Bel and Denima certainly seemed friendly, but Clariel couldn’t tell whether they were amused at her or at the stupidity of this tea business. She similarly couldn’t tell whether the hostility between Bel and Aronzo was real or some kind of playfulness between old friends, or at least old acquaintances. All in all it made her feel tired.

Clariel did not like trying to make friends, or the business of keeping up with them. As far as she was concerned, people might hunt with her, for example, or otherwise work cooperatively. She had no time for simply talking or the lounging about doing nothing together that had seemed to her one of the prerequisites of the groups of friends back in Estwael to which she had never really belonged. Here seemed no different, save that she could not escape these enforced sessions of conversation or whatever was supposed to happen.

‘Now, as you sip your tea, considered conversation,’ said Dyrell. ‘A suitable topic might be the weather, or any striking matters of business observed in the market or suchlike.’

‘I observed something in the clothier’s quarter yesterday,’ said Clariel, turning to look at Aronzo, who once again annoyed her with the faintest wink. ‘A strange attack upon a goldsmith’s daughter. A piece of mummery and –’

‘No, no, Lady Clariel,’ interrupted Dyrell. ‘That is not an appropriate topic. Lady Yaneem, perhaps you might start?’

‘I thought today less hot than yesterday,’ said Yaneem, slowly and without emotion. ‘And the day before that was hotter.’

‘Odd that it should be growing cooler so soon,’ added Denima, also speaking slowly, again without energy or feeling. But Clariel noticed the corner of her mouth quirked up, showing some effort at not laughing at herself.

‘We must hope that it doesn’t rain too much,’ continued Aronzo, his deadpan delivery slightly spoiled by a sideways glance at Clariel, who looked away.

‘Excellent, that is the way it is done in the best houses,’ said Dyrell. ‘Please continue, till the Academy bell tolls the eleventh hour. I have something … some work I must attend. Lord Aronzo, I deputise my authority to you.’

Dyrell was hardly out of the door before Aronzo spoke.

‘Fussy old fool. And tea is a disgusting drink. Whoever thought up all this rigmarole should have been thrown off the seawall at the Shark Pool.’

‘But you go along with the rigmarole … when anyone’s watching,’ said Belatiel.

‘I don’t lack for sense, unlike some people,’ said Aronzo. ‘There are advantages to having our elders think well of me.’

‘Why did you attack me yesterday?’ blurted out Clariel. ‘What was the point of that?’

Aronzo yawned.

‘Must you keep harping on about that?’

‘What attack?’ asked Belatiel and Denima at almost the same time.