Followed by an ebb of silent soldiers, Svarezi rode back into the ranks.

Standing his horse on open ground, Colletro's Prince Ricardo glared back at Svarezi and discarded all thought of mere promises. Svarezi's lust for power was an appetite best left unfed. The prince gathered up his reins, left all thoughts of betrothals lying just where they belonged, and rode slowly forward to the grim business of the day.

"Miliana?

"Miliaaaa-naaaaaa!"

The last syllable stabbed through Sumbria's palace like an ice pick gouging through an eardrum. Propelled by feminine lungs strengthened by untold years of gossip and complaint, the summons pealed out through the corridors and palace towers until it set the chandeliers shivering like autumn leaves.

"Miliaaaa-naaaaaa!

"Miliana! Where are you, child? In the names of all the gods, will you just learn to simply answer when you are called?"

Locked up in the third story of the palace's most obscure and ill-regarded tower, Princess Miliana Mannicci Da Sumbria heard the summons and went into an instant frenzy of activity. Slim, dusted with freckles and half hidden behind a vast pair of owlish, expensive spectacles, the girl whipped through page after page of a great, ill-smelling book inscribed on toad skin. She desperately searched for the phrases of a spell-a process hampered by the fact that her rubbery book had been written in a language that she could scarcely understand. The fact that the author had barely understood the language either simply served to make the whole process as chaotic as imaginable. Miliana hastily scanned for key words, cramming bookmarks into pages that she hoped to study in greater detail later on.

"Miliana? Miliana! Pray, do not make me walk all the way up these accursed stairs!"

A lady of the Blade Kingdoms-a real lady, complete with demure expression, flowing gown, and tall pointy hat-most decidedly did not dabble in magic. And although Miliana's expression was more often irritable than demure, and though her gowns were somewhat more ink-spattered than fashion allowed, she admittedly did have a very pointy hat. The heavens only knew what would happen if her assorted guardians, tutors and watchdogs found out that she had ambitions for a mere craft such as magic; some vague, horrid punishment involving pruning onions or tending the sick. Miliana avoided the awful prospect of ever finding out by keeping her studies safely hidden, deep inside her lair.

Miliana's secret hoard of spellbooks had been found while digging about in a moldy old crypt in the rose gardens; each volume now had beautiful hand-stitched covers proclaiming them to be parts one through five of Lady Faveretti's Cookery Handbook for Erudite Young Girls (with an appendix on Poisoning for Beginners). Only the eerie fishy smell remained-a stench Miliana blamed on the nesting cormorants in the eaves of her tower.

After three solid years of practice, Miliana had still not yet managed to master a single sorcerous skill. The palace was continually beset with odd little accidents that she had thus far managed to explain away-although the recent fire in the west wing had stretched her powers of misdirection to their utter limit.

Three years of study! And now, finally, at the very moment of breakthrough, the very instant of casting her first spell, her idiotic stepmother had chosen to come lumbering up the tower stairs! Miliana searched for the badly scrawled syllables she needed, her freckles rippling as she screwed up her face in furious concentration.

"Miliana? Miliana-I am coming up!"

Damn! Dressed only in a silken shift, a chemise, three petticoats and a pair of fluffy slippers, Miliana scuttled crabwise about her desk, trying to dress herself while keeping her eyes riveted on her books. Sparing a quick glance for the door, Miliana hopped up and down on one foot and tried to draw a stocking up her leg while reading her spellbook upside down. She tied the stocking into place with a silken ribbon, holding one end of the bow between her teeth as she contorted herself like a mad fakir across her cluttered desk.

Although being a princess locked within a tower had a certain romantic charm, the locks in this case were all fastened from the inside, rather than from without. Even with a double drop-bar, the security was not enough; the tower door shuddered to a massive blow as an operatic female voice rose to a pitch of outrage just outside.

"Miliana! Miliana, open this door at once! I have never seen a child so willful, so incorrigible, and so ungrateful! Miliana? Miliana-this is beyond belief!"

Ulia Mannicci-fondly referred to as "The Hammer of the Gods" by half the Sumbrian court-had finally reached Miliana's lair. Speaking with a stepmother's authority, she shook and pounded imperiously at Miliana's door.

"Miliana? Miliana-I know you're in there! I am giving you until the count of ten, and then I shall fetch a wizard to knock this door down!" Ulia's voice warbled onward with scarcely a pause for breath. "I shall knock it down-and you shan't be allowed to have another! We shall send you to finishing school where you belong!

"I'm counting! I am counting-I swear!

"One…!"

Miliana spat out a curse and jammed a plain blue gown across her freckled limbs. Adjusting her lenses, she suddenly spied the spell she had been searching for-the perfect thing to grace a palace ball! Frozen to the spot, Miliana laced her bodice about her scrawny ribs and read the spell icons in breathless fascination.

"Eight…! Nine…! Nine and a half!"

With a groan of frustration, Miliana closed her eyes, tried to fix the spell in her mind's eye, and then buried the spellbook beneath sheet music and half finished embroideries. The girl hastily splashed her face with hot water from the kettle, threw yet more water on the tiles and artfully tossed towels across every chair-back in line of sight. As her stepmother's count reached nine and eleven sixteenths-and since further fractions were well beyond Lady Ulia's intellectual capacity-Miliana flung herself to the door, somehow kicking her fluffy slippers out of sight. She ripped aside two iron bolts, a padlock and three security chains, then heaved open the door and assumed a mask of absolute, innocent surprise.

"Why Ulia! Dear Ulia-why ever didn't you knock?"

Lady Ulia Mannicci, wife of Prince Cappa Mannicci, stepmother to Miliana, and First Lady of Sumbria, sailed into the room like a gilded pleasure barge. Dressed in half an acre of silks and proceeded by a shock-front of perfumes, Lady Ulia bore her stepdaughter aside and made a stately royal progress about Miliana's rooms.

"Miliana! Miliana, what in the world are you doing sitting here like a haundar in its lair when there are visitors to be entertained?" Fanning at her face and exhausted by her journey up two whole flights of stairs, Lady Ulia heaved her mountainous bosom and tried to catch her breath. "I must say-in my youth, such things simply were not done! The daughter of a noble house-a Blade House, a princely house, and an ancient house at that-took her duties seriously! To think what would happen to this palace if the worst ever overcame me! Disaster! Disaster!" A silk fan stirred up a wild, perfume-sodden breeze. "Have you not a thought for your poor stepmother's peace of mind?"

Braced against a wall to weather the onslaught of Ulia's self-pity, Miliana heaved a tired breath and pushed out into the room. An irritating stepmother seemed to be an integral part of the "princess" lifestyle; Miliana wearily prepared to keep the peace.

"I am getting ready for the party! I was in the bath."

"The bath? The bath!" Ulia surged forward in a tidal wave of indignation. "Bathing will avail you no advantages, my girl! I have it on good authority that water against the skin introduces rude humors into the bloodstream!"