"You go off over in the woods there, then, and I'll meet up with you by that big rock in the distance tomorrow morning," she told the young dragon some time later.
"In the morning?" the dragon asked, rearing its head back. "I have to spend all night out there? Why can't I spend it in my cave?"
"Because I'm going down there to tell the villagers it was a misunderstanding and I've run you off," Sir Gregor explained. "And once I do, they'll be up to your cave, with pitchforks and scythes and hammers, poking about for any treasure you may have left behind."
"But I've never had any treasure," the dragon said, exasperated.
"I know that," Gregor said, "and I could very well tell them that, and they'd laugh when I was gone and called me daft for saying it. Everyone knows dragons keep treasure, and they'll want their piece of it, after all the trouble you've given them, and if you're still there when they come up with their sharp things--and they'll bring them, just in case--they'll run you through out of sheer spite. So you go on along to that rock, and I'll pick you up tomorrow morning. Now get on, we're getting close, and I want you well away before they all come running out and cheering me as the damn big hero of the hour. Off you go!"
Grumbling under its breath, the dragon tucked its wings in tight so as not to catch on trees and cantered off into the woods. There was a reason dragons liked rocky mountainsides and caves. Several, actually, but not catching up their wings every few feet was a big one.
"And as for you," Sir Gregor said, turning to pin the middle-aged, somewhat dumpy woman clinging to her horse's saddle horn. "I'll thank you not to tell anyone about what you've seen and heard today, and Briar here won't accidentally spook and dump you in the river on the way back to your village. Fair enough?"
The woman nodded meekly, her eyes still wide with fear and drawn with exhaustion. "Please, sir," she said, "I'd just like very much t' get home."
"I'm sure you would," Sir Gregor said, nodding. "It's no vacation, being shut up in a cave for two weeks with nought but blueberries to eat."
The woman nodded, and was quiet for the rest of the way.
It was nightfall by the time they reached the village, and many of its inhabitants had come out to wait by the start of the mountain path. When they saw the gleam of Sir Gregor's armour in the torchlight, and drew closer so that its light fell on the relieved face of the woman, a tired but genuine cheer went up. Sir Gregor smiled as the previously wary and timid village folk all swarmed Briar, who was quite used to this part of the job and stayed very still, lifting the exhausted and half-starved woman out of the saddle and carrying her to her home.
"We done good again, girl," Sir Gregor murmured, patting Briar and stroking the stocky warhorse's neck. "Now it's fine oats and sweet hay for you, eh?"
Briar knew the meaning of the word "oats". She snorted in excitement and lipped at Sir Gregor's armour where the pockets in her clothing usually were. Sir Gregor laughed, pushing the horse's face away.
"Steady on, girl, all in good time."
The tavern's stable was in good condition, with fresh straw laid down for the knight's horse, and the blanket beaten thoroughly clean of any mites or dust earlier that day. Sir Gregor left her horse in what she felt confident were kind and competent hands, and when up to her room, where a hot meal and warm bath were waiting.
After latching the door securely and going so far as to lean a chair against it so that it could not slide open so much as an inch, Sir Gregor felt safe enough to undress, undo the custom-made thin-leather binding she wore to flatten her chest, and slide gratefully into the steaming water. More than once, Sir Gregor had been spied upon by the younger members of tavern housekeeping staff, hoping to catch a glimpse of the handsome young knight with his shirt off, and each time it had lead to some of the quickest thinking and fastest talking Sir Gregor had ever had to do. And even then, money had been necessary to grease palms and cloud memories. Sir Gregor had learned the wisdom of caution.
She sighed and sank lower into the large tin tub, letting the water ease her muscles and loosen knots of tension. She was trying not to think about the ordeal tomorrow would bring, not quite ready to face the responsibility she'd brought on herself. Sir Gregor had convinced the young whip to leave its current cave behind and join her on her travels. Gregor wasn't sure how she would teach a dragon to hunt, though she had some ideas about how it could be done. Her older brother Angus had kept falcons since before Gregor had been born, and Gregor herself had spent all her free time in her father's kennels, playing with the young pups, and watching the handlers train the juveniles. Anyone that had known a wolfhound for any amount of time knew they were stubborn, arrogant, and difficult to bait, as they were finicky eaters even when hungry, and could be tempted into obedience only with the choicest, smelliest of morsels. Even so, as passionate as she was about them, Gregor had been a dab hand at it, and if she could convince a stubborn, leggy pup to do what she wanted without even being able to speak the same language, she felt confident she could work something out with the dragon.
