Kotallo had been determined not to be impressed by Meridian. If he hadn’t already been over the topic of the Carja’s might and skill in construct, the Sun Priest’s boasting on the journey from the west to the Sundom would have driven the quiet Tenakth to sullen mutism. And it was easy not to be impressed by Sunfall where the wretched Sun Ring rested, the place where so many innocents had been slaughtered by machines at the word of the mad Sun King. No amount of ingenuity, height of structure or craftsmanship could ever endear the Tenakth to that wretched fortress. Thankfully, again, the young Sun Priest recognised that it would be tactless to insist upon their stopping at Sunfall and they camped to the north of it, crossing along the border between the Sundom and the Claim where the Oseram tended to reside.

Still, Kotallo had also impressed, not just the Sun Priest and the soldiers but also his fellow Tenakth as he overrode two Chargers and had them carry their belongings.

“Truly you carry the favour of Aloy, saviour of Meridian.” Eager Eamon gushed as they made excellent time when not weighed down with heavy belongings.

Kotallo’s heart twisted at the mention of her name and the bitter sweet reminder that he didn’t carry her favour. It was tempting to put his hand up to his chest and let his fingers trace the inked mark of her countenance across his skin but his breastplate blocked his instinct.

They turned southward, keeping to the roads and using stone bridges to cross rivers.

“The Carja use stone where the Tenakth use wood and rope.” Jira remarked, her body lithe and beautifully marked with Lowland red, blue and white.

“And the Oseram use metal.” Virek sneered with Desert Clan harshness, smeared with black, yellow and red.

“They force the land to accept them,” Catra’s colours were of the Sky Clan, pink, white and blue and a bright splash against the arid landscape, “rather than live in harmony.”

“The Tenakth waged war with each other, the machines, the Carja and then Regalla’s rebels,” Kotallo looked at Catra, “where was the harmony?”

Catra lifted his chin. “We adapt to our surroundings and live within the land…although the Desert Clan take advantage of old world plumbing for its water.”

“When you live in the desert, you treasure every drop.” Virek retorted. “It makes you harder…stronger…relentless.”

“And as bitter as the water you hoard.”

Jira rolled her eyes as Virek and Catra began to trade heated words and slipped close to Kotallo’s side.

“Desert and Sky Clan…bitterest of enemies.”

“As were all Tenakth once.” Kotallo mused, spying a herd of Striders, a machine unknown in the west. He tapped his FOCUS and scanned them, adding their name and specifications to his machine catalogue.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

Kotallo paused and glanced at her. “Should I?”

Jira smiled. “I met you at Thornmarsh…but I was just a lowly scout.”

Kotallo frowned. Jira did seem very young to be a representative for Hekarro at an Embassy.

“How were you assigned to this post?” He asked.

“My mother put forward my name…after she put me through twice as many trials as the other applicants.”

“Your mother…Atekka?” Jira nodded. “I was not aware that she was married.”

“She is not.” Jira explained. “My father died during the clan wars, not long before Hekarro claimed Memorial Grove.”

“I am sorry.” Kotallo was not surprised. The clan wars had claimed countless Tenakth lives as Desert, Lowland and Sky Clan soldiers killed each other on sight.

Jira shrugged, her slick black hair bound in many tight braids over her shoulders. “Raising me alone made her a stronger warrior than those around her…and I received no favour just because I was her daughter.”

Kotallo did not doubt that. Jira had been introduced as the Lowland Clan ambassador, not as Atekka’s daughter. Her place in the Embassy was not a favour but an earned position.

“Marshal Kotallo,” the Sun Priest moved forward, “if we take this right path, we will cross by a quarry. It is the shorter path but isn’t quite as illustrious…”

Kotallo caught Jira’s barely concealed smirk and he raised an eyebrow at the Sun Priest.

“We, Tenakth, do not care for frills or finery. Take us by the quarry.”

