Citadel Excalbia, Excalbia
It was the day after the reception honoring the Excalbian Emperor's birthday, and the royal members of the Kartlian delegation were, in typical royal fashion, engaged in a fashionably late royal breakfast. The Kartlian Foreign Minister, Alexei Japaridze, had state business to attend to, however, and was on his way with an aide-de-camp to meet with representatives from the Fiefdom of Anahuac.
The issue on the agenda was the question of the Snefaldian border. Both states bordered the larger nation, and both states had long-simmering border disputes with them, mostly in the mountainous regions where few people lived, but "a border is still a border" as the Kartlian Prime Minister had said before Japaridze departed. Elections were approaching in Kartlis, and ever since 2015 the Snefaldians had become more bold about sparking incidents along their disputed area; they would move rock boundaries further into Kartlis by mere inches at night, or accuse the Kartlians of throwing rocks at their outposts, and in 2016 had even sent a detachment of border guards into the disputed space to dismantle a Kartlian guard shack they said was a violation of Snefaldian sovereignty.
Prime Minister Mikeladze wanted to approach the Fiefdom and coordinate a response for the simple reason that it was smarter to have an ally against a much larger bully than to fight alone, and the prospect of high-level diplomatic representatives being present in Excalbia was too great an opportunity to pass up to do just that. That was part of why Japaridze had been chosen to go as representative of the government instead of the more traditional choice of one of the more ceremonial Great Officers of State.
Japaridze had toyed with the idea of doing something cloak and dagger, making a surreptitious restaurant reservation rather than meeting in one of the embassies, in a kind of vain attempt to avoid letting the Snefaldians find out the two parties were meeting; he was not stupid enough to think he wouldn't be watched by Snefaldian intelligence working in Excalbia. His suggestion had been the Kartlian Embassy, and a light lunch of cheeses, breads, and fresh fruit had been laid out on the mahogany conference table used for staff meetings; the full-size official portrait of Prince Teimuraz gazed down serenely from the head of the table on whoever sat on it.