Chapter 4: A Lady in Green

"Then ask him," I said.

The Emperor raised the scarred eyebrow.

"Ask the boy again, in front of me," I said. "If he says it was me, I'll go wherever you send me."

I didn't know why I said it.

Maybe because the book had already sent me to the block, and I was tired of waiting for it.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Tomorrow," he said. "In the Ladies' Gallery. Every lady in the Selection will be there."

He went to the door.

He stopped with his hand on it.

"Eat something, Lady Montclair. You look like a ghost."

The next morning, Edie laced me into a grey dress because I wouldn't wear anything green.

"You look like a widow," she said.

"Good."

The Ladies' Gallery was a long room of tall windows on the garden side of the palace.

Twenty-two ladies of the Selection sat on gilt chairs in two rows.

They all stopped talking when I walked in.

I took the last chair at the end of the back row.

The lady next to me moved her skirt so it wouldn't touch mine.

At the front, my father stood by the windows with the other lords.

Duke Montclair was fifty-four, with grey in his red beard and a jaw.

He didn't look at me once.

Rose sat in the front row in pale blue.

She turned around and gave me a small brave smile.

The doors opened.

The Emperor walked in with Prince Lucan one step behind him.

Every chair scraped as the ladies rose and curtseyed.

Behind them came two guards with a skinny young man between them.

He was maybe nineteen, in a stained white apron, and his hands were shaking.

The kitchen boy.

In the book, he had no lines at all.

In the book, nobody saw anything.

"Tell them what you saw," the Emperor said.

The boy swallowed.

"Before the toast, Majesty. I was clearing the next table."

He bent his skinny body over an invisible one.

"She was leaning right here."

"And her sleeve was green. Bright green, like grass. With gold on the cuff."