Della looked out of the window of her family carriage as it drew up in front of the town house. It was in a quiet street of Vorlagenstadt, the capital of Steuerungland. Della was from Pianure and was the step-daughter of the Conte di Terrabella. Pianure had finally lost its war against Steuerungland the previous winter and, whilst only some strategic border cities had been occupied by Steuerung forces, Pianure had effectively become a puppet state. As a result, though ambassador, her step-father was more a messenger for the Prince of Steuerungland to his vassal state than the representative of a sovereign country.

“What do you think of Vorlagenstadt, Della?” Her mother, Nencia, asked.

Della smiled at her mother. They had become closer since Della’s father, Barone Giovanni di Colline, had died three years earlier. Before she had met her second husband, Arrigo, it had been hard for Nencia to make her way running their estate in the hills of Colline. He was a widower with twin daughters a few years older than Della. Despite his aloofness he seemed to be a lonely man and, anyway, the marriage between the Colline and Terrabella families had been politically beneficial; Nencia’s own family, the Fiumes, had encouraged it too.

Della’s step-sisters had hurried ahead of Nencia and Della to Vorlagenstadt to enjoy the delights of the city. Whereas Della was quiet and withdrawn, overawed by the arrogance and brisk, businesslike manner of her stepfather, her step-sisters were bubbly and excitable, and had clearly been looking forward to sampling what were rumoured to be the debauched delights of Vorlagenstadt.

“Well, mother, the buildings are grand as one would expect. They do have that northern starkness, though, that we tend to associate with the Steuerunglanders. And…”

Della trailed off as she glanced out of the window seeking inspiration to finish her comments. Outside the carriage on one side she could see their footman guiding the servants out of the house to welcome Della and her mother from the carriage. Out of the other window, across the street, she saw something that stopped her mouth. There was small two-wheeled trap with a driver no doubt awaiting the return of the vehicle’s owner. However, rather than horses, the trap’s traces led to two strong men. They wore black leather clothes from head to toe, no doubt so that this shiny skin mimicked that of a horse. They even wore blinkers on their faces. As Della looked closer she saw leather tails hung from their backsides and their feet wore hoof-like boots. Was this some affectation of a wealthy man or woman? Were these men servants or slaves? She had dismissed some of the rumours that she had heard about Steuerungland but, maybe, she had been hasty in doing that.

Della, her full name was Delphine but no-one called her that these days, was nineteen, still two years away from being introduced formally into society. That would be when the world would be alerted to the fact she was of marriageable age. Her tutors had long emphasised that particularly for her as the daughter of nobility, her honour, whatever that entailed, had to be guarded. Unlike that of her step-sisters, her clothing remained dour and shapeless revealing little of the body below. Despite this, Della already felt she had become a woman. Living in the country she had witnessed the coupling of livestock and cynically knew that humans, especially nobility, were no different. As yet, she was unfamiliar with how it fully worked with humans and she dismissed the thought that her husband would come on her as a stallion would a mare. However, such concerns, such lack of knowledge did not stem the urges she sometimes felt and seeing the men lashed to the trap, their strong muscular bodies so exposed in the shiny leather, she felt her heart beat faster and that strange sensation that came to her womanhood, so much nicer than the monthly augurs of her bleeding.

“Erm, and, erm, it’s strange. The Steuerunglanders are supposed to be decadent and debauched aren’t they?”

“Well, erm,” Nencia stumbled, clearly having seen the trap herself, “well, I’ve never been one to subscribe to rumour, but it does seem things are peculiar here compared to what we are used to in Pianure. I think you and I should remain in our new home until we are more familiar with customs here. I am sure your father will not mind if in a couple of months we ask to return to Terrabella. From my experience the work of an ambassador is very taxing and he has probably over-estimated how much time he can spend with us. Your sisters, I have no doubt, will remain here to keep him company.”

“Yes, mother, that sounds a very worthy suggestion.”

“Gather yourself, I think the staff is finally ready to receive us.” Nencia gestured to the house.

A line of servants, a mixture of men and women, stretched from the door of the carriage to the door of the house. Most of these servants were the exterior ones, the footmen, grooms and kitchen garden ladies, the laundresses too, who would work for the house. They were Steuerunglanders. In contrast, many of the interior servants had come from Pianure. Della had learnt Steuerungish as a girl and had occasionally used it with foreign visitors to the house; her father was fluent in it. However, since the end of the war, herself and her mother had engaged a tutor to give them thorough lessons and had doubled them when they knew Arrigo was being assigned to Vorlagenstadt.

Now Nencia signalled for the carriage door to be opened and then stepped down followed by her daughter. The servants were conservatively dressed in long coats, breeches, long socks and smart shoes. Della wondered if an order had been given for them to wear less ostentatious clothes than even the servants were supposed to wear in Vorlagenstadt.

