My first impression of the beast-kin city was that… it wasn’t one. Certainly not by my standards: There wasn’t a skyscraper to be seen unless you counted the trees, which I didn’t, no matter how many people they had living in them.

Even by more local standards, I had a hard time seeing how it would qualify. There was no wall, which was a requirement for any Latorran settlement. No densely pack housing, no cobbled streets, no smell.

Granted, Latorran settlements didn’t smell as bad as I’d been expecting from my knowledge of olde-timey hygiene. The main difference was the lack of horses. Latora did have them, but they relied on carts much less, since a couple of men could carry almost as much, faster. Men, mostly, didn’t shit in the street, so there was much less manure sitting in the open air. Not none, not an acceptable amount, but less.

The Gathering Place— that was another thing it didn’t have, a name— didn’t have that. There were no streets for carts, no horses to shit on them. It must have been hell for industry, but I supposed that men— or beast-kin— could manage travelling over the root-covered forest floor just fine.

There were a few things that distinguished this place from the other villages I’d passed through. Size, for one. It was difficult to tell in the dim light, and with all the trees in the way, but the villages had been small clusters of dwellings huddled together around a central point. You might not have been able to see the entire settlement, but only because your line of sight was blocked. This settlement extended… I don’t know how far, but we were nowhere near the central grove.

There was also an increase in density. Unlike the villages, there wasn’t the same consensus on what sort of houses to build. I saw doors leading into subterranean burrows, treehouses and regular stone buildings, all jumbled up together. The trees were on the large side here, and people made the most of it, stacking dwellings against the trunk. It wasn’t apartment-building dense, but it held a lot more people than the villages could boast.

So I didn’t doubt that we were in a city, that we’d reached our destination. It just turned out that our destination was a little vaguer than I’d originally thought.

“With no walls, there’s no gate,” I mused aloud. “With no gate, how do we know we’ve arrived? How do they know we’ve arrived?”

International delegates at home never had this problem, I surmised. Everything was arranged in advance, from the hotel they stayed at to their itinerary. They would be met as soon as they entered the country and shadowed every step of the way, by the media if no one else.

“Someone will be watching,” Reynard said. He waved vaguely in the direction we were going. “Just keep heading toward the centre and someone will come and find you.”

It seemed awfully lackadaisical to me, but it turned out to work that way. Barely five hundred metres of travel later, we ran into someone who was waiting for us. The long ears poking out of her blonde hair made her one of the easier types to identify.

“Greetings, L—Councillor Hammond,” she said politely, bowing. “Welcome to the Place of the Gathering. My name is Lira. I, uh—If it pleases you, I am to be your guide.”

“Just Kandis is fine,” I said easily. “Do you work for Elder Tinidan, then?”

She bowed again. “Yes, I have that honour. I am filling in for Anas as an apprentice in his absence.”

I nodded. Anas was, of course, in Talnier, serving as the Tribe’s voice to the Council. I was under the impression that had meant he had graduated from his apprenticeship, but perhaps they were holding off on declaring the arrangement permanent.

“Are you always so formal here?” I asked. Lira froze, and I watched her ears flicking while she tried to work out how to answer my question.

That probably had something to do with the fact that I already knew the answer, and it was no. [Charm] kept me informed of the local etiquette, and this wasn’t part of it.

“I thought… I mean aren’t people from Latora supposed to be super strict about titles and forms of address?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Nobles, maybe. But we’re all commoners here. Can’t you focus on [Charm], let it tell you what sort of formalities we expect?”

The rabbit-girl’s ears drooped. “I, uh, don’t have [Charm],” she admitted.

I sighed. This was why the tribes hadn’t been recognised as a state. It wasn’t that they were unfriendly, they were just very, very bad at diplomacy.

“Elder Tinidan is a diplomat, yes?” I asked. I wasn’t sure. He might have just been the only Elder willing to talk to us.

She nodded, so that was one question answered.

“So you’re an apprentice to a diplomat, and you don’t have [Charm]? What are you learning?”

“I was gonna get it, but I wasn’t supposed to be the apprentice! I was gonna be a hunter until Anas skived off—”

I held up a hand to stop the sudden flood of words. I couldn’t actually hear accents, the perfectly clear translation tended to overwrite what I was hearing. Nevertheless, I was getting the impression that she’d slipped into a particularly thick one.

“Enough,” I said. “It’s none of my business, though I would advise you to get the skill as soon as you can. Maybe pick it up through demonstrated expertise? It can’t be that hard to be charming.”

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“I thought I was,” Lira said. “With all the fancy-talk, I mean.”

“That wasn’t charming,” I told her. “That was just stiff and formal, and on you, it was a bit off-putting. Now, had Tinidan arranged some place for us to stay?”

“Oh!” she said, her ears perking up. “Yes, he did! I’m supposed to take you there! Follow me!”

She turned and took a few steps before halting.

“Oh!” she said again. “I’m supposed to say what a welcome surprise it is to see you here, and to apologize that these lodgings were only arranged at the last minute.”

“That’s only to be expected,” I said mildly, refraining from rolling my eyes. “After all, Elder Tinidan had no idea we were coming.”

“Yeah!” the rabbit-girl said, nodding. She turned again and led us to our lodgings.

* * *

“My apologies for the runaround,” Tinidan said. He’d shown up after we’d been fed and bathed, putting me in a much better mood. Also improving my mood was the very fine berry brandy that he’d brought for us to have this discussion over.

