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disappeared into the shadows of the Wood. The woman with feathered hair folded her fabrics and glided away as gently as a leaf on the wind. Jugglers pocketed their balls and knives; dancers wound up their scarves like birds drawing in their wings.
    In a long, steady line, they streamed back into Goldstone Wood as quietly as they had come, until all that remained to give testimony to their presence were a few glowing baubles no bigger than marbles, a flower worked in silver that wilted and budded and bloomed again and again as you blinked, and other forgotten trinkets. A faint scent of roses lingered in one corner of the lawn. As the night deepened, even these disappeared, fading into memory as distant as the oldest myths.
    But the Prince of Farthestshore, followed by ugly Sir Oeric and two other tall knights, climbed the King’s Way to Oriana Palace, and the guards at Westgate trembled as they admitted him to Fidel’s household.

3
    Fidel’s dining hall was older than the rest of Oriana Palace. It had been built in the days of King Abundiantus V many hundreds of years ago, in the old style with enormous doors opening to the east and to the west. In the middle of the hall, on a dais, stretched the long table of the king.
    The king himself sat in a gilded chair, his back to the north wall, upon which hung a fantastic tapestry of a maiden and a unicorn – which, incidentally, looked nothing like the unicorns seen in the market that morning, being rather more of the classical horse-and-horn nature.
    Felix, suffering agonies in a collar that stuck out like a peacock’s tail behind his head, sat at his father’s right hand. Una, hardly any happier, took a place on the other side of Felix, partly because precedent required it, partly because King Fidel expected her to keep her brother on his best behavior, an expectation Una found rather difficult to bear at times.
    The elegant chair on the king’s left remained unoccupied. Once upon a time, Una’s mother had presided over all the great feasts of Par-umvir from that place; but that had been years ago now, and the seat had remained empty ever since the queen’s death. Una, when she took her place beside her brother – the wires supporting her petticoats creaking dangerously as she arranged them – allowed herself one forlorn hope that perhaps Prince Aethelbald, once he arrived, would be invited to sit on her father’s left side. It would, after all, be an honor suited to a prince of so purportedly great a kingdom.
    But no, the practical side of her insisted, that would be too much to hope. She was fated, she knew, to have him seated beside her for the entire evening. She eyed the empty place conveniently located on her right with a sigh that gently puffed one of her hair plumes.
    “Why the long face?” Felix asked with a smirk. Being stuffed into his best clothing always made him disagreeable, and Una chose to ignore him, expressing through straight shoulders and an icily set jaw an unwillingness to talk. But Felix wasn’t one to pick up on nonverbal signals. “Any suitor is better than no suitor at all, right?”
    “Felix,” Fidel said in a warning tone.
    The prince slouched into silence and pulled at his collar. Una took a moment to scan the assembly up and down the hall. Lower tables below the upraised one at which she sat were filled with all the various courtiers of Oriana Palace, the visiting nobles of Parumvir, barons and dukes and ladies of high rank, all the dignitaries and ambassadors from other kingdoms and provinces, from Milden and Beauclair and Shippening. Every one of them had come to welcome this prince from the Far World.
    And every one of them was watching her.
    She hated that.
    “Pssst!” Felix hissed and nudged her. She turned sharply and regretted it when the tower of her hair swayed threateningly. She put up a hand to steady it and glared at her brother. “What?”
    “You want to know something fishy about this lover of yours?”
    “No,”