Eager Eamon bowed. Kotallo noticed the soldiers smirked and suspected they were as unimpressed by the formality and mannerisms as the other Tenakth were. Though Kotallo was not awed by them, he could see just how hard the young man, nearly swallowed up by the red robes, was trying to be a good host and guide, a representative of his order and of the Carja. So he didn’t mock or smirk and simply followed the Sun Priest up the rise to the right, moving away from the scrub land that didn’t look like anything in the west to a chasm of red rock, carved out of the mountain itself. They passed a small community that mined the quarry to their right and the workers stopped and stared, their weights and pulleys falling silent at the sight of the Tenakth walking freely and without restraint.

“Forgive their stares,” Eamon said softly, “all Carja know of the Tenakth, stories told to frighten children of a tribe that is akin to monsters. Ignorance breeds fear.”

Kotallo thought of the scraps of notes he’d been entrusted with of a Carja’s observations of the Tenakth and knew the Priest spoke the truth.

“The Tenakth view the Carja in the same way.” He admitted.

“I think it’s fair to say the Carja, under the Mad Sun King, were monsters first…”

Kotallo was surprised at the admission from Eamon but recalled that, from what Fashav had told him and what he’d learned since the liberation of Meridian and the Sundom from the Mad Sun King, it wasn’t just outsider tribes that suffered. Carja who displeased their insane monarch and even priests who protested the blood shed had also been sent to the Sun Ring to die.

Eamon was very young so Kotallo wondered who it was that had died for the Sun Priest to speak so sincerely.

“Behold…Meridian.”

Perhaps if the reputation of the Carja was not stained with blood and brutal violence, Kotallo might have allowed a pause to show how the city of stone atop a mesa impressed him. Despite their tribal differences and his scorn for their way of life, Kotallo could not honestly deny the grandeur of Meridian which contrasted so grandly with Tenakth homes. Even the Bulwark would have been dwarfed by the enormity of the mesa, let alone the city that had been carved out of the quarry and carted across a bridge.

As befitted the capital of the Carja’s ‘Sundom’, it was bathed in sunlight from sunrise to sunset, the cliffs around it and mountains unable to block the rays of gold.

“That’s Avad’s palace?” Catra said, unable to keep the awe out of his voice.

“Sun King Avad’s palace is on the smaller of the two mesas,” Eamon explained, correcting Catra as tactfully as he could, “the larger mesa is Meridian proper and at the base is lower Meridian.”

Where all the commoners were bound to live, Kotallo mused to himself but didn’t vocalise it.

They had to leave the Chargers before the start of the bridge that spanned the northern cliffs to the larger mesa. There was a plateau before the bridge that acted as a crossroads for the bridge to Meridian, another that led down sharply, another that took a more circuitous route to the ground, the path to the right along the cliffs over yet another bridge and the road they had travelled on. There were traders and sellers gathered in this crux of crossroads and at the sight of the Charges, let alone the Tenakth, they stopped what they were doing and stared.

Kotallo ignored them as he unloaded the Charger closest to him. It had dragged the sledge with their belongings and the agreed upon trades from the Tenakth to the Carja. If not for the Chargers, they would have had to pull it across half the breadth of the Sundom. Even as they went to take up the poles that would allow them to pull it behind them, an Oseram approached and bowed.

“Your arrival was sighted and I was sent to pull the sledge.” He offered, flexing his substantial muscles. Kotallo might have thought him a warrior if it wasn’t for his substantial waistline as well. Oseram did enjoy their ale. “I can bear your burdens.”

Kotallo glanced at where the Oseram was looking. Jira, Catra and Virek were assembling the Tenakth totems.

“These are not your burdens to bear.” He told the Oseram who nodded and let the three Tenakth assemble then shoulder the totems. Smaller than the original ones that were displayed at Barren Light, the totems were still a considerable weight, each designed and decorated in the manner of the clan they represented.

