“Suspicious how?” Lovisa asked, because she couldn’t resist hearing Ta’s opinions on how people were supposed to behave.
“One of them, the queen’s doctor, I think, was way too polite and pleasant for someone who’s just lost his queen. You know? Wouldn’t you expect someone to show some feelings?”
“Definitely.”
“Another one, a big, tall guy named Gidlon or Gildon or something, was all glassy-eyed and pale, and he hardly said a word. I mean, even paler than most Monseans, like he was almost transparent. And he kept shivering too.”
“Like someone in shock?” Lovisa offered.
“Or someone who can’t believe he just threw his own queen overboard,” Ta said. “Don’t you think?”
“Definitely.”
“A bunch of the Royal Continent envoys were there too. The Estillan, the Dellian. The Lienid envoy kept crying. The Monsean queen is half-Lienid, you know.”
“Mm-hm.” Lovisa remembered her parents talking about the Estillan envoy. “Was your aunt Quona there?”
“Yes.”
“Did she have anything to say about it?”
“Um, she’s an animal doctor,” said Ta. “What would she have to say? There’s a Graceling in the delegation too, but she wasn’t at dinner.”
Lovisa was beginning to be rather envious of this dinner. “What kind of Graceling?”
“I don’t know. But the big guy asked about your uncle.”
“Katu?”
“Yes,” said Ta. “Apparently they know him. They wanted to know if he was back from his travels.”
“He’s not,” said Lovisa, badly wishing she knew where to write to Katu. He would want to know about Queen Bitterblue. And he would understand how Lovisa felt right now, like a door that had seemed about to open had slammed shut.
“Is your mother all right?” Ta went on, eyes gleaming. “She got a message during class this morning and ended it early. Then she was late for dinner. Like, very late. We were already done with the soup.”
Lovisa had gone to Politics and Trade class this morning early as usual, then wondered why the classroom was empty. It had been one of the first clues that something was different today. And it was, in fact, unusual for Ferla to be late for anything, especially a dinner at which powerful people were present. “As far as I know, she’s fine,” said Lovisa, then waited.
“Supposedly she was dealing with some problem at home,” said Ta. “Your father wasn’t at dinner at all.”
“Oh, wow,” said Lovisa. “One of my little brothers is sick. I wonder if he’s okay.”
Ta wandered away, satisfied with herself, leaving Lovisa to ponder her mother’s tardiness to dinner and her father’s absence. One of her brothers was sick. But Lovisa doubted Vikti’s cold would keep her parents away from a dinner with the prime minister and delegates from the Royal Continent.
She was half looking out the window thinking this over, half reading her Sentient Animal Law textbook, when another student who’d been missing from dinner appeared on the path below. Nev. Finally. Lovisa had noticed Nev’s absence, a little clock in the corner of her mind paying attention to the passage of time. It was well past curfew. This mattered for a student like Nev, who wasn’t the niece of the prime minister. Nev could get into trouble for being out so late.
Lovisa watched Nev approach. Even through the thickening snow, her tall, straight-shouldered form was unmistakable; that one-named girl always looked as if the freezing cold, her hatlessness, the lateness of the hour, and any other unpleasant circumstance was inconsequential to her. She was a scholarship student from the north, Torla’s Neck, a province in Winterkeep near to the Kamassarian border. Lovisa had been to Torla’s Neck several times, because it was the location of the house and mine shared by her mother and uncle. Ferla and Katu had grown up in Torla’s Neck. The province was rough, wild. A place with few wealthy families, few restaurants; a place with glaciers, and rocks, and forests, and mines. Not a place that justified Nev’s proud shoulders.
Nev stopped in a circle of light cast by one of the streetlamps and raised her face to a window somewhere above Lovisa’s. Mari Devret’s, probably. Lovisa had watched Nev climb to Mari’s window more than once when Nev and Mari had been dating and Nev had been doing whatever it was Nev did that made her miss curfew so often. Breaking curfew without a pass from a professor meant a demerit, which carried a fine that Lovisa was sure Nev couldn’t afford. Too many demerits led to expulsion.
But Lovisa doubted that Nev would call on Mari Devret for help with that now. It hadn’t been a friendly breakup. Lovisa knew, because Mari was one of her oldest friends, that Mari had been too surprised and hurt for that. It had been months ago and he was still moping around, like a sulking child. There were other rumors too, mean stuff that Lovisa collected and filed away, but didn’t necessarily believe.
She’s . . . pretty? Lovisa thought, studying Nev’s brown face. No. Nev wasn’t pretty, but she was something, her black hair cut close to her head, her strong mouth and her high chin arresting. Handsome. The shadows of a snowy street suited her too. Her rough coat, made of patchy furs she’d probably trapped herself, always had a way of making her look strong, rather than poor.
Then, suddenly, Nev was staring straight at Lovisa. She gave no sign of greeting, just stared.
I could open this window for her, Lovisa thought. I could go get Mari’s ladder, or someone else’s.
Instead, she stared back, curious to see what Nev would do.
To her surprise, Nev turned straight for the dormitory doors. Lovisa heard them open and close below, heard Nev’s muttered conversation with the monitor, but couldn’t make out the words. She adopted the guise of being deeply focused on her Sentient Animal Law textbook. When Nev climbed the steps and reached the landing, Lovisa ignored her.
Then, as Nev brushed past, Lovisa smelled a strange mixture of scents on her clothing. Blood, the cold, and the sea. Nev was in the school of animal medicine, and sometimes Lovisa couldn’t help her own horrified fascination.
“What happened this time?” she asked. “You smell even worse than usual.”
Nev stopped. She slid eyes to Lovisa that conveyed nothing, not one jot, of what she was thinking. Then she glanced at the textbook in Lovisa’s lap. “I doubt you’d find it interesting,” she said, her northern lilt stronger than Ferla’s or Katu’s. Most northerners worked to sound more like Ledrans when they were in Ledra. Not Nev.
Lovisa noticed a bandage wrapped around her left palm. “I’m interested in how it’s humanly possible to smell so bad.”