As they drank, Hava asked Arni so many questions that Giddon was able to retreat into a kind of stupor. Raise cup to face, tip liquid in. Think nothing, feel nothing. Parts of their conversation jabbed him into sudden awareness that Bitterblue would never learn what Hava was learning. The difference between Scholars and Industrialists. Which of the two parties tended to hold more power, win more elections, and influence more policy: the Scholars, though Parliament was evenly split at the moment, which made Arni hopeful. Whether it was unfair to the Industrialists that the Keep sat adjacent to the academy, which was the Scholars’ domain: Yes.
“But Winterkeep had a monarch once too, just like you,” Arni explained, “hundreds of years ago. Our kings and queens established the academy, and lived there, in the Keep. All the nation’s nobility were educated at the academy. Our scholars, with a small s, were the advisers to the monarchs. Winterkeep has a long history of a government run by scholars, which eventually led to the Party of Scholars. The Party of Industry has had to struggle to establish itself from the beginning of the two-party system. Personally, I think our progress has been admirable.”
“Quona Varana told us that the Scholars are the party of the environment,” said Hava. “That’s why they vote against zilfium use.”
Arni’s smile was sunny. When he spoke, it was in a manner Giddon was starting to recognize: the patient, deliberately reasonable tone he used when he was explaining something he thought foolish.
“She would say that,” he said. “It’s her obligation; it’s the message that gets her family elected. The Varanas have voters because they touch a part of the popular imagination. Quona pretends to be un-political, but she’s perfectly aware of what she represents. She communes with animals, you understand? From her house on her cliff above the sea, she forms relationships with silbercows, or so she says. I understand that silbercows are selective about whom they talk to, and we only have her word that they talk to her. She also makes her home a haven for stray cats. And so, people imagine her to be a protector, like a hero in the fairy tales. She symbolizes something idealistic a lot of people like, but fail to see the impracticality of. The reality is that Winterkeep will be left in the dust behind the zilfium engines of the other Torlan nations if we don’t change our laws. And the other reality is something she’s unlikely to let you see behind her carefully crafted image: Quona is a Varana. The Varanas are airship magnates. The only mode of transportation we have in Winterkeep besides horsepower is airships. We don’t have trains like the rest of Torla. The Varanas have a monopoly on the production, leasing, and private sale of airships in Winterkeep; as such, they largely control the movement of the Mail and the Magistry; and they closely guard the secrets of airship technology. Naturally they don’t want the zilfium laws to change. It would ruin their transportation monopoly. Quona wants to protect the environment because doing so protects her fortune.”
It was remarkable, thought Giddon, how comfortable it was to sit beside this fire and listen to Arni’s warm, gravelly voice deliver disillusionment and cynicism. He sounded perfectly sincere. Giddon sensed no falseness, and wondered whom to believe. No one? Everyone? He glanced across the room at Arni’s big, stark desk, then decided Arni probably led all bank visitors to these armchairs near the crackling fireplace, even petitioners for loans. Even people who’d defaulted on their loans. Something about Arni’s manner, gentle, polite, and certain, made Giddon think that he offered people warm drinks and a comfortable chair before telling them that they were bankrupt and the bank would be seizing all of their property.
“How are you feeling?” said Arni. “Warmer? Shall I show you the way to the Keep?”
* * *
—
Arni led them across town with an avuncular sort of concern for their tired feet, their level of warmth, their disorientation.
“See?” he said at one point, gesturing toward a simple, graceful iron archway, decorated with small lamps, over the entrance to a street. “That’s a sign of an opening to an amble.”
But the next amble opening they passed was different, a stone arch covered with ivy, and most of the arches they passed weren’t openings to shopping areas at all. So Giddon gained no faith in these supposed signs.
“Mm-hm,” murmured Hava, noticing his face. “You just have to know.”
The last part of their route took them through the academy campus, which was like a small city of its own: white stone buildings set behind high stone walls; sweeping, well-kept yards and neat paths; gardens of flowers that even now, in this cold, pushed pink petals up through blankets of snow. Giddon’s heart ached at the spaciousness and beauty of the Winterkeep Academy. He saw keenly that it was the kind of institution Bitterblue could only ever have dreamed of creating in Monsea, with or without the money she’d lost in the sales to the zilfium importers. Students crossed the paths together, laughing, shouting, not even looking around, as if their surroundings were nothing to them. Giddon hated them, then was ashamed for hating rich, self-centered children. He’d been that kind of child.
The campus was built on sloped land that rose to a place where a long stairway began, climbing steeply to the crest of a hill. Atop that hill sat a big white building with wide columns and a dome: the Keep, which had used to be the home of Winterkeep’s monarchs. Flags flew to either side of the building’s entrance, a deep blue sea below a sky of gold. At the bottom of the sea lurked a large purple shape, rather formless. On the water’s surface, purple silbercows swam.
They stopped at the base of the steps. “I almost forgot,” said Giddon, who hadn’t forgotten at all, but wanted it to seem like an afterthought. “We saw you walking with someone I know, a woman from home named Trina.”
A knowing light came into Arni’s eyes. “Ah, yes,” he said, “Trina. She’s a well-known figure here, but one around whom we’re all a bit awkward, I’m afraid. Of great use to many, yet few invite her into their homes. Or their banks,” he said with a quick, rueful smile. “I have safety-deposit boxes, you see. And personal safes, and a vault. I’m charged not only with keeping my clients’ possessions secure, but in some cases, with keeping their existence secret.”
“You let me into your bank,” said Hava, “not knowing what my Grace is.”
Her directness seemed to surprise Arni, who glanced into Hava’s face, almost involuntarily. Giddon wondered if he was seeking out her Graceling eyes.
“I asked your doctor, Coran, about your Grace at dinner last night,” he admitted.
“I could use it to rob your bank,” she said, which elicited another surprised glance, then a chuckle.
“I suppose so, yes,” he said, “but that would be an unexpected occupation for a member of the Monsean delegation.”
“But not unexpected for Trina?”