She stood as close to directly beneath the King as she could manage.

She sighed. The wood was too dense, and blocked her aethereal sight completely, or at least too much for such a delicate working.

She passed back through the curtain, and past the guards. Men looked, and saw, or did not see, but now she passed among them, her will adamant, her face radiant.

One man sighed, and another groaned. But no one moved to stop her.

It was fifty paces to the end of the tall bleachers. She walked all the way, painfully aware that she had the eyes of a dozen men on her slim back. But no one shouted.

She passed the end of the bleachers. Out here, away from the pavilions and the enclosure for spare horses, the noise was greater. Above her in the stands, hundreds of ladies and gentlemen sat, eating morsels and drinking wine.

She turned and began to climb the steps. She climbed until she was parallel with the royal box. She could see a man in red who was probably the King, but long rows of people separated them, and his head bobbed back and forth.

The whole path from her position to the King was blocked with seated spectators.

She took a deep breath, and steadied her working. Then, to the first woman in the row, she said, “I’m sorry, I need to get to my father.”

The woman stood to let her pass, frowning.

“There’s someone coming,” her husband said. The man was short, and wide, and wore too much gold. “By God—it’s a whole team in red. Is it the King’s men?”

Amicia couldn’t help herself. She turned and looked.

Down at the entrance to the stands, fifty feet below her, there were ten knights and ten squires, all in brilliant steel armour—plate over maille, often edged in laten or bronze or brass.

She could see the Red Knight and the Green Knight, too. And Ser Tom.

The trumpeter was there as herald, dressed in the company scarlet with the lacs d’amour on his tabard.

Everyone in the stands was on their feet. Whether luck, fortune or God—she had her moment, and she scrambled along, no more interested in stealth, with the instinct of the pickpocket when a distraction is made available. She pushed and pressed almost recklessly.

The marshal strode across the lists. The crowd hushed.

Amicia pushed on.

The Red Knight’s herald raised his trumpet from his hip, and it unfurled with the white dove on a sun-in-splendor of the Queen.

The crowd roared.

The sound was so loud that it startled Amicia and she almost let her working fall. Her heart was pounding—

She wondered in the calm fastness of her palace what it was like to be in a closed helmet with nothing but the fear and all that sound, and all the hopes of thousands of people on your armour-burdened shoulders.