CHAPTER 22 #2
"Twelve hours," Julian says to me. "I want you in this suite or in my line of sight until the convocation tomorrow. Walk the garden once with me at three. Dinner at seven. After dinner you are with me."
"Yes."
He goes through to the bedroom and unfolds the garment bag and hangs the dove-gray trousers and cream silk blouse on the iron-canopy frame; the small domestic motion is so out of his register that I look away to keep the corner of my mouth still.
---
The garden at three is a square of frost-bitten boxwood, a single yew at the back wall, a granite bench under the yew. The cold is twenty-five at the warmest point of the day and the air bites at the inside of my nose. Sebastian walks at a distance behind us; I know without looking.
"Konstantin is in the east suite," Julian says. "Drake is with him. Beaufort arrives at five. Thea has been with Adrienne in the lower parlor for an hour."
"What does Adrienne say."
"Adrienne does not say."
"Konstantin has had me followed."
"He has had Atticus Wren follow you. " His voice does not change on the name. "Atticus is on his staff side tonight. He will be visible from where you stand behind my chair. He will see that you have seen him. He will see that you do not flinch."
"I do not flinch."
"I know."
We walk to the yew. The bench is too cold to sit on. He says, "Quinn. I want to tell you a frivolous thing. The only frivolous thing I will say to you in this house. The dress has a small button at the nape. It has come undone. I will fasten it and then we will go back inside."
He turns me by the shoulder — the same gesture he will use tomorrow with witnesses — and his fingers find the button and close it.
His knuckle brushes the bare skin at the back of my neck.
The brand on the inside of his left forearm under the cuff of his shirt is a small cold weight against the wool over my shoulder. Then his hand drops. "Darling."
The word is ironic and small and he says it once. He has never said it before. He will not say it again. My mouth lifts at the corner without my permission.
We walk back to the house. The cold follows us in.
---
The great drawing room is forty feet long and twenty-five wide.
At its center, forty feet of mahogany table dressed in white linen, the Federal silver service laid in three weights at each place, the Waterford crystal chandelier above in a slow refraction of cold blue that catches at the rims of the wine glasses.
A fireplace at each end, both lit, the wood snapping low.
The blackout drapes are pulled back; the windows show the garden in twilight, the boxwood gone to black against the snow that has begun to thread in.
Twenty-two seats. Nine for the elders. The Carrington seat — at Julian's left — is empty, the chair pushed back six inches in tribute.
Julian at the head; Konstantin at the foot, forty feet away; Adrienne to Julian's right; Thea to Konstantin's right; Drake to Konstantin's left; Iliana Solberg across from Drake; Beaufort Hale on one long side; Cyrus Greenleaf opposite Beaufort.
The two London lawyers — a dark-haired man, a fair-haired woman — are seated below Adrienne on Julian's side.
Sebastian stands at the door behind Julian in his Royal Navy cutlass and charcoal suit, Sig under the coat. Henrik is on the staff side at the wall. Helene is near Julian. The council steward is at a side desk.
I am behind Julian's chair.
The evidentiary chair. By Concordat protocol.
I have read the protocol three times this week; I know where my hands go (clasped above the seam of the wool dress, right thumb over left); I know where my eyes go (the centerpiece, the chandelier, the elders in turn, never the table-edge); I know my voice does not rise unless an elder asks me a question.
I have been a witness for a court three times in my career.
This is not different except in the witnesses.
The witnesses tonight have lived for eight hundred years between them.
Konstantin is across from me at the foot of the table.
I have seen him on surveillance screens.
The screens did not catch the height of him, or the pale-silver of his hair past the shoulders, tied back tonight with a black ribbon, or the way the black opal of his signet on his right index finger catches the chandelier-light from across the table.
He is in a charcoal three-piece, cut old-world, the lapel narrow.
The Tatar saber is in its tooled-leather sheath on a side credenza behind him; the staff would not permit it at the table. He has not looked at me directly. He will when he decides to.
Atticus Wren is on Konstantin's staff side at a side table six feet behind Konstantin's chair.
He is in his brown tweed jacket two sizes too big.
The thinning sandy-blond hair is parted on the left, the way he parted it the morning he showed me to the Greybar and called me darling, dear and asked me about the New England Methodist case in a voice I had taken for collegial. The pale watery blue eyes are on me.
I recognize him the moment I see him. He has expected this.
He has expected I would recognize him. He has expected I might flinch.
I have set my face the way I set my face the morning I sat across from Marcus Hale at twenty-six and pitched my first major audit.
The corner of my jaw does not flex. The brass pencil is in the pocket over my sternum. My sternum has not moved.
Atticus, after a beat, lowers his eyes to the side table.
I do not lower mine.
The first course is laid — a clear consommé, almost gold in the chandelier-light. Konstantin lifts his glass, the wine half-poured by the steward. His mid-Atlantic Germanic-Russian English is slow, almost languid.