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Eager Eamon led the way to the bridge and then across it. Kotallo followed without hesitation, Catra as well. They were used to heights. Virek and Jira were unsure but their Tenakth stubbornness wouldn’t let them vocalise it.

“Have no fear, brave Tenakth,” the Oseram reassured them instinctively from behind, “this bridge was conceived of by the Carja and built by the Oseram. What the Carja imagine, we Oseram make happen.”

“So what happened over there?” Virek asked tersely. Kotallo turned to his right and immediately saw what made Virek uneasy. Part of the cliff to the west and one of the bridges had collapsed. There was scaffolding all around it and the foundations of a new, longer bridge was already being laid.

“Death Bringers under the control of the Eclipse destroyed the western ridge.” Eamon explained.

“You speak of the battle for the Spire?” Kotallo recalled the exploits of Aloy.

“Indeed,” Eamon pointed, “and there is the Spire itself.”

Now Kotallo’s mouth dropped in unguarded awe. The Spire was greater, grander, taller and blacker than anything he could have imagined. It was atop yet another mesa that sat unbridged and alone in the middle of the heavily forested valley.

He knew there were Spires all over the world, built by Gaia to transmit a code that would shut down the FARO plague. But it was this Spire that HADES had attempted to use to reawaken the machines to destroy the earth once more…and it was this Spire that Aloy had cast it out of and saved the world…at least for a few more precious months until the Zenith threat was identified.

As they crossed the bridge, the Spire disappeared from view, upper Meridian filling their gaze with stone and verge. It was a claustrophobic clutter of streets and buildings, markets, stairs and towers. Kotallo’s fingers twitched as he felt the urge to escape the press of unnatural Carja stone and Oseram ingenuity. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, his jaw set in an even grimmer expression than it had been in the entire journey to Meridian.

Before they walked too deeply into the city, a man with dark skin and greying hair tied back and Carja robes that marked him as something important, approached with soldiers in tow.

“Marshal Kotallo, Tenakth ambassadors,” Eager Eamon bowed and gestured, “this is Blameless Marad, advisor to Sun King Avad.”

Marad bowed. Kotallo allowed a slight dip of his chin, keeping the Carja fixed in his cold blue sights.

“Welcome Tenakth ambassadors to Meridian,” Marad said in a twangy yet deep voice, “it is no small journey you have made and before you meet with Sun King Avad, I thought it prudent to offer you refreshments and the opportunity to bathe.”

“I don’t think the Carja like the way we smell…” Jira said somewhat sharply. She was the slightest out of all the Tenakth and the totem must have weighed nearly half her weight yet she carried it without flinching.

“Perhaps he’s worried we will offend Avad with our Tenakth stench.” Catra raised his eyebrows.

Kotallo kept his eyes on Marad, studying his reaction. He was as unreadable as stone.

“I only offer it as a courtesy and not as a slight against your appearance.”

Kotallo continued to hold his gaze until the silence became uncomfortable before he allowed himself to blink.

“We will present ourselves before your king as we are…for we are Tenakth.”

Blameless Marad bowed, hiding any reaction he might have let slip, turned and led the way forward. Eager Eamon fell into step with Kotallo, the soldiers and Marad taking the lead.

Meridian seemed to quiet as they walked through the streets, heading for yet another bridge that led to the palace. They passed over it without pause but at the ornate and elaborate gates that would allow them onto the smaller mesa, Marad turned to face them, the soldiers forming a solid line so that they were unable to proceed.

“Upon this threshold I must ask that you relinquish all weapons.”

Had the younger Tenakth not been carrying their totems, they would have had their weapons out, ready for a fight. As it was, their words conveyed their violence.

“We’ll die before you disarm us.” Virek snarled.

“We won’t be led into a Carja slaughterhouse.”

“Please, Marshall and ambassadors,” Marad held up his hands, “understand that, due to the bad blood between the Carja and the Tenakth, you cannot be allowed in his presence, so armed.”

“Will your soldiers lay down their arms?” Jira demanded.

