Her escape ploy served her little good; assorted predators marked her by the towering height of her conical hat and veil, and soon the chase was on.

Consider a room:

A large room-open, vast and airy. A place of white colonnades and barrel-vaults, where the ceiling had been painted with cherubim and seraphim, and where the polished floor had been spread with chalk to give purchase to a dancer's feet. A place as elegant and as tasteful as centuries of refinement could allow.

Despite the restrained tastefulness of the architecture, the palace ballroom now smote the eye like a multicolored claw hammer. Hundreds of celebrants packed the colonnades and floors-nobility decked out in eye-wrenching, tasteless splendor. Slashed tunics, tight hose, and loose-laced doublets adorned the strutting men, while the women cruised beneath headdresses adorned with points, turbans, battlements and horns. Music swelled and fine wines poured, as the culture of the self-obsessed luxuriated in a glorious afternoon.

The Manniccis' palace looked out across fields of grape vines and olive groves, up on a land of rolling hills and gentle ochre-colored dust. Within the halls they had laid tables heaped with the choicest foods, serviced and maintained by waiters who were the very essence of magnificent disdain.

On the dance floor, half a hundred brilliantly clad men and women turned and stepped to the intricate measures of an arrogant pavane. The dancers seemed to be split evenly between demure artistes and strutting, posing figures who swung briskly back and forth to slash the other dancers with their swinging capes and sleeves.

Above the dancers, a dense crowd had converged-the elderly, the pompous, the wealthy and elite. Sumbria's Blade Captains each boasted a palace of his own-a palace well stuffed with wives and daughters, dowagers and sons, all of whom now claimed a place at the Manniccis' victory ball. Soldiers who had returned home from the wars each formed the center of a small admiring crowd; here and there a man still wore an armored gorget or kept his arm inside a sling, artfully attracting the attention of the ladies in the hall.

Hovering beside a table strewn with orange rinds, roast ostriches, and singing fish, a thin, rather unhappy young man hovered in the shadows and played with his nails. Tall and forlorn, with unfashionably long, straggling hair and a court costume smelling of mothballs, the youth clutched a leather folder to his breast and watched the festival sweep dizzily past his eyes.

Hanging between two of Sumbria's "young blades," a brash young nobleman spied the youth and veered over to his side. Helping himself to a chilled bottle of wine, the newcomer thrust drink into his companion's hand.

"Lorenzo! Lorenzo, you look like a landed fish. Dance and drink-lie to women and flash your blade!" The noble clapped a hand against his dress sword-a silly toy that would have scarcely tickled a mouse-and clung to his companion in an unsteady daze. "We are an embassy! And an ambassador must make an impression-an impression of strength."

Lorenzo saved his folder from splashing wine as his friend collapsed into a velvet-covered chair and planted his boots between the eyes of a roasted ostrich.

Lorenzo Utrelli, scion of the Blade Kingdom of Lomatra and a visitor to Sumbria's court, stared at his friend with outrage and surprise.

"Luccio! Luccio-you're drunk."

"Drunk as a… as an animal that drinks a lot. Indeed! Indeed." Lorenzo's friend poured himself more Sumbrian wine, managing to come quite close to actually putting wine inside his glass. "I have been fostering diplomatic goodwill."

"Luccio, if the ambassador finds you, we're both dead!" Wrenching the drunk out of sight behind a platter of stuffed hamsters in sauce, Lorenzo unsuccessfully tried to draw his friend erect. "Look-brace up! Breathe deeply or something."

"Lorenzo, Lorenzo, Lorenzo!"

Luccio swung his friend about by the shoulders and led the nervous youth back out toward the dance floor. "I'm the one in the middle, actually," Lorenzo muttered.

"Why is it? Why, why, why is it that you never, ever, ever have fun?" Luccio blew a drunken breath out between his mustache hairs and rolled his head to watch a stately, slender damsel wiggle past. "You are here upon a hunt, my boy! You have been offered the possibility of marrying a princess, and I…" Here, Luccio thumped his chest with one hand, splashing wine all across his clothes. "I am commanded to assist you upon the hunt!"

"I don't want a hunt, and I don't want a princess." Lorenzo's face fell into a scowl. "I am here to seek a haven from Lomatran… Lomatran… pedantry! Lomatran conservatism! Sumbria is a place where a scholar can breathe free."

"Then breathe, my child. Breathe!" Luccio managed to tip his glass and pour a stream of wine across the floor. "And as you breathe, think what difference an income-a princess's income-might make to your studies of the arts. As your boon companion, it is my duty to see you find the solaces of love."

"Love?" Lorenzo gave a sniff of scorn. "I don't even remember this princess creature's name!"

"There's no need to even ask, my boy. A princess can be spotted from a mile!"

Reeling his head back, Luccio gazed upside down across the dance floor and gave a sigh.

"Lorenzo-Sumbrian women! Have you seen them? Have you smelled them? They make our own girls seem like heifers in a barn!" He flipped open his friend's folder and prodded at a charcoal sketch scribbled on one page. "Sumbrian women! Now there is a subject fit for art. Find a model, my boy. Find a nude model if you can! Something brim full with enigma and charm."

Lomatra sought Sumbria as a military ally-a fact that made every devout bachelor in Lomatra's nobility feel intensely nervous. Lorenzo, scion of a noble house, was young, unmarried, and available; assets, the ambassador assured him, which made him an ideal match.

Ideal or not, Lorenzo would see to it that this lunacy went no further. He had been lured to Sumbria on false pretenses, but now that he had arrived, he would use the opportunity to its full. The libraries and schools of the city beckoned; Lorenzo's freedom had finally arrived!

Sumbrian women were everywhere-tall, stately, and threatening. Any one of them might be a predatory princess. Lorenzo flicked his eyes across the room like a rabbit scanning from its burrow for a sight of hunting hounds, and clutched his art folio protectively against his breast.

Women turned in his direction, obviously scanning for prey. Sinking into the darkness of an alcove, Lorenzo hastily retreated backward around a potted palm, and suddenly felt something soft collide against his rear.

"Ouch! Fool!"

A girl spilled to the floor, plunging through potted plants with a deafening crash of noise. She landed hard on her backside amidst a staring crowd of Sumbrian noblemen.

"Oaf!"

"Sorry! Oh-um-sorry."

Lorenzo tried to help the girl to rise, only to have his hands slapped irritably away. Snarling curses as she rubbed at her injured backside, the girl rose with a ripple of long brown hair. Shoving her tall hat back into place, she whipped about and spared Lorenzo a sharp stab of a glance through a great round pair of thick glass lenses.

All around the dance floor, heads began to turn. The girl seemed to draw stares like sha'az eggs drew hauns. Male dancers paused in midstep, abandoned their partners and advanced upon the girl. Other men tugged tunics straight or puffed themselves with perfume before launching into the attack. Lorenzo blinked and stared as the girl retreated back into a corner, pursued by every young buck within a hundred yards.

She retreated, leaving Lorenzo to stare dumbly after her in shock.