Clan seals on the gate.
Six riders approached from the north road, moving with the deliberate pace of formal delegation rather than the urgency of messengers or the caution of scouts. The lead horse carried saddlepacks with ceremonial stonecutter tools visible—the symbols of Mahakam authority that I recognized from the SEG's cultural documentation.
"Mahakam clan representatives," Davan reported, reaching me at the administrative table before the riders had crossed the perimeter. "Elder Hrothmarr leading. Three clan representatives. Two guards. Formal delegation under clan seals."
"What kind of formal delegation?"
"The kind that requires an audience." His expression was carefully neutral, but something in his tone suggested this was not a social visit. "The ceremonial tools are displayed. That's significant."
Stonecutter tools. The symbols used for officially terminating a mining claim or delegitimizing a borderland operation.
They came to reject us formally.
The meeting took place at the colony's main gate—deliberately public, with workers gathering to observe. Elder Hrothmarr was older than Brac by perhaps thirty years, his beard gray and elaborately braided, his posture carrying the weight of decades of clan authority.
He began in Old Dwarvish.
The words were formal, ritual—phrases I recognized from the SEG's linguistic documentation but couldn't have reproduced myself. The ceremony of delegitimization, which removed Mahakam's protective shadow from a borderland claim and opened it to every threat the clan network would otherwise discourage.
The human workers in the crowd understood nothing. The dwarven workers' faces became unreadable—the particular stillness I'd learned to associate with significant clan politics.
Davan translated quietly: "He's removing Mahakam's protection. Declaring the colony outside the clan sphere of influence. Any borderland threat that tests us will do so without Mahakam's implicit discouragement."
The ritual continued. Hrothmarr's voice carried across the gathered crowd, each phrase building toward the formal rejection that would strip the colony of whatever protection my half-blood heritage had provided.
He paused, waiting for acknowledgment.
I answered in Old Dwarvish.
The grammar was imperfect—I could feel the words fitting awkwardly in my mouth, the pronunciation approximated rather than mastered. But the instinct was clear, emerging from somewhere in the body I inhabited, from memories that James Calloway had never possessed but Konrad Valaris had learned in childhood.
"My father's people taught me these stones. I will not argue with his memory in front of you."
Six words. Simple construction. The meaning carried not in vocabulary but in the choice to speak the old tongue at all—to acknowledge understanding rather than claiming ignorance.
Hrothmarr stopped mid-ritual.
The dwarven workers' faces shifted in ways the human observers couldn't read. Something changed in the crowd's attention—a recognition that the half-blood Colony Director understood more than he had revealed.
"You speak the old tongue," Hrothmarr said, still in Dwarvish.
"I speak what I was taught."
"By whom?"
"By the father whose memory you invoke when you call me a diluted bloodline." I held his gaze. "You came to execute a political death sentence. I won't contest your authority to do that. But I won't pretend not to understand what you're saying, either."
The silence stretched. Hrothmarr's expression was difficult to read—not quite hostile, not quite anything else.
The formal rejection ritual remained incomplete.
Hrothmarr had not spoken the final words—the phrases that would officially seal Mahakam's withdrawal of protection. The ceremony had been interrupted, not concluded. Which meant the colony's status was ambiguous: neither protected nor fully rejected.
"You understand us," Hrothmarr said quietly, switching to Common for the words that only I and the nearest dwarves could hear. "And still you build their way. That is worse than not understanding at all."
"I build for everyone who lives here. Human, dwarven, elven. The structure serves the population, not the other way around."
"The structure is human architecture modified with dwarven techniques and elven labor. It is a hybrid that satisfies no tradition and honors no heritage."
"It is a hybrid that works."
"For now." Hrothmarr turned toward his horse. "The ritual is incomplete. That is deliberate. Mahakam's position remains ambiguous—we neither protect you nor openly condemn you. This gives you time. Use it well, or the next delegation will complete what I left unfinished."
He mounted and rode north without further ceremony.
The crowd watched him go. The human workers exchanged confused glances, understanding that something significant had occurred but not grasping the details. The dwarven workers remained still, processing implications I could only partially read.
At the back of the crowd, I noticed a stocky dwarven man who had not spoken throughout the entire proceeding. His posture was different from the other observers—less concerned with the ceremony, more interested in the outcome. He put down his drink and paid attention for the first time.
Who is that?
I didn't recognize him from the census board. He wasn't one of the Mahakam-papered observers who had arrived in spring.
Another variable. Another unknown.
Brac found me at the administrative table that evening.
He stood near my chair without speaking—the same position he'd occupied hundreds of times since my arrival, the space where he delivered reports and received instructions.
Then he went back to the forge.
No words. No commentary. Just the presence and the departure.
I understood what he was saying: the answer to Hrothmarr had been correct. The Old Dwarvish, the refusal to pretend ignorance, the invocation of family memory. Brac wouldn't have supported a challenge to Mahakam authority. But he approved of the honesty with which the challenge had been handled.
The correction is the acknowledgment. The presence without words is the approval.
I'm learning this language. Slowly.
Davan's analysis came later, in the privacy of the planning room.
"The incomplete ritual is more useful than a clean rejection," he said. "Mahakam's position is officially ambiguous. They haven't withdrawn protection, but they haven't affirmed it either. Any borderland threat that tests us will do so without certainty about how Mahakam will respond."
"That's not protection."
"It's uncertainty. Sometimes uncertainty is better than clarity." He set a document on the table. "The dwarven man at the back of the crowd. I've identified him."
I looked at the document. A name, a brief description, a notation about clan affiliation.
"Yarpen Zigrin. Independent contractor, occasional mercenary work, no formal clan ties. He's been traveling the borderlands for the past several months—moving through operations like ours, observing, not committing."
Yarpen Zigrin. The name triggered a memory from my previous life—one of the games, or perhaps the books. A dwarven character who appeared in Geralt's story, someone with their own agenda and their own alliances.
He's here. Watching. Not intervening, but paying attention.
"What does he want?"
"Unknown. He hasn't approached anyone directly. But he stopped ignoring the colony after your exchange with Hrothmarr." Davan paused. "Whatever you said in the old tongue, it caught his interest."
I filed the information away. Another thread to track, another variable in the increasingly complex political web surrounding the colony.
The Mahakam protection shadow was removed. The political ambiguity remained—a gap too small to build on and too significant to ignore.
The council structure was in place. Triss remained at the colony, her investigation transformed into something that didn't require a name. The Temerian Crown expected production figures. The silver vein remained hidden in the Level 3 eastern section.
I added a note to the ledger: Post additional sentries on northern approaches. Identify Yarpen Zigrin's purpose before he leaves the region.
The incomplete ritual was the best outcome I could have achieved from a delegation that came to execute a political death sentence.
The ambiguity would have to be enough.
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