The other seven Houses present were flaunting as though they were birds in a particularly baroque mating season. Her so-called cavalier primary took great interest; he jotted verses on a scrap of flimsy that he palmed discreetly into his pocket every time her gaze fell on him. The other Houses had mingled into a spectrum of colours, interweaving in the dances like a living drift of spangles. Clean Cohort whites with coloured ribands vaunting colour on the pips or wrist; long dresses in iridescent white, a simpering tactic, with hued wreaths on the head to denote the House; necromancers in robes of all kinds, none of them practical. All except for the Sixth House, who did not seem to be represented among the dancers, but sat in a grey puddle by the wall in wallflower blessedness, as though they were a communal gawky child who could not find a partner. They all wore the same dead-dove greys and chattered among themselves. If the situation had been different, Harrowhark might have made an introductory approach to them, but she had other things to think about.

One tall, astonishingly built Third House princess had chosen to sit among their number like a butterfly in a grey bog: she wore a silk robe in gold and breeches that showed off a calf too fit to be called a necromancer’s, and she was holding a glass of champagne and laughing at something she was being told. The rest of the noble House of Ida made intermittent attempts to chivvy her back, in case being seen among the Sixth House proclaimed her too hopeless to win the attention of Her Divine Highness, but the Third princess kept waving them off.

Harrowhark’s anticipation was at a fever pitch by the time anyone approached her. She did not know why her heart was beating so hard; she did not know why she was afraid, other than that the crowd was unmanageable and that there was too much noise and light. She knew her eyes were too wide within her sacramental paint—the elegant skull called simply the Chain, which she had been practising for months—when a couple approached, without a retinue. A man and a woman, the lady with the hint of a necromancer’s build: she was arm in arm with the man, and he appeared to be eating a canape on a stick with his other hand, and so Harrowhark refused to look at him. The lady wore a deep cocoa satin gown with a train, and when she stood before Harrowhark she coughed, discreetly, into one buff glove. The simplicity of the gown revealed little about her, but the cut said more, and the cursory little gold tiara perched on the gleaming brown braids of hair said a lot and loudly.

“Lady Abigail Pent,” said Harrowhark, who had been practising that as well.