Description: CHAPTER 1 My name is Frank Blackthorne, and I''m going to tell you a story. By this point in the chronicle of my ill-advised adventures, I should be able to dispense with the introductory preliminaries aside from the brief necessities of scene-setting. We begin this chapter of my tale within the Kingdom of Lendowyn, of late slightly less impoverished and much less insignificant from a diplomatic perspective. Being the nominal victor in a multi-front war will do that. More precisely, we begin within the halls of the Northern Palace, recently reclaimed from the Grnwald diplomatic mission while a small army of workers repaired the damage done to Lendowyn Castle from battle, fire, and dragon collision. We begin exactly three hundred sixty-five days after the end of my first tale--my first wedding anniversary. Which also happens to be the day that everything I''d done to reach that point would finally catch up with me. But, like all the plotting and conspiracy that had dogged me ever since I had first set foot into Princess Lucille''s painful royal shoes, it would be a while before I realized it. And, as an aside, I still inhabited the body of Princess Lucille, despite spending the past six months in an intermittent effort to dislodge myself from it. But no wizard we''d found could offer a solution--at least no wizard the Lendowyn court could afford. Lendowyn might not be completely broke anymore, but King Alfred prioritized the castle repairs before my own issues. I couldn''t really blame him, since I was in large part responsible for the damage. Even within my budget, some wizards wouldn''t take Lendowyn''s money when they heard that the Dark Lord N'tlac had a hand in the enchantment. Others came up with increasingly colorful metaphors as to why it wasn''t possible. I came up with increasingly colorful language in response. Apparently it was extremely dangerous to move a soul from point A to point B. We had the recent coup and proxy war with Grnwald to show for it. However, it gets worse when there''s effectively no point B. Over the past year, my original body had crumbled to dust wrapped around the shriveled soul of Elhared the Unwise. The kind of magic needed to physically resurrect my body was not something you could buy with gold. It was the kind of thing that usually cost souls to do. And even if we found a way around that, it would still leave the princess''s body soulless and probably dead. That was a problem, as no one could tell me what that would do to the "temporary" enchantment that had swapped me and Lucille this last time. So after a few months I had begun looking into a Plan B. In theory, the physical transformation of the body should be safer and more straightforward. I had talked to a few mages, and had been given a few options. But I''d been hesitating a bit on that option, waiting for a good time to talk to Lucille about it. There were a couple reasons for that. First, you could probably trace the last war''s root cause down to my failure to communicate with my draconic spouse. Second, even though she had voluntarily given up this body to me, I still felt as if she had a stake in what happened to it. However, for some reason, that "good time to talk" hadn''t happened yet. I might be married to her, but the fact she was currently a fifty-foot fire-breathing lizard could still be somewhat intimidating, especially because she enjoyed the role so much. Though, in some sense, I think I may have been intimidated for different reasons than most people around her. When she said how well she thought I was adjusting . . . I didn''t know if that made the discussion more difficult because I''d be disappointing a dragon, or because I''d be disappointing my wife. Husband. Fortunately, over the past month or so, I had to put the matter aside because I had a party to plan. Don''t laugh. Being Princess Frank of Lendowyn meant I had a role to play and duties to perform. This was not something I had any right to complain about, given that one of my main objections after being princessified had been the lack of any substantive responsibilities aside from decorating the court. As a result, I had received an object lesson in being careful what I wish for. After Lendowyn''s last major conflict, King Alfred had seemed to take great pleasure in overworking his "daughter" as punishment for becoming uppity. I had to travel every fortnight or so; diplomatic missions to every kingdom, duchy, principality, and city-state in the surrounding area. I had the dubious pleasure of meeting one-on-one with a fairly representative cross-section of nobility; though such "one-on-one" meetings were usually six-on-ten or ten-on-a-dozen meetings when you counted the retainers and servants, which as a member of the nobility I wasn''t supposed to count. Meeting with these men, and they were invariably men, did nothing to moderate my opinion of the upper classes. It also did some serious injury to my opinion of my former gender. This role had fallen to the prince before the king and his accountants discovered a new income stream. Once peace had fallen, Lendowyn suddenly had an influx of tourists coming across the border in hopes of seeing the Dragon Prince. Keeping the dragon at home encouraged more of these curiosity-seekers--and more importantly, their gold--to cross the border. I represented a bit of extraneous backstory that the king could send on a recurring diplomatic roadshow. Even while I was on the road, I had been working toward the anniversary festival: a week-long exploitation of my marriage to Lucille designed to transfer a year''s worth of taxes, tariffs, and license fees into the Lendowyn treasury all at once. As a one-time professional thief, I couldn''t help but find it impressive. And scary. Sadistically, King Alfred had decided that as princess it had fallen on my shoulders to plan the anniversary celebration. It went beyond how much ale to import and the proper juggler quota for the influx of celebrants who would mob the capital. That was actually the least of it, since those issues, at least, I could pass off to people who had more of a talent for the organization of such things than I. My nemesis was the grand banquet, the part of the festival for those of "noble" blood; the same class of individuals who had spent the past five months making my meetings uncomfortable. Mixing the lot of them together had proven to be a nightmare. By now I''d been involved in court intrigue long enough to realize that these galas were not just an excuse for the high and mighty to eat and drink themselves into a stupor at the expense of the people they ruled. At least not exclusively. The festival for the "common" folk was simple enough: the consequences for mixing too much ale with the wrong people would not extend much farther than the distance someone could throw a punch. However, when a celebration involves the inebriation of the noble caste, it comes with layers of diplomatic intrigue and conspiratorial machinations to go along with it. Organizing that level of entertaining requires awareness of dozens of different parties and their interrelationships. Making the mistake of seating the wrong two counts together could, once alcohol was added, result in a border war to prove some lord''s virility that would cost the "common" people a lot more than the price of keeping their rulers inebriated. While my prior life as a thief gave me some comfort level with the part of diplomacy that involved bald-faced lying to people''s faces, it didn''t prepare me for the kind of detailed plotting that was required for a kingdom-level function like this to actually, so to speak, function. Some of the invitees were such a perfect mix of loathsome and tedious that I strongly considered suggesting Lucille add them to the menu as a means to cement Lendowyn''s position as a kingdom not to be messed with. I only decided against it because, if our Dragon Prince were to broil and eat the Baron Weslyess of Delarin, it would not quite send the message of peace and amity I was supposed to be aiming for. When the grand banquet actually arrived I felt a sense of relief. I''ve always been better at dealing with disasters as they occurred than I''ve been at anticipating them. The first half of the day was dominated by the royal couple in the palace courtyard, officially receiving the near-endless stream of "important" visitors. For all my worry, that part went a lot better than I had anticipated. As much as they had underwhelmed me when I''d been abroad, today they seemed to be on their best behavior. Of course that might have had something to do with my husband, the dragon, curled up next to me. But even though Lucille seemed to curb their worst impulses, the Baron Weslyess still managed to give me a look that made me want to bathe for a week, then catapult the tub at our enemies. Lucille may have been the main attraction for the masses, but for some reason, the higher the tourist''s status, the more interested they were in me . In some cases--such as the Baron Weslyess--the interest was decidedly unsettling. Whichever of the local royal curiosities had been the main attraction, I could draw some satisfaction from the fact that just the ba

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