This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To be fawned over by the greatest people in the realm? But close up, it all felt so false. He’d much rather have been in a barn with the Dogman, and his warriors, and his friends. He caught a glimpse of Jurand, standing on his own across the room, and Leo felt himself smile. He made it one step towards him before he was cut off.
‘It’s an outrage, if you ask me,’ murmured a tall man maybe ten years older than Leo, though his carefully swept hair was pure white.
‘What is?’ asked Leo, never able to resist the bait.
‘That you must share your triumph with the crown prince. You bled for the nation. What did our half-Styrian heir do? Hang some peasants?’
It was like this white-haired fellow had peered into Leo’s skull and read out the contents. ‘I suppose taking credit for other men’s work is why we have royalty,’ murmured Leo.
‘I am Fedor dan Isher.’ If you could know a man by his handshake, then Isher was firm, cool and careful. ‘These are my colleagues from the Open Council – Lords Barezin,’ a heavy man stuffed into a braid-wreathed uniform, with pinking cheeks and a boyish riot of blond hair, ‘and Heugen.’ Small and handsome with bright little eyes and sculpted moustaches around a pouty mouth.
‘Good to meet you all.’ It was pleasing to finally hear names Leo had heard before. These were the heads of three of Midderland’s most powerful noble families. Men with seats next to his on the front row of the Lords’ Round.
‘My father knew your father well.’ Barezin’s jowls shook with feeling. ‘Such a wonderful man, he was always telling me, such a man’s man, such an exemplar of the noble virtues! They were close friends.’ As far as Leo could remember, his father had always written the Open Council off as a nest of vipers. But this was a new generation, and he reckoned you can never have too many friends.
‘We all wish to thank you for the great service you did the Union,’ droned Isher.
‘It was a disgrace that you had to manage the business alone,’ frothed Barezin. ‘A shameful business, awful!’
‘New laws prevent us from keeping standing armies of our own.’ Heugen spoke with great pace and precision while constantly shaking his head, as though nothing ever met his high standards. ‘Or we would have sprung to your aid ourselves.’
‘Too kind,’ said Leo. Though actual aid would’ve been even kinder.
‘Our ancient rights and privileges are under constant attack,’ said Isher, dropping his voice. ‘From Old Sticks and his cronies.’
Heugen nodded away like a chicken pecking at seed. ‘The Closed Council are—’
‘A crowd of bureaucratic arseholes,’ burst out Leo. He couldn’t hold it in. ‘The gall of that bastard Glokta! Then the chancellor! Grilling me about extra taxes after we bled ourselves white winning their war! Good men gave their lives. Folk in Angland’ll be …’ He was about to say fucking incandescent, then realised how loud he was talking and settled for, ‘very displeased.’
Isher looked quite delighted, however. ‘The Open Council must present a united front. Especially with all this unrest among the lower orders.’
‘Your place is with us,’ said Barezin.
‘As the foremost of us,’ said Heugen.
‘As our champion,’ said Isher, languidly clenching a fist, ‘just as your grandfather was.’
‘Really?’ asked Leo, getting just a bit suspicious of their close-harmony flattery. ‘I heard he was a traitor.’
Isher wasn’t put off at all. He leaned closer to murmur, ‘I heard he was a patriot. He simply refused to be cowed by Bayaz.’ And he nodded towards that bald man, deep in a murmured conversation with Lord Chancellor Gorodets, who did, it had to be admitted, look thoroughly cowed.
‘That actually is Bayaz?’ asked Leo, baffled.
Isher’s lip curled. ‘During the last war, he promised my uncles that they would be chamberlain and chancellor, then, when he had the crown in his pocket, he snatched the rug from under them.’
‘Loyalty is an admirable quality,’ said Barezin. ‘Admirable. But it must cut both ways.’
‘Loyalty to a corrupt regime,’ added Heugen, ‘is foolishness. Worse. Cowardice. Worse! It’s disloyalty!’
Leo wasn’t sure he followed the logic. ‘It is?’
‘We leading lights of the Open Council really must meet,’ said Barezin.
‘Discuss the advancement of our mutual interests,’ said Heugen.
‘To have a genuine hero among us would make all the difference,’ said Isher.
‘It would certainly make all the difference to me.’ Leo looked around to find a very striking red-haired woman at his shoulder. ‘Your lordships really mustn’t hog the man of the moment. Since you haven’t the manners to introduce me …’ Though she’d given them no chance and could clearly manage it herself. ‘I am Selest dan Heugen.’ And she held her hand out.
‘Charmed,’ said Leo, bending to kiss it. And he really was charmed, as well. ‘The quality of the company’s looking up,’ he said, and she gave a silvery laugh, and fanned herself, and he smiled, and she fanned him, and he laughed, and Isher, Barezin and Heugen melted away with a few grumbles about speaking later, but Leo wasn’t really paying much attention any more.
Selest. Had a nice ring to it. And she had this breathless way of acting as though every word he said was a delightful surprise.
‘Have you been enjoying our city?’ she asked.
‘A lot more since you came over.’
‘Why, Your Grace, I suspect you’re flattering me.’ She brushed his wrist with her fingertips in a way that couldn’t have been accidental. Could it? She leaned towards him, voice slightly husky. ‘You really should take a tour of my new manufactory while you’re in Adua.’ As if touring manufactories was a forbidden thrill. The way her eyes met his over the feathers of her fan made him wonder whether a tour of other things might be on offer.
‘What do you—’ His voice came as squeaky as Bremer dan Gorst’s, and he had to clear his throat and try again. ‘What do you make there?’
‘Money.’ She gave another giggle. ‘What else?’
Riding through Adua in a grand procession, Rikke had thought she couldn’t feel more out of place. Now she discovered her error.
It was like they’d had a contest to dream up the circumstances she’d feel most horribly small, twitchy and ugly in, and this right here had been the winning idea. All she needed to complete the horror was to have a fit and shit herself across the pristine tiled floor.
Everyone was so clean. Everyone smelled so good. Everyone’s shoes were so shiny. They all had these little smiles, worn like masks, so you’d no notion what they were really thinking. They all spoke in whispers, like everything was a secret meant only for particular ears and those ears certainly weren’t hers. At least the Long Eye was leaving her alone for now. The only ghosts in attendance were her own awkward reflections, wincing at her, profoundly unimpressed, from the mirrored walls of the hall.
She felt as if her own skin didn’t fit her, let alone her clothes. She wished she had some chagga to chew but she hadn’t brought any ’cause it hadn’t seemed the kind of place where you chewed chagga, and indeed it wasn’t. Where would you spit? Down someone else’s back? There were only a handful of people she knew in the whole vast room. Bayaz she could hardly call a friend, and the magus had as fine a suit of clothes as anyone, slipping through the crowds with bald pate gleaming, trading hushed secrets as though he belonged there. Jurand stood alone, apparently pining for Leo even worse than Rikke was, while the Young Lion himself was forever at the centre of a gaggle of fine new friends who’d no doubt stab him in the back the moment he turned it.