More servants waited inside and Della struggled to take on board even more than a handful of the names and concentrated on retaining that of the butler, the housekeeper and the maid that she was personally assigned. This woman, called Magda, a tall, blonde haired woman with quite a severe expression, led Della to her chambers. They were larger than the rooms she had had back in Colline, but their stark white walls with panels of spiralling black patterns did not seem that homely to Della and she was aware that this was a home that they were really only borrowing as long as her step-father was assigned here. Tersely, speaking heavily accented Pianurean, Magda showed Della her bed chamber and sitting room. Though feeling the decor was rather harsh, she was glad that at least she had a space of her own. She guessed that she should not be surprised that Magda was not going to be the kind of ladies maid that you could share confidences and giggles with and she hoped that she might find friends among the daughters of the officials who worked at the embassy or of Pianurean merchants based in the city.

Over the next couple of hours, Della supervised the unloading of her luggage and the transfer of her clothes, books and a few ornaments to her room. With her clothes in the wardrobe and chest, a couple of her favourite pictures on the wall and her journal retrieved and open in front of her, Della allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. She ordered coffee and it arrived quickly though in a pewter pot rather than the porcelain one she would have expected. It tasted fine and taking her cup, she walked to the window. Her sitting room faced out the front of the house and she could see to the road beyond the formal, gravelled front garden. Nencia had said that the house was the shape of three sides of a square with a fine courtyard in the centre; beyond lay a small formal gardens which ended in a wall that backed another embassy in the street behind. Down one side of the garden, concealed behind hedges were the coach house and stables with their own access along a narrow road running along the side of the house down which food, water and fuel was also brought to the house.

Della had stayed in cities like Bocca and Fortezza and knew what it was like to miss the hills of Colline. She imagined there were parks in the city in which she could ride with her mother or the friends she envisaged making. However, like the garden beneath her, she worried that such parks would all be formally laid out and lack the rambling nature of uncultivated land; even pastures were more pleasant to ride across than along ceaseless gravel paths. Della checked herself: she was being too picky and had to remind herself that she was, in fact, in a very privileged position. She tried to focus on what she would see in Vorlagenstadt and be able to report back to her best friends, Arietta and Lacole.

Filled with a sense of mission that she should take in all that she could of the city, Della sat down on the window seat to look at the passing traffic. This district was a residential area for ambassadors, embassy staff and officials of the Steuerung government. That meant that beside the normal supply carts bringing food and other supplies to the houses, there were also the carriages and traps of the families of such officials. Della watched idly at the passing traffic but it was not until she saw a team of four women drawing a small carriage that she realised what she had been looking for. The quartet were dressed in striking red leather though their clothes were very similar to those worn by the two men pulling the trap earlier, so again making them appear like some kind of two-legged equines. The coachman seemed to make no concession to the fact that these were women and controlled them not by shouted orders as you would usually with workers, but by the reins that ran to their headpieces and occasionally by the crack of his long thin whip across their buttocks or shoulders.

In the open carriage, Della saw two women, one probably in her late forties, the other perhaps fifteen years younger. The older woman had flame-red hair that matched the brocade silk dress she wore. This consisted of a tight bodice that showed off her cleavage and then tapered into a broad skirt. The younger woman wore silk clothes of a matching kind, but her black hair was pulled back tightly from her face and she wore a jacket, waistcoat and breeches of manly garb. Her legs ran into long red leather boots that crested her knee. The two women were lolling on the seats, the black-haired woman’s head lying on the bust of her older companion whose hand seemed clamped to the younger woman’s breast. Della wondered where they were going in this manner and guessed that, most likely, they were returning from an all-night event or had stayed over at some house and only now were heading back to their residence. Della wondered which household these two came from and seeing a small pennant quickly fetched some paper, a pen and ink to make a rough sketch of its design. She imagined somewhere in a house would be a codex showing the heraldry of the different families of the city.

Della strained to keep the carriage in view as it proceeded up the street but looked away as she realised that she was becoming more fascinated by the leather-clad ‘horses’ than she was with the grand ladies they were drawing.

“Pheeny, Pheeny.”

Della shuddered as she heard the voice of one of her step-sisters using the baby name that the two of them had chosen to use for her. They were just under five years older than her and she had the feeling that the closeness in age encouraged them to treat her as if she was far younger than she actually was. They tended to tease and bully the servants in much the same way too. Whilst Della could not deny that her step-father was an ambitious man, it seemed that his twin daughters had inherited their particularly dominant characteristics from their late mother and these were focused on making as much noise as possible and asserting their importance over everyone who came into their orbit.

The door to Della’s sitting room burst open in a way that suggested it would be permanently weakened as a result. Marica led the way with Vedette close behind her. They were full bodied women with features which contrasted with their more slender step-sister. Their hair was a rich brown shade rather than her coal black, though as they came fully into the room, Della could see both had had their hair stacked in artificial ringlets and streaks tinted a blonder shade.

