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The new stadium had been completed shortly before Peace Day in the year three hundred and fifty-ten, and the Peace Day exercises were held there, instead of on the plaza of Kuana as heretofore. This was particularly appropriate, for the stadium had been built on the exact spot where had occurred the first clash between the Formians and the Cupians at the beginning of the War of Liberation two years before.

The golden-haired Lilla was unable to be present, for she was expecting a child. So she was safely ensconced in her castle at Lake Luno, a thousand stads to the north of Kuana.

Cabot and she hoped for a boy. They hoped this with more than the conventional fervor, for their son would be Crown Prince of Cupia, thus supplanting the renegade Prince Yuri, whose whereabouts had been unknown since the war. The birth of a son to the Princess Lilla would mean the end of the menace of the possibility of Yuri succeeding the throne on the death of King Kew, and bringing back the ants with him. It is true that the Assembly had cancelled his title as crown prince, and had awarded the succession to his younger brother, the loyal Prince Toron; but most Cupians doubted the legality of this procedure.