The great hall of the Sceau's palace had been transformed since their arrival. Where an almost hostile silence had reigned two days earlier, a hushed bustle now spread through the room, servants moving between clusters of guests with trays of cups Emma hadn't yet dared taste, freshly hung red tapestries stamped with Tra's sigil, two swords, one broken, crossed over a purple heart, covering the cracks in the walls, as if the whole city had decided, for one evening, to make itself forgiven for its own crumbling.
"Emma, stay close to me," Agatha had said as they walked in, without even turning to check that Emma had heard. "What you're about to see here will teach you more than any lesson I could give you in an empty room." She added, almost in passing. "Here, Tygrans aren't just claws."
"Tygrans?"
"Fierce animals, known for their sharp claws. Apex predators from the Est," Selene told her, visibly aware Emma had no way of knowing that.
But Emma understood what Agatha had meant within the first few minutes.
It wasn't even midday yet, and the hall was already swarming with representatives from all across the continent, twenty at least according to what Selene murmured to her, each dressed in their region's colors with an air of distinction that seemed to compete with everyone else's, each escorted by a number of guards and aides seemingly proportional to how much importance they placed on themselves.
Emma recognized some of the seals and crests on their clothing, not others, and let her Distortion stretch discreetly from one cluster to the next, cataloging the familiar layers without much effort, ambition, travel fatigue, that strained politeness that was really just calculation in disguise.
A silver haired woman, dressed in a deep blue Emma didn't recognize, spoke quietly with two younger men who nodded at intervals too regular to be sincere. A little further off, a heavyset man laughed too loudly at a joke no one else seemed to find funny, his gaze sliding again and again toward the door, as if he were already looking for the fastest way out. Emma wondered how many people in this room had come out of genuine loyalty, or even friendship, and how many out of the same diffuse fear she felt running under every polite exchange, mixed in with a morbid curiosity.
"How many regions are represented?" she asked quietly.
"More than a simple investiture would ever require," Agatha answered, her gaze sweeping the room with that same cold precision she usually reserved for files. "Which should already tell you something. All these fakes..."
She didn't finish the sentence.
It was Selene who spotted Marek first, a middle aged man with an unreadable face, deep in conversation with two men in gray robes Emma didn't know. She recognized him almost immediately, the rigid posture, that particular way he had of speaking without ever quite smiling, exactly like in the corridor where he'd pushed Andrew into betraying, against his will, the secret of the war.
"Councilor Marek," Emma murmured. The memory of that whole episode with Andrew rushed back to her all at once. "He's honestly frightening."
Huh, it's been a while since I last saw him. Not since that incident, actually.
"He frightens everyone," Agatha corrected, without taking her eyes off the room. "That's partly why we let him do his job. Marek, despite looking like a joyless bore, is actually one of the most loyal men the Capitol has. Maybe even a little too loyal."
That's exactly what I read off him, Emma thought.
They kept making their way around the room.
A little further off, leaning against a column with the ease of someone who had never once had to search for his place in a room, stood a man Emma had no trouble recognizing either, even though she would have preferred never to see him again.
Paul Verlot.
He was alone, Emma noticed, without the usual escort she would have expected from a councilor of his rank, which, in a room where everyone else seemed to have brought a small court of their own, looked less like modesty than a statement. He still managed to draw the attention of several women who seemed to take an interest in him that had nothing to do with politics, offering smile after smile while letting his gaze sweep the room, clearly searching for something or someone, until it landed on Agatha's.
He had already spotted them. His eyes met Emma's for a fraction of a second, a smile curling at his lips before he looked away, as if he preferred letting the suspense do its own work rather than crossing the room right away.
"He came alone," Emma said, more to herself than to Agatha.
"Which means either he doesn't need anyone, or he no longer trusts anyone. Knowing him, that arrogant man is probably leaning toward the first," Selene said.
"Don't trust appearances alone, Selene." Agatha gave a joyless smile. "With Paul, those two options tend to look more alike than you'd think."
A man Emma didn't recognize approached then, a Capitol badge pinned to his jacket, a young face under hair already graying at the temples. He bowed to Agatha with a deference that seemed sincere rather than rehearsed.
"Lady Agatha. Allow me to introduce myself, the new Councilor Thess, you surely don't know me yet," he introduced himself, then continued without waiting to be invited to. "The Capitol sent me to observe the ceremony. Officially, on behalf of the Triande, my new faction. Unofficially, I think everyone here already knows why we were all sent."
"Enlighten me," Agatha said, her tone suggesting she already knew the answer and simply wanted to confirm he knew it too. She already knew of this promising young councilor's existence, but not yet which way he actually leaned within his new faction.
"No one wants to be the only one absent," Thess answered, a tight smile on his lips, "in case something happens here that we'd regret, later, not having seen with our own eyes. And especially why. Isn't that right, Agatha?"
He drifted off almost at once, leaving his question hanging, which visibly didn't sit well with Agatha, pulled into another cluster before she'd had time to answer.
Emma took a moment to watch the people around her, with no idea what country or region any of them came from, but amusing herself all the same imagining what their homelands might look like, each unfamiliar face becoming, for one second, a door into somewhere she'd never seen.
I really want to visit everywhere someday. See what this whole new world actually looks like.
