“No, the whole city.”
“Hmm. It sounds dangerous to give someone so much power. In my city there was a head of each district and they were like… you know, powerful, and rich, and stuff. Like Finn—he couldcommand a lot of people, but not the heads of other districts. And he had no say whatsoever in the Maiden District.”
“Well. Power, when not checked on a regular basis, flows up. Not down.”
“I’m not sure I know what that means.”
“It means… it consolidates, ya know? Away from the people in general and towards heads of departments, like Stayn.”
“Is he a good guy? Or a bad guy?”
I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I have to think about this for a moment. “Well, he’s my friend, so I like him. But if he wasn’t, and all I saw was the power play and the politics, I would definitely consider him a bad guy.”
“That’s a good note. I will keep it in mind when I mingle.”
“I get the feeling dinner parties are second nature to you.”
“Oh, Tyse. I’m in my element here. I am so ready to go in there and compliment strangers while eating canapés, drinking champagne, and enjoying this evening to the fullest.” She pauses and looks up at me. “You do have canapés here, right?”
“If you mean gross-looking finger foods made of crackers, paste, and cheese on silver plates, then yes.”
She nods and lets out a breath. “I’m going to eat one of everything.”
We go to the door and ring the bell. It opens almost immediately, and then Janice, Stayn’s wife, is there in her fancy dress, and her perfect hair and makeup, and her lipsticked mouth moving a mile a minute as she greets us warmly and ushers us inside.
There is a whirlwind here filled with teenage girls in frilly dresses, and politicians with their arm-candy wives, and even a couple of dogs that are way too big to be house pets, but since when did rules ever stop rich people from doing impractical things?
Coats are taken, I feel very underdressed next to the power players in coats and ties, and Clara morphs into a Spark Maiden—minus the spark—right before my very eyes. Her smile is big, her voice is soothing, her eyes are bright, and she even leans in and lightly touches people on the arm when she speaks to them. Like everyone in this room is an old friend.
She is at home, to say the least. Like she has attended thousands of dinner parties in alternate dimensions and this one, at the Tau City patrol chief’s home, is no particular big deal.
We are separated, as is the way of things. It’s just… I’ve never come to dinner here with a date before, so I never noticed how weird it is that men are ushered into Stayn’s office, while the women gather in the living room.
Cigars are passed out. I sit on a tufted leather couch and then exhale smoke as I accept a glass of brandy on the rocks from Stayn. He takes the chair to my right and immediately, the conversation turns to Clara.
“So. Where the hell did you kidnap this one from?”
“Is that an insult? Are you insinuating that she is too good for me?”
Stayn laughs. “Brother, she is…” He decides to stop here so he can choose his words carefully. “Delightful.”
I raise my glass in his direction and we do a mock ‘cheers.’ “She is, isn’t she.”
“Keep this one. You’re gonna keep her, right?”
I just smile over my glass as I take a drink.
“OK, OK,” a rotund, older man says as he approaches us. “Enough about your man’s woman, Stayn. I only came to one of your stuffy parties to discuss the Looking Glass. What news, friend?”
“What’s that?” I ask Stayn.
Stayn ignores me. “Not tonight, Richard. This is not a business meeting. I told you that. It’s a dinner party. Janice will kill me if we start talking about work at the table.”
“All the better to do it now,” the portly man says.
“What’s a Looking Glass?” I ask again.
For a moment I’m sure that Stayn is gonna blow me off. But he gives me a side-eye instead. Like he’s reconsidering. “Well, if I tell you, you have to keep it secret.”
