The Megas Dukas and the Magister Magi both bowed.

An armourer appeared at the door. He was very nervous, and Toby poured him a cup of cider, warm from the shoe on the hearth, and tried to calm him.

“I am to fit the empress!” he said.

Anne slipped into the bedroom and emerged with the empress, who was clearly not wearing anything under a linen shift, which added magnificently to the armourer’s confusion.

“Your . . . sabatons . . . were too tight? Highness.”

Blanche smiled. “So they were, sir.”

She sat; Beatrice laced on her arming shoes. The armourer stepped forward and put the sabatons on. His hands were shaking.

Toby glanced at Anne and found that she was looking at him.

An eternity passed, and both of them were still in gaze-lock. Toby realized that someone had said his name.

The empress was smiling. “Toby?” she asked.

“Your Grace?”

“Get the poor man a cup of wine,” she said.

Toby fetched wine, and helped the armourer away from the empress’s feet. Blanche was trying not to laugh.

“Just a matter of a small change,” the armourer said. “The rivets have to be just so loose. So happy . . .”

Blanche rose. The man stuttered and managed a very sketchy bow.

“They are perfect,” the empress said. “I could dance in them.” She began to execute the steps of an Etruscan court dance that she and Beatrice did every morning, her steel-clad feet winking in the candlelight. Her sabatons were edged in gold.

“I have never seen anything so beautiful,” the armour said. “Oh! I said that out loud.”

He turned bright red; so red that Toby was afraid he might do himself a mischief, and he guided the man to a table and put wine in his hand. The empress grinned at her lady and then indicated the steel shoes, and Beatrice had them off in a flash.

“You’ll start a new fashion,” young Beatrice said. “We’ll all have to have armour.” She giggled. But she wiped the fingerprints from the steel with her very practical apron, and set the sabatons down with the rest of the harness laid out on the solar’s carpet by the fire.

The armourer watched Toby examine the sword.

“May I touch it?” he asked.

Toby held it out, and the man simply put a finger on the hilt, and grinned. “Ah,” he said in Galle. “What a night! I touched the empress, and the emperor’s sword.” He rose and walked out.

Toby followed him as far as the storeroom on the corridor, where he fetched a strop and a bowl. While Anne and Beatrice tidied away the last few things, he took some paste of wax and pumice and touched up the sharp blade of the war sword.