The Mannicci troops formed a tiny army all their own. There were battle mages with their protective squads of apprentices and pavisiers, pikemen, hippogriffs, and cross-bowmen in their droves. Billmen with their wickedly hooked blades, perfectly designed for unhorsing cavalry and deflecting pikes, marched to the fore. Prince Mannicci returned a salute from the golden, prancing lines of his own cavalry, then idly turned to watch his counsellors at play.

Fuming white with rage from some unimaginable wrong, Blade Captain Toporello watched the infantry march by and wrung his reins between his fists like a pair of chicken necks.

Prince Mannicci frowned; for parades, Toporello usually decked his horse out in a harness of star sapphires. The prince blinked at the older man's shabby leather horse trappings, scratched his beard, and decided to let the topic slide.

Passing behind a clean, gleaming squadron of hippogriff cuirassiers, Gilberto Ilego swung his mount about to slide in beside the prince. Ilego's horse curvetted prettily, allowing the bright morning sun to strike sparks along its copper mane.

"An impressive inspection, sire. Most enlightening."

Ilego had hardly even spared the assembled troops a glance. He matched his horse's pace to that of his prince and posed himself in thought; an artful display designed to convey both elegance and surprise.

Mannicci ignored him, covering his hate by turning his face toward the lines of marching men. Ilego smiled at the slight, taking perverse pleasure in swapping idle talk.

"Sire, I do believe that is your daughter on the balcony."

"Like enough." Mannicci scarcely cared enough to confirm it with a glance. "Her room is just above."

"Aaaaaah." Ilego swiveled snake-bright eyes toward his prince. "A pretty girl, by all accounts."

"I'd like to see whose accounts. I'd like to hire him." Prince Mannicci stirred laggards from his baggage train with a prod of his mace. "He'd be inexpensive to keep; such a man would like his meat very plain."

"But surely, my lord, she has spirit?"

"In a sense," said Mannicci. In truth, he rarely bothered to think about his sole offspring's character. Spirit in a daughter was considered about as desirable as dorsal guidance feathers on a prize-winning merino ram. "I believe she is a quiet girl-though much troubled by rats."

"Rats, my lord?"

"So I am told."

Prince Mannicci had neither the time nor inclination to bother himself about his daughter. His first spouse had died young; Mannicci's choice of a second wife had done much to line his own coffers, but very little to increase his domestic bliss. He knew he really ought to beget himself a son; unfortunately, Ulia Mannicci was the finest contraceptive device known to the Blade Kingdoms.

At his side, Gilberto Ilego turned his horse to face the palace balconies.

"You are hard on the girl. There are tales, my lord, of princesses whose beauty launched a thousand ships." Ilego faced his monarch with a bow. "Perhaps your own daughter might aspire to such a thing in her own small way. "A thousand troops, perhaps?"

Prince Mannicci dug his heels down and halted his mighty horse, creasing the corners of his eyes as he let his mind explore the flavor of Ilego's schemes.

A welcome diversion came in the form of a skinny youth dressed in the velvet finery of the royal court. The young man hovered nearby, wide eyed as a blushing beholder; he kept a leather portfolio clamped tight against his heart, as though he were using it to keep his internal organs from erupting out through his chest.

Prince Mannicci regarded the boy with a heavy frown; eye contact apparently won him a friend for life, and the youth instantly lunged forward and performed something that might possibly be mistaken for a bow.

"My lord! M-my lord prince." The boy almost choked himself on his own tongue as he hopelessly addled a carefully prepared speech. "Sir-I merely wished to say how… how invigorating your kingdom seems. How fresh, how inviting, how active!"

Insanity in a man so young seemed such a pitiable thing; Prince Mannicci leaned back in his saddle, cocking an ear toward Ilego, who duly leaned forward to whisper quiet words.

"It is one of the young gentlemen from Lomatra, my lord."

"Oh. Oh, yes." Aha-the prospective groom! Mannicci felt a sudden surge of interest. "Lorenzo Utrelli, I presume?"

The boy took the prince's smile as instant encouragement.

"My lord? My lord, I wondered if I might speak with you awhile? That is-I wonder if I can show you…"

At this point, the leather portfolio flipped open; cramming the wad of papers into the bole of a tree, Lorenzo inserted himself between the two older men and proudly spread out a parchment smothered in designs.

"My lords-I have ideas! Concepts, theories and designs the likes of which the world has never seen. Designs that will thrill you, my lords. Thrill you to the core!"

Prince Mannicci, ever the diplomat, wearily prepared himself to be bored. In contrast, Blade Captain Ilego stroked his mustache and cast an amused eye across the boy's diagrams.

"Say on, lad. Say on. It cannot be any less entertaining than the parade."

Finding himself with an audience at long last, Lorenzo seated himself in the crutch of an olive tree and used a green twig to point out the salient points of his inventions.

"Look you, sirs. I have been studying basic natural phenomena with an eye to making these phenomena work with us-for us." Paper fluttered as the boy avidly flicked through page after page of incomprehensible scrawls. "Ah! For instance… here-do you see? I have been experimenting with the forces that make solid objects fall."

A drawing appeared; a drawing showing a very badly rendered stick figure dropping objects from a tower. Lorenzo unleashed his excitement in measured little chunks, marking each point with a sharp wave of his olive twig.

"Now, consider the downward path of a falling object. Let us take two items identical in weight. A pound of feathers, and a pound of lead. Which of them will fall more slowly?"

"A pound of feathers." Mannicci suddenly found that he approved of the boy's logical mind-a reasonably desirable trait in a potential son-in-law. "What is your point?"

"Aaaah-but why do the feathers fall more slowly? The answer is, simply, air resistance! The feathers present a broad face to the air, thus slowing their descent due to the viscous qualities of the air itself."

Sitting cross-legged in his tree, Lorenzo made his points stab forward one by one.

"So, how is this phenomena useful to us? Well firstly, we have discovered that narrow objects fall more swiftly. I feel this may be useful for making some sort of aerial dart, or what I call a 'bomb.' But, certainly more valuable than that, I believe I can now create a fall-breaking machine! A device made from cloth that will slow the speed of a man's descent through the air, allowing him to alight as safe as if he were a pixie."

This declaration was met by a confused silence from the two armored noblemen. Loath to break the lad's enthusiasm, Prince Mannicci nevertheless felt it behooved him to give the boy unkind news.

"But my dear-um…"

"Lorenzo, my lord. Lorenzo Utrelli Da Lomatra!"

"Yes, quite…" The boy had the innocent, doelike eyes of a pet fawn unaware that it was being massaged with marinade. Prince Mannicci heaved an unhappy little sigh. "Yet, you must ask yourself, Lorenzo, just why you feel such a device to be useful?"

"Think of it, my lord. We could use my fall-breakers as a safety device… say, for the riders of hippogriffs."

"But our hippogriff riders are already provided with magical protection for such a case." The prince indicated an overflying squadron with a pained wave of his mace. "A one-use ring of feather falling, in point of fact…"