It was after the meal had been cleared away—and still no one made any move to go—that Jack Dedham cleared his throat in a businesslike manner and said: "We didn't know what to expect, but by the way we're all sitting around and avoiding one another's eyes—" Harry raised hers, and Jack smiled at her briefly—"we don't have any idea what to do with what we've got."

Sir Charles, still without looking up, said, as if speaking his thoughts aloud: "What was it, Jack, that you said to him—just at the end?"

Harry still had her eyes on Dedham, and while his voice as he answered carried just the right inflection, his face did not match it: "It's an old catch-phrase of sorts, on the let-us-be-friends-and-not-part-in-anger-even-though-we-feel-like-it order. It dates from the days of the civil war, I think—before we arrived, anyway."

"It's in the Old Tongue," said Sir Charles. "I didn't realize you knew it."

Again Dedham's eyes suggested something other than what he said: "I don't. As I said, it's a catch-phrase. A lot of ritual greetings are in the Old Tongue, although almost nobody knows what they mean any more."

Peterson said: "Good for you, Jack. My brain wasn't functioning at all after the morning we'd spent. Perhaps you just deflected him from writing off the Outlanders altogether." Harry, watching, saw the same something in Peterson's face that she had wondered at in Dedham's.

Sir Charles shrugged and the tension was broken. "I hope so. I will clutch at any straw." He paused. "It did not go well at all."

The slow headshakes Dedham and Peterson gave this comment said much louder than words could how great an understatement this was.

"He won't be back," continued Sir Charles.

There was the grim silence of agreement, and then Peterson added: "But I don't think he is going to run to the Northerners to make an alliance, either."

Sir Charles looked up at last. "You think not?"

Peterson shook his head: a quick decided jerk. "No. He would not have listened to Jack at the end, then, if he had meant to go to our enemies."

Jack said, with what Harry recognized as well-controlled impatience, "The Hillfolk will never ally with the Northerners. They consider them inimical by blood, by heritage—by everything they believe in. They would be declaring themselves not of the Hills if they went to the North."

Sir Charles ran his hand through his white hair, sighed, and said: "You know these people better than I, and I will take your word for it, since I can do nothing else." He paused. "I will have to write a report of this meeting, of course; and I do not at all know what I will say."

Beth and Cassie and Harry were all biting their tongues to keep from asking any questions that might call attention to their interested presence and cause the conversation to be adjourned till the men retired to some official inner sanctum where the fascinating subject could be pursued in private. Therefore they were both delighted and alarmed when Lady Amelia asked: "But, Charles, what happened?"

Sir Charles seemed to focus his gaze with some difficulty on the apprehensive face of his wife; then his eyes moved over the table and the girls knew that they had been noticed again. They held their breaths.

"Mmm," said Sir Charles, and there was a silence while the tips of Beth's ears turned pink with not breathing.

"It hurts nothing but our pride to tell you," Dedham said at last. "He was here less than two hours; rode up out of nowhere, as far as we could tell—we thought we were keeping watch so we'd have some warning of his arrival."

The girls' eyes were riveted on Dedham's face, or they might have exchanged glances.

"He strode up to the front door as if he were walking through his own courtyard; fortunately, we had seen them when they entered the gates in front here and were more or less collected to greet him; and your man, Charles, had the sense to throw open the door before we found out whether or not he would have walked right through it.

"I suppose the first calamity was that we understood each other's languages so poorly. Corlath spoke no Homelander at all—although, frankly, I don't guarantee that that means he couldn't."

Peterson grunted.

"You noticed it too, did you? One of the men he had with him did the translating, such as it was; and Peterson and I tried to talk Darian—"

"We did talk Darian," Peterson put in. "I know Darian almost as well as I know Homelander—as do you, Jack, you're just more modest about it—and I've managed to make myself understood to Darians from all sorts of odd corners of this oversized administration—including a few Free Hillfolk."

Harry thought: And the Hill-king stopped dead, as angry as he was, when Dedham addressed him in the Old Tongue?

"In all events," Dedham went on, "we didn't seem able to make ourselves understood too readily to Corlath."

"And his translator translated no faster than he had to, I thought," Peterson put in.

Dedham smiled a little. "Ah, your pride's been bent out of shape. Be fair."

Peterson answered his smile, but said obstinately, "I'm sure of it."

"You may be right." Dedham paused. "It wouldn't surprise me; it gave them time to look at us a little without seeming to."

"A little!" Sir Charles broke out. "Man, they were here less than two hours! How can they—he—conclude anything about us in so little time? He gave us no chance."

The tension returned. Dedham said cautiously: "I daresay he thought he was giving us a chance."

"I am not happy with any man so hasty," said Sir Charles sadly; and the pompous ridiculousness of his words was belied by his tired and worried face. His wife touched his hand where she sat on his right, and he turned to her and smiled. He looked around the table; both Peterson and Dedham avoided his gaze. He said, lightly, almost gaily, "It's simple enough. He wants arms, men, companies, regiments—help to close the mountain passes. He, it would appear, does not like the idea of the Northerners pouring through his country."

"Which is reasonable," said Dedham carefully. "His country would be turned into a battlefield, between the Northerners and … us. There aren't enough Hillfolk to engage the Northerners for any length of time. His country would be overrun, perhaps destroyed, in the process. Or at least annexed by the victor," he added under his breath.

"We couldn't possibly do as he asked," Sir Charles said, lapsing back to speaking his thoughts aloud. "We aren't even sure what the Northerners mean toward us at present."

Peterson said shortly: "The Hillfolk's attitude toward the North being what it is, I feel certain that Corlath's spy system is a good one."

"We offered cooperation," Sir Charles said.

"Capitulation, you mean," Peterson replied in his blunt way. "His."

Sir Charles frowned. "If he would agree to put himself and his people entirely under our administration—"

"Now, Bob," Dedham said.

"That's what it amounts to," Peterson said. "He should give up his country's freedom—that they've hung on to, despite us, all these years—"

"It is not unusual that a smaller country should put itself under the protection of a larger, when the situation demands it," Sir Charles said stiffly.

Before Peterson had a chance to reply, Dedham put in hastily: "What it comes down to is that he is too proud to hear our terms, and we are—er—we cannot risk giving—lending—him troops on his terms."

"The Queen and Council would be most displeased with us if we precipitated an unnecessary war," said Sir Charles in his best commissioner's voice, and Peterson grunted.

"We know nothing about the man," Sir Charles continued plaintively.

"We know that he wants to keep the Northerners out of Daria," Peterson muttered; but Dedham moved in his chair in a gesture Harry correctly translated as bestowing a swift kick on Peterson's ankle; and Peterson subsided.