell me, Mr. Prime Minister: what do you think his response is going to be when I outline how I have been treated?”
I paused, not expecting an answer. “If you want a healthy relationship between our countries, I can be reasonable, but my tolerance for continued disrespect is at a low. As far as I’m concerned, this is your last chance with me. Now I’m done talking.”
No one spoke immediately. There were looks exchanged. For his part, the Prime Minister looked long and hard at Minister Silmarion. What surprised me was that the Minister of Commerce wasn’t busy yelling at me.
Finally, the Prime Minister turned his gaze back to me. “You were right about a few things, Princess Darfelsa. Your perspective does not entirely match ours.”
“Would anyone really have expected a match?”
“Perhaps not. What do you think we should do now?”
“I imagine that depends on what you want. Minister Silmarion has been working very hard to alienate me from the moment of my arrival. And frankly, none of you were initially terribly welcoming.”
“You feel slighted because we didn’t schedule a special meeting to receive you?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I dealt with that and was ready to move on. I’m ready to move on now, too. You asked what we should do, but you haven’t told me what you want. If you want the status quo, then what you should do is have your ambassador tell King Leander what a foolish little girl his daughter is.”
“I believe we would rather find a way to work with the foolish little girl.”
I couldn’t help it. It was a risk for him to put it that way, but I couldn’t help it, and I smiled. “The foolish little girl is willing to work with you, but not beginning with the status quo and working backwards.”
“Then what do you propose?” He made a point of digging through the papers we’d given him. “I don’t actually see a proposal Your Highness.”
“I’m not the one who called the meeting,” I said. “Mr. Prime Minister, I am not qualified to lead the negotiations on everything decided for the last decade. I think we should focus on the most recent crisis but understand the crisis will come back if more qualified people can’t reach equitable agreement in the future. Or do you disagree with my basic assessment.”
“I’m not saying I agree.”
“I think a lot of it comes down to one notable difference. Compared to Flarvor, you have a huge bureaucracy, and that bureaucracy needs to be fed to stay big and strong. You have fees for everything, and the fee structure is highly disadvantageous to non-citizens. Flarvor doesn’t have any of that. It is deeply one-sided. Father has little interest in building that type of bureaucracy. I do not know what sort of agreement Minister Silmarion reached before his latest proposal with me, and I foolishly didn’t keep documentation, but the proposed licensing requirements to allow our trading companies to operate inside Gandeet were entirely, completely unreasonable, so egregious that no one would possibly try to meet them.”
“We were told they were quite reasonable.”
“Perhaps Minister Silmarion would care to outline what he feels might be agreeable terms,” I said. “Terms he feels your companies should fulfill when operating on our side of the border?” I didn’t even pause. “That is the standard, Mr. Prime Minister. If you’re not willing to accept an identical reciprocal agreement, then they aren’t fair terms, are they? I would also argue that if the terms are dramatically different than your own companies follow inside your borders, they aren’t fair.”
“Our companies pay taxes,” he said. “Yours do not.”
“Untrue. Ours pay taxes to the Flarvorian government exactly the way yours do to the Gandeetian government.”
“How does that help us?”
“How does it help us?” I offered. “Your country suggested our companies should stop all business inside your borders, but you expected to continue to operate inside ours. Does that seem equal or fair?”
I shook my head before plowing forward. “Let us agree on a few things. For you to work with that foolish little girl, you must convince her the agreements we are making are fair to both countries and to the citizens of both countries. If you cannot do that, or are unwilling to do that, then I should go home, and we’ll see whether I have more influence with the king than your ambassador does.”
“Princess Darfelsa-”
I didn’t pause. “We should begin with the issue regrading transportation companies. Come to me with a fair proposal. If you continue to insist our companies be licensed, then the terms should match what your companies pay, but understand also that we will enact similar terms on our side of the border, and we’ll be using the funds collected to offset the fees you charge our traders.”
“That is hardly fair!”
“You do what you want with your licensing fees, and we’ll do the same with ours,” I said. “Frankly, I’d rather you dropped those fees. I’d rather instead you set reasonable standards, and I can provide you the standards we follow in Flarvor, if you would like a sample. I understand that enforcement of those standards has a cost associated with it, but those costs are easily paid by tariffs.”
“Which are a tax on our own people!”
“Yet you still charge them,” I said. “That is your choice.”
“Flarvor also charges tariffs.”
“Not with Ressaline.”
“Excuse me?”
“There are no tariffs on goods flowing across our northern border,” I said. “Not one copper coin.” I shrugged. “I didn’t discuss tariff structures with Father. He may be quite happy with the status quo on that. He’s not happy with the new standard for transportation companies operating inside your borders, and I do not believe he will be happy when I point out the other inequalities. We didn’t discuss those.”
“Are you overreaching the bounds of your authority, Princess?”
“I very well may be,” I admitted. “And yet, Father sent me with an overwhelming amount of authority. Until I hear I have displeased him, I am using my judgement, and I am protecting my country and our citizens. Isn’t that what I should be doing, Mr. Prime Minister?”
He didn’t answer, not directly. We looked at each other for a minute, and then he said, “I do not agree with everything you have said, but I’ve heard you.”
“For that, I am thankful.”
“I’d like you to delay your departure.”
“Why?”
“So that we may properly review what you have said.”
“Ridiculous,” I replied. “If we can come to an agreement regarding transportation companies, with an understanding we’ll be reviewing absolutely everything, once I’ve heard from Father, then we’ll unpack.”
“We need time.”
“Why? It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. You really have a few simple choices. You can reverse the new changes. The old rules worked.”
“There were accidents.”
“There are always accidents, but if you want to talk about that, we can. No one profits from accidents. We can agree to license our companies under identical terms to yours, and we’ll do the same. I’ve told you what we’ll do with the funds we collect. Or your companies co
uld refuse to do business inside our borders, and we won’t be able to reimburse anyone.” I shrugged. “Or you can charge higher fees, but ones that are at least reasonable. Again, we’ll do the same, and again, we’ll use any collected funds to reimburse our companies. Now, explain to me why it takes more than ten minutes to come to a decision.”
He didn’t say anything. I shrugged. “Or explain to me why I am being a foolish little girl. Explain to me why we can’t come to agreement at this time tomorrow afternoon.”
“Please delay your departure, Princess Darfelsa.”
“Why?” I asked. “What is going to change? If we can’t reach this simple agreement, how can we possibly hope to negotiate on anything else?”
“We’ll be submitting a proposal to you,” he replied.
“What sort of proposal? When can I expect it?”
“You’ve outlined three basic choices on the transportation companies. We’ll pick one of them.”
“As I’ve said, and understanding I’d rather not implement the bureaucracy to take money from your companies just to hand it to ours.”
“As you’ve said, and with that understanding,” he replied.
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you propose we do in the meantime?” I asked.
“I don’t even know what you’re asking.”
“I presume you would like trade to continue. If this is going to take a year or two, I’d rather go make arrangements with Ressaline. I have some degree of influence there. Queen Lisdee’s daughter is a close, personal friend. We have shared slumber parties.”
“Slumber parties?”
“Yes. Several women sharing a bedroom for a night. We do the sorts of things silly little girls do when you get a bunch of us together. There’s a lot of giggling.” I smiled. “I’m serious about that last part. I think my sister loses three years of maturity, perhaps more.”
“Give us two weeks. If, two weeks from now, we haven’t proposed a fair agreement, then until such time as we are able to do so, Flarvorian transportation companies may operate inside our borders, but only when transporting goods between our countries.”
“Including collection or distribution of those goods.”