The ballroom of the Althorn Estate was a gilded cage of crystal and false laughter.
Two hundred candles burned in the chandeliers overhead, dripping wax onto the marble floors where silk shoes stepped carefully to avoid the puddles. The wine flowed from silver fountains. The roast boar turned on spits that required two men to operate. The music was a thin, polite strain of strings that no one listened to because everyone was too busy assessing who stood near the throne dais and who had been relegated to the shadows near the servants’ corridors.
In the shadows, four men stood together.
They were dressed in the most expensive fabrics available in the kingdom — velvet, brocade, fur-trimmed collars — but the fabrics were not designed for their bodies. The first man was the Prince, second in line to a southern duchy, his belly a massive round shelf that protruded beneath his doublet and forced the lower buttons to hang open. Sweat gleamed on his forehead and in the crevices of his neck.
His jowls shook when he spoke.
The second was the Baron, shorter but wider, his body built like a barrel stuffed into sausage casing, his thick arms barely able to fold across the chest they were supposed to dignify. The third was the Count, the tallest of the four but soft everywhere, his waist undefined, his hips carrying the same fat as his belly, his face pale and doughy. The fourth was simply called the Lord — a merchant noble who had bought his title, his body the most offensive of all because he was hairy as well as fat, dark tufts curling from the open collar of his shirt and the sleeves he had rolled up to relieve the pressure.
They were fathers. All of them had wives at home and children they did not raise. They had eaten and drunk and fucked their way through the kingdom’s lower courts for decades, and tonight they felt the exhaustion of it.
"The roast is dry," the Prince said. His voice was wet and phlegmy. He wiped his mouth with a silk cloth that was already stained. "Everything is dry. I have no appetite for it."
"I have no appetite for anything," the Baron muttered. His small eyes moved across the room with the resentful calculation of a man who had been denied a seat at the high table. "Look at them. The Duke’s son. The Chancellor’s nephew. They receive the trade contracts. They receive the introductions. We stand here like servants."
"We ARE lower than servants," the Count said. He swallowed a cup of wine in one gulp. The liquid ran down his chin and into his collar. "A servant at least has a function. We have nothing. Our titles are ornaments. Our coffers are emptying. Our cocks are the only thing that still respond to us, and even that requires the tinctures."
The Lord laughed. It was a wet, ugly sound. "The tinctures. Yes. I drank three vials before arriving. My cock is stone. And for what? These noblewomen look at us like we are furniture. I could not get a whore from the lower district to spread her legs for the coin we have left."
They stood in their circle of failure and sweat. Their bodies reeked — a mingled smell of stale wine, old meat, and the particular musk of men who had not bathed properly because their own stench had become invisible to them. They watched the dancers. They watched the deals being made across the room. They watched the young lords with their flat stomachs and their sharp jaws receive the smiles that had once, long ago, been offered to them.
Then they saw her.
She stood near the eastern archway, apart from the dancers. A mercenary. Young — perhaps twenty. Her body was firm and had been built by work, not by idle sitting. She wore leather armor that fit her properly, the chest plate shaped to her tits, the waist cinched, the thighs encased in riding trousers that showed the muscle of her legs. Her sword was sheathed at her hip. Her hair was pulled back severely. She was drinking water, not wine, and her eyes were moving across the room with the calm, professional assessment of someone who had been hired to watch rather than to celebrate.
"There," the Prince said. His voice changed. The phlegmy whine dropped into something lower. "That one. Look at the shape of her. The firmness. She is not a noblewoman. She is a soldier. She would know how to obey."
"She would know how to scream," the Baron added.
The Lord adjusted his massive belly. The tincture was working. He could feel the blood pooling in his groin. The thought of the mercenary’s disciplined body being forced to submit to his fat, hairy, drugged-up frame was the first thing that had genuinely excited him in months.
The Prince stepped forward.
He moved through the crowd with the unsteady sway of a man whose center of gravity was in front of him. He approached the mercenary. He smiled. The smile showed yellow teeth and the swollen gums of a man who ate too much sugar.
"Fair lady," he said. His voice carried across the nearby conversation. "You are a vision of steel in a room of silk. I am Prince Aldric. I would have the honor of your company for the next dance."
The mercenary looked at him.
She looked at his belly. She looked at the sweat on his face. She looked at the hand he extended toward her — the fat fingers, the stained nails, the tremor of drink and excess.
Then she laughed.
It was not a polite laugh. It was a genuine, bright, uncontrolled sound of amusement. Her head went back. Her hand pressed against her own chest plate. Her eyes crinkled.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, no. I would rather bed a swine from the Duke’s pens. At least the swine would not sweat through its silk."
The laughter erupted.
Not from her alone. The nearby dancers had heard. The string players had heard. The servants had heard. The room turned. And they laughed. The nobles, the merchants, the officers, the other mercenaries. They laughed at the Prince standing with his hand extended and his face going from red to purple to a color that suggested his heart was struggling.
The mercenary laughed again.
She turned away from him. She walked toward the archway, her stride confident, her sword bouncing at her hip. She did not look back.
The four men stood in the center of the sound.
The laughter washed over them. The Prince’s hand dropped. The Baron’s face twisted. The Count’s doughy cheeks trembled. The Lord’s hairy fists clenched at his sides.
They were lower than they had ever been.
They were pigs. Fat, useless, sweating pigs. And the room had seen it.
The Prince’s eyes followed the mercenary. They did not leave her. They tracked her to the archway, to the refreshment table, to the corner where she stood with her arms crossed and her jaw set and her body radiating the contempt of the strong for the weak.
"We will have her," the Prince whispered.
"How?" the Baron hissed. "She would cut our cocks off before she let us touch her."
"We will not ask," the Prince said.