Chapter 20: Seraphine's Offer and the Forged Letter, Revisited

The morning after the Recitation Trial, Honoria woke before the bell and lay in the dark counting the things she knew.

Six tributes remained. Herself and Callum from Province Twelve. Seraphine from Province One. Benedikt from Province Ten. Lisle from Province Three. And Aldous from Province Six, who had survived this far on a combination of quiet competence and the considerable advantage of being, by general agreement, the least remarkable person in any room he entered — a quality Honoria had long since stopped mistaking for weakness.

Five others had been removed in the eleven days since the Masked Cotillion. Three by social elimination of varying degrees of elegance; one in a duel-form that the official record described as a withdrawal under the Medical Welfare provision, which was the Court's considered way of acknowledging that certain kinds of pressure produced certain kinds of collapse; and Nessa, who had spoken for four minutes and twelve seconds on the subject of textile production and accident welfare with a composure so complete and so obviously constructed over something that was not composure at all that the gallery had been very quiet for the whole of it, and then had applauded in the particular way that the Gilded Court reserved for performances they did not know how to categorise.