Swing quickly by the visitors' pavilions.

"Let us pass by the camps, auntie," Philippa said. Her face was still pink from the climax her Aunt Eloise, Princess Senior of Eferia, had wrung from her womanhood. She sat her horse with easy practice as they descended the hill overlooking the mustering grounds where the visiting delegations were encamped.

Eloise smiled at her niece, eldest daughter and middlemost child of Queen Hélène-Lucrèce. "Hoping to catch the Elleniki cavalry or the Centaurs at their exercises?" she teased. "We'll have no time to do more than look, I'm afraid. When we return, you'll be trussed into your Princess Royal garb and packed off to the audience chamber to receive our guests in rank order. I'm glad you've a chance to piss and take pleasures first."

Philippa relished her aunt's tart directness and didn't bat an eye at her words. Nor would Cerise or Queen Hélène. Her little sister Mielle might have been embarassed, though.

"Thank you, auntie," Philippa said sincerely, feeling the warmth between her legs from Eloise's earlier attentions with her riding crop, tip and handle. "What about you, auntie? You haven't had a turn."

"I'm an old camel and practiced in this sport," Eloise said. "Prop me up in a chair and I can nod and smile graciously irrespective of comfort. But it wouldn't do to have our young, beautiful princesses fidgeting. I trust your mother will have told Cerise and Mielle to take care of themselves, or that their chambermaids know how to prepare them for a siege of audiencing."

As they reached the foot of the hill, two mounted royal wardens fell in alongside to escort them. Eloise greeted them. "Taff, Shanks," she said.

"Your highness," they chorused.

When they reached the broad, beaten road through the valley, Eloise nudged her horse forward, breaking into a trot. Philippa and the guards followed suit.

Eloise and Philippa rode along the road skirting the mown grass expanses of the mustering grounds. In peace it was betimes a haymeadow, but for years it had been trimmed and kept as a large field for exercising troops. Heads turned as the passed the camps of the visiting delegations, but their lack of ceremony and steady trotting advance proclaimed that they were passing by, not stopping to greet anyone.

Philippa looked toward the Elleniki camp, seeing the blue and white banners ripple in the warm breeze. It looked like many of their officers were absent. Perhaps they were already headed for an audience at the palace?

The centaurs, in their turn, seemed more than present. A gang of them was tearing up and down their large quarter of the grounds, perhaps doing nothing more than blowing off steam. It looked like they were tossing some sort of object to one another, perhaps a weighted sack. There was a roar of braying laughter as one of them dropped the whatsit and had to scrabble on the ground to retrieve it.

They passed the pavilions and banners of more senior, more powerful, or more trustworthy delegations, higher up the grounds and nearer the castle.

They slowed to descend the incline of a dry streambed, and Philippa heard a horse whinny nearby. She reined in and paused, thinking the sound familiar. The horse whinnied again.

Philippa laughed. "Pumpkinhead!" she exclaimed. "Stellus has taken Pumpkinhead out riding," she said. "What a silly horse."

"El-Kalabaza is a beautiful horse, without a doubt," Eloise said, using his formal name. "The match in looks of any grand charger among our visitors, which was no doubt why he was chosen."

"I hope he didn't ride Pumpkinhead by the Elleniki camp, or anyone else who actually knows horses," Philippa said.

Eloise held up a hand. "Peace, child, we're not alone in our chambers," she said.

Philippa directed her horse up the dry stream course and toward a screen of brush. The royal wardens urged their horses forward to pass first. Philippa paid them little heed, but followed the course she had chosen. Eloise trailed.

On the other side was a half-circle of wagons and tents. A ragged banner hung limply from a pole in the center, and a cauldron hung from a crossbar above a low fire.

The great golden horse El-Kalabaza, or Pumpkinhead to some, was tied under a tree nearby.

"Where is everybody?" Philippa asked the air.

"Siesta, yer highness," Taff said. "Travelers, they like a nap of a summer afternoon, som'thin they just do. Once me n'this traveler girl... Oh. Ahem. Beggin' yer pardons, yer highnesses."

"Ya can know they'll-a set summun to watching," said Shank. "Yar highness," he recollected.

"No, actually, where is Soleon, and his horse?" Philippa wondered aloud. "My brothers are almost always together."

Eloise gazed around suspiciously from atop her horse.

Philippa dismounted and looped her reins, trusting her horse Precious not to wander. She patted Pumpkinhead, who sniffed about to see if she had brought an apple or a taste of sugar, but seemed content and unanxious. Not that that meant much. Nothing much seemed to bother Pumpkinhead, but, well, he was a silly horse for all that.

An sigh caught Philippa's ear, and she turned to look. In the sheltered hollow beneath a tree growing precariously from a steep bank, she saw some feet. Two pairs of feet, a pair in soft riding boots nested between a pair of smaller, golden-skinned bare feet, with a certain rhythmic movement. She turned to her aunt and the royal wardens and raised her finger to her smiling lips.

The lower pair of feet raised themselves up and folded back, resting their heels on the upper thighs of the others. The sigh was repeated, more often and more loudly, till Philippa could tell beyond doubt it was a woman's voice of pleasure. Looking more intently into the shadows, she discerned a man's buttocks framing heavy balls and a thick prick-root.

Eloise hung back a bit, surveying the larger area, while the wardens also kept their eyes out for an ambush.

The woman's sighs turned to gasps and moans, and the heels dug in, urging her partner deeper. Soon, the release of her Pleasures made itself evident in her rising voice and her shuddering knees and feet. Her partner's voice, the deep steady tones of a man, were now heard as he moaned loudly. The boot toes scrabbled at the dirt.

Philippa put her hand to her mouth. It was her brother's voice. She wasn't surprised, exactly, but a little shocked that he would be dallying so casually on a day like this. And where was his twin?

A movement nearby caught her eyes. She gave a start to see her brother...squinting and looking hard, she could tell it was her eldest brother Soleon, dressed in hunting garb. He had been sitting motionless all this time, watching her watching Stellus swiving and spunking a Traveler girl.

Soleon was smiling at her. Almost smirking. He was chewing on a long grass stem. His prick was exposed, long and dangling low, and glistening with recent use. He toyed with it as he met Philippa's gaze.

"It... it's near time for the audiences," Philippa said quietly to her eldest brother, not wanting to break the spell of the couple consummating their carnal union a few steps away.