Gregor drifted in and out of fond childhood memories of wrestling with the descendents of her favourite hound bloodline, the victories of finally convincing a pup to obey because of love and not food, and schemes to translate these techniques to a talking, flying, fire-breathing beast.
She awoke when the water in the tub had cooled uncomfortably. Grunting as she clambered out of it and towelling herself off, Gregor pulled on her chest binder and then her sleeping shift on over it. Gregor never did anything without her chest binding other than bathe when she was anywhere near civilization, and that was only because the water would ruin the leather. There was too much risk of some emergency, like a fire, or bandits, or some other possible reason sending people barging into her room calling for the knight to leap out of bed and into action.
To quiet her mind of worry and planning, Gregor sat for a while and polished her blade until she felt her eyelids beginning to droop again.
Finally, with her sword along the bed beside her, its freshly polished, ever razor-sharp edge gleaming dully in the light of the candle that stood on the night stand, Gregor lay down with her back to the door and pinched the light out with her fingertips.

"Good grief, don't tell me your parents never taught you how to fly properly!" Gregor exclaimed some weeks later as Hisenrou, as she called herself, fell clumsily out of the sky after a failed swipe at a young buck that had been grazing in a meadow. The young red whip crashed into the ground, tumbling wing over tail for several feet before she skidded to a stop in a small mound of long grass and dirt. Meanwhile, the two-point buck she'd been aiming for was nothing more than a disappearing shadow among the trees at the far end of the meadow.
"Shut up," Hisenrou panted, glaring at the knight. "It's not as easy as it looks, you know!"
"I never said it was easy, I just said you weren't doing it right," Gregor replied, leaning against a tree trunk and pulling out a small knife. She began to clean her fingernails. "Perhaps you ought to practice recovering in flight before you keep after picking up prey. If you can't pull out of a dive properly without the extra weight of prey, you'll never manage it with it, and when you've crashed and snapped your neck on the ground, then where will you be?"
"I don't know," Hisenrou growled, spitting grass out of her mouth for the third time that day. "Where?"
"Dead, that's where. Alright, no prey this time." Sir Gregor walked over to their camp site and riffled through Briar's saddlebags until she found the one she kept her clothes in. Tying it more securely shut with an extra length of twine she made sure to always have on hang, Gregor brought it back out to the meadow, hacking off a good-sized low hanging tree branch on her way. She worked a hole into the ground with her sword, then stabbed the branch securely into the ground, mounding dirt and nearby rocks around its base. Prodding it firmly to make sure it stood steady, Gregor hung the saddlebag from one of its branches.
"Now," she said, "This time, you're aiming for the saddlebag. Don't try to grab it the first few times, just aim for the air above it, and then try to pull out of it as fast as you can. And if you're going to crash again, try to aim for that berry thicket." Sir Gregor pointed a fat plot of bushes grouped together at the opposite edge of the meadow. "It'll break some of your fall. Now try again."
"I don't want to," Hisenrou complained. "I'm tired of this. I'm not getting any better, and I ache all over from the first three times. Can't I take a break?" she wheedled.
Gregor plucked a length of sweetgrass from near where she stood and sucked on it for a moment.
"How about this," she said. "You manage to pull out of one dive--just one--and circle back, and land properly and all, and I'll go hunt you a nice fat fox." Seeing the dragon somewhat disappointed with this offer, she added, "alright, and a few plump trout. Sound fair?"
Brightening noticeably, Hisenrou nodded in agreement and took off at a brisk trot to get herself airborne. Gregor watched this with some niggling trepidation. She had this nagging feeling that dragons oughtn't have to build up enough speed before they took off. She'd seen many dragons flying, hunting, and taking off--without getting a running start first--as on occasion she'd felt it prudent to request their hospitality as opposed to that offered by her human fellows. Dragons didn't care much about what humans wore or what their gender was. Typically such occasions had followed after rumours concerning the curious habits and the words of maid staff that had walked in on Gregor in the middle of changing had made towns she'd been staying in uncomfortable.
