“Indeed, Your Majesty,” he says with a smile.
My dearest friend, Violet Marcin, quickly leaves her father’s side and wraps her arms round me. “Ali, my sweetest heart!” Her painted lips press against my cheek enthusiastically. She’s adopted the Resyan tradition as her own, partly because it’s in her nature to be warm and bold, but also because she fancies affording Reni the same attention.
I kiss her as well, grinning. “I copied you,” I admit, touching my feather clip. “It looked too wonderful on you at your recital.”
Violet smiles her grand smile, the sort she wears on stage when she sings. “They say in Landore even larger feathers are being worn. It’s a demonstration of Northern solidarity, you see. We should certainly show our support.”
“I’m not sure how feathers will frighten the Nahir.”
“Does it matter? Now, we need a peacock.”
“Stars, where does one find that?”
“I hear such exotic creatures are abundant in Resya.…”
I cluck my tongue and swat her arm lightly. She has the nerve to find Havis handsome and urbane, a man possibly tied to alluring adventure. But she can afford such fantasies because she’s the picture of Etanian beauty—gracefully mannered, with green eyes and auburn hair and curving hips—and she’s already caught the affection of our crowned prince, the prince who’s only a year from inheriting his throne.
For her, it’s all pretend.
Not for me.
As we sit side by side, her clever smile fades, and she reaches her hand under the table, offering me a small folded paper. Carefully, I look down beneath the lace cloth as if I’m smoothing my dress. We’ve done this many times before. I peel apart the paper and find a somewhat terrible drawing of a wolf. It’s lopsided, eyes and ears out of proportion, shading all wrong, but the wolf was my father’s favourite animal, a noble creature long since hunted out of our mountains. And she knows it.
Tears prick my lashes.
Violet touches my hand beneath the lace, distracting everyone around us by boldly fluttering her smile at Reni, on my other side. They play their little wordless game while I recover from the sweet gift.
Of course she wouldn’t forget what today means.
At the head of the table, a holy man offers his blessing upon the meal, as is tradition, and Mother nods along, though I know she puts not an ounce of faith in the words. She believes in fate and the luck of stars, not divine favour.
But when he finishes, she says, “Peace upon us.”
Champagne flutes are raised—“To Colonel Lyle!”—and first sips are taken.
Footmen step forward, serving silver plates laden with gleaming confit of goose and sour cherries, with poached salmon and butternut squash. I get my single plate of creamed carrots, deviled eggs, and rosemary potatoes.
Ever since the slaughtered fawn, I haven’t tasted a morsel of meat.
Not far from me, Havis leans back in his chair, tight-lipped, tapping his knife rudely as a thin man next to him, Lord Jerig, monologues about how he might solve the Southern unrest if he were actually across the sea, and if he were actually mad enough to go to the South. Reni says Jerig is the ringleader of Mother’s critics here at court, set against the General’s visit and anything else that might stray us from Etanian interests.
“It’s all very tragic,” Jerig finishes, dabbing his lips with an embroidered napkin. “They’ve no appreciation for the ways we’ve benefited the region. And now it seems Resya itself—the jewel of the South!—is in Nahir crosshairs. When will they have enough? Will they not stop until they’ve forced us out entirely?”
“Now, there’s a tragedy,” Havis observes with a trace of bored irony.
“This General Dakar is no different, in my opinion,” Jerig adds. “He means to solve any dispute with a gun. Surely you, as a man of diplomacy, see the danger in this?”
“I’ve never met the General, my lord. I prefer to judge every situation on its own merits, not the opinions from a newspaper.” Havis pauses. “And perhaps you should do the same.”
Jerig laughs, spidery moustache wrinkling. “Ah, still the defender of the South, then? I’m not sure such optimistic sentiment will get you what you wish here at court.” His fox eyes dart across the table to me, and I sense the implication acutely, but I absorb my irritation by smooshing a rosemary potato.
Jerig won’t let it alone. “Your Highness,” he says to me. “Tell me, please, do you think the Ambassador is correct?”
“On the General? Or the South?” I ask politely, annoyed to the bone.
“Take your pick.”
“Well then, I think if the ambassadors were doing their jobs properly then perhaps these Southern men wouldn’t be so irritable, and then we wouldn’t have the trouble to begin with.”
“Oh?” Havis asks with a skeptical, raised brow.
Reni bumps my arm rather pointedly on my left, and Violet laughs into her hand on my right.
“Yes, they sit round tables and talk all day,” I continue, louder, “but what good has that ever done in the South? We need men of real action in uniform, like the General. I greatly admire anyone who risks his own life for the service of others. That is honourable.”
“You don’t have to be in uniform to do that,” Havis offers.
I raise my chin. “No, I suppose not, Ambassador. But you must agree—the uniform’s more dashing!”
Violet laughs out loud, as does Jerig, and Havis has the nerve to join in. Then he stares right at me, taking a savouring bite of the roast goose.
I fume into my creamed carrots, resisting thoughts of Havis’s hands on my hips, his rough kisses forcing me into shadowy corners, and instead I listen as the young pilot seated on Violet’s right seizes my praise of military men as an excuse to begin some tale about landing his aeroplane in the pitch-black of night. Apparently the 3rd Squadron airbase outside Hathene has a windy approach, and he demonstrates by waving his hand about like an overexcited child, his shiny hair slicked to the side. He keeps peering at Violet like he’s waiting for her to give him a round of applause. She has that effect on most young men. But of course it doesn’t take long for Reni to notice the lavish attention she’s receiving, and he interrupts Slick’s boasting with the deceptively casual question “And you think you’re better than the pilots of Savient?”
Trust Reni to circle us back round to sour milk.
The pilot smiles nobly. “Of course, Your Highness. They’re only good because they fly such fancy aeroplanes. Give me one of those and I could do the same.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re as talented in battle as you are at spinning tales.”
“I’m at the top of my class, Your Highness. That’s what counts in a dogfight—talent, not machine.”
“And how many battles have you won, rookie?”
The pilot blinks, suddenly aware he’s walked himself into embarrassment as others at the table overhear the rising debate and tilt their ears to listen, Violet beaming like a pleased circus master. I’m ready to offer both young men a set of pistols so we can get it over with—Reni will debate this boy into tomorrow otherwise, and Uncle’s already nodding along like the quiet instigator he is.
But Colonel Lyle comes to the rescue of his airman.
“To be fair,” Lyle says, “it’s been proved in history that the desire for victory is of far more importance than weaponry.”
“And you don’t believe Savient has that desire?” Jerig asks dubiously.
The Colonel shrugs. “It’s not the same as here, my lord. Here we’ve been tied to our land for countless generations. Our crown descends from Prince Efan himself. We understand loyalty. But what is Savient? A ten-year-old nation patched together in the midst of strife? Its people are from three different lands, with three different languages, rallied together beneath their Safire flag. How can such a place hold together when strained? Mark my words, Savient will go the way of the South. The General will overestimate his power and it will dissolve back into the chaos from which it sprang.”