“Their weapons protect the Sun King.”

“Then we will not relent.”

Blameless Marad sighed. “Then we are at an impasse. After the last Embassy and your own civil war, how can we know that we can trust you?”

Kotallo stared at him for a long moment before he drew his blade from its sheath and held it out. He heard the other three Tenakth hiss and gasp at his actions. Marad accepted the jagged blade with a respectful bow.

“Know this,” Kotallo said and Marad’s movement stopped, “I don’t need a weapon to kill.”

“Of that I am fully aware.” Marad nodded.

Jira was next to follow Kotallo’s example, Virek the last and begrudgingly so. When they were disarmed, the soldiers parted and allowed them through. Kotallo had already chosen the weakest soldier to disarm and use his weapon should the Embassy turn nasty. But Aloy had said Avad was a man to be trusted and his actions had only reinforced this…

…although Kotallo was equal parts interested to dreading meeting the Sun King…who had practically proposed to Aloy.

What would this man be like?

Still further they walked into the palace, around gardens and wrought iron fencing, engraved stone and a dozen more guards to a set of doors that led to the inner palace. Marad opened them with a flourish, going inside but stood out of the way, bowing low.

“Sun King Avad, the Tenakth envoy has arrived.”

No doubt Avad knew of their arrival long before they set foot on the mesa. He was a tall, slender man with olive skin and black hair across his upper lip and peeking out from beneath his headdress which was as elaborate and ornate as a Lowland Clan adornment yet where theirs was woven with feathers and fronds, Avad’s crown was of machine parts. His chest was bare, a sleeveless vest draped over his shoulders and his waist was tied with a length of silk into a knot, his pants loose but cuffed at the ankles and his feet were unshod.

Kotallo wondered what on earth he could have in common with someone like Avad.

“I welcome you in the name of the sun and with all the reassurance I can offer of a safe visit to the Sundom…and my most humblest apologies in person for the bloodshed that my late father unleashed upon your tribe.” Avad bowed to them, his head weighed down by his crown yet he carried it with ease as he straightened and gazed at them calmly.

Kotallo permitted himself to bow to Avad.

“This is Jira of the Lowland Clan,” he introduced each Tenakth in turn as they placed their totem down, “Catra of the Sky Clan and Virek of the Desert Clan.”

“And this,” Blameless Marad spoke up, “is Marshal Kotallo.”

Avad nodded his head. “I greet you warmly and would shake your hand, Marshal…”

He held it out. Kotallo noticed Marad flinch and suspected the Carja King was acting outside of his ‘agreed’ behaviours by doing so. Kotallo immediately appreciated the gesture and clasped Avad’s hand. He tried not to shudder. It was as smooth as water, without a single callous or scar.

This man’s knowledge of war came from books and observation.

Kotallo could only wonder what his own handshake must have felt like.

“We have some formalities to conclude…” Avad gestured to Eager Eamon who unrolled his scroll and cleared his throat.

“Just as the sun shines forth anew every morning, bringing with it the promise of a new day, so too does this Embassy, held in the heart of Meridian, shine with hope for communion between Carja and Tenakth.”

As the Sun Priest spoke, Kotallo found himself oddly distracted, recalling how, only a few weeks ago, he and a tiny squad held the future of the earth in their hands. It still amazed him that the rest of the world had no idea just how close it had come, twice now, to annihilation and how the fight was not yet over.

He was still lost in his thoughts when Eager Eamon finished his spiel and Kotallo blinked and realised Avad was presenting him with a casket of Tenakth tags.

“Though I cannot know for certain,” Avad said, “I hope these are the last remnants of the war…and ask that you return them home to the families of the soldiers who fell defending Tenakth territory.”

Kotallo eyed the casket. It was hefty and he had only one arm. Thankfully Jira sensed his concern that he might commit a sacrilegious offence by dropping the box and the tags that represented so many Tenakth and stepped forward to take the box in her arms.

