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with Medalon?”
    “I hope you’re right, Lecter, because I’ll be very put out if this doesn’t work.”
    Before Lecter could offer another obsequious reply, the doors opened and the Karien prince strode in, accompanied by his retinue. Hablet greeted them expansively and ordered the guards to bring chairs for the new arrivals.
    Lecter bowed low, mopped his brow and backed out of the room, leaving the king to his guests.

CHAPTER 4
    Everyone’s eyes were on Adrina as she strode down the long hall. As if to mock her, at the end of the hall, the princeling in question was heading toward her, with his gaggle of priests in tow.
    Except for the ball held in his honour the day of his arrival a week ago, Adrina had not seen the young prince, and counted herself lucky. He had spent the entire ball blushing an interesting shade of pink every time he caught sight of a Fardohnyan woman’s bare midriff. As every one of the two hundred or so women present had been dressed in a similar fashion, he was damned near apoplectic by the end of the evening. For a fleeting moment, she debated doing something truly outrageous, right here in the Hall, which would ensure the Kariens would reject her as a potential bride. But she had caught the expectant look on Lecter Turon’s smug, fat face as he slipped through the door to attend the king, and thought better of it. He would keep.
    She stopped and waited as the young prince approached. Tall, serious and boring did not particularly appeal to Adrina, but he was civilisedenough, she supposed. He was a little taller than her, with unremarkable brown hair, and eyes the colour of dried mud. At least he knew how to chew with his mouth closed.
    “Prince Cretin,” she said, offering him her hand. The older man on Cratyn’s right looked a little put out that she had greeted his prince as an equal, but Cratyn didn’t appear to notice. He was too busy staring at the pearl in her navel. “My father has just informed me that we are to be married.”
    Cratyn dropped her hand, jerked his head up and met her eye. He looked at her black eye curiously for a moment, but made no comment about it. Instead, he nodded—rather miserably, she noted with interest.
    “Karien welcomes Fardohnya’s favourite daughter, your Serene Highness,” he said in his clipped Karien. “We look forward to a new era of prosperity and friendship between our two great nations.”
    Someone sniggered in the background at the idea. Adrina looked at Cratyn curiously, wondering if he was really as naive as he sounded.
    “I look forward to serving Fardohnya and Karien, your Highness,” she replied graciously, in heavily accented Karien. Two could play this game, and Adrina could mouth meaningless platitudes in any number of languages, when the mood took her. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have arrangements to make for my journey.”
    Cratyn stepped aside for her, forcing the rest of his party to do the same.
    Adrina continued regally on through the hall. Until she came up with a way to escape her father’s decree, she had no choice but to play along with it.
    At least the meeting with the young Karien prince had not gone too badly. She had made it clear to the Kariens that she held a rank equal to their prince, and Cratyn had been rather overawed by her, she decided with satisfaction. But he wasn’t very happy with the idea of an arranged marriage. That much was obvious. It could simply be his distaste for a foreign bride—or perhaps he was smarter than he looked, and had some idea of how treacherous and unreliable her father was. She was almost back to her rooms, and still trying to puzzle it out, when a rather shamefaced Tristan caught up with her.
    “The last I heard, you were running away like a cur with its tail between its legs,” she snapped as he fell into step beside her.
    Tristan was younger than Adrina by two days, and until an hour ago, she had considered him her best friend. Tristan’s mother was a Hythrun