way the light caught it. He didn’t have a beard, and he didn’t have much of a chin, either. It was buried beneath what might, in a few long weeks, be a beard—but messier.
His clothing, on the other hand, was very expensive and had it been on any other person, would have gone past the border of ostentatious; on him it looked lived in. She thought he might be forty. Or thirty. It was hard to tell.
What wasn’t hard to tell: he was having a bad day. And he wasn’t averse to sharing.
He didn’t have manners, either. When Sanabalis entered the room, he looked up from his desk—well, from the very, very long dining table at which he was seated—and grunted in annoyance.
The table itself was what one would expect in the Palace—it was dark, large, obviously well oiled. But the surface was covered in bits and pieces of paper, some of it crumpled in balls that had obviously been thrown some distance. Not all of those were on the table; the carpets had their fair share too.
“Mr. Rennick,” Lord Sanabalis said, bowing. “Forgive me for intruding.”
Another grunt. Sanabalis didn’t even blink an eye.
“I would like to introduce you to Corporal Handred and Private Neya. These are the people Ybelline Rabon’alani spoke of when we last discussed the importance of your work.”
He looked up at that, and managed to lose some slouch. “I hope you last longer than my previous assistants.”
“You had other assistants for this?”
“Oh, not for this project. In general, the office of Official Imperial Playwright comes with assistants.” The sneer that he put in the words managed to remain off his face. Barely.
“They won’t, however, allow me to hire my own assistants, and the ones they’ve sent me must have been dredged from the bottom of the filing pool.”
Kaylin gave Sanabalis what she hoped was a smile. She moved her lips in the right direction.
“We don’t intend to interfere in any way,” she began.
“Oh, please. Take a number and stand in line. If you somehow—by some small miracle—manage not to interfere, you’ll be the only people in this godsforsaken Palace who haven’t tried to tell me how to do my job.”
Sanabalis offered Kaylin a smile that was at least as genuine as hers had been.
On the other hand, if the Emperor hadn’t eaten Rennick, things obviously weren’t as formal as all that, and Kaylin felt a surprisingly strong relief; she was almost happy to have met him. Or would have been, if it were all in the past.
“This is not like filing,” he added, clearly warming up. He even vacated his seat and shoved his hands into pockets that lined the seams of his robes. “This is not an exact bloody science. Do you have any idea what they’ve asked of me?”
She had a fairly good idea, but said, “No.”
Something in her tone caused his eyes to narrow and Severn’s foot to stray slightly closer to hers. But she offered what she hoped was a sympathetic grimace; it was all she was up for.
“No, you probably don’t. But I’ll tell you.”
Of this, no one could be in any doubt.
“They want me to write a play that makes the Tha’alani human.”
There was certainly a sneer in his expression now, and Kaylin had to actively work to keep her hands from becoming fists. You’ve said worse, she told herself. You’ve said a lot worse.
Yes, she added, but he’s never going to go through what you did to change your bloody mind. Because she was used to arguing with herself, she then thought, And we’re going to have to do what experience won’t. Oh, god.
“I am willing to face a challenge,” he added. “Even one as difficult as this—but the Tha’alani themselves don’t seem to understand the purpose of the play I did write. They said it wasn’t true. I told them I wanted a bigger truth. It wasn’t real, but truth isn’t always arrived at by the real.”
“I can see how that would confuse them,” she offered.
“And now they’ve sent you. Have you ever even seen one of my plays?”
“I haven’t seen a play that wasn’t written for children,” she replied.
This didn’t seem to surprise him. He seemed to expect it.
Severn, however, said, “I have.”
“Oh, really?” A voice shouldn’t have legally been able to contain that much sarcasm. And, Kaylin thought, a person shouldn’t be subject to as much sarcasm as this twice in a single day. “Which one?”
“Winter,” Severn replied.
Rennick opened his mouth, but for the moment, he seemed to have run out of words. His eyes widened, his jaw closed, and his lips turned up in a genuine smile. Thirty, Kaylin thought. Or maybe even younger. “That was my second play—I wrote it before I won the seat.” He paused, and then his eyes narrowed. “Where did you see it?”
“It was staged in the Forum,” Severn replied, without missing a beat. “Constance Dargo directed it. I believe the actress who played the role of Lament was—”
“Trudy.”
“Gertrude Ellen.”
“That would be Trudy.” His eyes, however, had lost some of their suspicion. “She could be such a bitch. But she made a number of good points about some of the dialogue.”
“The dialogue was changed?”
“Good god, yes. Dialogue on the page is always stiffer than spoken dialogue—you can’t get a real sense of what it sounds like until actors put it through its paces. The first staging of any play defines the play. What did you think of it?”
“I thought it very interesting, especially given where it played, and when. It was also unusual in that it didn’t feature a relationship as its central motivation.”
“Starving people seldom have the time to worry about social niceties.”
Severn glanced at Kaylin.
“But you might be the first person sent me who’s actually familiar with my work,” Rennick said, picking up the reins where he had dropped them.
“And as one such person, I have no intention of guiding your work. You know it. I don’t.”
“And let me tell you—you don’t … Oh.”
“But the Emperor’s dictates are clear,” Severn continued, into the very welcome silence. “Winter was a work that reached out to people who had everything and reminded them, for a moment, of the fate of the rest of the city. You were chosen to write this for a reason.”
“I
