Berengar Leuvaarden stopped rocking his goblet and fixed his coal-black eyes on Shilard.

‘I have given you an imperial order, Baron,’ he muttered through his teeth. ‘When you’ve carried it out and returned to Nilfgaard you may ask the emperor yourself why he’s so unwise. Perhaps you mean to reprimand the emperor. Scold him. Chide him. Why not? But alone. Without my mediation.’

Aha, thought Shilard. Now I know. The new Stefan Skellen is sitting before me. And I must behave with him as with Skellen.

But it’s obvious he didn’t come here without a goal. An ordinary courier could have brought the order.

‘Well,’ he began, apparently freely, in a positively familiar tone. ‘Woe to the vanquished! But the imperial order is clear and precise, and it shall be carried out thus. I shall also try hard to make it look like the result of negotiations and not abject submissiveness. I know something about that. I’ve been a diplomat for thirty years. With four generations before me. My family is one of the wealthiest, most prominent… and influential—’

‘I know, I know, to be sure.’ Leuvaarden interrupted him with a slight smirk. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

Shilard bowed slightly. And waited patiently.

‘The difficulties in understanding,’ began the envoy, rocking his goblet, ‘occurred because you, dear Baron, chose to think that victory and conquest are based on senseless genocide. On thrusting a standard somewhere in the blood-soaked ground and crying: “All this is mine, I have captured it!” A similar opinion is, regrettably, quite widespread. For me though, sir, as also for the people who gave me my powers, victory and conquest depend on diametrically different things. Victory should look thus: the defeated are compelled to buy goods manufactured by the victors. Why, they do it willingly, because the victors’ goods are better and cheaper. The victors’ currency is stronger than the currency of the defeated, and the vanquished trust it much more than their own. Do you understand me, Baron Fitz-Oesterlen? Are you beginning slowly to differentiate the victors from the vanquished? Do you comprehend whom woe actually betides?’

The ambassador nodded to confirm he did.

‘But in order to consolidate the victory and render it binding,’ Leuvaarden continued a moment later, drawing out his syllables, ‘peace must be concluded. Quickly and at any cost. Not some truce or armistice, but peace. A creative compromise. A constructive accord. And without the imposition of trade embargoes, retorsions of customs duty and protectionism.’

Shilard nodded again to confirm he knew what it was about.

‘Not without reason have we destroyed their agriculture and ruined their industry,’ Leuvaarden continued in a calm, drawling, unemotional voice. ‘We did it in order for them to have to buy our goods owing to a scarcity of theirs. But our merchants and goods won’t get through hostile and closed borders. And what will happen then? I shall tell you what will happen then, my dear Baron. A crisis of over-production will occur, because our manufactories are working at full tilt. The maritime trading companies who entered into collaboration with Novigrad and Kovir would also suffer great losses. Your influential family, my dear baron, has considerable shares in those companies. And the family, as you are no doubt aware, is the basic unit of society. Are you aware of that?’