There seemed to be a great deal of activity going on in the palace. Windows kept popping open, and excited people stuck their heads out to gape.

‘It’s the steel clothing, I think,’ Fontan observed to the queen. ‘The appearance of your Majesty’s escort on the doorstep may very well set a new fashion. A whole generation of tailors may have to learn black-smithing.’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, well,’ he added. ‘It’s a useful trade. They can always shoe horses when business is slow.’ He looked at his pupil, who had returned to the carriage. ‘You should have sent word on ahead, Oscagne. Now we’ll have to wait while everyone inside scurries around to make ready for us.’

After several minutes, a group of liveried trumpeters filed onto a balcony over the palace door and blew a shattering fanfare. The courtyard was enclosed by stone buildings, and the echoes from the trumpets were almost sufficient to unhorse the knights. Fontan climbed down from the carriage and offered Ehlana his arm with a graceful courtliness.

‘Your Excellency is exquisitely courteous,’ she murmured.

‘Evidence of a misspent youth, my dear.’

‘Your teacher’s manner seems quite familiar, Ambassador Oscagne,’ Stragen smiled.

‘My imitation of him is only a poor shadow of my master’s perfection, Milord.’ Oscagne looked fondly at his wrinkled tutor. ‘We all try to imitate him. His successes in the field of diplomacy are legendary. Don’t be deceived, Stragen. When he’s being urbane and ironically humorous, he’s completely disarming you and gathering more information about you than you could ever imagine. Fontan can read a man’s entire character in the twitch of one of his eyebrows.’

‘I expect I’ll be quite a challenge to him,’ Stragen said, ‘since I don’t have any character to speak of.’

‘You deceive yourself, Milord. You’re not nearly as unprincipled as you’d like us to believe.’

A stout factotum in splendid scarlet livery escorted them into the palace and along a broad, well-lit corridor. Ambassador Oscagne walked just behind him, identifying the members of their party as they went.

The broad doors at the end of the corridor swung wide, and their liveried guide preceded them into a vast, ornate throne-room filled with excited courtiers. The factotum thunderously pounded on the floor with the butt of the staff which was his badge of office. ‘My Lords and Ladies,’ he boomed, ‘I have the honour to present her Divine Majesty, Queen Ehlana of the Kingdom of Elenia!’

‘Divine?’ Kalten murmured to Sparhawk.

‘It grows more evident as you get to know her better.’

The liveried herald continued his introductions, laboriously embellishing their individual titles as he presented them. Oscagne had quite obviously done his homework very thoroughly, and the herald dusted off seldom-used ornaments of rank in his introductory remarks. Kalten’s nearly-forgotten baronetcy emerged. Bevier was exposed as a viscount, Tynian as a duke, and Ulath as an earl. Most surprising of all perhaps was the revelation that Berit, plain, earnest Berit, had been concealing the title of marquis in his luggage. Stragen was introduced as a baron. ‘My father’s title,’ the blond thief explained to them in an apologetic whisper. ‘Since I killed him and my brothers, I suppose it technically belongs to me – spoils of war, you understand.’

‘My goodness,’ Baroness Melidere murmured, her blue eyes alight, ‘I seem to be standing in the middle of a whole constellation of stars.’ She seemed positively breathless.

‘I wish she wouldn’t do that,’ Stragen complained.

‘What’s the problem?’ Kalten asked him.

‘She makes it seem as if the light in her eyes is the sun streaming in through the hole in the back of her head. I know she’s far more clever than that. I hate dishonest people.’

‘You?’

‘Let it lie, Kalten.’

The throne-room of King Alberen of Astel was filled with an awed silence as the eminence of the visitors was revealed. King Alberen himself, an ineffectual-looking fellow whose royal robes looked a size or so too large for him, seemed to shrink with each new title. Alberen, it appeared, had weak eyes, and his myopic gaze gave him the fearful, timid look of a rabbit or some other such small helpless animal which all other creatures look upon as a food source. The splendour of his throne-room seemed to shrink him all the more, the wide expanses of crimson carpets and drapes, the massive gilt and crystal chandeliers and marble columns providing an heroic setting which he could never hope to fill.

Sparhawk’s queen, regal and lovely, approached the throne on Ambassador Fontan’s arm with her steelplated entourage drawn up around her. King Alberen seemed a bit uncertain about the customary ceremonies. As the reigning monarch of Astel, he was entitled to remain seated upon his throne, but the fact that his entire court genuflected as Ehlana passed intimidated him, and he rose to his feet and even stepped down from the dais to greet her.

‘Now has our life seen its crown,’ Ehlana proclaimed in her most formal and oratorical style, ‘for we have, as God most surely must have decreed since time’s beginning, come at last into the presence of our dear brother of Astel, whom we have longed to meet since our earliest girlhood.’

‘Is she speaking for all of us?’ Talen whispered to Berit. ‘I didn’t really have a girlhood, you know.’

‘She’s using the royal plural,’ Berit explained. ‘The queen’s more than one person. She’s speaking for the entire kingdom.’

‘We are honoured more than we can say, your Majesty,’ Alberen faltered.

Ehlana quickly assessed her host’s limitations and smoothly adopted a less formal tone. She abandoned ceremony and unleashed her charm on the poor fellow. At the end of five minutes they were chatting together as if they had known each other all their lives. At the end of ten, he’d have given her his crown had she asked for it.

After the obligatory exchanges, Sparhawk and the other members of Ehlana’s entourage moved away from the throne to engage in that silly but necessary pastime known as ‘circulating’. They talked about the weather mostly. The weather is a politically correct topic. Emban and Archimandrite Monsel, the head of the Church of Astel, exchanged theological platitudes without touching on those doctrinal differences which divided their two Churches. Monsel wore an elaborate mitre and intricately embroidered vestments. He also wore a full black beard that reached to his waist.