Setting aside the style of their hair, Della was rather startled by their clothing which, it seemed, had been heavily influenced by Vorlagenstadt styles. Marica wore a dress of soft light purple leather. It was patterned by a darker decoration of what looked like roses with prominent thorns. This design twisted across the skirt and up the bodice which was pulled in so tight Della wondered how her step-sister breathed. The bodice stopped short of her clavicle and looked as if it was delivering the top of her breasts on a tray. A design mimicking that of her dress seemed to have been painted across her skin. Her hair was lifted high into a horse tail that fell down sheer, clear of her of her head. The style meant the heaving choker-like necklace she wore at her throat was highly prominent.

Behind, Vedette was no less distinctive. She wore a plum-coloured velvet jacket and a long velvet skirt in the same colour. However, unlike the skirts women habitually wore, certainly in Pianure, it was slit to the thigh exposing the long laced smooth patent boots in plum leather, flat-heeled and cresting her knee below. Of course, the skirt generally hung to cover her legs but what Vedette wore beneath became visible as she walked. Under the jacket seemed to be a leather waistcoat embroidered with numerous small fleurs-de-lys and under that nothing, so her breasts strained at the top of this garment and seemed to threaten to pop the buttons.

Uninvited, the two women dropped themselves into chairs at the main table. Immediately, Della felt they were running their eyes over her in a disapproving manner at her seemingly provincial dress. Della tried to look back with similar dismay but found instead that she could not shake the thoughts of what it must be like to be dressed in these tight, ostentatious clothes. Quick fantasies of going to a dressmaker in Vorlagenstadt and it being assumed that she would want something tight and sensuous in leather or velvet came to Della’s mind and she had to bite her lip to distract her from them.

“Little sister, Pheeny, welcome to Vorlagenstadt.” Vedette said with a proprietorial tone.

“I imagine you have not been around the town yet. Well, dressed like that you would look so terribly like a yokel who had come in on a turnip cart, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, yes. Vorlagenstadt has so many attractions, but they are not suited to everyone. I am sure Nencia will organise for other girls to visit you here for musical recitals and such like. Of course, in Steuerungland such things are really the reserve of the merchant class not the most superior people.”

“And do you know that we have been invited to the Prince’s Spring Ball? The ball of Prince Wolfram, the ruler of Steuerungland, but for all of that, not even thirty-two yet and unmarried, you know.”

Della felt she could almost see the visions in Marica’s mind of her being married to the prince in some kind of alliance between Steuerungland and the country it had just conquered. Of course, Della knew that, even on a political basis, that made no sense. Her step-father might be noble and influential but he was not of Pianure’s royal family and surely Prince Wolfram would prefer a marriage with a state that he did not yet control rather than one he had just seized. The chance of Marica meeting an eligible Steuerung noble at the ball was a whole different issue and Della recognised that her step-sisters were right to see that securing an invitation was a social coup.

“When is the ball?” Della asked, partially curious, but mainly to be polite.

“Two nights from now.” Vedette said.

“She means the evening after tomorrow’s.” Marica clarified. “Too little time for you to have an appropriate dress made even if you had an invitation.”

“It is to be a masked ball. Aside from that there is no theme this time, so we have been free to choose the most exciting styles for our dresses.”

“And the boots do not forget. The Steuerunglanders love their boots, even the ladies wear such long ones.”

“A masked ball offers such opportunity. Who knows, we could be dancing with the prince himself and be oblivious to the fact.”

“Yes, and the masks, well, they allow such chances, for, well, for dangerous liaisons.” Marica commented with a subdued tone but one that then sent herself and her twin sister into cackling, wicked laughter.

Once they had calmed, Vedette continued. “Of course, Pheeny would never have an invitation, she will not be out in society for another two years.”

“Oh, Etty, you forget here in Vorlagenstadt they have no concern for such things, when a woman, well, is old enough to bear children, she is deemed mature enough to be in society.”

“Well, Pheeny’s mother thinks differently, and anyway whoever she was and however old she was, unlike us, Pheeny has no invitation.”

“This is not the time for gossiping there is still so much to do. We must speak with father to ensure the carriage looks its best. I do not want us appearing like peasants heading to market when we turn up at the palace.”

With as much noise and bustle as they had entered, the two young women were gone leaving Della thinking over their news. She imagined balls and dinners, even those hosted by the prince, were a common occurrence for the city and that there would be ample opportunity for her to attend some future event, perhaps something a little less frantic than this one. Whatever her step-sisters might say about the differing rules in Steuerungland, she felt very aware of how much she still had to learn about moving in society. Rather than bring her etiquette tutor from Pianure, Della’s mother had felt it better to engage one here in Vorlagenstadt so that she would be equipped with knowledge of the foibles of the society that it seemed that they would be in, at least for the next few years. Della did wonder, though, from what she had seen and what Marica and Vedette had said, whether the gap between society in Pianure and in Steuerungland might be so wide as to be very challenging to bridge.

Pushing her worries aside, Della decided that it would do her no favours to sit and reflect and so instead went in search of her mother to see what assistance she could be.