Of course, he couldn’t blame the staff for the chaos. It was, after all, his Firstborn Feast they were preparing. In mere weeks, Rudolfo would see his first child into the world, and it was the custom of the Forest Gypsies to celebrate that event with great vigor. That it was Rudolfo’s firstborn and an heir transformed the event into a minor affair of state, with dignitaries expected from a dozen or morehouses. Even the Marsh King was attending. Rudolfo smiled at this, knowing that the large hairy man who posed as the Marsh King did so at the command of a fifteen-year-old girl who was the true heir to that Wicker Throne. But tonight, Hanric would play the part of king alongside Rudolfo and the other lords in attendance. Those aspects of tonight’s festivities bored Rudolfo. Instead, he thought about the men who were the true hosts of tonight’s event-the men who rose to their captain’s challenge to honor their Gypsy King and the Gypsy King to Come.

The Gypsy Scouts could be proud of their work. They’d hunted and fished for six weeks to stockpile the game required for the festivities; they’d sent birds and riders all over the Named Lands to gather the finest sampling of wines and spirits. They’d even hired in cooks from the Emerald Coasts to study the best of the Forest recipes and reproduce them with southern augmentations to draw out the flavor.

Rudolfo chuckled. tonight, the Marsh King would sit to his left and the Entrolusian ambassador would sit to his right. The Entrolusians had sent their ambassador because Erlund was beset by the fires of rebellion on the Delta. When Erlund’s uncle, Sethbert, had destroyed Windwir, he’d hoped to shore up the Entrolusian economy by annexing the Ninefold Forest Houses with the help of his puppet Pope. Rudolfo and his kin-clave had pressed them back, and eventually Sethbert’s plans were unraveled and the Overseer himself tried and summarily executed for the genocide of the Androfrancine Order and their city.