to respond, giving the menu a more thorough glance-over. If I was going to splurge, I might as well make it worth it. Oh, that sounded fantastic.
“I’ll have the mirage soup and the mood rolls,” I told the waitress when she glided over. She nodded, took Emeric’s order, and breezed away again. She certainly didn’t seem to be viewing our association with any suspicion.
“What do the other families think of the fact that your sister has gone back to Blood U?” I asked Emeric. Yet another reason the reapers had been keeping him at arm’s length.
He waved his hand dismissively. “We told them it was to have an inside edge. Hard to say whether that won us points or lost them—maybe we came out even in the end. But after you and I are done here, that shouldn’t matter anymore.” He picked up one of the regular rolls from the basket the waitress had left in the middle of the table and tore it in half. “Speaking of which, we should get down to business.”
“Right. Have you heard anything from the mages who were at the luncheon—any idea what they made of me or whether they’re thinking of getting me more involved in their plans?”
“There’s definitely been some talk—probably a lot that I haven’t heard, considering how much I have. The general consensus seems to be that your arrival is a good thing. They’re hoping your family connections might benefit them, especially if you’re able to get back in your parents’ good graces like you suggested you were going to try to. Everything’s proceeding as we figured it would.”
I exhaled in a rush of relief. “That’s something, anyway. I guess I just have to wait until they reach out again, since I can’t exactly invite myself over to hang out with people I’ve only just met. Are there any public places where I’d have a decent chance of ‘coincidentally’ running into them?”
“They mostly stick to private property, but I don’t think you’ll need to wait very long.” Emeric motioned a ragged bit of bread at me. “I got the sense that the Mismerens are thinking of inviting you over for a more focused chat soon. They’re a little more… assertive than some of the others, as you might have noticed. I’m sure they’ll be feeling you out to see if you could help them with this plot.”
And give them an edge the more prominent families didn’t have, raising their standing at the same time. Lord, I hadn’t missed all the political scheming and jockeying for power one bit. What happened at Blood U was hopscotch compared to the rest of the fearmancer world.
I nodded. “And at the same time I can be digging whatever information I can out of them—subtly, of course. Perfect. I’ll see if I can find an excuse to poke around a bit in their house in case they haven’t been completely careful with the evidence of their scheming.”
“Listen to you, all ready to dive right in.” Emeric studied me, enough appreciation lighting in his eyes to send a warm tingle straight through me all the way to my toes. “You were really something, holding your own with the bunch of them yesterday. It was a pleasure to watch. I haven’t had the chance to see much in the way of real heroics around here, especially not lately.”
A flush followed the tingle as a twist of discomfort wound through my chest. “I don’t think I’m much of a hero. I’m just trying to stop my friends from getting hurt.”
“Modest too.” He leaned back in his chair, his gaze still fixed on me, his expression enigmatic. “And what could be a more heroic motivation, I ask you?”
I was saved from deciding whether to keep arguing the point or to bask in admiration I didn’t think I really deserved by the waitress’s return. The moment she set my soup down in front of me, I knew I’d made the right choice.
The creamy, blueish liquid simmered with an uncanny iridescence, which swirled before my eyes and formed an image of a castle floating on clouds in what appeared to be a bright blue sky. I dipped my spoon in, almost giddy as I watched the clouds drift around it, and scooped up a mouthful. The soup was warm but its flavor as light as those clouds, tangy with a sweet aftertaste.
Emeric was watching my bowl now too. “Looks more like art than food,” he remarked.
“It’s both,” I said. “But the