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?”
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 understo
od 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.
Wait! he cried. Don’t move anything! Don’t use my tools! Don’t go into my heat ducts! Someone will see or hear you, and I’ll never be able to explain about the heat ducts! It’s one thing to obediently crash a party and another to reveal that foxes aren’t always honest! That I’M not honest! That I’m a builder and a spy in my own house!
It’s not our fault that you’ve taken your dishonesty to such extremes, Ad, they said. YOU’RE the one who’s risking the secrets of foxkind, by lying to your human TOO MUCH!
You all smell like cats, he said crossly, a terrible insult, but they only sniffed.
Oh, stop worrying! We’ll be careful!
It was enough to turn his fur silver. Especially since there were Monseans at this dinner, and the fox had learned that Monseans paid more attention to blue foxes than the Keepish did. That strange-eyed Monsean girl, Hava, stared at him, trying to tell him apart from the others. And her mind was strong. The fox tried, at one point, to influence her mind with the idea that foxes weren’t worth noticing, and immediately she peered at him harder. Monseans seemed to notice when foxes tried to plant messages in their minds, which was a thing all foxes could do, with any humans, but which was supposed to be a secret of foxkind. How were the Monseans noticing that? Humans never noticed that! The fox influenced Ferla’s feelings all the time by touching her mind with ideas about how trustworthy he was. He influenced the cook, with a suggestion of benevolent generosity toward foxes, so that she was more likely to drop snacks onto the floor when he visited the kitchen. He was also working on Benni’s mind with visions of how distinguished Benni would look flying in the airship with a fox at his side, because Benni was the one who took the airship out most of the time. So far, the fox wasn’t making much progress on that, but sometimes it took a while.
The point was, the Keepish never noticed when foxes were in their minds. But Monseans apparently noticed. Their minds were harder to read too. You should be extra careful around the Monseans! he told his four siblings. They can tell when you’re trying to get into their minds! When they pooh-poohed him, he went electric with alarm, like a lightning bolt. He screamed. I cannot solely be responsible for keeping all the secrets of foxkind!
You’re one to talk about being more careful, they told him. Do you EVER do anything your person tells you to do?
They didn’t even know the half of what he did. The fox thought it must be nice to be part of a herd. To have six other minds on hand to come up with solutions, explanations, plans. To be able to hide behind someone else, if anything bad happened. To be bonded to a person who lived to please foxes and wouldn’t mind at all if she found hers in the heat ducts, instead of to Ferla, who lived only for herself, had eyes like whip ends, and hurt those the fox wished to protect.
Well? said Gorga Balava’s fox when he returned to the dining room. Why are they being so carelessly disobedient to their person?
She told them to come, he said.
Oh, said Gorga’s fox, interested. She’s a rather reckless human, isn’t she?
There’s something wrong with her, that’s for certain, the fox said. What kind of human bonded covertly—and illegally!—to multiple foxes, created a secret fox paradise for them inside her home, then disguised the fur, the smells, the noises, with a crowd of cats? Then imperiled her own secret by giving them risky adventures! Bonding was never allowed to be secret. A person wasn’t supposed to bond to more than one fox. She could get into so much trouble, and for what? He couldn’t quite get a paw on it, despite trying sometimes to get into Quona Varana’s head. She wasn’t even political. She seemed to do it for fun! And it was true that he might obey his person too little, but sometimes he worried that his siblings obeyed theirs too much. That they loved her too much. What if they got careless, trusted her too much, and told her too much? What if they let slip the secrets of foxkind?
He didn’t elaborate on any of these thoughts to Gorga’s fox now. She didn’t seem like the type who would cope well with tales of risk-taking. She was the sort of fox who pretended to have a temperature regulation deficiency so that Gorga would dress her in little fur booties and a coat whenever she went outside. Her chosen name was Earmuff.
* * *
—
The fox was in Benni Cavenda’s library, arguing with one of his sisters, Rascal, when those Monseans Giddon and Hava stumbled in.
The fox bolted under a sofa and crouched there, but it was too late to hide Rascal. He just hoped Giddon and Hava hadn’t been counting carefully.
Luckily, the Monseans were distracted by their own problems. They looked silly too, for Giddon had wrapped Hava up in one of Lovisa’s scarfs. They were clearly distraught. And they were also astonishing, because the moment they entered the room, Hava threw off the scarf and began snooping! She looked in the drawers of side tables. She lifted the edge of one of the rugs!
Giddon was very anxious about it. “Hava!” he hissed. “What are you doing?”
“Prying,” said Hava.
“What do you think you’re going to find?”
“Clues!”
“To what? We have nothing on the Cavendas! We should go back in there and eavesdrop on the Estillan envoy!”
“All these families are equally insincere,” she said. “Don’t you feel it? And maybe there’s some information about Katu in this house!”
Giddon was clutching his hair. Inside him, the fox could feel his surrender. “All right,”
he said, turning toward the door. “I’ll stand guard.”
Then Hava spun to Benni’s big desk and began pulling on the top drawers. “There are hidden drawers in this desk,” she said. “See those panels? I bet there’s a latch here somewhere.”
The fox was impressed, because Hava was right about the secret drawers. The fox knew how to find the hidden latch in Benni’s desk and he knew what Benni kept hidden in those drawers. If Hava found it, big things would happen.
Suddenly the fox sensed that Lovisa was about to step into the room.
Chapter Seventeen
First Lovisa crashed into Giddon, who was making himself enormous in her father’s doorway. “Ow!”
Then, at the sight of that Graceling rifling through her father’s desk, Lovisa was blindsided by her own indignation.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she practically shouted at Hava.
“I’m looking for a handkerchief,” said Hava. “Calm down.”
In fact, Lovisa was trying to calm down. She wasn’t a yeller; she’d taken herself by surprise. “You’re the one who stole those formulas from Minta Varana, aren’t you?” she cried.
“What are you talking about?” said Hava. “What formulas?”
“Do you really expect me to believe that where you’re from, it’s considered polite to snoop in someone’s desk for a handkerchief?”
“I’m not myself,” said Hava. “Really, I’m sorry.”
Lovisa saw then that Hava’s face was wet with tears. Hava blotted at them with her sleeve and they disappeared. Lovisa felt a little sick, but not at all repentant for making Hava cry. She had the sense that she was somehow being tricked. “Weren’t you at Minta’s house for dinner the night you all arrived?” she said, focusing stubbornly on the theft from Minta’s safe.
“Hava didn’t attend that dinner,” said Giddon tightly.
“Couldn’t Hava sneak into a house without anyone knowing?” said Lovisa. “You could absolutely be the thief.”
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