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Bellamy was terribly disappointed with the sound the gate locks made. He wanted a ‘clang’ or a ‘bang’ or at least the comforting sound of metal sliding on metal.
Instead they ‘snicked.’ Quietly.
He turned his head to catch his sister’s eye. “I was hoping for something more dramatic.”
Octavia rolled her eyes. “We’re still on the outside, big brother. And the doors won’t open until Chancellor Griffin gives the word.”
“Or Jackson wrestles Sinclair for the controls.”
This time Octavia laughed, snorting behind her hand when Kane sent them a stern glance. But from the way the corner of his mouth quivered, Bellamy was pretty sure he was laughing on the inside, too.
Kane was proving to be quite the conundrum. For a man whose complete and uncompromising devotion to duty was legendary, he also had a quicksilver smile, a charming tongue when he wanted to, and the instincts of the bossiest set designer this side of the moon.
They were sitting in a rough semi-circle of chairs and sofas, hauled out from the fortress behind them. A low coffee table sat before them, spread with food. Beyond the table, the ground had been covered in carpets and pillows were scattered about for reclining. They were facing what had become the main trailhead leading down (or up) the mountain. The path Commander Lexa and her advisors were traveling. They would emerge into the open space any minute now.
Kane had been unbelievably picky – rejecting piece after piece until he had his stage dressed just the way he wanted it. Even the chancellor got snapped at when she tried to intervene.
It was now pretty damn impressive, and Bellamy decided that maybe Kane had a purpose in all his fussy madness. The furniture was all low profile, comfortable and fully upholstered in bright colored fabrics, golds and reds and greens and blues. The table was a two layered, glass and beaten metal affair that weighed a fucking ton. The carpets and pillows were also all brightly colored. The tent itself was white.
The dishware? All cut or blown glass, sparkling in the midday sun. In the middle of the table? A big bowl of bright green limes.
The eight gathered dignitaries – and how utterly freaking bizarre that he and Octavia and David Miller counted among them – were all dressed in shades of grey and black, just like they had on the Ark.
He hoped the drones were snapping lots of pictures.
“Remind me what the point of all this is, again?” he asked, for no good reason except to fill the uncomfortable silence.
Lincoln, who had chosen to stand behind the small sofa he and Octavia were sitting on, positioned between them, leaned down. “Victory,” he said.
Kane glanced up from the tablet in his lap, tucking it down beside him. “Here they come.”
Bellamy just knew he was dying to add, “Places everyone.” But somehow, he contained himself. Superhuman strength of will probably.
Lexa barely broke her stride as she entered the freshly cleared ground. Ground that had been nothing but scraggly, untracked forest when she left them all there to die. Three nights ago. Her raccoon-like eyepaint made it impossible to hide the way her gaze darted around however. Her half-dozen guards and attendants weren’t so nice. They went ahead and swiveled their heads. Even Indra.
She went back to glaring at Lincoln and Octavia once she’d taken in all the changes though.
As the Grounders approached the edge of the pavilion, Kane rose to his feet and called out, “Heya, Heda. Mounin kom osir Maun-de. Greetings, Commander. Welcome to our Mt. Weather.”
Lexa raised her hand, halting their progress.
“Please,” Kane held out his own hand, indicating the ground cushions. “Won’t you join us, for some refreshment and some talk?”
Lincoln translated Kane’s words into Trigedasleng almost as soon as Kane fell silent.
“I apologize for not speaking your language. I am just beginning to learn,” Kane said.
Lincoln’s quiet voice followed, carrying Kane’s words into Trigedasleng.
Bellamy wondered if Lexa had any way of knowing that Kane was lying. His grasp of Trigedasleng was amazingly good, much better than Bellamy’s own, even if his pronunciation, according to Lincoln and Octavia, still sucked.
“You welcome us?” Lexa managed to convey so much disdain with those three words, Bellamy wondered that she didn’t fall over backward from looking too far down her own nose. “In whose name?”
Kane grinned at her. “Our own, of course,” he said. And then he dropped casually back into his own chair, settling in and crossing one leg over the other, completely at his ease. His chair, deliberately, was no higher or larger than the rest. “Please,” he said again, gesturing to the carpets. “Join us.”
“We will stand,” she said. And strode into the tent.
She came to a stop about a meter away from the edge of the table, her crew flanked out behind her.
“Suit yourself,” Kane said, Lincoln’s translation a soft echo after him.
Bellamy had vaguely grasped the advantage Kane was angling for in his frantic burst of interior design mania, but now he saw it clearly. There was no move Lexa could make right now that didn’t end up with her in the position of seeking an audience on someone else’s turf.
“You are not welcome here,” Lexa began.
“You have certainly made that quite plain,” Kane said.
“The Mountain does not belong to you.”
“Oh yes. It does,” Kane said. “We won it. Fair and square. After you betrayed our alliance and turned your back on us. Expecting we would all die horribly at the hands of your old adversaries. Enemy of my enemy is my friend, yes?” Real anger edged Kane’s words, and Bellamy heard it again in Lincoln’s translation behind him.
“You could not have won it without our assistance.”
“You’re correct, Heda. We could not have. And had you fought with us, as you swore to do, you and your alliance would have had a claim to your portion of the spoils. But you accepted a deal with Dante Wallace. You took your people out of the Mountain – after Bellamy had already freed them, mind you – and then you quit the field. By your own choice, your efforts here have already been fully compensated. You are entitled to no more of what is now ours.”
Lexa started to speak, but Chancellor Griffin stopped her. “If, Heda, you would like to reconfirm your agreement with Wallace, with us in his place, we would be happy to talk, and to mark a new friendship with gifts and trade.”
Lexa exchanged a long look with Indra, then turned back to Kane and Griffin and shrugged. “I don’t think so. Not today.”
Indra suddenly stepped forward, hand on the hilt of her sword and barked, “Nau!”
Nothing happened.
Indra waited half a beat, then drew her blade. If the mammoth coffee table hadn’t been in her way, she would have had it at Kane’s throat, but the furniture stymied her long enough for Kane to touch his earpiece. “Major Chavez? Would you escort the rest of our guests out please?”
Indra and the rest of the Grounders, who all had their blades in various states of readiness, froze. Except Lexa. Bellamy was pretty sure she was swearing under her breath.
Two dozen Arkers, all armed and all dressed in Guard uniforms – for the purposes of display, only eight of them were actually in the Guard, though the guns were real and loaded – stepped out of the trailhead. They were herding an equal number of Grounder warriors along in front of them, each warrior walking with bound hands clasped behind his or her head. Their feet were also shackled, and linked together. When they were about three meters back from the pavilion, Major Chavez halted the line, then poked and prodded his prisoners until they were spread out, side by side, at the limit of the ties that held their shackles together. “Ona graun,” he said.
When the warriors didn’t move, he helpfully demonstrated what he wanted by walking around and kicking in the backs of the knees of the man closest to the center of the line.
The ‘guards’ raised their weapons, safeties clicking off.
“Ona graun,” Lexa ordered.
The captured warriors knelt. Not all gracefully. Two of them actually toppled over completely and landed on their faces. They had to be yanked up by the closest guard. Bellamy found this obscurely satisfying.
Then Lexa sat as well, quite gracefully, nodding at her crew to do the same.
“Very well,” she said. “We will talk.”
“Good,” said Chancellor Griffin. And then she smiled. And her smile was somehow far more unnerving than Lexa’s frozen glare. “I hoped you’d feel that way.”