We had retired to a private room equipped with two comfortable chairs that I could sink into. It was all very private and cozy. Had we been on Earth, one of us would have been smoking a cigar as we hashed out the details of our secret dealings.

He started by asking about my trip, and then he shared the news from Talnier. Mind control was a nasty business, but they seemed to have it well in hand. Then he’d moved on to the apologies.

“It wasn’t that bad,” I admitted. I wasn’t angry at Tinidan, but I was a bit frustrated at the hoops I had to jump through dealing with the Tribes. This was not, I felt, an uncommon feeling. “Once we managed to find a guide, we had an easy enough trip that I don’t think an official invitation would have helped much. Maybe with the attack.”

I was also leaving off the Dungeon Break, but it wasn’t like an official invitation would have helped with that. Tinidan frowned when I mentioned the attack.

“I’d like to promise that the perpetrators will be punished, but I fear that the Council will take the stance that outside of a village’s territory, there is little that can be done.”

“Reynard and Cloridan are checking with Reynard’s contacts to see if we can identify the village responsible,” I said. Cloridan didn’t have Reynard’s contacts, but he did know clandestine. And I didn’t trust Reynard.

“It’s useful to know who’s shooting at you, but I fear it will make little difference to the Council,” Tinidan said. “Since they don’t see you as a delegate, it will just be two private groups fighting on unoccupied land.”

“That’s what the villagers said,” I agreed. “But we’ll check it out anyway. Getting back to the runaround, the hard part was my heading out here at all, given the lack of information.”

“I apologise for that as well,” Tindan said. “Unfortunately, with the Council divided, I can’t promise anything, or even reveal some of the things that you want to know.”

I sighed. “It’s a real quaint system you’ve got here, Tinidan.”

He shrugged and glanced fondly at his staff. He hadn’t brought it with him to Talnier, it was a gnarled and intricately carved piece of wood, with nine rings hanging off it. They were also intricately carved. I started to ask about it, but wondering brought its own answer.

[Identification]: - Council Speaker’s Staff - Quality: Excellent - Nine Tokens

“I didn’t think you were on the Council?” I asked.

“All the Elders are on the Council,” he told me. “But most don’t attend.”

He nodded at the staff. “The nine rings are tokens from nine Elders who trust me to attend in their stead.”

“Like proxy votes,” I said.

“Not exactly. Almost all decisions are by consensus, so it matters little how many votes one has.”

And just when I thought they’d managed to institute something workable.

“So they’re a status symbol?”

“Perhaps. A symbol of how much I am trusted by my peers.”

“So how many do show up on the Council?”

“About a hundred, give or take,” Tinidan replied. “Not a very wieldy number, so there is a smaller group. The Nine.”

“Are they an executive? I mean, do they handle things when there’s a need for quick decision-making?” I noted to myself that the tribe’s allergy to naming things even extended to this sub-council. “The Nine” for a nine-person group—astounding.

“They are empowered to make some decisions,” he agreed. “Not many though. They mainly determine the agenda for the main Council meetings. You’ll need to meet with them before you meet with the main Council.”

I groaned inwardly as my hopes of getting a quick answer were dashed. [Charm] kept it all on the inside, though I did allow my smile to become a bit more strained.

“Can you at least tell me something about the task that you had Anas allude to?”

“I can’t, I’m afraid. The Nine will likely ask you to intervene when you meet them, but I’m not authorised to tell you anything about it. However—” he held up a hand to interrupt me before I spoke. “—you should be able to work it out from what you’ve told me about your trip.”

I narrowed my eyes. There were three major incidents during my trip through the Wild. The attack was on me. Unless the Nine wanted me dead that couldn’t be the reason they would like me here. The dungeon break was more likely, but it had happened after I’d left. None of the villagers had heard of something like that happening before. That left…

“The demons,” I said flatly. “You’re concerned that demons are escaping from the Elven lands.”

“I can’t confirm that, of course,” Tinidan said smugly, “But it is a conclusion one might easily draw.”

“Why do they want me involved?” I asked. “The demon I saw was taken out by Elf hunters— I don’t know if I could have beaten it.”

“It’s not that we doubt their capability,” Tinidan said slowly. “But the Council is in a delicate position. Our relationship with the Grove is good, but elves are… standoffish and prickly about maintaining their border.”

“Unlike you guys,” I noted.

“Indeed. Over the last century or so, there have been a few demon incursions, and we have been grateful to the Hunters for their prompt handling of the matter. However, in recent months, the number of incursions has greatly increased.”

“Increased by how much?”

“For much of the last hundred years, we could expect to see a demon perhaps once every five to ten years,” he told me. “Your sighting is the third in as many months.”

“And the elves haven’t said anything about it.”

“Nothing at all. They are known to be more… forthcoming towards Champions.”

“And you didn’t send Kaito because…”

Tinidan smiled wryly. “I’m afraid that’s your fault, not that I blame you. When you reached level six so quickly, Lady Washiyama became obsessed with catching up to you. A diplomatic mission didn’t promise huge experience gains, so…”

“I see,” I said, with no expression on my face. Sorry— not sorry, I said to myself. “So how do you suggest I approach the Council— sorry, the Nine?”

“You have requests to make— make them,” he said. “Coming as a supplicant will enhance their opinions of themselves. They will probably put you off or deny you, but they should see the opportunity this brings them and ask you to visit the elves in return.”

“Should?” I asked. Tinidan sighed.

“The Nine is comprised of the most popular and the most egotistical of all the Elders,” he said. “There are no guarantees, but if they don’t think it’s their idea, they’ll never agree to it.”