The Chosen One (The First Book)

Chapter 27

Cassian's POV

"He gave it to you so it would be lost," Amara said.

"He gave it to my desk. That is not the same thing."

"It is exactly the same thing, and you have known it since Tuesday."

Whitmore had been writing to my father since the autumn. The garrison, then the levies, then the road, always in that order, because he is a soldier and he lays an argument down course by course. There had been four letters. My father read three and answered none.

The fourth came to me.

His daughter had asked about all three since she arrived, but never the way the others asked. She did not stay after an answer. She did not find reasons to be near anyone. Tonight she had put the northern garrison to my father twice and taken the same reply both times.

Whatever Lady Eleanor Whitmore was doing in this palace, she was doing it because her father had given her a reason.

"Do you know what she asked me at the archery ground?" Amara said.

"Whether the crown pays for remounts or the province does."

"What did you tell her?"

"That I had no idea. She looked at me as though I had failed an examination."

Down at the table, my brother said something that made three people laugh at once. He does that four or five times a night without appearing to try.

It was quieter at my end. Lady Celeste Armand had been working toward something for most of the fish.

"May I ask you something that is not about roads?"

"You may ask."

"What do you do when there is nothing that has to be done?"

"There is generally something."

"Yes. But if there were not." She kept her voice light.

"What would you want the evening to look like?"

"That would depend on the season."

There was a pause about the length of a breath.

"Of course," she said. "The eastern crossings, then. You said the treaty language was wrong."

She recovered quickly and went back to the treaty as though that had been what she meant to ask all along.

I have not decided whether she does that because she likes it or because it is the ground she is surest of.

Two seats past her, Lady Rosalie Beaumont said something about Lady Clara Ashford's hands. Lady Isabelle Laurent laughed before she had thought about it, then stopped.

Lady Ashford was four places further down with her eyes on her plate. She had heard it. She went on cutting something she was not eating.

"Cassian."

My mother does not raise her voice. She waits until you are between things.

"Yes."

"How long do you intend to take?"

"As long as it needs."

"That is not a length of time." She turned her glass a little on the cloth.

"Your father has begun to ask me. When your father begins to ask me, it is because he has already decided to ask you."

"Then he will ask me."

"Is there anyone at all?"

"There are eight."

"Cassian."

"I know what you are asking."

She let that sit. She is better at this than anyone in the room, including my father, and she is better at it because she never appears to be doing it.

She looked along the table for a moment.

"The Rosier girl."

"You mean Vivienne?"

"She is the only one of them who has not once tried to be interesting to you. That is a discipline. It will still be a discipline in twenty years, when the rest of it has gone."

"You have a favorite."

"I have an opinion. It is not the same thing, and you would know the difference if you ever allowed yourself one."

She set the glass down.

"I could arrange an afternoon. Nothing anyone would have to notice."

"Not yet."

"Not yet is a decision, Cassian. You have only not said it out loud."

Then she turned to my father and asked him something about the Cassarian envoy, which is how she always ends a conversation, one sentence before you are finished with it.

Down the table, Miss Vale was holding her spoon without using it.

She put it down and put both hands in her lap. Nobody had spoken to her. Nothing had been taken away from in front of her. She simply stopped, in the middle of a course.

Some minutes later she picked the spoon up again and ate three or four mouthfuls of a soup she plainly did not want.

"Miss Vale."

She looked up. That took longer than it should have taken.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

She had one hand flat under the edge of the table. She was sitting straighter than I had ever seen her sit.

"You don't look fine."

"I think I just need some water."

I caught the footman's eye and told him.

"You are very attentive this evening," Amara said.

"She asked for water."

"She did not ask you."

I gave her the road between Ashfell and the pass instead, in more detail than she wanted, which is the fastest way to end a line of my sister's questioning. She let me. She usually does.

Miss Hart turned in her chair at some point and put a hand up near Miss Vale's face. Whatever she said was short, and she said it twice.

Then both of them stood.

Two people getting up at once at a table where nobody else is moving would bring the whole room round, and it did. Miss Hart sat down again almost at once.

Miss Vale kept one hand on the edge of the table and stayed where she was a second longer than standing up requires.

Then she asked to be excused.

My mother inclined her head and went back to my father.

A girl leaves a long dinner early. It happens at every long dinner, and more often with women. There are enough ordinary reasons for it.

She went the length of the room without hurrying and did not touch anything else on the way.

My brother watched her the whole way to the door.

Then he turned back to the woman on his left and finished whatever he had been telling her. She laughed. He laughed with her.

"The eastern crossings," Amara said, "are the least of the problem."

"Probably."

"You are not listening to me."

"I am."

"Then tell me what I said."

I told her.

She gave me the look she gives me when she has lost an argument and is working out whether it is worth beginning another one.

While she was deciding, my brother drank what was left in his glass and stood up without saying anything to anybody.

He went out through the west door.

His rooms are in the south wing. There are two ways to reach them from that table. The west door is neither of them.

"You have not conceded the language," Amara said.

"No. I am going to."

"When?"

"Tomorrow, in writing, so that you can keep it."

That pleased her enough to let me go.

"Excuse me."

She was still saying something about the crossings when I got up.

I went out through the west door.