Page 10

CHAPTER

Ten

N EEMA LOVED NOTHING more than a good mystery. It was like the old joke: How do you trap a Raven? Ask them a question, and they’ll trap you for half an hour. But Neema’s curiosity was extreme even by Raven standards.

One of her biggest obsessions was Shimmer Arbell’s throne-room masterpiece Dedication to the Eight , and to what extent it had caused the artist’s breakdown and tragic death. Neema had decided to write a book about it, a side project once she had settled in at the Bear monastery. She had romantic visions of the private suite that awaited her there—a deep, imposing stone fireplace, snowflakes swirling against the windowpanes, thick blankets and hot chocolate, shelves and shelves of books. She wasn’t sure where she was going to get the hot chocolate from, given that her hosts were committed to the Way of the Bear. She might have to buy some and take it with her. Neema’s romantic visions often ended like this—with her fretting over their verisimilitude.

Before she left the island, she was keen to snatch an interview with Shimmer’s older sister, Lady Harmony Arbell-Ranor. As a gift to herself, Neema had seated the celebrated composer next to her at the feast.

Lady Harmony wafted over to join them in diamonds and blue velvet, smelling of peaches. Settling herself down with straight-backed poise, she surveyed the table, which included Tala and Sunur, and Facet the court jeweller, as if they were the cast of an opera she was glad she hadn’t written. “How lucky we are,” she declared. “Such a vivid mix.” Then she turned round and fell into a deep conversation with her cousin, who was sitting behind her at the next table.

“Nice manners,” Sunur grumbled.

Tala put a hand on her wife’s leg.

The soup arrived. “We should thank the Eight,” someone said, and everyone dutifully held hands as he said the blessing. “Divine Guardians of Orrun—we thank you for this feast. We thank you for your protection and guidance. Eternal Eight, watch over us always.”

“And remain Hidden,” everyone else mumbled.

Lady Harmony plucked her hand free from Neema’s and swivelled back to her cousin. There was talk of a new yacht, and the struggle to find a decent crew. “One cannot teach discretion,” Lady Harmony said. “One cannot teach them anything,” her cousin replied.

This continued through the first course, Lady Harmony with her back to the table, her soup untouched. Neema had to fight the urge to tap her bare shoulder with her spoon. Just lightly, to get her attention. Tap tap, like a boiled egg.

“This soup is delicious,” Tala said, and Facet agreed. The jeweller—a short, elderly black man with sapphire blue eyes—was professionally amiable. He had a saying, which he’d polished up like one of his gemstones, that “no diamond ever shone as brightly as an open heart.” As a survivor of the purges and—more deadly—the vagaries of court fashion, the chances he actually believed this were slim. But it sounded lovely.

“Chef Ganstra adapted Empress Yasthala’s menu to suit a modern palate,” Neema told them, across the table. “The original was based around her favourite recipes: pomegranate rice, fragrant roast chicken, spiced prawns, sea bass in a chilli sauce, garlic greens with toasted chickpeas. Simple, traditional recipes refined for a grand occasion. The only significant change is to the central dish. Yasthala’s banquet featured a twenty-foot-long sea eel, dressed to look like the Dragon. Chef Ganstra found that at such a monstrous size, the eels become tough and unpleasant to eat. For our feast he has created individual dragons for each guest, using smaller eels wrapped in a light pastry. This makes for a much tastier, if less dramatic dish.”

Neema stopped there because Facet’s eyes had glazed over, and everyone else was either laughing or trying hard not to.

“Thanks for the lecture,” someone muttered. The same man who had given the blessing.

“Ah, right. Sorry.” Neema turned the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. She had an unfortunate tendency to speak in paragraphs when she was nervous.

A melon sorbet next to cleanse the palate, and still Lady Harmony did not turn around.

Sunur lost patience. “Hey!” she called across the table. “Your ladyship!”

Reluctantly, Lady Harmony shifted back to face them.

Sunur pushed her tortoiseshell glasses up her nose, enjoying herself. “Do you want Havoc to lose?”

The table froze. Lady Harmony’s son was the Monkey contender for the throne.

Sunur grinned, to show she was joking (sort of). “You’re not wearing his colour.”

Lady Harmony rescued her smile. “Yellow does nothing for one’s complexion,” she said, patting her ivory skin.

Facet leapt into the breach. “My Lady suits every colour. But in blue, she outshines us all.”

Sunur made a loud gagging noise, then yelped as Tala kicked her ankle.

