“Indeed, he is, Your Highness,” the Seneschal said, as both the Rethwellan Ambassador and the Ambassador from Hardorn leaned closer in order to hear. “He and the Equitation Instructor have found it an invaluable substitute for melee and skirmish training. They say they have found that both the mounted and foot versions are equally valuable. And it is all the better for the fact that the Trainees want to do it, and several of them spend a great deal of their free time in practice at it. We are restricting the mounted version to the final-year students, however, given the level of expertise required, and the danger involved.”

“Better a broken bone or two now, than something worse in combat,” Selenay said, sobered by her recollection of another spring day—nearly this time last year—

Then she shook off her melancholy. This was supposed to be a day given over to relaxation and pleasure, and she was not going to spoil it. “Well, gentlemen, you can tell your friends and kin back in your homelands that we here in Valdemar know how to provide both novelty and entertainment for our guests,” she said lightly. “I do believe that was the first ever public game of mounted Hurlee.”

“And I hope you will convey my admiration to your Weaponsmaster for finding so clever a solution for a training dilemma,” the Prince said with a smile. “Though I will confess, if that is the level that he trains to, he is fully as expert as our own Weaponsmaster at home—though perhaps not quite to the exacting standard of Swordmistress Tarma shena Tale’sedrin, the famed Shin’a’in who trained my father and older brother.”

“But not you?” asked the Hardornan Ambassador, and Selenay had the oddest sensation that he knew something about Karath that he would like very much for Karath to reveal. Something unflattering…

Though why he would wish for such a thing—

Ambassadors are always jockeying for favor. I suppose he thinks that if Karath appears less than perfect, I will lose interest in him. Absurd.