Evie shrugs. “I wasn’t the best student of the subject, I admit. I know about the Renewal, the chaos of blood feuds and nobility that came before. The serenity and efficiency that replaced it.”

“Do you? Can you recite names? Dates? Specific incidents that marked the downfall of the noble houses?”

Evie shakes her head. “Like I said, I wasn’t the best student.”

“You’re as informed as any, I assure you. No such history is taught, at any level, in any Crachian house of supposed learning. You’re taught only what the Nation State wishes you to know, and what it wishes you to know is its way is right and just and the only way.”

“And you’re telling me for asking questions about ancient history, you were sent here?”

The Professor nods. “History, and the war we’ll be fighting tomorrow that’s scarcely mentioned within two hundred miles of the Capitol.”

“Crache has enemies, like any great nation.”

“Does it? Or does it make enemies? Is it protecting its borders, or expanding them?”

Evie is no longer grinning, no longer playful in her questioning. She’s as intrigued as she’s been since waking up on a wagon with the Capitol at her back.

“Imagine if you can,” the Professor continues, “that Crache and all its wonders, all its egalitarianism, is built on what it’s taken from others, what it has weaponized its least desirable citizens to help take from others.”

“You asked your students these questions?”

“I did.”

“And for that and that alone you’re here now.”

“I am.”

“In a place the taskers swear is reserved for killers, rapists, and the condemned alone.”

“Does any of that describe you?”

“No. But mistakes are made. Acts taken out of desperation.”

“That’s true. And yet here we both are.”

Evie nods. “Here we both are.”

Over the shoulder of the Professor, Evie spies the serving girl with the dying violet eyes leaving the tent hall, not through the main entrance, not through the slit for the servers, and not even through the pleasure curtain, but through a smaller opening far removed from the others and the crowd.

It should be a wholly innocuous sight, just like that of the girl as Evie first saw her.

Yet Evie feels a spike in her blood, a wave of warning that spreads to every part of her.

She looks back at the Professor. “Thank you for talking with me. It’s been… enlightening.”

“You’re a better student than you credit yourself,” he tells her.

That restores the grin to Evie’s face, even if only for a moment.

She leaves the Professor and walks away from the feasting tables, finding the same parting in the tent through which the serving girl disappeared.