She put her arms out horizontally while the pages fastened the belt of tooled black leather around her waist. The purse on one side was largely ornamental, but the dagger on the other was ten inches long and fully functional, for all the tooling and silver cutwork on the sheath.

Lioncel insisted on getting on a stool and combing her hair, though strictly speaking that was no longer his duty, and carefully placed the chaperon hat of the nobility on her head. It was round and black, with a broad brim of rolled cloth and a long flat green tail called a liripipe down the back; he arranged the end over her right shoulder. Then he gave the livery badge above her brow a quick buff; it was Sandra’s arms quartered with her own.

Two pages brought a flat carrying case. Lioncel used a key to open it, and drew out the gold chain of office he placed around her neck; with similar reverence he pinned the knot of ribbons that was Delia’s favor on her upper sword-arm.

“You can carry the sword, Lioncel,” she said.

He started to grin and then composed his face gravely though his blue eyes sparkled with excitement; he’d managed to make himself quite presentable, too, in a dark brown outfit with a squire’s brimless flowerpot hat.

You didn’t wear a long sword to a formal meal; not these days, when Eaters or enemies were less likely to crawl down the chimney or burst through the door between the soup and the main course waving rusty kitchen knives and lusting for your flesh or at least your dinner and shoes. But a squire would carry hers behind her with the belt wound around the scabbard, sign of the High Justice and her jurisdiction throughout the Association by right of office. It was a more practical reminder than a gold chain with a heraldic medallion, since the hilt would be within reaching distance. And in the Association they didn’t bother to deny that Justice carried a sword.

“Sir Rodard,” she added as she signed the pages away and picked a rose out of a vase, trimming it and threading the stem through a buttonhole, leaving the great red bloom at her throat. “Did you send that girl in with the towels?”

“Yes, of course, my lady,” he said, coming through the door and looking her over critically. “Splendid, my lady. Just the right touch of the sinister amid the dark elegance.”

“Why did you do that, may I ask?”

“Modesty, my lady. It wouldn’t be fitting for a man to carry the towels into your bathing chamber.”

“Rodard, how many times have we ended up squatting over the same trench in the field?”

“This is the City Palace of the Counts of the Eastermark, my lady.”

“Bullshit. I think it was your perverse sense of humor.”

“I have been well trained in skill and courtesy, my lady.”