Yes, it was terrible tea, but it was a really particular, special brand of awful, and, since she both offered it to him and was drinking it, he assumed The Dark Lord either hated him, hated herself, or seldom drank tea but was attempting to be social.
Tepid in temperature without being soothing, rooty and grimy in flavor without feeling earthy, abrasive without for an instant being bracing. Knowing that she had a vast and blushingly loyal Goblin army which would have been more than happy to make sure that someone was standing by, at all times, day, night, Pluterday, un-night, under-night, imaginary afternoon, invisible dusk, and so forth, who did nothing other than prepare excellent tea should the Dark Lord happen to wish it, Sam could not help but wonder why she would choose to not only make this herself, but then drink it.
“I’m sorry about the tea,” said the Dark Lord. She sipped some and winced.
“I’m sorry, too,” said Sam. He sipped some and winced. He put the cup down too hastily and a bit of tea slopped over his thumb.
“What happened to the thumb-ring I gave you?”
Sam had never seen a thumb-ring before, until the Dark Lord showed him one in one of the rather large and inconvenient treasure chambers, in which she wandered when she wanted walks, and admired the selenite statuette upon this one. He still had the ring—no statuette, though.
“Apparently, selenite counts as a gem.”
“Oh, right, that famous greed for gems and wealth.”
“Nope, not wealth, just gems. Gems are the only form of wealth they consider valuable. Anything else is too variable. Gems are the most stable, solid form of wealth, and since there are still quite a lot of wonderful gems out there with the Dark Gnomes don’t have, the best way to get it is to steal it from others. Or each other. Or anyone, anywhere, anything, really.”
The Dark Lord had a spectacular Samovar. It was the most magnificent Samovar had ever seen. It was the only Samovar that Sam had ever seen. He would have loved to have seen it in operation. Sam knew Dwarven engineers who would likely construct entire pyramids just for a chance to have a good look inside; it was a pity he was not any kind of engineer, and none of them were currently speaking to him, as far as he knew. He realized that the Queen of Tenebrae was speaking to him.
“How are the Svirfneblin?”
“In.”
If you’re going to make terrible tea, and then drink it, you ought to expect to have to spit it out and all over yourself once in a while. At least, so Alice would conclude, later on that night, in the darkness of her bedroom. Fortunately, one of the benefits of having no servants is that one can conduct royal business in overalls which were already stained.
And not recently, either.
She cocked her head at Sam. “What did you just sayt?”
“They’re in.”
“Like Hell!”
Alice’s Staff leaped off the wall at her tone of voice, got about halfway to her hand, realized she had been speaking entirely rhetorically, and stumped slowly back into the corner, hoping no-one had noticed.
Everyone had.
“Sam, they said they would not. They said never. They said they would not do so in one year, ten year, or ten thousand years. They attacked the Orcs. They attacked the Goblins. I sent [and here, we would transcribe the shriek she made which indicated a particularly large and ill-tempered Dragon; but Alice spoke Dragon purely for effect, as they, themselves, vastly preferred English’s 2,000,000 words, being great hoarders of treasure]…and all she said when she got back was, “Now I’m sad.”
“She fried quite a lot of them. They gave her a lot of gems to go away. She went away, they planted a lot of Dragonsbane, and then they stole her gems. She’s very annoyed, and when she wakes up in a few hundred years, their descendants will be in serious trouble.”
“They told everyone else that I have ever sent that they were out that they would rebel until their days of dying!”
Sam nodded. “Oh, yes. They were very offended.”
“Their entire culture is based upon the theft of gems. Without the ability to steal gems, how would they ever determine social status among their people?”
“But Ambassadors have diplomatic immunity!”
“Exactly. Who would want to be the least-popular Svirfneblin?”
Alice sighed.
“All right. So what happened?”
“I went past the places of government and the houses of worship and the marketplace, and I sought out the bars, the bad ones, until I found someone who was at absolute rock-bottom. Nowhere to go but down, but not quite down enough to forget that there’s an ‘up’.”
He paused, staring at something in a far distance. “This is not an easy place to be.”
“By starting at zero, he gets, very very slightly, ahead. He’s got nothing to lose.”
Alice stared. “And the other Gnomes were fine with this?”
“I told the current High Elf that I was utterly corrupt. If I he wanted the honor of being appointed Ambassador, he had best give me a whole big bunch of gems, or I would punish him by appointing a drunkard no-one had ever heard of. He was still chuckling when he signed the receipt,” said Sam.
Alice paused.
“You’ve got another receipt?”
“I have.”
Alice nodded without changing expression, as if she had expected this all along. Or possibly as if facial expressions had suddenly become an utterly inadequate way for her to express whatever was trying to happen in her head.
“Good work,” she remembered to say. She took an awkward sip of tea; not that there was any graceful way to drink this tea without actually throwing it into a crater.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to try my brownies?” she asked, in the tones of one who having experienced one miracle, has decided to go for broke and try for two.
“No,” said Sam.
___
