Lovisa had plenty she could say on those topics. Being alive was like a game, a race. She was going to win. “What’s your office?” she asked instead.
“Office?” said Hava, wrinkling her nose at the Keepish word.
“What is your role in the Monsean royal court?”
“Oh,” said Hava, instantly seeming confused, and distressed, and fuzzier at the edges. “I—” She flickered into a sculpture and back again, while Lovisa watched, fascinated.
Giddon suddenly turned to face them and broke into their conversation, speaking quietly, in Keepish. “Hava is uniquely situated to aid the queen, in a broad range of situations,” he said, polite, bland, and firm. “Do you hope to enter politics, Lovisa?”
Lovisa thought it was interesting how different he was now, talking to her. No tears or sadness; he spoke like a politician, using a lot of meaningless words to make her stop pushing. Uniquely situated. Broad range of situations. And in Keepish too, which he’d claimed not to speak well.
She also thought she understood suddenly why a person who could disappear in plain sight might be useful to a queen.
“Are you a spy?” she asked Hava. “Like a blue fox?”
“I’m not like a blue fox,” said Hava, with a touch of scorn.
An argument erupted suddenly, halfway down the table. “We had him!” someone cried. “We bent over backward to get him! How did we lose him?”
“Dev Dimara is an opportunist, like all Scholars,” someone else said in a disgusted and familiar voice—her professor Gorga Balava.
“Now, Gorga,” said Lovisa’s mother, in that particular tone of condescending forbearance that made one ashamed of one’s outburst. “This is a dinner party.”
“Papa?” Lovisa said, touching her father’s arm, interrupting his conversation with Mara. “What are they fighting about?”
“Oh,” said Benni lightly, that same strain in his face again, “the Industrialists convinced a Scholar in Parliament, Dev Dimara, to change sides and vote for zilfium. It involved a lot of promises and favors. Now he’s gone and changed his mind back again. But,” he added, “we’ll find the votes we need by December. Don’t worry, sweetheart.” And Lovisa relaxed, because now she understood why her father was tired and short-tempered. Everything was always less stressful once Lovisa understood.
Hava leaned toward her again. “Where do you fall on the zilfium debate?” she asked.
“I don’t,” said Lovisa.
“Don’t you think it’s important? Won’t it have consequences?”
Lovisa thought of Katu, who hated Ledra politics—who saw, as Lovisa saw, the self-interest that drove every conflict, and wanted no part of it. She wished her uncle were at this table. They could roll their eyes at each other, then they could talk about what really mattered about zilfium, and about varane too. They were fuels, to leave.
“Sure, there’ll be consequences,” said Lovisa. “Either way the vote goes, people who are already rich will get richer.”
“Then no wonder you don’t care,” said Hava. “Isn’t your mother a Scholar and your father an Industrialist? You’ll get richer, whatever happens.”
“I’m sure a queen’s spy is also well-situated,” said Lovisa sourly, “even without her queen.”
All at once, grief flooded Hava’s face. She turned into a sculpture, but this time, she stayed that way. When someone nearby saw the stone girl sitting at the table like a petrified dinner guest, he cried out. Then everyone at the table was looking, exclaiming, standing, shouting, and Lovisa knew she’d misstepped.
Immediately, Giddon crouched over Hava, creating a sort of wall around her with his body and arms. He was muttering into her marble ear; when someone demanded an explanation, he put up a hand and said, “Please. We’ll explain later, but now we need space. Please, look away, and I’ll take her into another room, and someone will explain, but please, give us space. She’s lost her queen,” he said heatedly, standing, making himself into a barrier. “She’s lost her queen. Have pity.”
Lovisa herself was struggling not to stare at the sculpture-Hava, partly with nausea, partly with the fascination of someone watching a thing that should be impossible. Hava was a beautiful sculpture, her face frozen with pain. But Lovisa understood that all the eyes in the room were making things worse. Unwinding her own scarf from her body, dark pink, long, and wide, she passed it to Giddon, who used it as a curtain to hide Hava. Giddon, still shielding her with the scarf and his arms, shuffled her out of the room. Everyone was still standing, shouting. No one seemed particularly touched by Giddon’s plea, though she could hear her mother’s acid voice importuning everyone to “calm down.”
Lovisa left the table too, then slipped out of the room. She didn’t want to be part of the questions and explanations, and she needed to think. In the corridor, she saw a table on which were staged plates of pastries and went to it, thinking to steal some for the boys. But then she saw the guard at the foot of the staircase in the foyer and stopped in her tracks.
It was the sister of the guard she’d done those things with. Cold and grim, the young woman stared at Lovisa with an expression that conveyed all the contempt Lovisa had no doubt she felt. She looked like her brother too. She was beautiful, tall, straight-shouldered, like Nev, like everything Lovisa wasn’t.
Cowed, Lovisa turned and slipped into her father’s library.
Chapter Sixteen
The fox who was bonded to Ferla Cavenda was having a very stressful evening, and it was the fault of four of his seven siblings. Because they came to the party, uninvited! They squeezed through the secret crack in the cellar foundations he wished he’d never told them about! He sensed their arrival during dinner. One of the other visiting foxes, who was bonded to a little man named Gorga Balava, sensed them too, and was absolutely incredulous.
I’ll handle it, Ferla’s fox told Gorga’s fox. Then he ran downstairs to confront them.
What are you doing here? he yelled at them while they fell all over one another, popping through the opening. It was Rascal, Rumpus, Lark, and Pickle. You’re risking the secrets of foxkind! The house is full of people who think foxes do what they’re told!
We ARE doing what we were told! they said. Our person told us to come!
Oh, he said, startled by this. But, why?
To be on hand in case she needs us for anything! they said. She’s so fun! We’ll split up. We’ll spread out. Anyone who sees us will think we’re you, or one of the invited foxes. Calm down, Ad!
“Ad” was short for “Adventure,” because his siblings, even if they never did what he said, at least acknowledged who he was. Their use of his chosen name placated him slightly, until they began to disperse in every direction.