Dragon females were largely the same as dragon males, as among their kind size varied only depending on age and the growth of horns depended on a dragon's magic. Hisenrou's juvenile bumps were already beginning to crown bone tips, and she couldn't have been much older than two or three years. She would likely be a prominent sorcerer among her kind, something Gregor felt obligated to encourage. Once the dragon was able to hunt for herself, Gregor knew of a couple patient and experienced sorcerer dragons she'd befriended in her travels that she could send the whip to for tutelage.
In the meantime, though...
CRUNCH
"Oof--ow--ouch!"
Gregor sighed, and went to dig her young dragon ward out of the tree she'd just crashed head-first into.

"I really do think you're getting better," Gregor insisted that night as they shared a pile of trout over the fire. Gregor had to admit, travelling with a dragon, however young, had its perks. While Hisenrou still struggled with aerial hunting, her fire-breathing was top form and she definitely was getting the hang of fishing. It had poured with a vengeance the night before, but even the most soaked of firewood was no match for the whip's lava-hot breath, and when Gregor had tired of baiting and tossing her fishing line, the dragon had taken over and had contributed several fine, fat trout to their pile that evening.
"I'm not," Hisenrou said sullenly. "I just can't do it. I'm worthless at it. I can never do anything right, no matter how hard I try. It was the same way with my parents, I just can't--" Hisenrou stopped, and Gregor didn't press her to finish her sentence. Instead, she decided to try comforting, something she'd never been very good at.
"Well," she began, and thought for a minute. "You see...it's...well...the thing is...I know it's hard," she finished lamely, giving up on attempting feelings. "But you'll get better. You just have to practice. I was just as clumsy with a bow and arrow when I started learning--" she never had been, really, she'd taken to form like a fish to water, "--and all it takes is practice."
Hisenrou snapped down the rest of her pile of trout and glumly curled up in a horse-sized ball of red scales and shimmering, vein-shot canvas, tucking her head under her wing.
Gregor sighed. She knew her pep talks were getting repetitive--Gregor had never been gifted with words--but she couldn't think of what else to do. She felt that a lot of this ought to be instinct to begin with--after all, hawks and hounds knew when to chase, when to pounce, and when to wait. Training was just fine-tuning this, and really, the majority of training them to do it was training them to do technically unnatural things--like bringing their kill back and not dragging it off, and handing it over rather than eat it.
Hisenrou seemed to be somehow lacking in those natural instincts that told the muscles when to go, the wings when to fold, the jaw when to bite, the claws when to snap. She really had improved in the few weeks she'd been together, but she had never yet managed a real kill. Gregor knew there had to be some underlying reason, something Hisenrou either wasn't telling her or didn't know herself. Gregor didn't consider Hisenrou a dumb beast, but, well, animals were animals, and when they weren't doing what ought to be natural instinct, it wasn't just clumsiness, or inexperience--it was something wrong.
The problem was, Gregor wasn't sure how to uncover it without offending or hurting the whip's feelings.
Gregor sighed as she lay back on her bedroll, gazing up at the starry sky that turned gently above Argenwaul. She'd thought training the whip would be easier than dogs and hawks--after all, she could tell Hisenrou exactly what to do and how to do it. But when Hisenrou did something wrong, she couldn't just scold her and run her through the same exercise over and over day after day until she got it right.
Hisenrou wasn't just an animal. She got frustrated, and while animals got frustrated, they usually forgot about the whole thing entirely within an hour and were ready to go again the next day. Gregor could see the wear that constant failure was having on the dragon, and she knew they had to manage a breakthrough soon, or one day she would wake up and the young dragon would be gone.
The most frustrating thing for Gregor was that she had a suspicion that Hisenrou's failure had something to do with her family and why she left home, and there was nothing Gregor could do about it.

"We're going to try something different today," she announced a few days later. Her travels had brought them across a crossroads the night before, and there had been some very intriguing papers nailed to the newsboard next to the signpost. Heavy thunderclouds rolled overhead as the knight began to pack up camp, leaving the dousing of the firepit for last.
