Rather than Resenting: Ch. 12

Sitting through a Meeting

Notes:

I mean...I have no notes...

Wait-

Update on where everyone is (since there are waaay too many people and it's easy to forget them...the next story will be so much easier in terms of keeping track of characters...)!

Arundelle and Galya: here's the truth, neither of them wanted to come to the meeting and would far rather either watch the kids or do pretty much anything else than sit through something that's inevitably going to be boring.

Nia and Sara: they are currently together watching the kids upstairs. Also they have books. And they can chat.

Evnia, Elquinn, Cerlon, Asteria, Laylynne: the first three are with Nia and Sara. Asteria is helping her mother do whatever it is that she's doing and Laylynne is playing with Evnia and Elquinn.

Amrah: in the cell

Artham, Janner, Kalmar: at the meeting

Everyone else who should be in the story and isn't is in the Green Hollows and arriving within the next few chapters (hopefully)^^

lol once again I had notes when I thought I would not have notes 😅😂

****

The trouble with only meeting with the Skreean delegates once a year was that it meant the meetings were dreadfully long and often dreadfully boring. There were also far too many of them. There were several reasons why the Skreeans arrived two weeks before and stayed one week after the Ball: because of the amount of agreements, trades, taxes, suggestions, changes, and what seemed like everything else under the sun that needed to be discussed.

Janner normally didn’t mind it, not too terribly, except for the fact that he was the one who had to keep kicking Kalmar under the table to wake him up when he dozed off. He usually enjoyed certain parts of it, or at least the parts where they began debating about the logic of beginning or ending certain agreements. For that matter, he normally spent the weeks before all the meetings preparing for them so he would actually be able to carry on a coherent argument in place of Kalmar, who was nearly hopeless when it came to the formalities of diplomacy. 

The trouble was that with everything that had been happening, he had had neither the time nor the energy to even think about such preparations. There was always the chance that he could snatch a few hours before bed or the next morning to actually review what they needed to talk about, but he preferred not to rely on such a haphazard system.

As it was, that evening they were not discussing any of the trade agreements or more difficult details. Haldrid, one of the three lords Kalmar had placed over the three provinces of Anniera (Artham and Brastin were the other two, and though the former was in charge the latter and Haldrid, he preferred to let Haldrid do the speaking when it was possible) had the floor. It wouldn’t have been so painful, except that Haldrid tended to speak for a very long time, even longer when the subject was one that should have taken a total of five minutes. It just so happened the most necessary and immediate subject was that of where the Skreean representatives would board, when and where meals would be provided, et cetera.

It had taken him an hour to get through the subject of food, through which Janner was almost certain Kalmar had actually stayed alert, awake, and had paid attention, but that only meant the speech on where they would stay would be even longer.

“Now, accommodations, meaning boarding,” Haldrid stated before launching into another rant about every single detail regarding where the Skreean representatives would stay and where the Hollowsfolk would board for the night once they arrived.

It seemed to Janner that the topic had been discussed multiple times already at multiple meetings over the course of multiple weeks and months, even. Why Haldrid and how managed to drag the topic on for more than a minute was beyond him, and if he could say whatever he wanted, he would simply ask Haldrid to move on to the next topic. Then he wouldn’t have to put up with wet hair and wet clothes and being freezing cold (that was all by his own choice, of course, but it didn’t mean he liked it) for as long.

He couldn’t say whatever he wanted, though, because that would arouse suspicion, especially since Artham had stepped into the conference room and taken his seat a few minutes earlier. Normally, Haldrid's long-windedness would not have mattered to him so much and he simply would have put up with it quietly, occasionally nudging Kalmar’s foot from underneath the table to let him know when he needed to answer a question or make a decision. 

This time it was Janner whose mind kept drifting on top of being irritated and very tired, both of listening and in general. He found himself struggling to keep his eyes open and though he had yet to stifle a yawn, he guessed it would not be much longer until that too was necessary. He was pretty certain one of the only things keeping him awake was the state of being unpleasantly cold and wet.

And, of course, exhaustion wasn’t contented enough with being the only problem: Amrah had decided to step in as well. His throat burned again as he thought of her, as he thought of the notions that had raced through his mind and nearly come to life. He remembered how his hand had drifted towards his sword hilt and how naturally his fingers had wrapped around it in a death-like grip, how he had tensed the muscles in his wrist, ready to put it out of its sheath, how he had mentally pictured drawing it out and—

A wave of nausea hit him and he swallowed in an effort to keep the bile down. 

“Hey, are you alright?” Kalmar murmured, leaning out of his seat at the head of the table just a little bit. “You look like you’re about to be sick.”

“I’m fine,” Janner muttered, resisting the urge to place his elbow on the table, rest his head in his open palm, and close his eyes. 

Kalmar looked at him more intently this time. “Well you don’t look fine. You should’ve changed before the conference. Do you need to leave?”

“No!” Janner hissed, perhaps a little too loudly. Color flooded into his face when Haldrid turned his direction on both him and Kalmar.

“Does the High King have a different proposition on where Gilda Strop, Representative of Torborro should stay?” Haldrid asked drily, a frustrated glint in his eyes. He was more than a little testy when it came to people disrupting the main schedule, but it was somewhat necessary to have someone like that in charge of reading off a list and remembering things from memory, especially when that list was very long and the things on it were very dry.

Kalmar cleared his throat. “Ah, no. None at all.”

Haldrid nodded, still seeming a bit suspicious and miffed regarding the interruption, and moved on to clothing and the cleaning of it, then “haphazardly” mentioned they had the option to change or “freshen up” before the evening meal that would be provided soon after the meeting’s conclusion.

