The worst part about Rundan, in Dylan’s mind, was the lack of communication options. It was not quite a game, and not quite like the real world. He couldn’t send a chat message to someone two zones away like he could in Colossus 4 Online, but he also didn’t have access to a telephone, email, or even fax.

He’d kill for a fax machine right now. And he was pretty sure that was the first time someone thought that in the last century.

Kaldalis didn’t fully understand why he got dragged into this meeting. It was the ultimate “this meeting would be a better email” type of meeting. But not only that, after his latest glorious failure, the Zaran diplomats that made up the Panbu council had made obvious their dislike of him. For whatever reason, they believed his failure was intentional sabotage, and so when Garyung had set up this meeting to deal with the fallout, Kaldalis had expected them to want him far, far away from that discussion.

Which was fine by him.

That meant he had been incredibly surprised (and a bit miffed) when Garyung had sent Sardol to fetch him for the meeting, and doubly so when he was told that it was the Panbu council’s insistence that he be present, not Garyung’s.

It was very clear where he stood when he entered the council chambers.

The meeting room itself was in complete disrepair after having been salvaged. Most of the furniture was usable, but badly damaged. One of the walls of the room had a huge fissure that ran from the floor up to the ceiling, and then halfway across that, leaving the chamber open to the sky.

As bleak as the structure looked, it was positively beaming compared to the faces of the council.

Cerh and Jetmorpan were looking at him with open hostility. Cerh’s scaled lips peeled back from triangular teeth in a look that was equal parts the imperious sneer of nobility and the instinctive threat of an animal. Jetmorpan was visibly grinding his teeth at the sight of him as well. While Kaldalis knew he hadn’t done anything actually wrong, the two of them were the leaders of the group, and likely felt like his presumed betrayal had harmed them the most.

He hadn’t expected support from the rest of the council, but Kaldalis still felt a pang of disappointment that not a single person seemed happy to see him arrive. He’d worked hard bending over backwards to debase himself just to build a rapport with them.

It was disheartening to see how little all that work actually meant. Demriv looked agitated, but it wasn’t directed as cleanly towards him as Cerh and Jetmorpan’s glares. Big Mike looked sympathetic to Kaldalis’s position, but the sea captain was keeping his head down. He was unlikely to offer any real support.

The only member of the Panbu council who seemed to have a positive reaction to his arrival was Guard Captain Kensah. It was strange, since she had been the most critical of him for most of the time he’d spent working with the council. Her being the only one neither glaring or downcast was disorienting, though he expected it was because he’d made it his business to get the council to safety. Even then, all he got from her was a slight incline of her head. Her stony expression belonged in the dictionary next to “resting bitch face” and offered nothing even approaching comfort or gratitude.

“Now that our Envoy is here,” Garyung said at last, after Kaldalis had been allowed to awkwardly stand in the doorway for long enough to feel embarrassed, “can we get this discussion underway?”

“Yes,” Cerh said, the word dripping with contempt. “Now that your full party is present, we will have no more hiding or obfuscation, won’t we?”

Kaldalis wanted to snap something at the man for his petty behavior, but kept his mouth shut as he took his seat at the table. The council’s meeting table was long enough for him to find a seat down at the end in between Filomena and Big Mike. Both councils largely ignored their respective ship captains, and while sitting between them put him squarely in the middle - bridging the border between the Cotanaku and Panbu councils - he could dream that being next to the most neglected members might let him blend in and be forgotten as well.

“We have no desire to shirk our debts,” Garyung said, taking the high road and ignoring Cerh’s barbs. “We’ve done the math, and Cotanaku is fully capable of funding the rebuilding. We can set the standard pace we had when building Cotanaku and have all tasks completed within ten days.”

“You think that will make this all go away?” Jetmorpan said, his words spat across the table. “You think Zara will forget what you did here?”

Garyung shook his large head. “Not in the slightest.” One of his massive hands reached out and patted Ikzoz on the shoulder, and Kaldalis was surprised to see how on-edge the Talsar was at the Panbu council’s behavior. The man calmed down a bit at Garyung’s reassurance, but Kaldalis had already started to wonder. Did the Cotanaku council still feel ties to the kingdom of Zara? Or were they upset to have their new home slandered?

Perhaps they felt protective of him, personally, after all he’d done for them.

