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thought of as a mediocre stable of court women, but she sometimes found them just as silly and hidebound as their older relatives, scandalized by the slightest variation from formal etiquette or tradition. Old Puzzle the jester was sitting with them, restringing his lute, biding his time until he could see what food the ladies might have in their hamper.
    The idea of withdrawing to the safety of the hill and watching the rest of the hunt while her ladies-in-waiting gossiped about people’s jewelry and clothes was too painful. Briony scowled and waved at one of the beaters as he staggered past with several of the heavy spears in his arms. “Give me one of those.”
    “What are you doing?” Barrick himself could not easily handle the long spears with only one arm, and had not bothered to call for one. “You can’t go near that creature. Kendrick won’t let you.”
    “Kendrick has quite enough to think about. Oh, gods curse it.” She scowled. Gailon of Summerfield had seen and was spurring toward them.
    “My lady! Princess!” He leaned out as if to take the spear from her, and only realized at the last moment that he would be overstepping. “You will hurt yourself.”
    She managed to control her voice, but barely. “I do know which end points outward, Duke Gailon.”
    “But this is not fitting for a lady . . . and especially with such a fearsome beast . . . !”
    “Then you must make sure and kill it first,” she said, a bit more gently but no more sweetly. “Because if it reaches me, it will get no farther.”
    Barrick groaned, then called the bearer back and took a spear for himself, clutching it awkwardly under one arm while still holding the reins.
    “And what are you doing?” she demanded.
    “If you’re going to be a fool, strawhead, someone has to protect you.”
    Gailon Tolly looked at them both, then shook his head and rode off toward Kendrick and the hounds.
    “I don’t think he’s very happy with us,” Briony said cheerfully. From somewhere back along the hillside she heard the master of arms shout her name, then her brother’s. “And Shaso won’t be either. Let’s go.”
    They spurred forward. The dogs, surrounded now by a ring of men with spears, were beginning to find their courage again. Several of the lymers darted into the copse to snap at the swift-moving, reddish shape. Briony saw the long neck move, quick as a whipcrack, and one of the dogs yelped in terror as it was caught in the long jaws.
    “Oh, hurry!” she said, miserable but also strangely excited. Again she could feel the presence of invisible things swirling like winter clouds. She said a prayer to Zoria.
    The dogs began to swarm into the copse in numbers, a flood of low shapes swirling in the dappled light beneath the trees, barking in frightened excitement. There were more squeals of pain, but then a strange, creaking bellow from the wyvern as one of the dogs got its teeth into a sensitive spot. The barking suddenly rose fiercely in pitch as the beast fought its way through the pack, trying to escape the confinement of the trees. It crushed at least one of the hounds under its clawed feet and gutted several others, shaking one victim so hard that blood flew everywhere like red rain. Then it burst out of the leaves and moving shadows into the clear afternoon sunlight, and for the first time Briony could see it whole.
    It was mostly serpentine body, a great tube of muscle covered with glimmering red and gold and brown scales, with a single pair of sturdy legs a third of the way down its length. A sort of ruff of bone and skin had flared out behind the narrow head, stretching even wider now as the thing rose up on those legs, head swaying higher than a man’s as it struck toward Kendrick and the two other nobles closest to it. It had come on them too quickly for the men to dismount and use their long boar spears properly. Kendrick waited until the strike had missed, then dug at the creature’s face with his spear. The