They had never forgiven him for changing parties. So he was on his mettle as he rose to his feet and sought the Speaker’s recognition, and then instinctively glanced up at the galleries. Centaine was in the middle of the front row of the visitors’ gallery. She was always there when she knew that either Shasa or Blaine was going to speak. She wore a small flat hat tilted forward over her eyes with a single yellow bird of paradise feather raked back at a jaunty angle, and she smiled and nodded encouragement as their eyes met. Beside Centaine sat Tara. Now that was unusual. He couldn’t remember when last she had come to listen to him. ‘Our bargain doesn’t include torture by boredom,’ she had told him, but there she was looking surprisingly elegant in a dainty straw basher with a trailing pink ribbon around the crown and elbow-length white gloves. She touched the brim in a mocking salute, and Shasa lifted an eyebrow at her and then turned to the press gallery high above the Speaker’s throne.
