Figuring out what to wear was a problem, because I only had plain, dark-colored tunics and leggings. In the end, I borrowed a light blue tunic from Cara and brushed my hair and hoped it would do.

I could tell the moment I entered the Noble Hall that it wouldn't.

Quickly, I jerked back out of the huge room. My brief glance had showed me a golden hall full of lords and ladies in flimsy satin and silk, the men wearing ornamental daggers at their belts and the women with their hair plaited and coiled. Leaning against the cool wall, I closed my eyes and cursed Joshua under my breath. 

He told me to be inconspicuous, but didn't warn me I would be the only one wearing normal clothes in a sea of gilded peacocks. Idiot. Or jerk. It occurred to me that he might have done it on purpose, as payback.

I tilted my head forward into my hands. I could feel tears burning in the corner of my eyes, and that made me angry. Long days and nights of training I could deal with. Constant taunting and sneers from nobles I endured easily. Joshua's intense dislike of my destiny as a thief barely fazed me. But I hated being humiliated.

Furiously, I rubbed my tears away. Already I was brainstorming a long, long list of names to call Joshua the next time I saw him. Jerk didn't begin to cover it. I smiled a little, harshly, anticipating the thrill of revenge when I dragged him onto the court again. 

"Excuse me?"

I snapped my head up and saw a women two or three years older than me. How long had she been standing there?

She tilted her head and her deep red hair, the color of lava cooling to hard stone, swung around in a liquid curtain. Regarding me with deep-set eyes, she asked, "Are you having a problem?"

Surely she could see exactly what my problem was, which made me suspect she had asked in a taunting way. However, it was hard to tell. No emotion showed clearly in her strange, dark eyes, and her accented voice was hard to interpret.

"No," I answered coolly. Turning, I stepped into the hall. I could hear the nobles talking, and I could locate clearly the wave of chatter that sprung up when I entered. Raising my head high, I put one foot in front of the other and strode down the long aisle between the banquet tables, letting it roll of me like water. I was drawing stares but I pretended not to notice. If I couldn't enter inconspicuously, I would enter dramatically. I would not hide or try to sneak in. I probably could, but I wouldn't. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I recognized several ladies who were attendants of the princess tittering to each other. Another older man raised an eyebrow, looking at my slightly wrinkled tunic and course leggings. I kept my eyes straight ahead, on the table on the dais at the front of the Hall.

Lord Ornon sat in the throne-like seat that the king would have occupied had he been there, and Princess Magali sat to his right. To his left was a thin, dark-haired man with shrewd eyes who I had never seen before. His suit of dark blue velvet was at odds with the summery fabrics around him, and he wore a black cloak pinned at his shoulder in the style of Englescroft nobility. He watched me closely as I made my way confidently down the aisle. Sam, sitting on the other side of Magali, eyed me with amusement. I looked back at him, surprised he was at the head table. The king didn't usually invite his son up there because his queen, who was not Sam's mother, didn't like him.

Joshua stood up from his seat with the high-ranking officers with burning eyes. He was clearly furious as he pointed from me to the empty seat at his table. Great. It looked like I would spend the meal being glared at by an angry captain.

It was, as I had suspected it would be, long and tedious. There were many courses, and I had to endure Joshua's glares and the idle, idiotic chatter of the nobility. By the time we reached the fourth course I had given up all pretenses of joining the conversation and was instead thinking up ways to corner Joshua alone and force him to tell me why exactly I had to attend this in the first place. 

My daydream of punching him solidly in the stomach was interrupted by the doors to the hall opening for a late arrival. With a start, I recognized the girl from outside, the one with the deep purple-red hair. She had donned an indigo gown with a mosaic-like border of lighter blue and black with a wide sash and formal cloak. Another one from Englescroft, evidently. She glided down the aisle, drawing even more stares than I had. When she mounted the podium, Ornon rose and kissed her hand before guiding her to the chair on the left of the ambassador. He then turned to face the crowd.

"My dear subjects--" He began, and I heard several officers snort. In the absence of the king he was acting like a monarch. "It is my great pleasure this evening to introduce to you our new ambassador from our gentle neighbor, Englescroft." This time the sounds of disbelief were louder. We were no longer constantly at war with Englescroft as we were twenty-five or so years ago, but "gentle" was a bit of a stretch.

"The honorable Lord Iso!"

"Iso," muttered Joshua to another officer. He nodded back, frowning worriedly, and I wondered why I felt like I'd heard the name before.

"And his beautiful daughter, Galatea."

The girl stood up with Iso and curtsied gracefully to the politely clapping crowd. As she raised her eyes, I felt her gaze flicker over the nobles and land on me. I stared back, refusing to break eye-contact, even after she sat back down. Idly twirling a golden spoon around her fingers, one corner of her mouth curled up in amusement. Something cold and slippery settled in my stomach, an unfamiliar emotion I didn't care to name. I continued to stare at her coolly until she turned to say something to her father. Then, with Joshua distracted by the other officers and the strange Galatea occupied by the nobles, I slipped quietly out of the hall.

The hallway behind the Noble Hall was wide but low-ceilinged, floored with marble. The walls were lined with tapestries in richly-colored thread, and as I wandered slowly down the hall I reached out and brushed their tasseled edges. One showed the first king being crowned in the temple of the fire-god. Another depicted a priestess tilting her head up to read the night sky. As I often did when I was bored, I tried to think of how I would steal them. How would I have entered the palace? How would I have sneaked past the feasting nobles? Where was my exit, and how would I carry the tapestry out?

As I stood facing a woven woodland scene of a prince being crowned with thorns and woven branches, I heard light footsteps approaching. My back stiffened.

"I hope you know I did not mean to offend you."

When I did not offer a response she sidled closer and tilted her head back to gaze up at the tapestry. "This is beautiful. It is almost as good as the one in my bedroom at the Capital. The Capital in Englescroft, I mean."

"I knew what you meant." My words came out clipped and sharp.

She shot a side-long look at me. "I am sorry that I have offended you. When I asked if you were having a problem before, I only meant to help. I also came down in my every-day clothes. I did not realize it was a nice dinner. Then I saw you, and I thought we were perhaps the same size, and you could borrow one of my dresses. Truly, I did not mean to insult."

"It's fine." 

She shook her head. She could tell that I was not accepting her attempts to befriend me. I walked away from her, and stood before a different scene in the same woven story. Unfortunately, she followed me. "Is this a well-known story? I am very interested in the culture of Solangia. Its religion and literature are much more developed than that of Englescroft."

I had no idea what she meant by that. My formal education had only reached so far before I abandoned it for more useful training. Once more I edged away from her. "It's the story of King Isaic. He was son of a river and a forest fire, and the western forest chose him to be its king. Then he conquered the land around it and he named his empire Solangia after a tree he had fallen in love with."

Galatea nodded. "That is what I mean. Never in Englescroft does one find myths of kings born from rivers and fires who fall in love with plants."

Why did she insist on talking to me? I was getting very annoyed with her, and some reason, defensive.

"Galatea, darling." A man's voice came from behind us. I hadn't heard his footsteps over the girl's irritating chatter. "Leave her alone. The princess is missing your company at the feast."

Galatea shot him a look that said the princess's company was the reason she'd left, but whatever she saw in his face convinced her to return to the hall. 

The ambassador approached me, regal in his blue velvet and black cloak. "Hello. I am Iso, the ambassador from- how did that man say it? Gentle Englescroft." He came closer, looking me shrewdly in the eyes. "And you are The Royal Thief."

Well, there went the "inconspicuous" plan.

~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Galatea's picture is on the side (Add deep red hair and darker eyes because I can never find a perfect model).