Daja nearly refused. When she saw anger on the faces of the other girls, she grinned instead, white teeth flashing against dark skin. “Daja Kisubo.”
“Lady Daja is my guest,” Sandry told Liesa.
A girl nearby muttered, “If that’s a lady, I’m a cat.”
Reaching out, Sandry lifted the pitcher of milk from the table. Cradling it in both hands, she walked over to the mutterer. “I am Sandrilene fa Toren, daughter of Count Mattin fer Toren and his countess, Amiliane fa Landreg. I am the great-niece of his grace, Duke Vedris of this realm of Emelan, and cousin of her Imperial Highness, Empress Berenene of the Namorn Empire. You are Esmelle ei Pragin, daughter of Baron Witten en Pragin and his lady Colledia of House Wheelwright—a merchant house. If I tell you my friend is a lady, then you”—carefully she poured milk into Esmelle’s plate—“you had best start lapping, kitty.” She set the pitcher down and returned to her chair.
Daja was still on her feet. “You did no one any good with that,” she said in Tradertalk. “Not me, not you, not even them.”
“I don’t care.” Sandry spoke in Common, so that everyone understood. “My papa said that nobility has no right to be rude. We are supposed to know better.” She plumped her bottom onto her chair and looked at Daja. “Are you going to sit?” she asked. “Big as you are, you look like you can’t afford to skip meals.”
For the first time since the sinking of Third Ship Kisubo, Daja smiled. Gingerly, she sat. “I hope other nobles aren’t like you.” She had a lilt in her speech when she spoke in Common. “I don’t think I could stand the excitement.”
Novices began to carry bowls and platters to the tables. Any talk about what had just taken place was drowned out in the rattle of wood and metal.
“Trisana, listen to me—I have your best interests at heart.” The blue-robed dedicate stood over her, blocking the light. “These odd ways of yours make you no friends with the other girls. They’re outside enjoying this splendid weather. You should be, too. If you are to make anything of yourself, you need friendships with girls who will help you to meet the right kind of people.”
Does she ever shut up? wondered the redhead as she turned a page in her book.
“Are you listening!” Dedicate Staghorn took the girl by the arm and pulled her up until she was sitting instead of lying on her cot. “Stop slouching. Put that book down.”
Tris attempted to yank out of the woman’s hold, without success. She looked up into Staghorn’s face with eyes that glinted like gray ice behind her spectacles. “Let go,” she said quietly.
“This is for your benefit,” the dedicate told her. “Whatever caused your parents to give you to the Living Circle temples—”
They didn’t want me, so shut up, Tris thought miserably, pale skin crimson with humiliation. Shut up shut up shut up—
Across the room, shutters banged as they closed, then flapped open.
Staghorn jumped and released the girl’s arm. “Now listen. You have been in this dormitory for six weeks and you act as if you are royalty—which you are not.” Staghorn jerked as a door slammed. “You need to be nicer to people.”
Tris couldn’t answer. Her head was starting to ache, and her stomach lurched unpleasantly. Pressure built in her ears until she thought they might burst. The room pitched before her eyes. This was very different from just being angry. “You wanted me to go out?” she gasped, standing up. “I’m going.” Running to the door, she yanked it open. “You might want to come, too!”
The air popped. Staghorn lurched. “If you’ve made me ill—”
A pitcher marched off a bedside table and shattered on the floor. The metal-and-enamel image of Yalina, goddess of water, dropped from the shelf on which it sat. In the corner, a freestanding closet fell over.
Staghorn ran for the door that Tris still held for her. “Quake!” screamed the dedicate. “It’s a quake!”
“She noticed,” muttered Tris, following her outside.
The ground stilled almost immediately, but Winding Circle’s residents stayed outside for a while, in case there were more shakes. Many were fearful: it was the first good-sized tremor in over a year. Was it a warning of a larger quake to come?
Tris yawned. Her sickness gone with the shaking ground, she thought the others’ fear was silly. Except for broken crockery and the ruined pine wardrobe, there was little damage—not enough for the fuss that was being made of it, in her opinion. She was also sure there wouldn’t be a bigger shake that day, though she couldn’t have said how she knew.
Looking around, she saw that Staghorn was huddled with the other two dedicates who supervised the main girls’ dormitory, talking rapidly and watching Tris. Straining her ears, the redhead heard, “knew it was coming.”
That was enough. She’d heard people say such things about her dozens of times before. Next would come, “We/I don’t want her living here.” Book in hand, Tris walked toward the rear of the garden. Out of sight of the dedicates, she climbed over the short fence and escaped to Winding Circle’s biggest library.
In the girls’ main dormitory, two weeks after her first meal with Sandry, Daja decided to take a late evening walk before the dedicates called everyone inside for the night. She walked a great deal these days, feeling trapped inside Winding Circle’s twelve-foot-thick walls. She wished she were aboard a sturdy little ship bound southwest, through the Long Strait and the Bight of Fire, into the vast stretch of the Endless Ocean. In recent years word had come of islands in the Endless, filled with strange animals and copper-skinned natives. She would like to see them.