Chapter 4: Ember Night

The formal welcome banquet was held on the eighth day after the season's guests arrived, which the court calendar called the Ember Night and which was, in practice, the moment when the Councillors deigned to acknowledge that new people had entered their domain.

Mira had spent eight days doing nothing remarkable.

She had run Lady Fenn's errands, pressed her dresses, accompanied her to the morning presentations and the afternoon promenades and the two informal suppers in the Long Amber Hall that served as preliminary sorting events — who sat where, who was introduced to whom, who had been upgraded from the Fallow Wing to the adjacent guest suites, which said something about their growing currency. Lady Fenn had not been upgraded. Lady Fenn had, however, secured a second conversation with Lord Harren, which she considered progress.

Mira had memorized the layout of the administrative wing. She had identified seven of the twelve watch positions in the palace complex. She had located the secondary kitchen entrance, the laundry passage, and the narrow corridor behind the Hall of Petitions that dead-ended in a locked door — locked in a way that suggested regular use rather than permanent sealing, which meant someone had reason to use it.

She had learned that Cassian Vael's chambers were in the upper east tower. That he had a habit of reading in the garden at odd hours. That he had, in eight days, appeared in her peripheral vision six times, and that if the appearances were coincidence they were the most specifically targeted coincidences she had encountered.

She had not spoken to him. She did not intend to speak to him first.

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The banquet hall for Ember Night could seat three hundred and often did. The Councillors would make their entrance after the second remove, which gave the assembled guests approximately an hour to perform their own dynamics at the long tables before the evening's primary actors arrived.

Lady Fenn had been seated at the third table, which was an improvement over where Mira had expected her to land. Lord Harren had clearly used some of his minor influence. Mira noted this and adjusted her assessment of Lady Fenn's usefulness slightly upward — she was getting somewhere, even if she didn't understand exactly where.

Mira stood with the handmaids and attendants along the south wall. She had the wine server's route memorized within ten minutes and had positioned herself at the point where the serving corridor met the main hall, which meant she could take water to Lady Fenn's place setting while having a legitimate reason to move through the room.

She used the first remove to map the tables.

The seating arrangement was not arbitrary. The first table was the Councillors' table, currently empty of Councillors but occupied by their senior staff and proxies, who had been placed here as a kind of preliminary announcement of their patrons' importance. She identified Dorn's senior aide by the military bearing and the ashcraft bands. Sethe's representative was the one who looked like he was memorizing everything, which he probably was. Vael's proxy was absent — she had already noted that Vael's faction did not send obvious representatives to public events, which was consistent with their operational style.

The fourth table was the one she most wanted to study: minor merchant families, a few scholars who had received court invitations for expertise rather than rank, and two people who appeared to be there on behalf of external trade partners. In that table's arrangement she could see the outline of Sethe's current economic interests — the merchant families were the right ones, the scholars studied the right subjects, and the trade partners came from the eastern route that was apparently in dispute.

She was still building that map when the Councillors arrived.

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They entered together, which was a display of unity that she was certain was at least partly performed. Whatever tensions existed between the four Councillors were not something they broadcast in public appearances. They came through the great doors at the north end of the hall in order of their formal precedence — Dorn first, as military chief, then Sethe, as head of treasury, then the woman she had not yet seen up close who must be Vael, and finally a fourth figure who took the last place and who she spent a moment not recognizing because she had not expected the fourth Councillor to be so young.

But she set aside the fourth Councillor for later. She had priorities.

Dorn.

She watched him cross the room and took his measure with the focus she had spent six years developing.

He was older than she remembered, which was obvious — she had been sixteen and he had been perhaps fifty, and five years had made him more of what he already was. Heavier through the shoulders, though he still moved like someone who trained regularly. His ashcraft rank was visible in the copper framework built into his formal military dress, bands at wrist and collar and a single narrow strip across the chest, and the way he interacted with the hall's ambient heat told her what rank assessment alone could not: he was not at his maximum capacity yet. There was something held back, some level of expression he was keeping in reserve. Which meant he was either habitually cautious or had reason to be cautious tonight specifically.

His face told her less than she had hoped. She had memorized the face from the miniature portrait she'd carried for three years, and the portrait was accurate in its general features — broad jaw, pale eyes of some indeterminate gray-blue, the wide forehead and the close-cropped iron hair — but the expression in the portrait was ceremonial and the expression on the living face was something more complicated. Not comfortable. Not entirely in control.

He was performing ease while feeling something else. She recognized that, because she did it constantly.

What was he hiding?

She filed it and waited for her opportunity.