“Mistress, if you wilclass="underline" I occupy this seat…”
“I occupy this seat for the First—”
Click.
Ustin’s gaze snapped to the main door. Faster than the turning handle, she leapt to the Maze door and disappeared.
Selemei’s heart flipped; she tried to swallow it back into place and keep breathing. Three men walked in, conversing, then a fourth. The fifth man was first to notice her. He was broad-bodied, golden-skinned, and bald as a stone.
“Hello?” That single word filled the chamber. “What are you doing here?”
She thought of Imbati Ustin. “I occupy this seat for the First Family.”
Now the others saw her. “What?” “Who—wait, wasn’t she the lady who…?” “Xeref’s partner?” “What in Varin’s name is she doing?”
“I occupy this seat for the First Family.”
“I’m sorry, Lady, you’re going to have to leave,” said the bald man.
She grabbed the lower edges of the chair, winding her fingers through gaps in the brass. “I occupy this seat for the First Family.”
They were talking about her, now, and more of them poured in every second. She couldn’t see Fedron.
“Can we have her removed?” “But, I mean, the poor thing—” “This can’t be serious.” “She’ll go soon enough.”
“What’s this?” asked the Eminence Indal. He leaned on a cane of rich dark wood. His manservant, a single figure in black silk against the jewel colors of the other men, murmured in his ear while they went to the head of the table. “What’s this?” He sniffed through his noble nose and shifted his white and gold drape as he sat. And looked right at her.
Selemei lost her breath.
“No problem, your Eminence.” The Heir waved his golden hand magnanimously. “She’s just grieving, we can ignore her.”
“But, cabinet business,” objected a man with bulging eyes.
“Our main point of business is the empty seat.” That was the bald man’s resonant voice. “That is why Speaker Orn pressured us to convene this meeting at such short notice.”
Selemei closed her fists tighter, until the brass hurt her fingers. “I occupy—”
Fedron burst in the door with a desperate look on his face.
“—this seat for the First Family.”
Fedron gaped at her, panting. “Wh—Selemei? Cousin?”
Somehow his presence stopped the words up in her throat. She shoved them out. “I occupy. This seat. For the First Family.”
Fedron deflated, and fell into the chair beside her. “Well, hand of Sirin…”
“We should just get started,” someone said.
The Manservant to the Eminence struck reciting stance, his clear baritone cutting through any further murmurs of objection. “I call to order this meeting of the Pelismar Cabinet, and serve as a reminder of the Grobal Trust: giving to each according to need, the hand of the Grobal shall guide the eight cities of Varin.”
“So noted,” said a red-faced man sitting at the Eminence’s right. “First order of business, acknowledgment and certification of the empty seat. Which is empty, in spite of appearances.”
Selemei took a breath, but it was no use; hopeless certainty stole the words from her tongue. It was just as they’d said: they were ignoring her. While the men leaned forward to press buttons below the personal ordinator screens embedded in the table before them, her own screen—Xeref’s screen—was dead.
Dead love, dead hopes.
The Manservant to the Eminence pulled a small device from his pocket, bowed, and intoned, “A unanimous vote is required to certify an empty seat. I count one vote in dissent. The seat remains occupied by the First Family.”
“Wait, now,” said the man with the bulging eyes. “Fourteen to one? Fedron, you’re not serious.”
Fedron folded his arms. “Does that seat look empty to you?”
Selemei looked at her cousin, but he didn’t meet her gaze.
The red-faced man beside the Eminence gave a noisy sigh. “The seat remains occupied in the presence of a legitimate substitute. Indal’s Jex, you’ll carry the cabinet’s petition to the Arbiter of the First Family Council to investigate the legitimacy of the substitute.”
The Manservant to the Eminence bowed. No animosity on his face, but Imbati only showed feelings when they meant to—unlike the other cabinet members, who scowled and scowled while Fedron continued to avoid looking at her. Only the bald man with the big voice held pity in his face. They all argued about one topic after another. It went on so long that Selemei’s fingers cramped around the curled brass of her chair; she had to extricate them painfully and rub them together in her lap. She combed through the men’s portentous words for the Indelis proposal, but in vain. The paper Ustin had given her proved useless, for the voting screen before her remained blank.
“Right,” declared the big-voiced man at last, “if there is no further business, the meeting shall adjourn.”
“Seconded.”
Selemei’s heart shrank; she didn’t dare protest into the silence that followed.
The Manservant to the Eminence bowed again, and intoned, “So it shall be. This meeting is adjourned.”
If the last two years hadn’t trained her to move slowly, she might have tried to run from the room. Selemei stood, and pushed back her chair, swallowing grief.
“That was some nerve,” said a man somewhere to her left. “Get back to your children.”
She dropped her gaze, but her cheeks blazed. She watched the placement of her feet, moving out from between the chairs.
“Lady—Selemei, is it?” When she looked up, the Heir was staring down at her. His face was young, handsome, chill as gold.
“Yes.”
“You realize we’ve given you a gift.” As he spoke, he stepped closer, looming over her.
She shook her head.
“Our patience, in the name of your bereavement. You know there are other ways to respond when someone disrupts cabinet business.”
Mai help her—would he lay hands on her? Selemei took a nervous step backward.
Her left leg collapsed. She grasped for the nearest chair, felt fingers slip on the unkind brass, knocked her elbow, and hit the floor, the chair nearly coming down on top of her. She sat, immobilized by pain and shame while the Heir walked away without a backward glance. Gulps of air kept her from sobbing but couldn’t stop tears creeping onto her cheeks.
“Cousin?” Fedron crouched beside her. “Let me help you up.”
She nodded. Pretended this was just a room, not a room full of eyes and sneers. Gritting her teeth, she got her right leg under her. With Fedron’s help, she managed to stand, and limp to the door where the manservants were waiting.
“Grivi,” she said the moment she saw him, “I’ll need you to make an appointment with that doctor. The one who was at Vull’s.”
Grivi interposed himself beneath her arm with a murmur of thanks for Fedron and a cutting glance for Ustin.
“Let me walk you home,” Fedron said.
She hadn’t expected that. They moved slowly, at her limping pace. But a bigger surprise came in the spiral staircase, where Fedron allowed his manservant to pass him and turned to face her.
“I’m grateful to you, Cousin,” he said.
“What?” Grateful! Had she heard him right?
“Sure, you were misguided, but that was a big favor you tried to do for the Family. Someone overheard that we were inviting Garr back from Selimna to claim the seat at the next scheduled meeting, so they convened this one early. You know, to certify it empty before he could get here.”
She couldn’t tell whether to be flattered or insulted, and ended up mostly confused. “Garr and Tamelera are coming back?”