24

On the appointed day, 'tis within the hour after the first changing of the Guard when the Gramercy nobles and all their train make their appearance at Westfenster's gates.

A considerable party it is, near a hundred with all the ladies-in-waiting and menials in tow. The sight of their soldiers makes it clear why they were such indispensable allies in the Flenish Wars; stocky as hay bales they are, with the keen, flat gazes of souls ever ready to draw blades and let the blood spill where it may.

Such soldiers would likely not submit to the outlandish fashions that the nobles sport, and which much of Westfenster's polite society is garbed in by way of solidarity. Their starchy neck ruffs are like great deadly doilies, and the thin forked capes they wear are like serpents' tongues pulled, trophy-like, from the fantastic and terrible beasts of pre-history.

Yet they project an air of self-assuredness that belies the oddness of their frippery…especially Lady Gramercy, called Hotfoot, the head of the clan at a scant twoscore years of age. A brilliant warrior, she survived internecine battles where her elders did not and rose to unite the various noble houses as none before in her region. Though all smiles at the head of her victory parade now, her temper is the stuff of legend.

Much gossip has leapt from lips to ears within the palace walls about how His Lugubriousness King Saul, he of the whispered voice and the staid expression, will manage dealings with the vivacious firebrand Hotfoot. Will he master her though subtlety, or be as a hare cowering in a stampede of stallions?