Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [117]
During warmer months, the nameless young man explained, such feasts were held outside, under the stars, with places set so that everyone, from the prince’s household down to the lowliest fieldhand, would take some part in the meal. During the winter, however, Lowre would ensure that some gift of food or drink reached each family that owed its livelihood to his presence, but he himself would feast within the doubled walls of his hall.
After sunset she made her way to the long hall, knowing that the meal would not commence for some time. She found Fordwright and her companion there already, plainly looking forward to the hospitality, among a handful of others who were guesting there too: a Dragonfly noblewoman, a Mercer out on business for the throne, and a Grasshopper woman in piecemeal armour who looked to Tynisa like a mercenary captain.
However, when Lowre Cean himself made his appearance, just as the servants were bringing through bowls of hot kadith, there was someone walking beside him that had Tynisa leaping up from her place.
‘Alain!’ she cried out, heedless of propriety. She had nearly cried ‘Salma!’ instead, just like before, which would have made her seem a complete fool.
Salme Alain grinned broadly at her. ‘And here she is,’ he declared. ‘You have taken some finding, Maker Tynise, though I place the blame for that at my mother’s door. Forgive me my absence, but I have been ensuring that our southern border is safe. The Turncoat tells me that he showed you exactly what we have to deal with there.’
It took her a moment before she remembered that ‘the Turncoat’ was Gaved, but then she nodded, recalling the wretched ruin that had been Siriell’s Town.
Lowre Cean lowered himself into his appointed seat. A formal Dragonfly meal was set out much like a Fly-kinden feast: long, low tables, and everyone sitting on cushions on the floor, with the prince’s place in the middle of one of the long sides. A moment later, servants began showing other people to their seats. Tynisa found herself at Lowre’s left-hand side, balancing the nameless messenger seated on his right. Alain, who had presumably displaced some previously planned guest, was at one end of the table, seemingly as far from Tynisa as he could get. That seemed odd to her, and she turned to Lowre to ask about it. She caught the old man gazing at Salme Alain with a strange expression. If the two of them had not been Dragonfly nobles, and if Lowre was not so beholden to the Salmae, Tynisa might have read hostility there.
Alain was already talking animatedly with the people on either side of him, clearly making some new friends. He glanced at Tynisa once or twice, but without raising his voice more than would have been polite, there was no way he could speak to her. For her part, Tynisa picked at her meal in silence. She was aware that she must be missing something important, some unspoken axiom of Dragonfly society. She was used to reading people at a glance, sketching an instant picture of their motives and intentions, and it was not that the Commonwealers were too subtle for her, who had dealt with Imperial bureaucrats and Spider-kinden Aristoi in her time. It was simply that their language of face and gesture was different, following a code that she was still learning. While she tried to accustom herself to their ways, there were realms of suggestion and implication that were nevertheless passing her by.
She could catch not a word of Alain’s conversation, either, for Hardy Fordwright was stridently holding forth about some matter of her own. In a bid to derail the woman’s braying monopoly of the conversation, Tynisa leant over to her and, just as the Beetle paused for a draught, asked her, ‘When did you last see our ambassador, Mistress Fordwright?’
‘Our what?’ the Beetle demanded, baffled.
‘Gramo Galltree,