"Varlet! Do your worst!" Ulia shoved her guards aside and proudly hefted up her hems. "Toril itself shall expire before you manage to break the likes of me!"
Trailing a nervous procession of guards, Lady Ulia stormed away into the talons of her enemies. Outside the palace walls, the street crowds still excitedly bubbled as the new prince of Sumbria was showered endlessly with praise.
As far as cities went, Lomatra placed itself at the picturesque end of the scale. Overlooking the clear waters of the Akanamere and capped off with spectacular limestone promontories, the city had the look of a sleepy fishing village grown to unmanageable size. It seemed a land of pastel colors and evening hush, of warm lakefront and eccentric little trees bounded by a broad, deep river that masked the city from the mountain pass above. Miliana, who had spent her life confined to the Mannicci palace in Sumbria and a few closely chaperoned bridle paths, found the place utterly enchanting.
The city's general air of sleepiness and disarray were what annoyed Lorenzo the most. Clad in bedraggled clothing, tired and filthy from long sleepless nights beside the road, he surveyed his native land from the hills up above, and gave an irritated snarl.
The Blade Kingdoms were each quite tiny when measured on the scale of other lands. Each nation consisted of a single town, a few surrounding villages, and their supporting fields. Most could be crossed in less than a day's ride. Even so, the escape route taken by Miliana and her band had taken two weeks of vile, uncomfortable tedium. They each had only a single set of clothes, and those had been damp and muddy from their trip under the river gates. With no money, the group had been unable to afford food; dinner had been provided by Tekoriikii, who had scavenged rabbits, watermelons, and long poles threaded with dozens of dead, dried carp. While the bird seemed to enjoy the salty fish, no one else could bear to ever look a carp in the face again.
With brigands and rapacious refugees scouring the hills, Miliana and her friends had hidden in a cave for many long, boring days. Now bedraggled, scratched by brambles, and beset with chafing itches, they had all endured quite enough. Despite Lorenzo's protests, the footsore humans had shambled on to the promised haven of the Lomatran city walls.
Flying gaily overhead, Tekoriikii gave a screech of heartfelt joy and looped toward the sun. His companions glared up at him and muttered curses under their breath.
Miliana felt utterly exhausted; she had never walked a full day's march before in all her life. Footsore, unkempt, and smelling like a sea hag dragged backward through a sewer, she was quite ready to sell her soul for a decent bed and a massage. She watched, uncaring, as Lorenzo and Luccio exchanged conversation with the soldiers at Lomatra's gates, never even questioning why the gate commander offered her a horse.
The girl leaned upon Lorenzo for support. As she rode, Miliana nodded wearily, casting an eye up to a fine, half-timbered house that occupied the slope of a quiet hill.
"Where are we going? Is that an inn?"
"No… it's home." Lorenzo kept his shoulders hunched and kicked irritably at vagrant cobblestones. "My home. So now I have to crawl back in through the doors and beg for leave to stay."
"Oh?"
Miliana sensed a delicate situation in the offing, but was just too damned tired to care. She held Tekoriikii on the saddle bow before her and hugged him tight to keep him still. "What about Luccio? Does he have a house here too?"
Luccio answered with a polite cough, hiding his responding blush behind his hand.
"Yes. Ah-well… I suppose I am what is best called a 'boon companion.'"
"Meaning I have to convince my father to let him free-load from our kitchen once more." Lorenzo spared his own front door a bitter, reluctant glance. "All right, let's get this over with. He told me to bring home a princess-and now I'm bringing one…"
Pulling his ruined clothing into some semblance of shape, Lorenzo the artist, scion of the noble house of Utrelli, moved up to the thick wooden bars across the gatehouse door. An old man bearing a spiked wooden club scrabbled up from his comfortable chair behind the portal and waved the weapon back and forth above his head.
"Be off with you, ragamuffin! You'll get no charity here!"
"Oh, hush!" Miliana regarded the old man with a foul-tempered scowl. "Can't you see he's Lorenzo Utrelli?"
"He knows…" Lorenzo kicked at the gate in spite. "Open the gate, Alonzo, or I'll burn the damned thing down."
The old gatekeeper muttered; seething with dislike, he ripped open the locks and swung the heavy doors aside. Lorenzo led Miliana and Luccio in through the gatehouse, biting his thumb at the gatekeeper as he passed.
Just to prove superiority, Tekoriikii strutted back and forth past the old man three times, clucking to himself as he shook out his fabulous tail.
In a courtyard formed by a hollow square of half-timbered walls, Lorenzo handed Miliana down from her horse. The girl shot an ill-tempered glance back to the gate.
"Is he always like that?"
"Nasty old…" Lorenzo tried to help Miliana bash her hat back into a presentable cone. "I tried to replace him with an automatic door-opening machine."
"What-because it was less expensive?"
"No, because it would have offered better conversation." The young artist adjusted his rapier belt and headed for the stairs. "Come on up. Tekoriikii, leave him alone, you don't know where he's been!"
The group entered a darkly panelled, badly lit great hall that smelled of wood polish and fried onions. A pair of overfed maids took one look at Lorenzo, gave spiteful scowls, and stalked off without a word. Lorenzo ignored the scene and busied himself opening up the curtains, trying to bring some illumination to the room as he spoke for the benefit of his friends.
"Welcome to House Utrelli. Contents: One father-heavy cavalryman, retired. One brainless dolt of a younger brother-light cavalryman, not retired. The barracks house three hundred Lanze Spezzate, four noblemen, five squires, and a gatekeeper with a club. An environment tailor-made to foster hostility and hate." He turned as the sound of silks whispered down a connecting hall. "The house also contains one sister: Name-unimportant. Profession-gold digger."
The door opened, revealing the sister in question-tall, haughty, and wearing a well-stuffed court gown. She faced Lorenzo with a sweet, false smile and dropped herself into a little bow.
"Brother scribbler."
"Sister bloodsucker." Lorenzo looked at the girl with absolute, unfeigned dislike. "These are my friends. This is Princess Miliana. We've all just escaped the fall of Sumbria."
"Why, how very nice for them!" Lorenzo's sister simpered, keeping her malicious face locked into its perfect smile. "And so why have you brought them here?"
"Why do you think?" Lorenzo ignored the girl and began wrenching open doors. "Where's father?"
"Father has left word that he is not at home."
"Meaning that he is home and just doesn't want to see me." Lorenzo pulled open a broom cupboard and stuck his head inside. "Father?"
A muffled reply drifted through the wall; thrusting into the room came a massive, powerful old man. Although fully seven decades old, he towered over his own son by some six inches in height and fifty pounds of muscle mass.
Franco Utrelli, once a cavalier of the realm and now father to a nitwit inventor of a son, took one look at Lorenzo and let his nose wrinkle to a hidden smell.
"Oh, it's you." Lorenzo's father looked as though he had just trodden in something nasty. "Unless you've got a princess-get out."