The unsigned peace treaty weighs momentarily heavier at my side as the Heiress grips my arm—gentle, but firm—and turns me around so I face the crowd.
“Go.”
I take a deep breath and go.
In summers past, this moment—the one where I merge with the crowd of delegates, join the dance—has always been one of lightness and joy.
Still, it’s hard to feel too morose amidst all this merrymaking. Music and laughter and the scents of fruit and wine wrap around me as I push deeper into the crowd. The Elemental Orchestra is playing a rearranged version of The Rite of Spring, with minor-key Byrnisian flourishes woven into Stravinsky’s arrangements. Delegates swirl around the floor, creating a maelstrom of different colors and textures. With everyone moving like this, you could fail to notice that our ranks have thinned at all. You could think that everything was all right.
My uncle, Marcus, is at the bar, chatting up the delegates as he passes out glasses of wine and champagne. I don’t think he’s fully recovered from being in a coma after the Silver Prince’s attack, but right now you wouldn’t know it from looking at him. He’s animated, handsome, happy. Graylin, his husband, even convinced him to wear a tuxedo. He looks smart—not a wrinkle.
Staying out of his sight line, I lurk by the bar until Marcus steps away, at which point I quickly duck behind the counter, put together a tray of glasses filled with fruit-studded wine, and spike each of them with a dash of truth serum. Straightening up, almost immediately, I fix my eyes on someone who could be my first target. Saber Cancarnette. He’s respected among the Fiorden delegation, and his signature on the treaty will carry real weight. Plus, as a fur trader who works closely with the gem miners of Byrn, it seems possible he might know something about the soul-silver.
I stride up to Cancarnette with determination. The Fiorden lord looks slightly taken aback by my approach. His ice-pale cheeks are tinted pink with the influence of wine. Good. Hopefully that’ll give me a head start. I smile and proffer my tray carefully.
“Another drink, Sir Cancarnette?” I ask with a bright tone. “Willow and I are trying out new recipes.”
Let him think, let them all think, that now that Marcus is recovered I’m back to my previous role, sidelined, a child with nothing to do with the real affairs of Havenfall. It will make it easier to find the truth.
Cancarnette doesn’t hesitate to accept one of the spiked glasses. As soon as he does, one of the staff materializes and whisks the tray away, leaving my hands free. I clink my own serum-free glass against Cancarnette’s and increase the wattage of my smile.
“To the new peace treaty.”
The lord hesitates a moment, his brow wrinkling in confusion or concern, I’m not sure. But then he returns my toast and echoes my words. “To the treaty.”
So he’s not completely prejudiced against Solarians, then. That’s good. I was afraid that the delegates might flat-out refuse to acknowledge the treaty, even as ineffectual as it is now. That gives me hope enough to ask my next question, once Cancarnette’s throat has moved to swallow the wine—and the truth serum—down.
“That’s a lovely pendant,” I say after I’ve tilted my own glass back. I gesture to the ornament hanging on Cancarnette’s chest, a delicate figurine of a bird of prey, an eagle, carved out of pale, marble-like stone, white with blue veins. “Is it a family heirloom?”
I know he is a lover of jewels and precious things, or at least a connoisseur. When Marcus was comatose, one of the first Innkeeper duties I carried out in my uncle’s stead was overseeing a trade negotiation between Cancarnette and a Byrnisian merchant—Fiorden furs in exchange for Byrnisian jewels. Most of their talk went right over my head, as scared and overwhelmed as I was. But I remember the hunger in Cancarnette’s eyes when he looked over Mima’s spread of jewels.
The lord reaches up to trace the amulet with long fingers. “Indeed.” Pride colors his voice. “It belonged to my mother before me, and her father before her. Furs are my father’s trade, but my mother and grandfather raised eagles for a living.”
I’m momentarily distracted as I imagine a Fiorden eagle. All the animals in the great forest of Myr—the Fiordenkill country on the other side of the door—are many times larger than their counterparts on Earth. What must it be like, to face down an eagle with a wingspan as long as a car? To know that it’ll come when you call?
“The piece is beautiful,” I say admiringly. “You know, Brekken told me a story once about a knight whose beloved gave him a pendant enchanted with her healing magic. And after that, no matter what opponents he crossed or how they wounded him, the pendant healed him and sustained him so that as long as he wore it, he would never fall.”
I lift my hand up as if to touch Cancarnette’s pendant, and then let it go, weaving wistfulness into my voice. “Do you think such a thing could ever be?”
Cancarnette smiles. “Magic belongs to people, Miss Morrow. The wild gods granted it to us; it runs through our blood. To enchant a lifeless object, no matter how beautiful, would be blasphemy.”
My heart speeds, as I notice that he’s said it’s wrong, not that it can’t be done. “Of course. Naturally.”
“I remember that story,” Cancarnette goes on. “But perhaps your soldier left out the part about how while the knight was adventuring, his lover fell ill. Having poured all her magic into the pendant, she had none left for herself and died alone.”
I feel myself flinch. “I hadn’t heard that part.” He’s right, Brekken never told me.
“Even had the knight returned the pendant to her, it wouldn’t have saved her,” Cancarnette goes on, his raised voice showing annoyance. “Once magic is torn from you, it cannot be reintegrated, not in the same way. Of course, that doesn’t stop the magpies.”
He takes a sip of wine, his eyes bright and hazy. I edge closer as the dance swirls all around us, my heart beating fast. Even cloaked in riddles and fables, this is more than I’ve gotten out of any of the other delegates. “Magpies?”
“Collectors,” Cancarnette clarifies, the scorn clear in his voice. “There are some who hoard such objects, believing themselves above the corruption.”
“Like who?” I ask eagerly.
The haziness clears for a second from Cancarnette’s eyes, and he looks me over skeptically.
“No one you need concern yourself with,” he says with a scoff. “Princess Enetta would never grant them a token to come to Havenfall.”
“But—” I bite my tongue, frustration mounting. “If binding magic is blasphemous, where do the objects come from?”
I should have phrased it in a more diplomatic, less pointed way, but I sense the Fiorden lord is growing bored with me, with this conversation. My time is running out. And if he knows something …
But I’ve let myself be sidetracked. There are plenty of people from whom I might learn something about the soul trade, but I need Cancarnette’s signature on the treaty. I fumble to take it out with the hand not holding my glass, too flustered to think of a smooth transition. “Could I get your signature on the treaty?” I ask, hoping I at least sound winning.
Cancarnette takes the folio. I can see his eyes roving, searching for loopholes or catches.