Near the First Day’s Lunch Break’s start, shortly after Chapter Five ends:

…

Aren turned away from Mari, clearly disappointed in her negative response, and left the room. The door, made of finely carved wood and emblazoned with Sterlir’s crest, closed with a boom behind her.

Julia, her aide, relaxed nearby on a mostly unadorned chair. It had a cushion for padding affixed to the chair’s seat, but otherwise, it was just a simple wooden piece, cobbled together by mediocrely crafted nails, which served their purpose nonetheless. Even if the money was there to splurge on more ornate and expertly made chairs, Mari never saw the purpose of such an expenditure; the current chairs served their intended purpose perfectly well. Mari’s utilitarianism didn’t stop the chair’s current occupant from complaining about them.

She, as typical of a Gil, had skin the colour of the sun during an eclipse. Scattered across her, she had spots of white that dappled her skin like the stars that peppered the midnight sky. That was quite unusual; a village might only have a precious few families whose skin was similarly blessed. Even rarer were her irises; they were tinged a blackcurrant purple just ever so slightly different than the eye colour typical of the Gilish people. All of the small woman’s tiny rarities were what drew Mari to her and why she’d taken Julia in at her embassy, having hired her a few weeks ago.

The woman derailed Mari’s current train of thought, focused on said woman herself. “Department Head”, Julia asked, snapping Mari’s attention to her, “Should I add that to your list of engagements? I don’t believe that it conflicts with anything else.”

“Oh! Julia. Yes, that would be wonderful of you to do”, Mari responded. She paused for a moment before she reiterated what she had been telling the Gil for weeks, “And the formality isn’t needed. I know you haven’t really gotten a chance to look at the regular goings-on of the Grand Embassy, but outside of formal events like this hearing, you really don’t need to keep it properly formal. Heavens know, the only reason our countries aren’t at each others’ throats more than they already are is because us all appearing relaxed and friendly eases tensions.”

“Department Head”, Julia responded, “ I know that. I just prefer this formality.”

“I know what you prefer, but-”, Mari cut herself off. She shifted gears slightly and picked up a different thread. “The first guests will be here in a moment. An argument then won’t exactly inspire confidence in Sterlir’s citizens, so may you please just address me informally then?”

“That’s… fine. Just don’t press the issue when we’re alone. It doesn’t make a difference in how I ‘inspire confidence in Sterlir’s citizens’ then, does it?”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

…

The first two to show up came in a pair. One, Mari recognised; the short, white-haired lady with angular features was Terys de Valen, the first speaker of the day- and by extension, the trial as a whole. Her speech had had an impact on Mari; she was unlikely to forget the woman anytime soon.

Accompanying Terys was a man. He was slightly taller than most Sterlir, and similarly, he was a bit more widely-set than the average person. His hair and eyes matched each other perfectly; they both had the same glimmering shade of emerald green. His hair was fading with age; the sides of his head’s hair’s tone gave way to a silver shade in place of his usual green. His hair was cut evenly and close-cropped around his head.

“Good day”, Mari said, opening a conversation between the three, “I am the Sterlir Embassy’s head, Mari de Thern. Could I ask your names?”

“I am Terys de Valen; I spoke earlier. This gentleman here is Quall Vera-Mondal.”

So she was capable of formality after all. Her speech certainly didn’t make it appear that way. “Please, just call me Mari. We Sterlir are just having a nice chat over lunch, that’s all. We can eschew formality for now”, Mari replied, “Please, follow me. You as well, Speaker Vera-Mondal.”

“If we’re going to drop the formalities, just call me Quall”, the aging man said, “And her Terys.”

“Very well”, Mari responded. She led the pair through the embassy’s utilitarian lobby into a much fancier, exquisitely decorated room. It was a relic of a few decades ago; Mari herself wouldn’t have gone so far with the room’s decor. The chamber’s chairs were carved from fine aspen, with their backs twisting up and out to form arm and headrests. Embroidered cushions with the designs of woodland creatures sewn into them acted as padding for the chairs’ bottoms. The labour spent on even one of the chamber’s dozen or so chairs was probably equal to the whole of the work put in on the lobby’s furniture.

“Julia!”, Mari asked, “Will you tend to the door for a few minutes? I’m going to be occupied with the guests. There should be no more than three who haven’t yet come.”

“Sure, D- Mari”, came a voice from the left corner of the room nearer Mari. Mari glanced over to where Julia was standing.

