Smoothbrain Freddie's house party was well into its third week when the Apothecary arrived. The venue was the Earl of Ozobranch's so-called "hunting lodge"—a medium-sized palace in the middle of a deciduous forest carpeting the foothills of a picturesque mountain range. The Earl had made it available for his children's recreational use, so Freddie had taken it over for the summer and invited all his friends (and a few of his enemies). After three weeks of Freddie-grade festivities the servants had bags under their eyes, the wine cellar was down to a third of its original level, the guests had fought four duels (none of them conclusively fatal), and the roof of the west wing was still smoking from the dragon race the Drones Club had held the weekend before. Luckily for the servants, many of the party animals from the first week had moved on: most of the survivors were confined to the gaming salon. They were mainly hedge-lords playing for grim death to avoid homelessness, or vainly attempting to recover their squandered fortunes. The latter crew were absolutely pestilential—they'd propose marriage at the drop of a hat, and some were unscrupulous enough to try to compromise their target—so the Apothecary avoided them. In any case, the gambling tables were not her preferred hunting ground right now. Instead she mingled with the ladies of the fourth party as they arrived from the capital aboard one of the earl's personal airships.