City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(33)

Mulaghesh picks up another ale. “It’s your funeral, Ambassador,” she says. “But watch that one. She has a taste for trouble.”

“I merely have good taste,” says Ivanya, smiling beatifically.

It immediately becomes clear that despite her youth, Miss Ivanya Restroyka is a seasoned socialite: she carves through the groups of the glamorous and the powerful like a shark through a school of fish. Within an hour Shara has bowed before or shook the hand of nearly every luminary at the reception. “I wished to be an artist,” Ivanya confides to Shara. “But it simply didn’t turn out that way. I didn’t have the … I’m not sure. The imagination, I suppose, or the ambition, or both. You have to be a bit outside things to make something new, but I was always very much inside things.”

A small hubbub breaks out before one of the hearths. “What could that be?” says Ivanya, but Shara can already see: Sigrud stands with one foot up on the hearth, reaching into the fire to pull out a small, flaming coal. Even from here she can hear it sizzle as it touches his fingertips, but his face registers no pain as he lifts it to his pipe, sucks twice, exhales a plume of smoke, and tosses it back. Then he skulks away to a shadowed corner where he crosses his arms, leans up against a wall, and glowers.

“Who is that creature?” asks Ivanya.

Shara coughs. “That is my assistant. Sigrud.”

“You have a Dreyling as your assistant?”

“Yes.”

“But aren’t they savages?”

“We are all products of our circumstances.”

Ivanya laughs. “Oh, Ambassador … You are so much more provocative than I could have ever hoped. This will be a grand friendship. Ah! What perfect timing!” She breaks off from Shara and trots away to a tall, bearded gentleman slowly descending the stairs, picking his way down with a white cane. His right hip bothers him: every other step, his right hand snaps down to steady it, but he maintains a regal posture, dressed in a trim, somewhat conservative white dinner jacket and sporting an ornate gold sash. “And there’s my darling. It took so long for you to come down! I thought it was women who took forever to get dressed, not men.”

“I am going to put in some sort of pulley-lift in this damn house,” he says. “These stairs will kill me, I’m sure of it.”

She drapes herself around his shoulders. “You sound like an old man.”

“I feel like an old man.”

“But do you kiss like one?” Ivanya pulls him in, though he resists a little before indulging her. Someone in the crowd gives a soft whoop! “No,” she concludes. “Not yet. Will I have to check every day, darling?”

“You will have to make an appointment, if so. I’m terribly busy, you see. Now. Who do we have sponging off me tonight?” he asks merrily.

He looks up at the crowd. The firelight washes over his face.

Shara’s heart goes cold: she assumed the man was old, but he is not. In fact, he’s hardly aged a day.

His hair is longer, and though it is streaked with gray at the temples it still has that odd reddish hue to it. His beard is bright copper-red, but it is short and closely cropped, rather than the mountainous ball of fluff popular among wealthy Continentals. Shara can still see the strong jaw, the ever-present smirk, and though his eyes have lost a bit of their wild gleam, they are still the same bright, penetrating blue she remembers so well.

The dilettantes and socialites gently descend on him. “Oh, goodness,” he says. “Such a crush. I hope you brought your pocketbooks. …” He laughs as he greets them. Though he could only know a handful of them, he treats them as his oldest friends.

Shara watches, fascinated, horrified, terrified. How little he has changed, really, she thinks.

And she is surprised to find that she hates him for this. It is so terribly, unbearably rude for him to pass through all these years and come out the same person on the other side.

“Have you seen the pieces?” Ivanya asks him. “You must see them when you can, darling. They’re so delightfully abominable. I adore them. I can’t wait to hear what the papers will say.”

“Probably many impolite things,” he says.

“Oh, of course, naturally. Huffing and puffing. As one should hope. Rivegny from the foundry is here—you wanted him to attend for some time, didn’t you? Well, he finally showed up. I thought he’d be a rough sort of fellow, being a fellow captain of industry, but he’s quite svelte, I think. You must talk to him. I will get you an envelope for the check. Oh, and we have the new cultural ambassador here, and do you know she has a North-man as her assistant? As in a secretary? And he’s here, darling. He reached into the fire with his hands and it was just absurd! I can’t stop laughing, I mean, the night is going so well.”

He looks up again, glances around the room, amused. And, at first, he looks past her. Shara reels from this slight as one would a sound blow.

But then a light goes on in his eyes, and he slowly drags his gaze back to her.

Within a matter of seconds, his face does many things: first she sees confusion, then recognition, then disbelief, and anger. But after this medley of expressions, his delicate features settle into an expression she finds quite familiar: a smirk of the most cocksure, arrogant sort.

“New ambassador?” he says.

Shara adjusts her glasses. “Oh, dear.”