“So?”
“So?” Nev repeated, with so much contempt that Lovisa took a small step backward. “Silbercows are important. They understand things about the world that we can’t. They rescue drowning people.”
Lovisa had tried to talk to silbercows once, at her mother’s house in Torla’s Neck, when she was little. It hadn’t worked. The purple blobs out at sea had offered no acknowledgment of her existence whatsoever. It had made her feel . . . insufficient. Like she wasn’t important enough. And it had made her half suspect that anyone who said they talked to silbercows was lying.
“They haven’t done such a good job rescuing drowning people lately,” said Lovisa, thinking of the queen. “I think Quona’s just trying to brainwash you into believing her family’s party line so you’ll vote for the Scholars.”
“Why would I care about party lines?” said Nev. “I’m not political, I’m an animal doctor in training. And at least I’m that. You’re not anything.”
Tears stung Lovisa’s throat. “Good night,” she said, turning away so that Nev wouldn’t see her expression.
“Good night,” said Nev, sounding confused suddenly, as if she hadn’t expected to drive Lovisa off with her words. And why should she? She was only being honest, as Nev always was.
In the hallway, a crowd of boys passed by, greeting Lovisa, moving on. The last boy in the group was Mari Devret, who turned to look into the room of his ex. In an instant, his unhappy eyes seemed to absorb everything: Nev’s fox kit, Nev’s tidy bed, the messy piles on Nev’s desk, the plants in Nev’s window, Nev herself. Lovisa watched his eyes flash across Nev’s face, hurt, reproachful.
Sighing, she took his arm and pulled him away.
“What?” he said defensively.
“When are you going to stop being so pathetic?”
“When you stop being mean,” he said, then canted his face, looking at Lovisa more closely. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Shut up.”
“Very convincing,” he said. “How was dinner?”
“There was an incident with a Graceling.”
“Really? What kind of Graceling?”
“She can change what you think you see when you look at her. She kept turning into a sculpture at the dinner table.”
This seemed to cheer Mari up. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Mari?” Lovisa said, slowing her pace, letting the other boys move on. Pari Parnin, Kep Gravla, boys she would never trust with anything precious.
“Yeah?” he said, pausing with her. Then, when she didn’t speak, he searched her face again with his clear, perceptive eyes. “What’s wrong, Lovisa?”
Mari was, for all intents, Lovisa’s oldest friend, the friend who knew more of her childhood secrets than anyone. It had been a long time since she’d shared any secrets with him, or with anyone. But now she wanted to tell him about the snooping Monseans. Why had they been trying to get into her father’s desk? What were they looking for in there? Also, the thing they’d said about Benni running his shipping firm into the ground. It had made her so angry. But could it be true? The bitter feud between her parents, who usually never directed their bitterness at each other. Benni’s banker’s box—and the renovations—in the attic room. Lovisa couldn’t connect the dots, but Mari had an imagination. He might have ideas. She knew she could trust him to keep it to himself too.
She found herself hesitating, not knowing why. “Will you vote Industrialist when you’re older?” she asked instead.
“I guess so,” he said, not looking much interested. “You know I’m not political.”
Yes, she knew that Mari had no interest in his mother’s political career, nor in his father’s bank. Mari wanted to be a doctor, as in, for humans; he always had, since they were little. His parents were proud of him, for wanting to do something different. He was in the school of medicine here at the academy.
“I’m thinking of changing schools,” she said, only thinking of it as the words came out of her mouth.
“Really?” he said, surprised. “To what?”
Lovisa had no answer to that. She’d never questioned her school before and she didn’t suppose she was truly questioning it now. She wasn’t sure what she was questioning. “I’ll tell you another time,” she said.
“Yeah, okay. You’re being weird, you know that?”
“I’m just tired. Good night, Mari.”
“Okay, good night. You know where I am if you want to talk about this wonderful new plan to get disowned by both your parents,” he said.
She smiled, despite herself, then left him at his door. Inside her own room, the glow of streetlamps illuminated a crystalline pattern of frost on her window. She knew without looking that her desk was still covered with work. She knew she faced a long night of reading papers that bored her, burning her small stove for heat, wrapping herself in furs and blankets. Maybe moving out to the chair by the fire in the foyer, where studying felt less lonely, less meaningless.
Why did she work so hard, when she cared so little? She’d never found politics difficult to follow, because every dispute was the same. People were motivated by money, power, idealism, fame. Usually money. What was the real reason the Scholars didn’t want to legalize zilfium use in Winterkeep? In Parliament, Scholars yelled at Industrialists for not caring about the air and water pollution that would impact Keepish industries like fishing and farming. They yelled about Winterkeep’s beauty. Sometimes they even yelled about fairy tales, as if they actually mattered: According to the oldest stories of the silbercows, humanity’s most solemn promise was to help protect the planet. The Keeper was watching.
But how could Lovisa believe that the Varanas weren’t motivated by the need to protect their own transportation monopoly? If they really wanted to protect the earth, wouldn’t they be throwing their varane formulas at other nations, so other nations could have environmentally safe transportation too? And what about the Dimara family? They were Scholars, shippers who transported Keepish zilfium to Mantiper. If zilfium use became legal in Winterkeep, new laws would limit zilfium’s exportation, and the Dimaras would never find anything Mantiper wanted as much. Lovisa’s own mother co-owned the Cavenda mine in Torla’s Neck with Katu. The mine was situated right at the base of the Winterkeep peninsula, where a narrow strip of land connected Winterkeep with Kamassar. The zilfium had already been mined out of that land, but silver remained. Lovisa guessed that if zilfium trains became legal in Winterkeep, the inevitable train connecting Winterkeep to Kamassar would cut through Ferla’s land, compromising her ability to mine silver. Lovisa did not believe, for one iota of one second, that her mother cared about pollution. She was a miner! Mining was known to pollute the environment! What Ferla cared about was her ability to keep mining.