“She’s a member of the imperial family and a Privileged. She gained enemies simply by being born.” Tenik clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “Her nickname, it also has a double meaning. You know about Privileged, right?”
“They’re damned dangerous.”
“Not that. The sorcery, it makes them ravenous.”
“For sex?” Michel scoffed. “I thought that was a myth.”
“No myth,” Tenik said. “As far as I’ve been able to tell, our Privileged are less … discerning than yours. Try not to catch her eye. If you do, she will use you like a damp rag and discard you. Whether you survive the encounter will be left up to chance.” Michel turned to look at Tenik, expecting a tongue-in-cheek smile, but the cupbearer was dead serious.
“You’re joking.”
“A friendly warning,” Tenik said. He went on. “The man beside her is a cupbearer for the Jerotl Household—minister of public works. The woman behind her is a captain of the Sedial Household guard.”
Tenik spent the next ten minutes pointing out people and telling Michel their names, Households, and their occupations. Michel repeated each name that was told to him, trying to get the pronunciations down and casting them to memory. Within minutes he was trying to juggle two dozen names. Soon that number doubled. The game below them carried on, and the noise in the room began to grow in pitch, suggesting to Michel that some sort of conclusion was forthcoming.
Michel’s eyes kept returning to Forgula. Tenik had described her as a capable woman, and as Michel examined her, he began to see through the deception of his first impression that she had a gentle face. While it was true that some baby fat still clung to her cheeks, she had the thin, hard body of an athlete and her eyes were just as intense as those of the Privileged standing behind her. She grimaced at the game, occasionally smiled, and once bore her teeth toward the players with an open malice.
There was a weight to her right sleeve, suggesting to Michel that she carried a blackjack—the same weapon she’d beaten him with last week. His forehead and arm were finally beginning to heal, and he reminded himself not to allow this to get personal. He was here, he told himself, just until he could find Taniel’s informant. The opportunity to have some vengeance on Forgula by disrupting whatever she was doing with Marhoush was a secondary concern.
Unfortunately, the informant’s name, Mara, was not among those that Tenik shared with him by the time the roar of the spectators suddenly drowned out the next name that Tenik whispered into Michel’s ear. Roughly half of the room broke out into a cheer, while others looked away with disgust and disappointment.
Michel felt his own disappointment, swearing under his breath. He tried to remember what little Taniel had told him about Mara, that she was part of a Dynize higher-up’s retinue. “Retinue,” he decided, meant “Household.” But now that he knew roughly how big a Household could be, that information was practically useless.
There had to be a more efficient way to do this.
Michel discarded the thought and turned to Forgula, whom he saw shaking hands with the crowd.
“Her cousin won,” Michel said.
Tenik nodded. “He’s a very good player, but he got lucky.”
“You were watching the game?”
“Weren’t you?”
“I was listening to you.”
Tenik slapped him on the shoulder. “If you come to more games, you’ll have to learn to talk and watch. Good morning!” he called to someone a few rows down the seating, waving a greeting. He whispered the person’s name in Michel’s ear, which Michel promptly forgot.
Michel’s attention was still on Forgula as she began to move through the crowd, exchanging a few words here, touching an arm there, then a longer conversation. She snubbed one woman, warmly greeted another, then put her arm around a man who spoke in her ear.
Michel noted the faces of each of the people she spoke with, and how they interacted. “This room smells like politics,” he said to Tenik. “These games are the political underbelly of Dynize, aren’t they?”
A moment of silence passed, and Michel turned to find Tenik watching him carefully. “You’re very perceptive.”
“It’s my job,” Michel answered. “I have to know just enough about everything to keep from getting killed. And instinct tells me to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
“Instinct?”
“Instinct, and the looks your compatriots are giving me. I’m unwelcome here.”
“That is true.”
Michel wondered again if coming here had been a mistake. He was a spy, and he should be operating from the shadows. Let the Dynize upper crust wonder about the foreign spy in Yaret’s Household, but keep himself hidden.
But not all spying, he reminded himself, was from the shadows. Hiding in plain sight was a useful strategy. If it didn’t get you killed.
Someone passed him on their way down the tiered seating, knocking hard into his shoulder and almost throwing him to the ground. A word was hissed as Tenik caught him. Michel regained his balance. “What did that mean?” Michel asked.
“He called you a dirty foreigner.” Tenik’s eyes narrowed at the assailant’s back.
“Is he an enemy of the Household?” Michel asked.
“An ally, unfortunately. He’s a footman for the minister of agriculture. I will speak to him later.”
“Let it go,” Michel suggested.
Tenik shook his head firmly. “You’re a member of Yaret’s Household now, whether our allies like it or not. And someone like him”—he nodded to the assailant—“is not high enough a station to get away with insulting you. His minister isn’t even here. She’s back in Dynize, schmoozing the emperor instead of helping with the cause.”
“Just out of curiosity, who is high enough station to get away with insulting me?” Michel asked, eyeing Forgula as she continued to wind her way through the crowd. He studied everyone she made contact with—who knew about her contact with the Blackhats? Was there a conspiracy? Was she a traitor? Was her master vying for more power?
Tenik considered the question for a moment before answering. “That is a complicated answer. If you are insulted, you should let it go. I can deal with it.”
“That sounds like my mother telling me to ignore the boys who beat me up in school,” Michel responded. He caught the eye of another Dynize staring in his direction, and realized with a start that it was Ichtracia. The Privileged was watching him with open curiosity, and Michel felt a shiver run down his spine. “I think I’ve learned enough for one day,” he said to Tenik. “We should go.”
He began to head down the tiered seating, only to see Forgula directly below him, speaking urgently with a young woman in a soldier’s uniform. Michel turned to work his way around her just as she looked up toward him. He swore silently, resisting the urge to slink away, and decided to walk directly past her on his way out. He decided Forgula was someone to whom he shouldn’t show weakness.
Michel looked her in the eye and gave her his most charming smile.
A look of disgust crossed her face. “Tenik,” she said sharply.
Tenik was just one step above and behind Michel. “Good morning, Devin-Forgula,” he said, touching his forehead in greeting.
“Don’t ‘good morning’ me, Tenik. I’ve just received news of another explosion. At least thirteen soldiers dead or wounded down in Lower Landfall.”
Tenik stepped down beside Michel and scowled. “I’m sure that Yaret has been informed.”
“Has he?” Forgula took a half step toward Tenik. “Because his cupbearer is attending a game with a foreigner instead of out there looking for the men killing our troops.”
Michel bit his tongue. She had no idea she’d been followed the other day, and he had to resist the urge to throw her meeting with Marhoush back in her face. He could see the same struggle on Tenik’s face. “You’ve no right to question Tenik’s actions,” Michel said.