if he just wanted the other courtiers to think he could.
“It is with humility that we work with the things of the earth, and with humility that we offer our small wares to those who will use them to bring light to the still-dark corners of our world.” The Guildmaster, short, square and robustly corpulent despite the Wilmerians’ ostensible asceticism, beamed at Gavin’s father. “And who fits that description better than Lord Elban?”
Cheers and applause rose at this, as they were supposed to. The great Lord Elban, in his gilded chair at the center of the dais, merely nodded. He was tall and lean, with white hair that flowed down over his shoulders and skin that wasn’t much darker. Even his blue eyes were so pale as to be nearly white. He wore nothing but black, which heightened the effect. Those he skirmished with on the southern border called him the Wraith Lord. Judah couldn’t remember where she’d heard that. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing she was supposed to know. On balance, she would rather be down here on the floor, squeezed in between the courtier and the guildsman, than up on the dais, anywhere near him. He made her think of a bird rather than a wraith: something cruel that waited. Like a carrion crow. Maybe the effect was different when he was charging toward you on a warhorse.
The Guildmaster’s speech went on and on. He must not have been paid for the lamps yet. Judah’s dress fit her badly. As always, it was one of Elly’s, made over. She was hot and uncomfortable, and she wanted to leave. She’d been late getting dressed and there hadn’t been time to braid back her hair and the Wilmerian wasn’t the only one staring at it. At her.
“I don’t know why the Seneschal is making me go,” she’d complained to Gavin the night before. “Nobody cares if I’m there. Nobody will even talk to me. I’m just Judah, the witchbred foundling.”
She didn’t exactly mean it as a negative. She was mostly amused by the way the staff wouldn’t quite look at her and the courtiers couldn’t quite look away. Still, Gavin had scowled. “Tell me who calls you witchbred. I’ll have them executed.”
“Kill the whole House, then,” she’d said, “and most of the courtiers.”
“Could you do that?” Theron had asked, curiously.
Gavin ignored his brother. “You’re no foundling. You’re my foster sister. And the courtiers had better get used to seeing you, because someday, when I’m Lord of the City, I’m going to make you—I don’t know, Lead Chancellor in Charge of Keeping Me Sane, or something.”
“I thought that was the Lady of the City’s job,” she’d said, and Elly, playing solitaire by the window, said, “Leave me out of this.”
It wasn’t Gavin’s fault that she was eating in such odious company. The Seneschal, dressed in his usual gray, stood behind Elban, but she could still feel his eye on her. Anything inappropriate that she did would earn her a lecture, and twenty-two years of the Seneschal’s lectures had bored her into a reluctant obedience, or at least a moment’s consideration as to whether her intended bad behavior was worth the tedium of another one. Escaping this room was certainly worth it. She intended to do so at the first possible opportunity.
More applause. The Guildmaster had finally shut up. Now Elban rose, and a thick and instantaneous blanket of silence fell over the hall. Elban’s face—otherwise as handsome as Gavin’s—bore a crosshatch of old battle scars, earned honorably or otherwise, that left it craggy and granitic. “The Guildmaster has spoken well,” he said. “This House is the jewel of Highfall, and Highfall is the jewel of the empire I have spent my entire life building. Every province, guild and noble family stands united under my banner, from the Barriers in the east to the sea in the west, from the border of the Southern Kingdom to the dead lands of the north. We are powerful. We are prosperous.”
Another cheer from the courtiers. And it did sound nice when he said it that way, using words like united and prosperous. Darid, the House stablemaster, had told her that Elban’s cavalry horses came back covered in blood, when they came back at all.
“But we must be vigilant,” Elban continued, and the cheers died. “There are evil forces at work in our city, seditionists who would eat away at us from the inside like woodworm. Who would work against Highfall’s best interests