Chapter 6: The Winter Ball

The herald at the ballroom door read Idris's name wrong, and the room went quiet anyway.

"The Marshal-General of the Fleet, Dain Korrigan, and his consort, Idris Penhallow."

He was a Korrigan now.

The herald had used the old name, and the whole room had noticed.

Eight hundred guests turned in the Founders' Winter Ball to watch the dead man walk in.

The Council had set its hearing for the end of the evening.

A Marshal who could not stand at a ball, the Council had said, could not hold a house.

So the body of Dain Korrigan had put on dress blacks and come down the long marble steps with Idris on his arm.

The body had taken the arm itself.

It had not been told.

Idris had simply stepped out of the car in his borrowed ceremonial coat.

A gloved hand had folded around his elbow and stayed there.

Nobody in the ballroom had seen that hand move in two years.

"They are staring," said the shade, pacing at his other side. "I will have all of them removed."

"You can't," Idris murmured.

"I can think about it."

"We came to be seen," Idris said, his eyes on the long table by the far wall.

"I'm seen. There's a buffet now. They have little tarts."

He crossed the floor with the body at his elbow and the wolf padding behind them.

The ladies of the Council drew their skirts back from its shoulder as it passed.

By the time he reached the tarts the Marshal's husband had two in each hand and one in his mouth.

The shade was bent double over a potted palm with his shoulders shaking.

"Don't," Idris said around the pastry.

"I'm not laughing," said the shade.

"You're laughing," Idris said.

"I am a general. We do not," said the shade.

"Idris."

The voice was clear, and sweet, and pitched to carry.

Marius Penhallow stood at the foot of the buffet in pale gold silk, the heir's pin on his lapel.

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