State of Sorrow (Untitled #1)(12)
The heat in the banqueting hall was a living thing, a hundred candles sucking the air from the room while adding to the summer heat searing the palace outside, and sweat pooled beneath her breasts and trickled down her spine from beneath her hair. When she tried to raise her glass to sip the bitter wine, the dress clung to her, making it almost impossible to move and sending her into palpitations at the feeling of confinement. She fought the fabric, and the seam in her armpit gave way as she forced the cup to her mouth. For a moment she was grimly satisfied she’d managed to ruin another of the hated gowns, until she remembered she’d have to mend it later.
It was horrible, unnatural, to have a feast in almost-silence. Although it was how it had always been for her, she knew from books, and Rasmus, but mostly from some instinct, that it wasn’t right. There ought to be talking to counter the bone-shuddering scrape of knives and forks against plates. There should be music to mask the sounds of chewing and slurping. Laughter. Flirting. Debating. Even fighting. Instead the dining room was embarrassing: a hundred people, all in black, who must surely want to be somewhere – anywhere – else, instead of sitting playing audience to a concert of each other eating.
Across the room Rasmus sat at the consulate’s table, nodding over the bones of the feast with the Rhyllian ambassador, Lincel: the woman Rasmus was officially in Rhannon to aid.
Once, the table had been full of delegates from other lands: representatives from the desert republic of Astria to the east, vast Nyrssea neighbouring Rhylla, Skae with its one thousand islands, and polar Svarta. Sorrow remembered, back when she was a child, when the tall, pale-skinned envoy from the top of the world had given her a sweet that looked like bark, but tasted like salt. She, Irris and Rasmus had taken turns to lick it until it had made them sick and then they’d hidden it in an old vase and forgotten it.
They were long gone now, the other ambassadors, all claiming illness or family problems, returning quietly to their own lands, no replacements ever arriving. With hindsight, Sorrow was glad of it – she couldn’t imagine how they’d have kept the world from knowing about Lamentia had Rhannon been full of foreign diplomats. But at the time she’d missed them: their accents, their customs, and their stories. Just the Rhyllian envoys had remained, bound by the Peace Accords to maintain a diplomatic presence in Rhannon, come what may.
She tried to catch Rasmus’s eye, but he was absorbed in whatever he and Lincel were discussing. A frown drew his brows together, and Sorrow’s expression darkened in response. Rasmus wasn’t made for misery, it didn’t suit him, and she wanted to go over and rub his forehead until the frown vanished and he was himself again. The moment she had the thought she pushed it away. She shouldn’t think like that.
Instead she glanced around, and saw Meeren Vine, sitting on the furthest table with some of his brutes, looking directly at her. Her stomach knotted as she realized he’d been watching her. Waiting, it seemed, because the moment their eyes met he lifted a hunk of meat to his mouth and tore into it, peeling the dry flesh from the bone with his teeth. Sorrow’s stomach turned as she forced her gaze away, reaching for her wine glass. She drained it, not protesting when a server appeared and refilled it.
An odd, deliberate cough drew her attention to the table directly below hers on the dais, where it became apparent Irris had been trying to get her attention. When Sorrow finally looked down, Irris tipped her a swift wink before saying something to her father. Then Charon turned to Sorrow, though his expression was the opposite of his daughter’s: his brown eyes questioning, his mouth turned down at the corners. Worry, she recognized, as guilt tickled her.
She should have gone to him after seeing her father, instead of seething in her rooms. He’d want to know what happened with Harun, and she ought to have told him what she’d done with Balthasar.
Lord Charon Day was in his late fifties, a decade older than her father, though Harun’s drug use had aged him far beyond what nature had done to Charon. He had risen to his role during Reuben’s time, succeeding his own uncle as vice chancellor in the last years of the warlord’s office. Rumour had it Harun had once intended to replace Charon with his own man. But then Charon had jumped into the Archior after Mael, and when he’d been fished out, alive, but with the bones in his legs smashed beyond repair, Harun had told him his position would await him when he’d recovered. For once, he’d kept his word.
She resolved to talk to him after the meal, tell him everything then. Perhaps he could be persuaded to lead the memorial tomorrow…
Almost as soon as she’d thought it, she realized there was more chance of Harun cartwheeling into the hall wearing rainbow-coloured clothes. Charon would insist she took up the mantle. He’d been doing it more and more since her grandmother had died – he’d even handed over the majority of the funeral plans to her. The past four months had been a ceaseless parade of things she had to deal with now – papers to be signed, meetings to attend, protocols to learn – at Charon’s insistence. She hadn’t realized how much her grandmother had protected her from it all. “Irresponsible”, Charon had called it, in a singular show of open criticism when Sorrow revealed she didn’t know how the Rhannish tax system worked. And that was only the tip of the iceberg…
As the feast went on, Sorrow eyelids began to droop, the heat, the quiet and the wine lulling her into a daze, and twice her head fell forward, jerking her back into awareness. She picked at the remains of her food, the meat overcooked and chewy, the bread blackened, designed to bring nothing but base sustenance to the eater. Graces forbid she accidentally enjoyed a meal. Rasmus had told her about the bread at his aunt’s court, fluffy and steaming, the smell alone enough to draw you to kitchens to beg for a little. Stars, what she wouldn’t give just to try it…