“Good morning, Lovisa,” she said, turning the force of her attention upon her daughter. She raised a hand to touch her husband’s chest as he kissed her on one brown cheek. The students still remaining in the room slowed their movements, watching discreetly. Everyone always like to watch Ferla and Benni Cavenda when they were together, for both were members of the Keepish government, but they represented parties that were bitterly opposed. Ferla was a Scholar. Benni was an Industrialist. Ferla was also the nation’s current president; though, with a few important exceptions, that position was mostly ceremonial. Benni was an elected representative of Parliament. Ferla and Benni agreed on hardly anything politically, and made a spectacle of it sometimes while Parliament was in session. It turned out you could make yourself famous, even successful, powerful, by marrying the enemy and having your wars in public. Yet there were no political fights at home. It had always been that way: At home, her parents had no differences.
“Good morning, Mother,” said Lovisa.
“How is your paper coming along for Politics of Trade?” asked Ferla. She was a small woman who never seemed small, not even beside her big husband, for her chin was high and her face proud and certain. Her dark hair was pulled severely back from her forehead, streaked with white at the temple like Lovisa’s. All of Ferla’s four children shared her smallness of stature, but only Lovisa had the white streak.
“It’s going well,” Lovisa said.
“Good,” said Ferla. “I’ve asked Gorga to share it with me.”
A screw tightened in Lovisa’s throat. Her professor, Gorga Balava, was a forgiving grader, whereas Ferla had an eye for reading Lovisa’s work and detecting exactly where she’d been lazy. She’d written a section of the paper just this morning, and maybe it had been too easy. She’d have to take a closer look.
“Say hello to the boys for me,” said Lovisa as her parents moved toward the door.
“Come home for dinner and say hello to them yourself,” said Ferla, speaking with the kind of friendly challenge she accorded to her students and her colleagues, and her daughter when they were in public. This was why Lovisa always came to class early. She wanted the sense of belonging bestowed by her public mother.
Ferla and Benni left the room together. Then Gorga Balava pushed through the door, a small man with a ring of graying hair, a bonded fox of his own at his heels. Lovisa didn’t like anyone’s fox, because all foxes snuck and hid and she hated not knowing if a conversation was happening right in front of her that she couldn’t hear. But Gorga’s fox was less annoying than the others, because their relationship seemed based less on secret communication and more on the professor’s indulgence. For example, this morning his fox was prancing around in little fur booties, sparkling with gems. Ridiculous.
“Nice to see you, Lovisa,” said Gorga.
“You too, Professor Balava.”
“Was that a union of rivals I saw leaving just now?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I don’t suppose you overheard any of their conversation?”
“No, sir.”
“I don’t suppose you’d tell me if you had?” said Gorga, with a flash of a smile that contained warmth, a kind of teasing. Almost every teacher in the academy’s school of politics and government also worked in the Keepish government in some capacity, large or small, and Gorga was no exception. He was an elected representative of Parliament, like Benni. An Industrialist, also like Benni. And everyone in government, regardless of their party, was nosy.
“I saw them exchange meaningful glances,” Lovisa said, making a joke of it, but remembering the look that had passed between her parents. Her mother’s face had contained a question, and her father’s, an answer, one that had caused Ferla to light up with curiosity. Lovisa was adept at reading silent conversations. Maybe that was why foxes made her so irritable. Their conversations with their humans were uninterpretable.
“Are you ready to talk about the upcoming zilfium vote?” asked Gorga.
Lovisa sighed. “I knew there was some reason I didn’t bother to do the reading.”
“I don’t believe you didn’t do the reading, Lovisa.”
And he was right. Lovisa always did the reading, because that was the path to perfect grades. But Lovisa couldn’t care less about the upcoming vote scheduled for December on whether to legalize zilfium use in Winterkeep, because there was no point. The results were already certain. The Industrialists, who were the pro-zilfium party, did not have enough votes to win. It was too bad, because Lovisa had a feeling she’d like the zilfium trains that the other Torlan nations enjoyed. Her uncle Katu, who was her mother’s baby brother and a world traveler, had told her all about them. He’d once ridden a train across Kamassar and Borza, then on into Mantiper. For all Lovisa knew, Katu was on a train somewhere right now, for Katu had set off again a few months ago on a new adventure. Maybe he would write soon, and tell her where he was. Lovisa hoped he would. Katu was so much younger than his sister—in his mid-twenties, really closer to Lovisa’s sixteen than to Ferla’s ancient grown-up-ness—and so different from Ferla that he’d always felt like more of a cousin than an uncle.
“Zilfium trains smell like burning and excitement,” Katu had told her once as they climbed aboard his boat. When Katu was home, he often took Lovisa and her three little brothers sailing.
Lovisa had snorted, whacked his shoulder idly, and demanded to know what excitement smelled like.
“Like the sun on metal,” he said, “and a saltwater wind.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re wild about boats.”
A smile had transformed Katu’s face into light. Lovisa’s brother Viri, who was five, had repeated, “Wild about boats!” Then Viri had stood up straight as a soldier, tiny, brown, and freckled, waving his arms around as the boat moved under him, repeating it again, chanting it to the sky. “Wild about boats! Wild about boats!” The other boys, Erita and Vikti, seven and nine, had joined in the chant. Being with Katu made the boys hyper, silly. They always seemed a little drunk around him. Katu, who thought life in their household was grimmer than it needed to be, did nothing to discourage it.
“I’m wild about my niece and nephews,” Katu had responded as he began to check the winches; then, rolling his eyes good-humoredly at the boys, “Or maybe they just make my head spin.” And Lovisa had wished, if he was so wild about them, that he would take them the next time he ran off. Or at least take her. She wanted to climb the mountains of Kamassar and hug the coasts of Borza in a big, long metal contraption that sounded like grinding steel and smelled like excitement.
“Make my head spin!” the boys began chanting, while Katu, laughing, worked around them. He hoisted Erita onto his shoulder so he could reach the dock line and Erita broke into delighted squeals. Katu was compact and strong and looked like Lovisa’s mother, especially the white streak in his hair, but he was so easy and friendly, so much less serious. The ruby on his thumb sparkled as he unhitched the dock line. He’d once, in Ferla’s hearing, called the ring “the only nice thing our father ever gave me,” which was ridiculous, for their father had given him a zilfium and silver mine he shared with his sister, not to mention the house that sat above it. But Katu spoke that way sometimes about the father Ferla idolized—called him a tyrant, a bully, and a bore—impressing Lovisa with this person who said what he wanted, did what he wanted, and wasn’t afraid of Ferla’s temper.