Good Times

Since the weather was finally warming after the bitter freeze and the bloody thaw, Savine had been keen to throw open the doors of the palace and hold a reception in the budding gardens. Spring, and a new beginning, and a sorely needed opportunity to heal wounds: wounds of the Great Change still far from scarred over, and wounds inflicted since still bleeding.

But the evening was not so balmy as she had hoped, and the gooseflesh on her bare arms made her think of the brutal winter just past. The braying laughter of someone drunk too soon brought back the rioters’ clamour in the Square of Marshals. The glint of torches on the armour of the many guards reminded her of the flames towering into the sky above the Court of the People. She wanted to run for her chambers, lock every door and hold her children close, but she had hidden too long. So she squared her shoulders, snapped her fingers at Zuri to pass the box and took another pinch of pearl dust instead.

Savine was far from the only one on edge. Her guests were those lucky, clever or treacherous enough to have lived through the fury of the mobs, the chaos of Risinau, the massacres of Judge. Now, after the briefest period of heady relief, they were starting to wonder if they might end up purged by their new Lord Regent.

Leo was in no mood to heal wounds. He stood grim and aloof, as usual, surrounded by armed Anglanders, as usual, refusing to sit down, as usual. He had taken Adua in a vice-like grip the day Judge fell, but since Orso’s escape, and with Jurand to help, he had instigated a crackdown far harsher than any the Burners had dreamed of.

The endless restrictions and searches, curfews and tests of loyalty were bad for morale and terrible for business. The only people prospering were armourers, flag-makers and the painters daubing Union emblems on the homes of Citizens terrified of showing inadequate patriotism. Leo insisted he was infusing Adua with common purpose, oblivious to the fact that nothing proclaims disunity like shrill proclamations of unity on every corner.

“My lords and ladies!” The panicky chatter subsided, every eye turning towards the gateway in the palace wall, flanked by two giant sun banners. The announcer puffed himself up with a mighty breath. “Might I present…” He glanced nervously towards Leo then, as if embarrassed by the lack of a suitably magnificent string of titles, deflated. “Black Rikke.”

Savine knew how to make an entrance. She had engineered some classics in her time. Starting new trends at the Solar Society. Radiantly happy at her wedding. Proudly defiant at her trial. But she was not sure that she ever made an entrance like Rikke did that day.

“Someone has been to the tailor,” murmured Zuri.

The new mistress of the North was a heady concoction of high fashion, black magic and barbaric splendour with a weird twist all her own. Her dress was of fine red Suljuk silk, long and lean like a streak of blood with a cloud of white fur about the shoulders. Her hair was bound up into a ridiculously tall, impossibly shiny black gentleman’s hat, cocked right over in the manner of a backstreet pimp. She showed every one of those fine teeth in a knowing smile, the emeralds that Savine once gave her shining at her throat but her eyes shining brighter, one all white, the other all gaping pupil in the centre of those tattooed witch’s rings. She raised her sinewy arms and spread them wide, Sipanese lace gloves on her hands but chains, runes and bone bangles dangling from her wrists.