Amanda Fox

The youngest of the three Fox siblings, under Natalia and Merrigan, and a niece of Nathan Fox. She is vain and lives expensively, she is reckoned the best-looking of the family, and she can be spiteful when she believes she has been wronged. She is very close to her eldest sister, with as much of the ordinary rivalry between them as that allows.

At her uncle’s banquet in Loshev she came floating over to where Natalia had the guests of honor, dressed to impress, and hugged her sister. Asked whether she had met the Valiant Few, she looked at the three of them with a sparkling smile and said that unfortunately she had not, which was not so; all three had met her before and had her name from it. She offered her hand, made a small amount of conversation, and excused herself with the remark that she would be sitting close by and they would surely have time to talk over dinner. Koa took a moment longer than the others to work out what had happened, and settled on having been too unimportant to remember.

She was seated across from Aldo and beside Mikhail, which was her uncle’s arrangement, and she spent the meal a very long way from it. She made conversation when conversation reached her and there was nothing behind any of it. She had no interest in being there.

One thing moved her. When Nathan rose to thank the company on the town’s behalf and began the applause himself, Amanda was up out of her chair and clapping before most of the table, entirely present for the length of it. On the way out Mikhail stopped her to ask whether she would remember which one he was next time. She said of course she would, and used his name.