“She is Julia”, Mari said to Terys and Vera, “She’s an aide here.”

“...Just that?”, pondered Quall aloud.

Julia left the room rather quickly.

…

Zinnia had splurged a tiny bit on her lunch today. A handful of food carts scattered the space around the Grand Embassy, especially around the entrance that spectators were currently using. Zinnia had bought a small package of beef sticks from one of them. She’d then returned to Arina’s embassy, where she found a table in the lobby to eat at. The food wasn’t world-class, but it was clearly made by a talented cook who knew what they were doing.

A knock on the door interrupted her up to then silent break. “Marin”, she called out to the errand boy presumably on the door’s other side, “You can come in. Nothing’s blocking you.”

The door opened, but the boy on the other side was definitely not Marin. He was covered in dirt and grime and could not have been older than eleven or twelve. They’d be small for even that age. Slender ridges of scars crisscrossed the adolescent’s arms. Some of them were red, and fewer still still had open wounds.

There was a rather good chance he was one of Aren’s strays. “Come over here”, Zinnia told the boy, “What’s your name?”

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The boy closed the door behind him- its sound startled him- and timidly came over to Zinnia. “I’m D-Dodeca. A woman told me to come here. She gave me this”, the boy said. He showed Zinnia a pin emblazoned with a familiar crest. Zinnia once had held one like that.

“Okay. We should clean you up”, she told Dodeca. She offered the boy one of her meat skewers, before starting towards the embassy’s back rooms.

“Wait!”, Dodeca exclaimed, “Where are you going?”

“Just to a back room to get a first-aid kit. I’ll be back in just a moment”, Zinnia said, trying to reassure the kid.

“...Okay…”

…

Eric and Tehran had to wait only a few minutes for Liara.

“Liara”, Eric said once she entered, “Is Pyros alright?”

“Yes”, the woman responded, “He’s doing fine now; he’s just a small bit out of it. Pucoths is with him for now.”

“That’s good. Come, Liara”, Eric said, “We should talk over lunch.”

She came over to the table and took the remaining seat.

“Aren is clearly with us on the matter at hand”, Eric opened, “But the others range from neutral to strongly for a treaty.”

“Right”, said Tehran, “So should we reach out to her, Liara?”

“You two aren’t wasting any time”, Liara remarked, “But yes, that seems logical. We do share an opinion that we need to defend, after all. But why ask me?”

“Thanks for the input”, Eric replied, “And I wanted to ask you because of how directly influential you are with this all. It’s me and you up there, after all.”

“I guess that makes sense”, Liara said, “But it’s not like I have nearly as much influence as one of y’all with an actual vote, and actual voice, in the matter.”

“But you can take another’s.”

“What?”

“If you translate someone’s speech, you can warp what they’re saying and you can dull their points, or you can make their arguments stronger, just by slightly changing their words.”

“I suppose that makes sense. What now, though? I doubt we go together for a couple of minutes of talking.”

“You’re certainly right”, Eric said, “There is more to talk about.”

…

After Terys and Quall, the next to arrive at Mari’s luncheon was a light-skinned man. He had eyes with irises the tone of a purple one might expect royalty or only the highest-ranking nobles to be able to afford. The man had longer hair, which reached his shoulders. It had the colour of wet sand; not quite dark brown, but far from blond as a hair colour.

“Hello”, Mari said once the man, guided by Julia, entered the room she and the two speakers were in, “I’m Mari de Thern. I’m one of the council members, and I’m the one who invited you here, along with the other Sterlir speakers. Could I ask you your name?”

“Hello, Ms. de Thern”, the man said in a slightly accented voice. Mari thought it sounded distinctly northeastern. “I’m Theros Maceles.”

Mari thought she recognised that name. “Welcome in, then, Mr. Maceles.”

“Lord.”

That would explain it; Maceles was the name of a noble house back in Sterlir. “For now”, Mari said, “Would you mind dropping formality? I’d like to be able to speak to each of you all as equals while we eat.”

“I suppose”, the man replied, “That would be acceptable. You are a noble as well, are you not? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be working here, in a position held so precious by the government.”

“I have been selected for my role, yes”, Mari said. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. “But there are commoners here as well.”

“I shall suffer it if it is only for a brief time, as long as it is your request.”

“Thank you, Theros”, Mari said, “Mari would be fine for me.”

