Isana frowned. “But… why? Why do such a thing?”
Aria’s expression remained calm, but it could not hide the woman’s worry from Isana’s senses. “Nothing good. Our coach is waiting.”
CHAPTER 5
Isana had been to the great hall of the Senatorium only once before, during the presentation ceremony when she and several others had been brought forth in front of the Realm as a whole and introduced as new Citizens of Alera. At the time, dressed in the scarlet and sable of the House of Aquitaine, she had mostly been too self-conscious-and, she could admit to herself now, ashamed-to notice how large the place was.
The Senatorium was built from sober, somber grey marble, and was ostensibly large enough to hold not only the Senate, which included the Senators and their retinues, but every Citizen of the Realm of Alera as well. Isana had been told, at some point, that it could seat more than two hundred thousand souls, each and every one of them able to see and hear what transpired thanks to the cleverly arranged furycraft in the construction.
It resembled an enormous theater more than anything else. Upon the bottom and center of the Senatorium was the actual half circle of seating for the Senate, presided over by the Proconsul, the Senator with the most votes within the body of the Senate itself. Then, rising in rank upon rank upon rank, bench seating stretched up and out for hundreds of yards. Looking down upon the Senate floor, one had only to lift one’s eyes up a little to see the First Lord’s Citadel, the heart of Alera Imperia, rising above the Senatorium.
“What’s so funny?” murmured Lady Placida.
“I was thinking how one couldn’t help but notice how large and threatening is the First Lord’s Citadel up above us upon entering,” Isana said. “It’s hardly subtle.”
“That’s nothing,” Lady Placida replied. “When leaving, the view is of the Grey Tower. An even more poignant vista.”
Isana smiled, and glanced over her shoulder to see that Aria was correct. The Grey Tower, that unassuming little fortress, was a prison built to hold powerless even the strongest furycrafters in the Realm-and was a silent statement that no one in Alera was beyond the reach of the law.
“One cannot help but wonder,” Isana said, “if whichever First Lord presided over the construction meant the view to reassure the Senators or to threaten them.”
“Both, naturally,” Lady Placida replied. “Senators loyal to the Realm first can rest easy knowing that personally powerful, ambitious men will always be held accountable-and the ambitious receive the exact same message. I believe it was the original Gaius Secondus who constructed the Senatorium, and he-oh my.”
Isana could not blame Lady Placida for breaking off in the midst of a sentence. For though the vastness of the Senatorium was generally more or less empty, hosting only the various retinues of the Senators and a few curious parties, allowed by law to watch the proceedings, that night was different.
The Senatorium was filled to the top rows of its seats.
The noise of the crowd was enormous-a sea of talk, a thunderstorm of murmurs. More than that, though, was the overwhelming emotion of those present. None of it was particularly sharp, but there were so many people there that the accumulated weight of all their low-intensity anxiety, curiosity, impatience, irritation, amusement, and too many others to name hit her like a sack of grain.
Isana felt it when Lady Placida called upon her metalcrafting to shield her mind against the storm of emotions, and briefly wished that she could have done something similar-but she couldn’t. She simply ground her teeth for a moment, fighting back the surge of outside emotion, and found Araris’s hand beneath her arm, holding her steady, his calm concern a bedrock and a shelter against the tide that threatened her. She gave him a swift, grateful smile and, working from that solid point, methodically pushed away the other emotions to let them back in gradually, bit by bit, to give herself a chance to acclimate to them. Araris and Lady Placida stood on either side of her, patiently waiting for her to adjust to the environment.
“All right,” she said, a moment later, as other Citizens continued to file in. “I’m better, Araris.”
“Best we take our seats,” Lady Placida murmured. “The Crown Guard is beginning to arrive. The First Lord will be here any moment.”
They descended to the rows of box seats just above the Senate floor. While not specifically, legally granted to the High Lords, it was well understood who would be occupying those seats, and tradition had long since established which High Lord would occupy which box in the Senatorium at the infrequent assemblies of both the Senate and lords.
The seats for Lord and Lady Placida were situated above the places of the Senators from the areas governed by Citizens beholden to them. Lady Placida took a few moments to descend to the Senate floor, exchanging greetings with several people, while Isana and Araris sat down in the box.
“Lady Veradis?” Isana asked, recognizing the young woman in the box beside theirs.
The serious, pale-haired young healer, daughter of the High Lord of Ceres, turned to them at once, and offered Isana a grave nod. She was notably alone in her father’s section, and seemed all the more slender and frail for the open space around her. “Good evening, Your Highness.”
“Please, call me Isana. We know one another better than that.”
The young woman gave her a fleeting smile. “Of course,” she said. “Isana. I am glad to see you well. Good evening, Sir Araris.”
“Lady,” Araris said quietly, bowing his head. He glanced around the empty box, and said, with perfectly bland understatement, “You seem less well attended than I would expect you to be.”
“With excellent reason, sir,” Veradis said, returning her attention to the Senate floor. “As I trust will be made clear shortly.”
Isana settled back, frowning, and studied the seating behind the High Lord’s boxes in general, where the visiting Lords and Counts as a rule settled in behind their own patrons. Behind Lord Aquitaine’s box, for example, was a sizeable contingent of finely dressed Citizenry, mostly sporting the scarlet and black of the House of Aquitaine, while the gold and black of Rhodes made for an only slightly smaller contingent in the seats behind that High Lord’s box.
By contrast, the sections behind Lord Cereus’s box, and for that matter, behind the box of Lord and Lady Placidus, were rather sparsely populated. And the section behind the empty box where the High Lord of Kalarus would have been seated was entirely empty of any citizen bearing the green and grey of the House of Kalare. That wasn’t a surprise, given that the House was hardly in favor after Kalarus Brencis’s open rebellion against the Crown had failed so miserably and spectacularly.
Even so, the Citizens seated in that section were at its fringes, and wearing the colors of one of the other greater Houses. Surely someone should have been wearing Kalarus’s colors, if for no other reason than out of tradition and force of habit. Some of those families had been wearing those colors for centuries. Regardless of the actions of the most recent Lord Kalarus, they would not have abandoned their own traditional garb-indeed, many of the poorer Citizens of that region simply could not have afforded a new court wardrobe, given the devastation the rebellion had wreaked upon their economy.
Where were the Citizens from Kalare, from Ceres, and from Placida? What has Lady Placida not told us?
She felt a similar sense of concerned curiosity from Araris, and turned to him, expecting him to have noticed the same absences she had-only to find him staring intently across the Senate floor.