“We will shirk neither our debts nor our faults,” Garyung continued. “You have our deepest apology, of course. We absolutely accept all the blame for this failure. As I said yesterday, it was my oversight that allowed this to happen, and I promise you, I will not let this happen again. All that said, we do need to establish both of our respective expectations going forward.”

“Obviously, a public apology is in order,” Cerh said, raising a hand to stop Jetmorpan from interjecting again. “An admission of fault in private only goes so far.”

Garyung steepled his fingers, once more channeling an anime villain. “If you want a public apology, I will be happy to issue one.” He paused, just long enough to give pause, but not for anyone else to speak up. “But that is outside the scope of this discussion. We need to get Panbu set up, both for the sake of Zara’s goals and for the safety of everyone here.”

Kaldalis was pleasantly surprised how well Garyung was handling himself. He wasn’t allowing the council to walk over him, while also bowing to their desires. It was an interesting tactic, and one Kaldalis wished he could have employed.

If only there were a way to turn back time.

Perhaps he could save Panbu from the destruction of his failure.

“It is not your apology this council wishes for,” Cerh said, drawing himself up, looking down his snout imperiously at Kaldalis.

“Then your council is being foolish,” Garyung said with a calm detachment. “I am wholly at fault here.” He motioned towards Kaldalis. “The failure of my assigned Envoy is thus my failure. He was my hand here, and acted in my name. You would not ask for my foot’s apology if I tripped you with it, would you?” He smiled thinly. “You have my most sincere apology, both in word and in deed. If we might discuss how I can begin to make it up to you, we can get to work on those deeds sooner rather than later.”

Jetmorpan sputtered for a moment at that, but Cerh held up a clawed hand, silencing the Vathon. Despite his calm and collected body language, the Talsar’s nostrils still visibly flared.

“Ten days will be insufficient,” Cerh said at last. “We anticipated a ten-day timeline five days ago. Your foot,” Cerh spat, glaring at Kaldalis, “assured us - and showed us - that a shorter turnaround was well within reach.”

“That was a different circumstance,” Garyung said. His voice was calm and even, but his rounded ratlike ears twitched and flattened back against his head. “We were making an offer of labor when funding was present. Labor is still in abundance, but funding is what we’re here to negotiate.”

“Then let me make clear where the negotiation begins and ends,” Cerh said. He folded his hands together on the table, milking the seemingly interminable pause. “In three days, we will have another meeting. If, at that meeting, the camp is not prepared to be upgraded to a town, this council will be making demands that you will find far less charitable.”

Cerh glared at Kaldalis, but Sardol provided an abrupt distraction. The man was Cotanaku’s chief manager, and was likely the most closely involved with Cotanaku’s finances. The choking sound that popped out of him drew all eyes at the table. He took a long moment to collect himself before whispering - very audibly - to Garyung: “I don’t know if we can support that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Garyung said, at normal volume, eyes locked onto Cerh, matching his glare for a change. “Zara has made its stance clear. If we must go into debt, then so we must.” He gave a respectful nod towards the shifty Suyon on the Cotanaku council - a man whose name Kaldalis had never caught. “Reach out to Cornix. If President Eileen wishes to enter into negotiations to offload a daughter, I’ll do what I must to repair relations here.”

“Ambassador Isabeau of Svjetlo has been most polite and eager to please,” the Suyon replied, a catlike grin spreading across his face. “Perhaps you would like to speak with her first?”

Now it was Panbu’s turn to sputter in disbelief. Demriv’s eyes popped open so wide it looked momentarily painful, and her jaw practically hit the table when it dropped.

“We will discuss foreign relations and my reasonings later,” Garyung said, giving a dismissive gesture. “If we must produce this money or be at war with our mother nation, then we must.”

Garyung was trying to take the Panbu council’s shock and surprise as a win, but Kaldalis worried that he’d actually given up more than he’d gained. The pair of them had spoken earlier about keeping their contact with outside nations a secret from Zara. Cerh’s aggressive negotiations had drawn it out of him in an entirely unnecessary show of diplomatic force.

The elected Expedition Leader should have just promised them the money and left it at that. Kaldalis feared now that the man’s desire to show off would escalate things to an international incident.

And not only was it too late, he had to keep his mouth shut. Garyung was handling things on his own for once, and undermining that could set them back to square one on that front.

All Kaldalis could do was grin and bear it, not just until the meeting was over, but until the other shoe dropped. And in three days, there was another meeting where they’d all be here, neatly arranged for Cerh to drop it right on their heads.