“We have Carja trophies to present as well,” Kotallo explained, gesturing to Virek who fiddled briefly with the Desert Clan totem before joining Catra in carrying the chest full of armour and headdress taken from Carja soldiers, “in accordance with the treaty of peace.”

“You have my…” But before Avad could finish, Virek suddenly lunged forward, secreted blade in hand, the tip plunging towards the Sun King’s heart.

“For Regalla!”

They were Virek’s last words as Kotallo grabbed his neck and snapped it, Virek’s body falling to the ground in a lifeless heap at Avad’s feet, the blade skittering out of his palm.

For a moment, no one knew what to do, staring at the dead body, their hearts only just starting to race even though the danger was over. Kotallo knelt by Virek and brushed his fingers over his eyes, closing them before reaching for the blade. He knew he danced with death as he stood with the small yet lethal dagger in his hand and held it out to Avad.

“How did you know?” Avad asked hollowly.

“I didn’t,” Kotallo admitted, “but as Marshal for Hekarro, I bring his will with me…and he bade me to ensure that peace is pursued…no matter the cost.” Even Blameless Marad was speechless. Kotallo swallowed. “I imagine you have even greater cause to distrust us now.”

Avad looked at the little blade in his hand. “The civil war that festered within the Tenakth was ultimately of Carja make…of my father’s mad reign. I blame the Tenakth not for their hatred.”

Blameless Marad stepped forward, possibly to curb anything Avad might say that would incriminate the innocent yet ultimate authority responsible for the Sundom, King.

“In accordance with the Tenakth guidelines for Embassies, without a representative of the Desert Clan, I am afraid this Embassy is over before it’s even begun.”

Kotallo’s shoulders sagged. Even though Virek’s ultimate revenge had been thwarted, he had still managed to ruin the Embassy and delayed steps towards peace.

“Marshal,” Jira urged respectfully from behind, “you represent Hekarro’s will…what would he want to happen?”

Kotallo felt a small smile at the corner of his mouth. Jira demonstrated her mother’s wisdom.

“Sun King Avad,” Kotallo lifted his chin, “I know Chief Hekarro would not want a single, desperate attempt to ruin this Embassy to succeed. Know that this poor, deluded young man’s actions are not representative of the Desert Clan or the Tenakth as a whole. If you will accept my word of authority as a Marshal, the Embassy can continue.”

“And in doing so, would not allow what this young man sought to do, to succeed.” Sun King Avad nodded. “I accept.” He looked at Marad who nodded but then, Kotallo doubted even the King’s Advisor to dare contradict Avad. “You speak with wisdom and authority, Marshal Kotallo. Chief Hekkaro is fortunate to have you as his representative.”

Kotallo paused and glanced at his pouch.

“But I was not his first choice,” he said softly, opening the flap and drawing sheafs of thin leather out, covered in unreadable to Tenakth but familiar to Kotallo, Carja glyphs, “here is the voice of the man who would have truly represented both our peoples.”

Avad took the parchments, every action watched by a dozen pairs of eyes, waiting for yet another attack. Kotallo watched as Avad held the pages up, his eyes grazing the words, glancing across them until he reached the end and he gave a small, unguarded, gasp.

“Fashav…these are Fashav’s words…”

The deceased cousin of the Sun King, murdered and run down by Regalla on the cusp of his return to his homeland.

“Though he was Carja born, upon surviving the Kulrut, he considered himself Tenakth and he only ever acted with integrity and character, wisdom and courage.” Kotallo insisted. “He hoped his words would breach the chasms of ignorance and fear.”

Avad closed his eyes, holding the pages close to his chest, his body trembling with emotion.

“I…would you permit a recess of an hour…so I can read his words?”

Kotallo bowed. “We will refresh ourselves…as was suggested earlier.” He looked pointedly at Marad who didn’t seem bothered by Kotallo’s gaze…which in of itself was rather impressive.

“A house has been made available to you. I will take you there.”