Chapter 7: Callum and the Conspiracy of the Kitchens

The Waltz Examination was scheduled for two o'clock, which gave Honoria the morning.

She used it as she had used every available morning since their arrival: systematically. The tributes' wing contained three common rooms in diminishing order of formality, a reading room that nobody read in, and a long gallery with windows positioned to overlook the Court's east garden. It was in this last room that she had established her primary observation post, on the reasonable grounds that a tribute standing at a window appeared merely decorative, while a tribute standing in a corridor appeared to be doing exactly what she was doing, which was listening to other people's conversations and cataloguing the results.

By half past ten, she had confirmed that Province Three's female tribute — Lisle, small, dark-haired, given to careful silences — had met privately with Province Six's male tribute on two separate occasions, which was an alliance forming or a flirtation, and possibly both, the distinction being less relevant than the fact of the connection itself. She had noted that Province One's Seraphine Beaumont-Lace had walked the east garden twice in the past three mornings at precisely the same hour, accompanied by her sponsor's senior attaché and a small notebook she was careful to angle away from any window. And she had observed, with the particular interest one reserves for a pattern one cannot yet explain, that the footman who delivered the morning correspondence to the tributes' wing paused for thirty seconds longer outside Province Eight's door than was required by any reasonable postal geography.