Ball

The celebration fills a vast banquet hall, its guests including Giorgio and Poliziano. Out on the balcony, Magnifico tells Roderick that the Vandimion Bank now funds many of the nations arrayed against the Kushan, ensuring that whoever rises to lead after their defeat will count the family among its allies. Below, one nobleman strikes another for supposedly siding with Tudor, and Magnifico explains that states nominally allied with Midland secretly plot to carve away its territory, driving many of its own nobles into rival camps.

A furious Owen breaks up the brawl, demanding the men stop disgracing Midland further, and reminds everyone that they came to Vritannis to win backing for their homeland. The assembled nobles agree, yet grasp that their cause depends on the royal bloodline enduring, and Owen gazes upward, wondering whether Laban has safely slipped into Wyndham.

Magnifico and Roderick weigh their own hopes, one bent on climbing the ranks of power, the other yearning to sail beyond the horizon toward unknown lands, both blocked by their superiors, Federico for Magnifico and the isolationism of Ys for Roderick. Vowing to seize the coming age, they are joined by Farnese in an ornate gown with Serpico trailing her. Magnifico reveals his scheme, that she and Roderick will announce their engagement in public so Federico cannot annul it without shaming the family, but Roderick brushes the plotting aside and leads Farnese off to dance.

Lady Vandimion surprises Magnifico on the balcony, unaware she has come back to the city, and stuns him further by revealing she knows of the engagement. She warns that he is growing into the man Federico once was, and that Farnese will never serve as a pawn in anyone's design.

Spotting Serpico at the glass door watching Farnese and Roderick dance, Lady Vandimion recognizes her former servant, and when he says he has stayed beside Farnese for as long as she lived apart from the family, she understands the singular bond between them and that he will always remain at her side before taking her leave. At the guarded side entrance, four sentries huddled by a fire catch sight of Guts, Isidro, Casca, and Schierke approaching, and Schierke commands them to stand aside. The twenty one page chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 8 on 8 April 2005.