There were crowds gathered outside Greyspike Palace as the carriage carrying Soonia Darniss, Captain Silva and Princess Ardria approached. They were jeering and throwing things, some of which bounced noisily from the sides and roof, but Ardria, wearing a new gown given to her by the sister of the Mayor of Tarchem, the town where they'd stopped the train, sat bolt upright and stared straight ahead, ignoring the protest. Shielding herself with dignity.

     There were guardsmen holding the crowd back, as well as soldiers guarding the gates of the palace grounds, and she half suspected that the crowd was only making a fuss for their benefit, wanting to be thought loyal by the King, whom she could see watching the approaching procession from the balcony overlooking the courtyard. Their very poor aim was one of the things that made her think this. More of the lumps of horse dung and rotten fruit was hitting their military escort, riding on horses ahead of and behind them, than was hitting the carriage.

     “Charnox at last,” said Darniss, also dressed in a gown donated by Lady Henly of Tarchem, although not as fine or splendid as that worn by the Princess, something that she had never commented on but which made her scowl nonetheless and which made the Princess smile with amusement. “I had forgotten how beautiful the city was.”

     Ardria looked about at the buildings of bare brick; blocky and simple in their construction. They were big, there was that to say about them. Big enough to crush the spirits of the people who walked between them in the streets where their sheer weight could be felt pressing down on them, impressing them with their insignificance. The road they had come in on was the only really wide street in the whole city, it seemed. Wide enough for armies to parade along it with crowds lined on either side, as they were now. Even this great avenue was made to seem small and cramped by the towering government buildings, though, and the Princess found herself breathing a sigh of relief as they emerged from it and entered the Grand Concourse; the wide open area in front of the palace grounds.

     There were Radiants floating overhead. The three occupants of the carriage watched them warily as the carriage clattered and bounced their way across the Concourse towards the tall, spiked railing that surrounded the palace grounds. “Will they hold off, do you think?” asked the Princess.

     “The telegraph operator said he’d passed on my warning to the King,” said Silva. “Now that we’re here, in sight of the King himself, I think we’re safe enough. Anything the Radiants do to you now will only confirm what you're trying to tell him. It'll tell him that they're afraid of what you have to say. Their best chance now, I think, is to simply deny everything. Say that you’re simply trying to drive a wedge between Carrow and the Radiants. That'll be what the King thinks anyway. They only have to confirm it.”

     “But how do they explain what happened on the train? With you, Darniss and the other two men to tell what happened?”

     “We can simply disappear. We're no-one.”

     “Speak for yourself, young man,” said Darniss angrily. “I am a Duchess of the Kingdom. Related by blood to the King himself.”

     “Begging your pardon, Madam, but that counts for very little here,” replied Silva. “The other aristocrats have been seen about society. They have reputations, contacts...”

     “You don’t think that the King himself is the best possible contact? If one of the King's traitorous advisors makes me disappear, Nilon might start thinking that there's some truth in what Ardria's trying to tell him.”

     “With respect, Your Grace, the Princess is the prize. If you were to disappear, the traitorous advisors would probably only have to tell him that you'd quietly gone to Lord Krell’s mansion, being anxious to see your daughter again, and he'd probably be satisfied with that.”

     “Even if I told him that she had vital evidence to present to him?” said Ardria. “If the King demands that the Duchess be brought before him and she can’t be because she's already dead...”

     “Then they'll just tell him that she's on the road somewhere, that they've been unable to find her. They'll say that highwaymen must have gotten her.” He turned back to Darniss. “I’m sorry, but only the Princess herself is truly safe. She may end up in a dungeon, or paraded in chains about the city, but she's far too well known to simply disappear.”

     “That's comforting,” said the Princess drily. She looked up at the Radiants again. Maybe they couldn't act openly in front of such large crowds, but once they were in the palace an adoptee could easily curse her back to a Kestrel, or all the way back to whatever the Kestrel had been before. Her place could then be taken by an imposter coached to say whatever the Radiants wanted her to say. It could even be done without the King’s knowledge. He'd never met her in person, after all. He had no idea what she looked like.

     “We have to protect each other,” she said. “I will try to keep the two of you by my side at all times. If we speak with one voice, we will be much harder to ignore.”

