She held her tongue, mindful of the watchful presence of Sothe at her shoulder. Claudia Nettalt sur Tasset was twenty-five, extremely wealthy, and beautiful. Raesinia found her fascinating to listen to, because everything that entered her head via her eyes or ears immediately left it again via her mouth, with no apparent processing in between. Since they’d been herded into the royal box, Claudia had offered her opinions on the number of people who’d gathered (quite a lot), Raesinia’s dress (lovely), the color of the sky (gray), and of course the lack of rain. Now she looked around again with wide, guileless eyes.

“They’re still working on the machine, Emil, look,” she said, indicating the center of everyone’s attention, where a black-robed scholar and a pair of assistants were indeed still working on a bulky machine.

Her son, a boy of seven or eight, was dressed in a dark, sober suit, as appropriate for a noble still in mourning. He slumped with one shoulder against the railing of the box, immersed in a thick, leather-bound book that Raesinia recognized as the bloody adventure story Heart of Khandar. Claudia had introduced him when they first entered, but the Queen of Vordan was apparently a poor alternative to the exploits of Captain Merric and his men battling crocodiles and waterfalls.

On Raesinia’s other side was a portly gentleman in gray, whom she recalled had something to do with the arms industry. He, thankfully, did not feel obligated to make conversation, and devoted his attention instead to scanning the crowd and occasionally muttering caustically. From the tone of his observations, it appeared that he was extremely satisfied to be placed beside the queen while his rivals were obliged to sit with the commons.

The center of Farus’ Triumph, with its spectacular fountain and speaker’s rostrum, was poorly suited to this kind of public spectacle. Instead a semicircle of bleachers had been constructed at the north end of the great square, in front of the Hotel Ancerre, where the new government had its headquarters. In the center of the arc was a fenced-off box for the queen and her guests, which made Raesinia feel a bit like a cow penned and awaiting slaughter.

The very ends of the arc of seats were occupied by the members of the Deputies-General, with the opposing factions pressed as far away from one another as it was physically possible to be. On the left were the Radicals, in the colorful, particolored coats and hats that had for some reason unfathomable to Raesinia become the fashion in their circle. On the right, Conservatives looked like a flock of crows in their black, high-collared coats. The no-man’s-land between the feuding parties was taken up by other notables of Vordan, a mix of wealthy men of common stock and aristocrats who’d thrown in their lot with the new order.