“They saw something …”

“So they say.” The look the huntsman flashed toward the elf nobles who waited politely for the king to lead the chase was poisonous. “No proper hound can both scent and gaze.”

“Bide here, then, until I return,” Kieri said. The huntsman opened his mouth, but the look Kieri gave him shut it again. Kieri lifted his reins. “Come, gentlefolk,” he said in the pleasantest tone he could manage, and Oak broke to a gallop. Behind him, the soft thunder of hooves indicated that they’d all followed. They’d better, he thought. He would deal with the huntsman later.

Still, after the first stag fell to his arrow and the hunt settled to business, he felt it had not been a useless endeavor. Both packs of hounds ended up working together; some of the men and elves exchanged near-friendly banter along with compliments on a good shot or a handsome mount. The hunting party returned in late afternoon, followed by the pack ponies laden with enough game for what he was already calling—in his own mind only—“A Feast of Princesses.”

What mattered more than princesses were the two packs of hounds now trotting along side by side, the set of their ears and tails suggesting the kind of cooperation he’d hoped for. He glanced around. Though the bulk of the elves still rode to the left, the heart-side, and the bulk of the men still rode to the right, the sword-side, he saw man and elf chatting peaceably in the middle, both individuals and small groups. He hoped his father and sister would have approved.

Once back at the palace, he was immediately besieged by the Pargunese princess’s guardian, a sour-faced woman who declared herself Countess Settik. Complaint after complaint, starting with the baths.

“Barbaric,” she said. “Tubs, as if we were piles of dirty clothes! And so small. And dirty bits of weed thrown in!”

“Herbs,” Kieri said. “To scent the water.”

“At home,” she said, “we have proper baths. We don’t have to climb up steps and into cramped little tubs—we step down into heated pools where the water moves and is always fresh. It is an insult to guests to make them use what is nothing more than an oversized bucket. You must grant us the use of your bath. If you are ashamed to be seen as the gods made you, we can bathe at a different time, but I will not—not, I tell you—fold myself into that—that article again.”

“I use one,” Kieri said.

She sniffed. “I don’t believe you. No king would.”

“I do not know what your baths are like,” Kieri said firmly, “but everyone here uses a tub. If you insist, you may inspect my bathing room—”

He had not believed she would be so rude, but she did insist, complaining all the way to and from it of other indignities: being lodged across the hall from the princess instead of in an adjoining room, having no separate kitchen where food could be prepared under her own eyes. Kieri declined to inflict her on his own cooks. Nor did she approve of the King’s Squires Kieri had assigned to the princess Elis—all, he insisted, honorable women.