"And what's that?" Hisenrou asked glumly, picking at her teeth with a trout's rib bone. She had been particularly unsuccessful lately with hunting, though she'd managed to get the hang of pulling out of dives--without crashing, anyway. Her recovery involved a good deal of clumsily flapping about like a sick duck, though, and Gregor was beginning to suspect that certain aspects of Hisenrou's tutoring were going to take nothing less than a real dragon's touch. "Some brilliant new technique you've concocted overnight?"
"No, actually," Gregor said, raising an eyebrow as she saddled up Briar and strapped the saddlebags on to the saddle. "It's the same technique I've used for years when I feel like getting paid lots of money for sitting around and talking with a great big lizard for a few hours. And occasionally getting winked at by princesses, but I consider that a downside more than anything." It was considered traditional for knights to bring princesses back riding sidesaddle or sitting on their lap, and the keen ladies could make the journey particularly awkward for Gregor.
Hisenrou considered what Gregor was saying, and then brightened noticeably, trotting briskly to keep up as Gregor directed Briar through the trees and onto the road, turning down the track directed in the poster on the board by the signs:

SUMMONING ALL KNYTES TO HYS ROYAL MAJESTY THEE KYNG OF dOR mANTUA'S AYDE:
FOR THEE SLAYYNG OF ONE 3OO-AND-50 STONE BULL DRAGONNE
RESCUYNG AND SAFE RETURNE OF ONNE PRYNCESS WHO YS:
UNWED
FULLEE MAYDYNNE
ELDEST OF ALL HYS MAJESTY'S CHYLDREN

50 GOLD PEECES PER STONE
10 GEMS OF VALU PER HORN

PLEESE YNKWIRE WYTHYN THEE CASTLE OF dOR mANTUA
DOWN YON PATH OF THEE RYGHT
AND STRAYT ON TYLL YE COME TO THEE DRAW BRYJ
WHER THER YS A RUNNER WAYTYNG

"You mean you're going dragon slaying and I get to take a break while you do?" Hisenrou asked brightly.
"Not quite," Gregor said with a wry grin. "It's more like I'm going slaying and I'm going to try and bargain some proper lessons out of the dragon for you while we're there."
Hisenrou groaned very loudly and a bit longer than Gregor felt was necessary.
"That's not fair," she whined. "Don't I get to take a break ever?"
"Yes. When you've landed your first kill."
Hisenrou groaned again, though not as long after Gregor shot her a glare.
"You know, I don't have to do this," Gregor snapped, weeks of whining and grumbling finally wearing through her last nerve. The thunder rumbled ominously above them and began to open up, inch by inch, drops coming down in spatters, then steadying into a light rain. "I didn't have to save your scaley arse from a proper skewering on the pointy tools of a dozen angry villagers. I didn't have to bring you with me. And I certainly don't have to try to teach you how to be a proper bloody dragon! I don't know if you've noticed, but all this trouble hasn't exactly benefited me either! You make so much noise crashing through the forest you scare off half the prey, you can't fly high enough overhead that they don't see you and run away anyway, you moan and complain about everything I've tried to do to help you, and frankly I'm about through with it! So either shut your scaley trap or learn to start showing a bit of gratitude, or so help me I will truss you up one of these nights and throw you in the river!"
Hisenrou shrank in on herself throughout Gregor's tirade, raising her wings as if to shield herself against the onslaught. When Gregor was done, the knight turned back to face the road and urged Briar onward onto the road they'd been camping alongside.. Eventually Hisenrou felt brave enough to catch up and bring her head level with Gregor's.
"I am grateful," she said quietly. "I am."
Gregor grunted, which Hisenrou knew was about as much of a "You're welcome, I forgive you for being an ingratiating little brat," that she was going to get out of the knight. Feeling satisfied, the dragon fell back a ways before she began her clumsy flapping gallop to lift herself up and into the air, soaring ahead of Gregor down the road towards the bright, shining silver towers that were glimmering on the horizon between raindrops.

Gregor was uneasy as Briar trotted up to the drawbridge of the castle of dOr mAntua, one of the richest and largest kingdoms of Argenwaul. Something about the reward advertised was going round and round in her mind, setting off the subtler senses her mind reserved for trickery.