She didn't get the chance to ask Selene where these people were from. It was Paul who came to them first, crossing the room with that calculated slowness Emma remembered already hating once before.
"Agatha. It hasn't been that long," he said, inclining his head slightly, a gesture too polished to be truly respectful. "And the little Relic. I didn't expect to see you again so soon."
"Paul," Agatha answered, in a tone that left no room for conversation.
He didn't seem bothered by it. His gaze lingered on Emma a second too long, that same green intensity she remembered finding so unsettling the first time.
"So," he said, addressing her directly this time, deliberately ignoring Agatha, "how's the training going? I heard you're starting to make sparks. Literally, almost, if the rumors are accurate."
Emma said nothing, and the silence seemed to amuse him more than an answer would have.
He remembers everything, and he sees everything, Emma thought, recalling despite herself that sensation of being pushed to speak against her own will, in the empty Senate chamber back at the Capitol, never quite understanding how he'd managed it. She stepped back half a pace, almost without thinking, adding a handful of centimeters between them, a distance that probably changed nothing about what he could or couldn't do to her, but that reassured her a little all the same.
"You came alone," Agatha said, deliberately changing the subject. "That's new, for you. Here I was taking you for a simple coward. Turns out you're a stupid coward."
Paul didn't even react to the jab, deliberately or not, no one could have said.
"I could say the same about you," he answered, his smile not wavering an inch. "A Senate president showing up in Tra without warning anyone, that hasn't happened in years. What do you call that again? An overreach of duty? Let's say I came to see what merited such an inconvenience. Let's not lie to each other anymore, Agatha. You're here for the same reason I am."
"And what did you find?"
"A lot of people," he said, letting his gaze sweep the room with theatrical slowness. "Far too many people, for a simple celebration. And above all, a new Sceau everyone talks about, but whose face no one has actually seen." He paused, as if weighing whether to add something. "In your place, I'd worry less about who's here than about who isn't."
He bowed once more, an almost mocking gesture, and walked off without giving Agatha time to answer, already melting into another cluster on the far side of the room.
Agatha stayed silent for a moment, her gaze fixed on the spot where Paul had just vanished.
"He's never right by accident. You can say plenty of things about that man, but his Distortion is one of the most perceptive I've ever known," she finally said, more to herself than to Emma.
Powerful. Another type of Qualia I don't know yet, Emma thought.
It was Selene, who had stayed back through the whole exchange, who finally broke the silence that followed.
"Lady Agatha." Her voice carried that same absence of emotion she usually reserved for her most important observations. "I counted the delegations."
"And?"
"Every major region is represented. The North, the East, the coastal states, even the small provinces that never usually send anyone." Selene paused deliberately, as if letting the weight of her next sentence settle before she even said it. "But no delegation from the South. Not a single one."
Agatha went still, turning back toward the room as if to check the fact for herself.
"You're certain?"
"I checked twice." Selene swept the room with her eyes once more, as if confirming, one last time, what she was about to claim. "Across every southern territory starting from Dastagn, the border, not one sent so much as a representative. Not even a letter of apology, according to Tra's own representatives here. They don't know why, but they don't seem especially concerned about it either."
Emma felt something tighten in the air around them, that same density she'd learned to recognize these past few days, except this time, she hadn't even needed her Distortion to feel it.
"It's not just strange," Agatha said slowly, as if assembling the pieces out loud to make sure she wasn't getting it wrong. "I've lived longer than the two of you combined. This is impossible. A tragedy concerning the entire continent, and not one southern region thinks it worth sending anyone, even just for appearances?"
"Unless," Selene said, "they all had a good reason not to."
"Or someone stopped them," Agatha added, her voice dropping almost to a whisper.
No one said anything for a long moment. Around them, the hall kept humming, indifferent, conversations, polite laughter, the clink of cups being refilled, as if none of what had just been said carried the slightest weight against the approaching celebration.
"The Circle needs to know," Agatha finally said. "Tonight. Selene, you'll go back and deliver the news yourself. Before the ceremony, not after."
She turned to Emma, and for the first time since they'd walked into that room, something like genuine worry crossed her face, before vanishing as quickly as it had come.
"Stay close to Selene," she said. "I have to go."
Emma watched her cut through the crowd, her figure carving a path between the clusters of guests with a determination nothing in that room seemed able to slow, and felt, without quite being able to explain it, that something had just shifted, somewhere beneath the polished surface of the evening, toward a shape no one yet fully understood.
"Selene." Emma waited until Agatha's voice had fully dissolved into the noise of the room before speaking again. "What could stop an entire part of the continent from sending even one representative?"
"Plenty of things," Selene answered, her gaze still fixed on the crowd, as if she were still counting and recounting the same absences. "A local civil war. An epidemic. A collective decision to cut off all contact with the Capitol, which would be news far worse than any disease. But in every case, the Capitol would have known in advance. Southerners are known for their pride. They would never have gone quiet this easily."
"Or?"
Selene kept quiet long enough for Emma to understand she had another answer in mind, one she didn't intend to say out loud, not here, not in a room where any ear might belong to anyone.
"Or maybe there's no one left down there to send anyone at all," she finally said, so quietly Emma had to lean in slightly to be sure she'd heard right.