     “I'm afraid that you may find it impossible to protect us,” said Silva, though. “The King will want to make it plain to the crowds that you are his prisoner. He will almost certainly order your hands to be manacled, and then you will go where they take you and we will be taken somewhere else. The last we heard, Helberion was almost finished. You no longer have a country to give you weight and influence.”

     “I wouldn’t write Helberion off so quickly, Captain,” said Ardria, trying to look confident and unafraid.

     The last news had been bad, there was no denying that, but she still hung onto hope. The hope that her father and the Brigadier had managed to cook up some little last minute trick to save the country. They hadn't told her in case the Carrowmen forced her to reveal it. Had there been something in her father’s face, in his voice, when they said their goodbyes outside the palace, or was she just grasping at straws? The Brigadier had saved them so many times before, though. It was so easy to hope that he was about to do it again. Where was he, anyway? Their decision to enter Carrow by a different route meant that they had failed to meet on the road, but he might still be out there somewhere, making plans. He might even be in the crowd right now! She searched the faces of the nearest people, still shouting and throwing things, but she failed to see him.

     They were approaching the gates now, and two garishly uniformed gatemen were opening them to allow one of the palace carriages to emerge. Not one of the ornate golden carriages the King and other members of the royal family used on state occasions, but a simple stagecoach such as might be used by guardsmen and other members of staff going about their duties. Ardria's carriage came to a stop beside it, and the Captain of the palace guard came to open the door. He regarded the occupants with a flat, expressionless face. He gave the impression of a man who knew all three of them personally and would know if they were not who they claimed to be. “Your Highness?” he said to Ardria. “I’m sorry, but I must put these on you.” He reached down to his belt and produced a pair of manacles.

     Ardria felt her heart go cold and a nervous sweat broke out across her body. She forced herself to remain calm, though, and held out her wrists. “Do what you must, Captain.”

     The man looked embarrassed. “Your pardon, your Highness, but your hands must be behind your back. I have my orders, ma'am.”

     “Of course.” Ardria twisted around in her seat and put her hands behind her while the man manacled her. A lock of hair immediately fell across her face and she instinctively tried to brush it away before the cold iron stopped her. Ardria tried to tell herself that she was no more helpless than she'd been before, but the iron was heavy on her wrists and was already beginning to press painfully into her skin. She realised she was panting heavily in fear and forced herself to breathe evenly. She would show no fear. She was a princess!

     The guardsman took her by the elbow and helped her out of the carriage. More rotten fruit was thrown by the jeering crowd, but none of it hit Ardria, except one mouldy apple that glanced off her shoulder. Several pieces hit the guard, though, who muttered curses under his breath, and more splattered on the ground around them. Even for untrained civilians their aim was awful unless they were deliberately trying not to hit her, and the Princess felt herself cheered at this sign that the common people were sympathetic to her. They hated their own king far more than they hated her.

     The guard Captain led her to the other carriage and helped her into it. This carriage was pretty much identical to the one they'd just left. The only reason they were changing carriages, Ardria knew, was to show her off to the crowd with her hands manacled. To show the Kingdom, the whole world, that she was a captive of the King of Carrow. A public humiliation to emphasise the superiority of Carrow over the country that had humiliated them again and again over the past century.

     Silva and Darniss got in after her, the Duchess waving to the crowds and getting no reaction from them. They have no idea who you are, thought Ardria in amusement. Poor Soonia Darniss! You spent all these years plotting the restoration of your family name and fortune, and now that you're here you have nothing to show for it.

     “Can we have these off now, do you think?” she asked, showing the guard her manacled hands.

     “I'm sorry,” he replied, sounding genuinely apologetic. “I was told to put them on you, but I have no orders to remove them. If it was up to me...”

     Ardria nodded, understanding. “Ever since I entered your country, I've had the good fortune to encounter decent, civilised people,” she said. “This could be a great country in which to live if you had a better king.”

     “I would be speaking treason if I said any such thing, your Highness,” replied the guard Captain. “I hope your meeting with the King goes well.”

     He then closed the door and spoke to the carriage driver. The man slapped the reins, and the carriage clattered off along the wide, gravel road towards the palace.