“Lady Harmony,” Neema said, snatching her chance. “I’m researching a book on Dedication to the Eight, and your sister’s—”

“ We do not speak of her ,” Lady Harmony hissed, and pivoted back to her cousin.

Chastened, Neema returned to her sorbet. With the conversation flowing over her head, her thoughts returned to her argument with Gaida. She had to get her hands on Yaan Rack’s report, before Gaida passed it over to Kindry. If she could find it, and destroy it… She was tempted to sneak away now, but this was her ceremony, her responsibility—she couldn’t leave until it was over. So, when? It had to be tonight. But Gaida was hosting the Raven afterparty in her rooms straight after the feast.

The shutters. She’s going to leave the shutters open all night. I can sneak in while she’s asleep. Neema projected ahead, trying to imagine herself treading barefoot up the iron steps to the balcony, picking her way through Gaida’s mess of belongings without waking her. Impossible, but what choice did she have?

She could ask Cain. Master thief.

Would he do it? One last favour, for old time’s sake?

She searched for him, hoping to catch his eye. He was not where he was supposed to be, of course. Eventually she found him, a few tables away. He was sitting next to Gaida, his chair pushed right up against hers, murmuring in her ear. Gaida had let her hair down, soft brown curls cascading about her shoulders. Cain felt Neema’s stare and looked up. Smiling, he whispered something to Gaida, and they laughed, conspiratorial. Gaida picked up her glass and clinked it against Cain’s.

Neema sniffed, to hold back the tears. Stupid, to think she could rely on him. Pathetic. Eight years she’d managed perfectly well on her own. I’ll save myself.

“High Scholar. There has been a mistake.”

Oh, fuck the Eight—what now?

Twisting in her seat, she looked up at the figure standing behind her—a neat, cherubic man with cloudy puffs of perfumed hair. Lady Harmony’s husband, Lord Clarion Ranor. Playwright, patron of the arts, and the richest man in Orrun. His son Havoc stood a few paces back, dressed in his contender uniform. The Monkey sigil blazed across his tunic—a golden circle made up of three twining branches. Father and son shared the same colouring—blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin deeply tanned and freckled by the sun—but Havoc was a head taller, with a swimmer’s build—lean and muscular, with wide shoulders. He wore the resigned expression of someone who knew his parents were about to be wincingly awful, and would just have to wait it out.

Lord Clarion put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, fingers stroking her collarbone. Lady Harmony closed her eyes for a second, then turned to look up at him. Adoration. “What’s wrong, darling?”

“A disaster with the seating, dearest. We should be together, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Lady Harmony murmured.

He offered her his hand. “Come with me, darling, your husband has saved the day. Havoc will sit here with these people.”

And with that they were gone.

Havoc took his mother’s seat and gave the table a rueful smile.

Tala raised her glass to him. “Don’t worry, we’re happy with the swap.”

“Much as we enjoyed staring at your mother’s back,” Sunur added.

Havoc turned to Neema and made a seated Monkey salute, palms pressed together. “High Scholar. Good evening.”

Neema gave a Raven salute in return, arms crossed over her chest. They did not know each other, except by reputation. Havoc had been serving in the imperial navy for the last six years, fighting pirates along the southern coast. Last summer he had been promoted to admiral, with command of eight Leviathans. The long stretches at sea had bleached his hair and eyebrows a white-blonde.

Unlike his mother, he was happy to talk about Shimmer, or Auntie Shim as he called her. Unfortunately, he could barely remember her. She had moved to Armas when he was five and died while he was studying at Anat-shonn, down in Three Ports. Havoc had been sent to the Monkey monastery to study music (“my parents insisted”), but it was the renowned martial training that had called to him, that and the ocean.

Neema had more questions, but Havoc couldn’t answer them. He bored her for a while with stories of life at sea, and then she bored him for a while with stories of life in the library. After which the conversation lay becalmed for a while, upon a sea of mutual indifference.

“Tell me about your name,” she said, after they had sat in silence for several minutes. Monkeys of Anat-shonn changed their name when they left the monastery, just as Ravens did. In their case, they selected a new first name—something with a personal resonance. Harmony, Clarion, Shimmer—these were all chosen names. Havoc, unusually, had stuck with the one he’d been given at birth. “Do you mind me asking?”

“No, I don’t mind,” Havoc said, with the patience of someone who was asked a lot, and had learned to live with it. He piled up his plate with more food as he explained, keeping his eyes on the task. “My parents never wanted children. I was a mistake, something they are always keen to remind me. They called me Havoc as a joke. Because I ‘wreaked havoc on their perfect lives.’”