Janner groaned inwardly. He had forgotten about how every single evening of every single day the Skreean delegates were there, they all ate in the main dining room together, discussing politics together and literally everything that had happened in their lives together. Not only would he have to stay awake through and even manage to make conversation during supper, he would have to navigate all of that while doing his best to not focus on Amrah. Maybe if he didn’t look at Kalmar he would be able to accomplish it. 

And Sara won’t be there, he realized suddenly, his heart sinking. She would likely insist on staying with Cerlon upstairs and watching the children, who would not be permitted downstairs with the adults for ridiculous “diplomatic reasons,” as was her right to choose. That didn’t mean he liked it. 

He was weighing between the pros and cons of checking on Sara before the meeting — pros: he would get to see her and likely get a chance to change out of his wet clothes; cons: he would see her and change and not want to leave their room to go to supper — when his mind veered back to reality at the words, “That is all I have to discuss for tonight.” He breathed an enormous sigh of relief that would have been heard by everyone if everyone else had not been breathing their own sighs of relief that the meeting had ended. 

Everyone waited around the table for Kalmar to dismiss them, but it took a few seconds for him to realize he needed to do that. “Oh, sorry,” he laughed nervously. “Conference convened. Feel free to make your way to the dining hall for supper.” 

Janner inwardly smacked himself when he realized he normally reminded Kalmar to officially end the meeting and had managed to forget to in the chaos that was his mind at that moment.

Nobody seemed to mind too much about the delay though, and they rose from their seats eagerly at those words. 

All except for Janner, who remained sitting for just a few more seconds, gathering his thoughts and trying to convince himself to actually get up to sit for at least two hours at a supper he was almost certain he would nearly fall asleep halfway through.

Someone brushed his arm and when he glanced up, he saw Kalmar standing there. “Hey, I asked Uncle Artham to get everyone to the dining hall. We have a few minutes if you want to talk about, you know, earlier.”

Janner froze. “About what, exactly?” he finally coaxed his voice to say.

“Uh,” Kalmar glanced around awkwardly. “You know…Amrah? Greston came and told me what happened, and we took her back to the castle before I went to greet the Skreean ships while Uncle Artham was looking for you and such. Amrah’s in the castle dungeon right now because...we weren’t sure where else to put her.” 

His breath catching in his throat, Janner stared at his brother, his eyes drifting toward Kalmar’s right shoulder of their own accord. His hands clutched the armrests of his chair without him telling them to, and it wasn’t until he heard the words, “Janner, you need to breathe,” that he gasped in a choking breath of air.

“Sorry,” he whispered after a few more seconds had passed. He looked away from Kalmar’s too-worried expression and down at his open hands, where he was reminded yet again that he had dug his nails into his right palm hard enough to draw blood in his immediate fury over seeing Amrah. 

“Janner,” Kalmar hesitated before continuing. “I don’t think you should attend the meal. Not because you can’t,” he added hastily. “But because you’re exhausted and stretched too thin as it is. Today has not been a good day.”

Janner laughed mirthlessly at the statement that was an enormous understatement. He wasn’t exactly certain what the correct description of the day was. Perhaps, “catastrophically upheaving” would do it justice.

His brother seemed too over-concerned about upsetting him with the tiniest detail, but it didn’t bother him, not too much, at least. He was more grateful for it than anything else, but uncomfortable was a close second. “Thanks for the suggestion, Kal,” Janner replied as kindly as he could manage, as since the diplomatic mask had briefly dropped from his entire body he was having a harder time appearing happy or pleasant when he really wasn’t. “But then they’ll ask questions. Sara’s already not going to be there and if we’re both not there, people are going to get confused and start poking where they shouldn’t and—” he paused and rubbed his face with his hands, wincing as his right palm made contact with his cheek. “And I just can’t risk that.”

Kalmar said nothing for another minute or so. “Fine,” he replied eventually. “But at least come with me so we can take care of your hand. We don’t have to make it obvious by bandaging it, but I can at least put ointment or salve on it or something.”

Janner sighed and stood up reluctantly. “You know, I was really hoping you wouldn’t notice that.”

His brother snorted, but his tone was anything but humorous. “Janner, if you’ve gotten to the point at which you hope other people won’t notice that you’ve dug your nails into your palm hard enough to make it bleed, you’re not okay. You need to talk to someone. I get why you might not want to talk to me about Amrah, but there’s Artham.”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” he muttered. “And I’m not ready.”

Kalmar pursed his lips before grabbing Janner’s arm to lead him along. “Yeah, well if no one ever forces you to be ready, I don’t think you ever will b. And that’s the problem.”

An unexpected wave of fury surging through him, Janner jerked his arm away from Kalmar’s grip. “I’ll be ready when I want to be,” he hissed. “I’m working on it.” He jammed his hands into his pockets and strode away from his brother, ignoring the way Kalmar’s mouth had gaped open in surprise, how he did not bother to follow, and how his left (and only) arm had simply dropped to his side.

Maybe the evening meal would be a good thing, after all. Maybe it would talk his mind off everything. Maybe he could keep the crumbling mask on longer. Maybe he could glue it back together again.

But maybe he couldn’t.

*****

Notes:

**half-hearted and sarcastic* yay, more angst and not being okay and not resolving things....

I just mapped this story out again to see how long it's going to be, and I'm guessing it'll be around 20 chapters. This is surprising, considering that it was only supposed to be around 4. Don't ask me how I thought I would cram everything into that tiny space, because I have no idea. This is a very normal thing with what I write. SSitS was supposed to be 30 chapters and 50K words, then the chapter count moved up to 45, then 60, and it ended up being 75 chapters and 144K words. So.