She had never seen a reward that large. "Ten gold per stone" of dragon meant ten per cent of the ransom paid for the princess--after a knight had negotiated the ransom with a dragon, they added their per cent due on to the total when they presented it to the king, and would subtract it from the ransom wagons before they set out on the path up to the dragon's lair, sending it to the inn or household they were staying at for safekeeping.
Dragons took this into account when they made their ransom demand, and a knight also took this into account when haggling them down. Smart knights struck a deal halfway between what a king was willing to pay and what the dragon wanted--halfway was considered the most reasonable point. Stupid, greedy knights caved towards the dragon's end to get the largest ten per cent they could--those knights were talked about and typically ended up getting turned away after they'd pulled a swindle like that two or three times. They didn't stay in the business long.
There were poorer kingdoms, of course, that could barely manage to pay a knight's ten per cent in addition to the dragon's ransom, but they still did it, because most knights would turn up their noses at anything less. Larger kingdoms didn't offer more than ten per cent because they didn't want to, but since dragons demanded more of larger kingdoms, the knight would get more anyway.
But fifty per cent? That was insane. Sir Gregor could only think of one reason why any kingdom would offer to pay that much, and that was maybe because they weren't plannign to have to pay at all.
...Or, maybe this was an occasion where the dragon actually needed to get slain, and no one would go challenge it for anything less.
Well, it said "YNKWIRE WYTHYN". She'd find out when she inquired within.
The shimmering silver spires on the horizon had to be huge, because it took much longer than Gregor had expected to reach it. This was not the main path to dOr mAntua, the one used by the caravans of merchants, travellers, and those seeking their fortunes, but one of its many side paths twisting up the foothills to its mountain doorstep. Gregor had seen the main road to dOr mAntua once in passing, and it was laid with well-kept broad cobbling, whereas its side paths were merely broad dirt tracks.
The whole day had gone by by the time Gregor reached the city gates, and the steady rain had turned to a thunderous pour. Briar's head drooped miserably, though she picked up her feet some as her hooves struck stone and she recognized that they were entering a place of civilization. For all the stories Gregor's adventerous uncle had told her of herds galloping across plains in the eastern land, she had never seen such longing for wilderness in Briar. Briar loved her straw-strewn stalls with soft, warm blankets and buckets of oats. The day's journey uphill in the rain carrying her master in full armour had worn sorely on the beast. Gregor did feel very sorry and very grateful, but it was considered downright insult if a knight arrived at a household in anything less than full armour when he had ridden up to take up a task. It was another of those silly etiquette things Gregor had never understood, like women wearing stockings when no one could see so much as an ankle under their dress to be able to tell the difference.
Hisenrou was well away by the time Gregor had reached the city, knowing better than to fly too near within sight of it. Gregor had not seen the bright red whip swerve away in the downpour, which was rapidly becoming ever heavier, but she trusted the young dragon by now to find her own lodging for the cold, wet night that was falling. Perhaps Hisenrou would even happen upon the local dragon that had stolen the princess--though as she recalled her earlier theory about the dragon's potential hostility, Gregor found herself hoping against this rather than for. She also realized her previous plan to barter for lessons for Hisenrou may not work out after all, and was seriously debating forgoing the whole ordeal as all around her, shutters slammed and doors were locked tight as the city went to bed early in the face of the merciless, clinging cold and wet. Though Gregor understood, she felt a stab of disappointment.
That was one aspect of attention Gregor usually enjoyed in coming to a village or city with a king in need. She liked the initial gathering of crowds, the cheering, the murmurs of awe, the relieved faces all around. These all came before questions, and Gregor liked to pluck one lucky child out of the crowd, placing him--or her, Gregor was very particular about including little girls as well as boys--on the saddle in front of her and taking a brief trot down the street or around the nearest square. Gregor typically did not like children, especially babies, that did more crying and shitting than anything else and could drive her to madness quicker than anything--but knowing the joy she gave the ones old enough to understand the treat they were given, especially seeing the delight on the faces of little girls, when she herself had been so young once and wished so badly to see the world from atop a tall and fearsome charger. These were some of Gregor's favourite parts of knighting and slaying.