Well that’s horrific, Neema thought, nodding politely for him to continue.

Havoc selected an eel pie and poured over the honey and rice wine sauce. “You can let something like that destroy you, or you can use it to make you stronger. But that’s enough about me,” he said, briskly. “Tell me about your family.”

Neema opened her mouth.

“No, wait!” Havoc lifted his fork to stop her. “Tell me about Gaida.”

Neema closed her mouth.

Havoc leaned in, his face alive with renewed interest. “Weren’t you in the same year at Anat-ruar?”

“Are we talking about Gaida?” Facet called across the table. “I adore her.”

Everyone agreed she was amazing. “I really like her,” Tala said.

“You really like everyone,” Sunur observed.

“Professor Rack is the greatest mind of our generation,” someone said. That fucking arsehole who gave the blessing, again. “Have you read her Addresses to the Flock , Contender Talaka?”

“Sunur does the reading in our house,” Tala said, as if it were a domestic chore.

“My wife only likes practical books,” Sunur explained to the table. “ The A-Z of Sheep Shearing. The Big Book of Plumbing. ”

“Are those actual books?” Tala asked. “Because I would definitely read them.”

“What was Gaida like back then?” Havoc pressed Neema. “I bet she was wonderful.”

Everyone waited for her to say something nice.

Neema poured herself some more wine. “She hasn’t changed a bit.”

Smiles and nods around the table, as everyone took that at face value. Everyone except for Sunur. When the conversation moved on she caught Neema’s eye. I’m with you.

The desserts arrived soon after—edible replicas of the imperial island’s most celebrated buildings and treasures. Servants carried them in on silver litters, to gasps and applause from the guests. Neema watched a perfect simulacrum of the Monkey palace theatre go by, complete with a candlelit stage and tinkling music box. The table next to them had the treasury, with tiny automaton Hounds guarding the entrance, and edible jewelled delights hidden inside. A Leviathan sailed past on marzipan seas, mechanical oars moving back and forth. “Very good,” Havoc said, as if he were inspecting one of his own ships. “Excellent.”

Vabras had tried to block this grand finale. There was no way the original desserts had been this elaborate, or expensive. The emperor had overruled him. “We do need some spectacle, Vabras. Something for the Raven historians to write about.”

His instinct had been proved right. The room was alight with excitement, courtly cynicism replaced with a childlike wonder, as each table received its own unique creation.

“Here’s ours,” Havoc said.

The Imperial Temple. They clapped in appreciation as the servants lowered it carefully down on to the table, turning it on its rotating stand to show it off from every angle. The golden dome was shaped from tempered chocolate, covered in gold leaf. The stained-glass windows were made of coloured sugar, the gleaming walls from smoothed white icing. The attention to detail was exquisite and charming, from the golden filigree work on the miniature shutters, to the intricate carvings etched into the entrance doors.

Facet peered through a window, a fellow craftsman marvelling at the artistry. “There’s more inside.”

Havoc opened the door, then drew back in surprise as a tiny mechanical raven flew out, perching on top of the dome. The table clapped again in astonished delight.

The display wasn’t over. The raven began to peck at the roof, precise rhythmic taps. The dome cracked neatly down the middle and slid back to reveal the expertly rendered interiors.

The ginger cake, when they could bring themselves to slice into it, was flavoured with nutmeg, cardamom and other spices blended to match the incense used on Festival days. The servants, with a final flourish, brought out flaming brandy cocktails, mixed with the same spice blend.

“Is this appropriate?” the man who gave the blessing asked, and everyone ignored him.

Tucking into her cake and brandy, Neema thought she finally understood why Yasthala had done this, at the end of the original banquet. When the empress moved the court here after the war, there was only one habitable building on the island: remnants of the Raven monastery, the original Anat-ruar. This she renamed the inner sanctum, and made her seat of power. The Guardian Gate and the marble throne were brought up from the old court at Samra.

Everything else, barring the network of tombs that lay beneath the island, she designed from scratch. The eight palaces, the Grand Canal, the Mirror Bridge, the Garden at the Edge of the World, the Imperial Temple. For millennia, Samra had served as Orrun’s capital, its grand architecture a symbol of its power and wealth. Now the power had shifted, and the wealth would follow—to the island and to the new grid city of Armas. With this dessert, playful as it might seem, the empress had been saying: Samra is the past. A past of tyranny and civil war that brought Orrun to the brink of destruction. A past that almost provoked the Last Return of the Eight. From this point, we are building a new future. Come—share in the feast.