“I’m sure.”
She takes the chair opposite mine and folds herself into it with impossible poise, long fingers resting lightly on one arm. When she gestures, it’s clear she expects to be obeyed. I sit because standing there looming over a seated queen seems like a quick route to an early grave.
For a little while, she doesn’t ask about rebels or tunnels or routes. She talks about humans.
Not casually. Not kindly. Clinically.
It throws me off-balance more effectively than a threat would have.
“Such a varied species,” she says, watching my face as if it might tell her more than my answers will. “You arrive from different worlds and yet often believe yourselves one people. Your languages overlap and fracture. Your cultures do the same. You divide yourselves by nations, by faiths, by histories, by skin.”
Her gaze drifts over me, deliberate and cool. My brown skin. My locs, tied back badly after a run-in with the ground. The shape of my face, the scar near my eye.
“And yet,” she says, “you remain recognisably human to one another. Interesting.”
I am very aware of how carefully I need to move here. “Most species probably look more different to themselves than they do to outsiders.”
Her eyes narrow slightly with something like approval. “Perhaps.”
She asks where I was born. I tell her the truth because it’s old truth and harmless truth. Coventry. She asks where I grew up. I say Australia. She asks if I prefer one over the other, and I say that depends very much on the weather and whether anyone in the room is secretly hoping I’ll incriminate myself.
Again that near-smile, but still, there’s no warmth in it.
“You are cautious.”
“I’ve had practice.”
“So I have heard.”
The conversation tilts then, subtly enough that I almost miss it.
“My youngest son,” she says, as though we are discussing weather after all, “has developed an interest in humans.”
My pulse jumps once, and I force it back down.
“I’ve heard rumours,” she continues.
“Have you.”
Not a question.
She studies me. “Have you met him?”
“No.”
That at least is true.
I’ve seen Aelith at a distance once or twice. Court processions. Moving through the upper city with guards and arrogance and the sort of wealth that makes itself visible even at fifty paces. But I’ve never met him. Never spoken to him. Never had reason to.
She tilts her head. “Curious. There are many stories at present. My son and his alleged bond. His alleged sympathies. So much imagination in this city.”
I keep my mouth shut.
She notices. Of course she notices.
“I do not believe all of them,” she says. “In fact, I believe very few.”
Still I say nothing. The room feels smaller with every breath.