Briar the horse was excited beneath Gregor as they approached the castle, picking her feet up in a near-prance as she realized she would be spending the night in a proper stable after their few weeks on the road. As a travelling dragon slayer, while Gregor was a knight of the realm and could demand lodging from any inn or village she chose to stop at and hospitality from any local lord she deigned to drop in on, the whole reason Gregor had chosen the life she had was to avoid such situations. Gregor certainly enjoyed a proper bath and a three-course meal, but oftentimes the households that provided such things were run by authority figures or reported to them. Dragon slayers were, while everyone knew what really went on between knights and dragons, still a prominent heroic sort of figure. This was because dragon "slaying" was not the only thing dragon slayers did--those that dealt with dragons had also always been expected to likewise deal with any kind of monster, whether it was a matter of peaceful negotiation or down-and-bloody sword-to-gullet slaying. When peace had been struck between dragons and kings a little under a thousand years ago, the other monsters that plagued the realms hadn't just jolly well quieted down and gone away. Gregor had slain several monsters in her travels, from minor Jenny Greenteeths that lurked in rivers and drowned villagers, to great big raging chimaeras that rampaged with the bodies of bulls, the heads of lions, and great spikey snakes for tails. She was a good negotiator and a better, genuine monster slayer. Despite her efforts to remain in anonymity, word of the dark-skinned knight and his mighty silver charger had gotten around.
The more rumours spread, the more questions Gregor was asked. The harder she tried to avoid them, the more her mysterious allure grew, and the harder she was pestered--especially by the unwed daughters of village men, and sometimes by the wedded ones, too. It was all very awkward and made it much harder for Gregor to keep her secret. However, it was basic etiquette that a visiting dragon slayer be put up in the castle for the night, and it wasn't the kind of thing Gregor could wriggle out of without offending the resident king. And kings, however big or small, were never good people to offend.
The runner leaning against the gatehouse and chatting with the guard within started and tried to look important as Gregor rode up to it.
"Hail there, boy," Gregor boomed in her best man's voice. The lad straightened and then remembered to bow halfway through, putting his back through some interesting bends before he managed to get himself upright and at attention. "I am Sir Gregor the Valiant, of His Royal Majesty, High King George, noble and mighty warden of these fine and prosperous lands. I have ridden far and wide in search of good deeds through which I might better our great realm, and have arrived here at word of your king's great distress. Away with you now, speed within and tell His Majesty that the aid he has sought is at hand."
The boy gave another quick bow and sped off, his feet slapping on the wet and slippery cobbles. Gregor watched him as he disappeared under the portcullis and continued on through the courtyard beyond that, and then another portcullis. Hard as it was to see in the fading light and thickening rain, Gregor could barely make out that this castle had three outer walls, all with portcullises, all mightily thick and what seemed mountain-high.
Some castle hands had appeared as if by magic out of the great stone wall; Gregor knew there would be servant's entrances, concealed to almost perfect invisibility in the walls. Gregor dismounted as they neared, and Briar whickered happily as she was lead away by the stable hand for a good rub-down and a pail of honeyed oats. The others lead Gregor within the first portcullis and into a much larger gatehouse that was clearly more for temporary entertainment of important visitors, though not-so-important visitors that would have been lead up to the castle immediately. Dragon slayers were afforded great respect and often treated like lesser lords in their own right, but they were travelling knights, and in the constant political undercurrents and barely concealed hostilities and rivalries that seethed like a pot of snakes between the royal houses of the realms, caution was always the first watchword of any of them. Though Gregor had taken great pains that her hands were never dirtied with any politick, dragon slayers in general were regarded as "buyable" knights, those that would sell their loyalty for a price. Unfortunately, this was true more often than Gregor liked to think about, and so, until they felt certain of her allegiance or lackthereof to any of their current enemies, here Gregor would stay in the large, warm gatehouse until the king bade her up to the castle.
In truth, Gregor hardly minded these unspoken formalities much; she enjoyed the time spent with the rougher, common sort of guards and beholden knights that she and her brothers had grown up with in their father's house. She enjoyed their beer, their loose and easy talk, and often gleaned valuable information on the current status of the rumours involving her and her fellow travelling knights. These guards and soldiers, who often entertained her sort, could see easily enough when a fellow was too tired to regale others with tales, and would leave her alone to drink her beer quietly in the corner, or just as easily welcome her into their end-of-the-day talk. Gregor downed three or four tankards before the drink finally began to warm her; the wet cold had seeped much deeper than she'd realized. After that she leaned against the fireplace,quietly sipping her beer and listening to the knights and guards talk and laugh. Usually she would have liked to join in, but she was too preoccupied with her nervousness regarding the bounty.
