The dinner was political in the specific way that all Shadow Court dinners were political meaning that the food was genuinely excellent and nobody was primarily there for the food.
Three weeks before the summit, the court had shifted into its pre-summit register, which Lira had learned to read as a distinct emotional climate elevated, focused, the specific tension of people who had been preparing for something long enough that the preparation had become its own form of anticipation.
Conversations at meals had acquired the particular edge of exchanges where the real content lived underneath the social surface.
The food remained excellent. The cold blue candles burned. Forty-three people arranged themselves in their established positions, and the political geography of the table encoded