“Then, Mari, shall our group dine?”, the noble asked.

“We’re still waiting for two guests, though I think that the two that are here already would find conversation with you quite interesting.”

“Very well. Talking to the common folk every once in a while is good for you.”

He went to converse with Terys and Quall. Mari thought that she’d get a few moments of silence, but any chance of silence was interrupted by a crashing sound. She heard slightly melodic shouting coming from the other room.

Mari rushed to the lobby, where two Gilish were… doing something to- or maybe with?- Julia. “Julia!”, Mari exclaimed, “What is going on?”

“There’s… something I never mentioned. We should take to a side room.”

…

“Okay”, Zinnia said, “We should clean you up. It’ll sting a little.”

“I’ll be fine”, the grime-covered kid replied.

She took a cloth from the small first-aid kit, a dibbled a small bit of alcohol onto it. She took the now-wet cloth and drew it over Dodeca’s wounds. He, strangely, barely reacted to the stinging cloth.

“If you’re lucky”, she told Dodeca, “They’ll fade with time, and you won’t even notice the wound’s remains after a while! It might not even scar over, even for a time.”

“Is that good?”

That answer was concerning. “Of course; if the scars stay they’ll only remind you of what caused them.”

“Oh.”

She then took gauze from the kit. She gently took one of the child’s arms and began to wrap the gauze around the limb. “I’ll have to change this later, but this needs to be wrapped for now around your arms.”

She wrapped the cloth around Dodeca’s arms. Once she finished the endeavour, Zinnia led the child to a small, private room in the back. It had some furnishing; there was a couch in one corner and a mirror in its opposite. “You can stay in here for now. I’ll be away for a while, but someone else will come here when I’m gone.”

“Okay. Who will come?”

“A man called Marin. He’s probably around a decade older than you. Just show him that pin if he asks why you’re here.”

…

Zinnia had gone back to her table, where she sat eating her now lukewarm meat sticks when Marin arrived. “Marin”, she said, “Aren sent us another stray. He’s in the back.”

“Zinnia”, the errand boy replied, “Don’t use the term derogatorily.”

“I’m not. Anyways, his name’s Dodeca. He had some nasty scars on his arms. I applied some gauze, but you’ll have to redo it later.”

“I get that. But seriously, don’t call him ‘stray’, like an insult. After all-”

“I know, I know”, Zinnia said.

“Some of us end up staying”, she and Marin said in tandem.

“Don’t steal my line. But I’ll go see him. I don’t think there’s anything for me to do until the day’s over.”

…

“Julia”, Mari questioned once the pair had found a chamber, “What was going on back there?”

“I’m sorry. I should have told you earlier, but it just didn’t seem quite right.

“My skin”, Julia said, tracing the starlike spots on her arm with her opposite index finger, “Is ‘blessed’ or wonderful or whatever other adjective you want to use. I wasn’t born in Sterlir or even the Gilish part of Rathia. My family’s Gilish and my skin is a recessive quirk. I don’t really understand it, but I think it represents something important in my people’s folklore.”

“That’s fine”, Mari replied, “But why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Like I said, I don’t really understand it. I wasn’t raised in the Gilish religion, nor have I really studied it. I just know these white spots- these geilu-juluji, my parents called them- are supposed to symbolize something. I just… I just didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

“That’s fine, Julia. I can talk to those two, tell them to stop venerating you, and we can just have a nice lunch together, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Oh, and what does ‘gailoo youlooyee’ mean?”

“It’s geilu-juluji. My Gilish isn’t exactly extraordinary, but it means something like ‘white land of humans’ or ‘humanity’s land which is white’. Let’s just have a nice remainder of our break, okay?”

…

Eric’s proposal wasn’t that insane, though it caught Liara off guard. After the trio ate for a while, made idle chit-chat, and listened to the bells ring out three separate times, the former general turned in his chair towards Liara and asked her “Should we make some sort of arrangement with Aren?”

“What?”, Liara asked in response.

“It would be prudent to directly work with the other person who is definitely on our side, right? Earlier, we almost hamstrung each other with our questioning. It would be better to work together, right?”

“Yes”, Liara said, “It would.”

“Well then”, Eric said, “I guess we should plan to have dinner for four?”

…

The bells rang out, summoning Eric and Liara and Mari and all the others. It was time for the trial’s third speaker to argue for their side.