The council's answer arrived on the ninth day, carried not through the crystal relay that Snowe had used to transmit the Horde's proposal and not through any diplomatic channel that acknowledged the communication as a proposal worthy of formal reply.
It came through the mouth of a herald, a young officer in the formal dress uniform of the kingdom's Lord Marshal's office, who rode forward under the Threian banner to the corridor's southern mouth and read the council's decision from a scroll whose length communicated, before a single word was spoken, how much language the kingdom had found necessary to say no.
Sakh'arran translated while the herald read, keeping pace with the formal Threian's elaborate register in the flat, precise voice that he used when the content of what he was translating mattered more than any tone its delivery might impose. Khao'khen stood still and listened.
