“Yes, though I’m afraid I’m not very good at it,” said Lovisa, who was excellent at it.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if your Lingian is better than my Keepish,” said the pale, dark-bearded man across the table from Lovisa, politely. His name was Giddon, and he was working hard to be attentive. Every time he spoke, he seemed to pull the Keepish words out from a deep, dark well. Lovisa wondered if he was one of the people who’d jumped into the ocean looking for the queen.
“We could all use some Lingian practice, I’m sure,” said Mara, switching into Lingian.
To Lovisa’s astonishment, Giddon was suddenly blinking back tears. “You’re very kind,” he said.
The Graceling girl spoke then, with a randomness that made Lovisa think she was trying to distract them from her crying friend. “We’re curious about the relationship between humans and silbercows,” she said, continuing in Lingian. “Are these lamps burning silbercow oil?”
“Ah, yes,” said Benni pleasantly. “If you don’t know the nature of our relationship with our silbercows, it might seem odd. When a Keepish person dies, we bury them at sea, which is traditionally considered to be an offering to the silbercows, since glassfish eat human bodies, and silbercows eat glassfish. Similarly, when a silbercow dies, its family brings its body to land and presents it as an offering to humans. And though humans don’t eat silbercow bodies or use their hides, we do use their oil, for it makes the finest golden light in Torla. It’s highly regulated, though, and very rare. Very expensive. I believe you import the tiniest amount to Monsea. We burn it in our lamps today to do you honor, and to express our sympathy for your loss.”
Lovisa wondered how the Monseans felt, now that they were imagining glassfish eating their queen’s body. She thought Benni might’ve found a way around planting that image in their heads. “Do you know our fairy tales?” she said, to distract them further. “About the Keeper, the hero who lives in the ocean and defends the planet, supposedly? The stories come from the silbercows. The Keeper is their hero, really.”
“Is Winterkeep named after the Keeper?” said Giddon.
“Doubtful,” said Benni.
“But of course it is,” said Quona Varana smartly, leaning in from several places away.
“Respectfully, Quona,” said Benni, “many nations refer to their fortress or their safe place as a keep.”
“Yet we don’t have a fortress here in Winterkeep,” said Quona. “Our Keep is no more than a castle, sitting beside a school. And our careful, balanced relationship with the sea, the animals, and our natural resources is what defends us from self-destruction.”
“What a conscientious Scholar you are,” Benni said, with a sharpness that startled Lovisa. Benni was not usually sarcastic to guests, even ones with visible cat hair streaking their gowns.
Embarrassed for him, she spoke quickly, calling out to Sara Varana nearby. “Are you ready for the gala, Prime Minister?”
Sara called back, smiling. “Not even slightly,” she said. “But we will be. It’s a party that takes place in the Keep,” she added to Giddon, as explanation. “It happens this time every year to celebrate the first snows. I trust you’ve received your invitations?”
“I’m sure we have,” said Giddon politely.
“We hope you’ll make it,” said Sara, “but of course we understand if you don’t feel like coming to a party. If you do come, we promise it’ll be a very nice party.”
The conversation continued in its usual mundane, tedious way, no more sniping. Lovisa noticed that neither Varana sister seemed visibly upset about the theft from their sister Minta’s safe. Giddon, she thought, had a nice smile, though it sat in an unhappy face. The Graceling’s eyes were lowered. Lovisa wondered what a girl so young and inconsequential-looking did at the Monsean court. What was her role? She had a quiet way of avoiding the attention of others that Lovisa had been trying to put a finger on. It had to do with her plain, nondescript looks, her silence and her small movements, all of which Lovisa understood, but there was something else too. It was almost as if . . . no, that was impossible. Lovisa turned her head away from the girl, looked back again. Turned her head away again, in the other direction, and looked back.
Yes. There was a way in which the girl, whenever she was in Lovisa’s peripheral vision, took on a fuzzy, blurry appearance, and almost disappeared.
The Royal Continent, Lovisa thought. Magic. Then she stared at the Graceling directly, with no attempt to be tactful. Hava was thin, with a long, narrow mouth. Her hair was pale, but dull. She was not pretty. Lovisa wanted to see her eyes, to see what colors they were, and she wanted to know what her Grace was.
She leaned toward Hava and spoke quietly, in Lingian. “How are you doing that?”
To her absolute shock, Hava flickered into a stone sculpture of a girl. An instant later, she looked like a real girl again. Lovisa gasped so hard that she began to cough.
Giddon paused in his speech, glancing at Hava once, then returning to his conversation with the prime minister. No one else at the table seemed to have noticed, and Lovisa was already doubting what she’d seen. The inside of her head felt like it was expanding with cold air.
Then Hava looked right at her and Lovisa was staring into a face that had one glimmering, copper eye and one that was red like blood.
“You’re shocking,” Lovisa said quietly, still speaking in Lingian.
“It’s impolite to stare,” said Hava, in perfect, barely accented Keepish.
Lovisa was surprised to receive a rebuke from a foreigner, and a guest. “Isn’t it impolite for you to control our minds?” she asked dryly.
“I’m merely protecting myself from being stared at.”
Lovisa understood such an instinct, though she couldn’t imagine how anyone like Hava could hope not to be stared at. “If I could do what you do,” she said, “I’d do it all the time. How are you doing it?”
Hava flicked those unmatching eyes at her again. “I change what people think they see.”
“Is that a Grace a lot of people have?”
“No,” said Hava, shortly.
“Can you teach me?”
“Could one of your foxes teach me to read minds?”
“Ah, so, is that what it’s like?”
“I don’t know what it’s like. When I want it to happen, it happens.”
“Of course you know what it’s like.”
“What’s it like to have a beating heart?” Hava retorted. “What’s it like to be alive? I guess you have a lot to say on those topics?”