An hour or so had passed by the time another runner came for Gregor, and by now she was beginning to feel insulted herself. The inside of the castle had better be a hive of activity right now for some reason, Gregor told herself, because to keep a knight waiting like this was not a matter of traditional etiquette, but evidence of a total lack of respect.

"Their Royal Highnesses are very busy at the moment, I expect," she said conversationally to the runner after they'd passed through the second inner courtyard and he had directed her into a hallway within the wall.
"Er, they...are preoccupied," the runner said, with the tones of an underling choosing their words carefully. "H...Her highness's abduction has been difficult for us all."
"The King and Queen are very upset, I imagine," Sir Gregor said. "I know that life can be difficult for servants in any home run by an unhappy master." "Yes, sir." Sir Gregor recognized that response. It was the fail safe of any servant talking to a figure of authority when they did not want to talk to them. It was safe, respectful, and confirmed nothing about anything. It could also be used in response to almost anything, until the authority figure gave up or went away or both. Sir Gregor gave up.
The castle was indeed busy, she found as they entered into a main corridor and headed down along it, but this was the increased busyness found in any large building when there was still work left in the day, and the outdoors was too inhospitable to do it outside. Gregor marked the hunched and hurried posture of all, in both the lowest laundry carriers and the small group of important looking staff, probably task supervisors, gathered in one corner of the hallway and discussing things in quiet, rapid voices. There was much furtive glancing over shoulders, and a noticeable lowering of volume as Sir Gregor and her runner passed. This, too, Gregor recognized, not as anything as sinister as plotting, but as the behaviour of those important enough to get away with standing around while they agreed on their disapproval of the current Goings On.
The house of the king of dOr mAntua was not busier than usual, but it was worried about something.
This further upset Gregor. She was used to anxious. She was used to wringing of hands, the desperate busyness of those trying not to think about something that was happening. But this quiet fear was something different.
There was something more going on here than just a kidnapped princess, though it probably still had everything to do with it, and Sir Gregor had a deeply irritating feeling that she was not going to find out what it was.
Sir Gregor glanced at a portrait of the royal family as the turned a corner, down a hallway that looked to lead to the throne room, judging by the massive double doors looming at the end of it--and Sir Gregor stopped.
She backed up a few steps and stared at the wall where the portrait of the royal family should have been. Instead, there was a glaringly blank expanse of wall, and yes--Sir Gregor squinted and could make out the clear, large rectangle of slightly brighter stone where something had hung for enough years to prevent the permanent stain of dust that had affected the stone around it. And there--she could see the iron bearings that had supported it, still nailed into the wall.
"Sir Gregor," the runner said quickly, snapping her attention away for a moment. "Sir, if you please, their Royal Majesties..." She stared at the suddenly anxious young man for a moment, then back up to the blank expanse of wall.
Sir Gregor was kind to peasants.
"The royal family portrait was damaged recently, I expect," she said in a tone that let on she expected no such thing, but was giving the man an easy out. "Had to be taken down for repairs?"
The relief in his face was enough to confirm her suspicions.
"Yes, sir," he said. "Terrible accident."
"Scaffolding was involved, I should think," Sir Gregor went on, slowly turning and continuing down the hallway with her grateful guide.
"Sir?"
"Big wooden ladders," Sir Gregor translated. It was not the first time she'd forgotten the gap in vocabulary level between herself and commoners. "Put up to dust the portrait, of course."
"Yes, sir," the young man continued to agree. "Great tragedy. Happened just before you rode in, Sir."
"Perhaps it happened while I was in the guard's house, even," Sir Gregor went on conversationally. She saw the young man's white mountain-born skin pale even further.
"I...it may have, Sir," he said, speeding up his gate slightly as they neared the doors of the King and Queen's audience chamber. "I was not present for it."
Sir Gregor turned her attention to the doors in front of her as the runner dissolved to her right to alert the fanfare givers waiting inside.