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you.”
    “Fascinating,” said Shedemei. “Let’s see if we can think of a way to get the Keeper to talk to you. Or at least to show her hand.”
    Mon was seated, as usual, down at the stewards’ end of the table. His father told him that the king’s second son was placed there in order to show respect for therecord-keepers and message-bearers and treasurers and provisioners, for, as Father said, “If it weren’t for them, there’d be no kingdom for the soldiers to protect.”
    When Father said that, Mon had answered, in his most neutral voice, “But if you really want to show your respect for them, you’d place Ha-Aron among them.”
    To which Father mildly replied, “If it weren’t for the army, all the stewards would be dead.”
    So Mon, the second son, was all that the second rank of leaders in the kingdom merited; the first son was the honor of the first rank, the military men, the people who really mattered.
    And that was how the business of dinner was conducted, too. The King’s Supper had begun many generations ago as a council of war—that was when women began to be excluded. In those days it was only once a week that the council ate together, but for generations now it had been every night, and human men of wealth and standing imitated the king in their own homes, dining separately from their wives and daughters. It wasn’t that way among the sky people, though. Even those who shared the king’s table went home and sat with their wives and children for another meal.
    Which was why, sitting at Mon’s left hand, the chief clerk, the old angel named bGo, was barely picking at his food. It was well known that bGo’s wife became quite miffed if he showed no appetite at
her
table, and Father had always refused to be offended that bGo apparently feared his wife more than he feared the king. bGo was senior among the clerks, though as head of the census he was certainly not as powerful as the treasuremaster and the provisioner. He was also a surly conversationalist and Mon hated having to sit with him.
    Beyond bGo, though, his otherself, Bego, was far more talkative—and had a much sturdier appetite, mostly because he had never married. Bego, the recordkeeper,was only a minute and a half less senior than bGo, but one would hardly imagine they were the same age, Bego had so much energy, so much vigor, so much . . . so much anger, Mon thought sometimes. Mon loved school whenever Bego was their tutor, but he sometimes wondered if Father really knew how much rage seethed under the surface of his recordkeeper. Not disloyalty—Mon would report
that
at once. Just a sort of general anger at life. Aronha said it was because he had never once mated with a female in his life, but then Aronha had sex on the brain these days and thought that lust explained everything—which, in the case of Aronha and all his friends, was no doubt true. Mon didn’t know why Bego was so angry. He just knew that it put a delicious skeptical edge on all of Bego’s lessons. And even on his eating. A sort of savagery in the way he lifted the panbread rolled up with bean paste to his lips and bit down on it. The way he ground the food in his jaws when he chewed, slowly, methodically, glaring out at the rest of the court.
    On Mon’s right, the treasuremaster and the provisioner were caught up in their own business conversation—quietly, of course, so as not to distract from the
real
meeting going on at the king’s end of the table, where the soldiers were regaling each other with anecdotes from recent raids and skirmishes. Being adult humans, the treasuremaster and provisioner were much taller than Mon and generally ignored him after the initial courtesies. Mon was more the height of the sky people to his left, and besides, he knew Bego better, and so when he talked at all, it was to them.
    “I have something I want to tell Father,” said Mon to Bego.
    Bego chewed twice more and swallowed, fixing Mon with his weary gaze all the while.