Timing, you've deduced, is anything except exact here. Zar returns to the tower of the three ladies and discovers a sign hanging from the door:
*****A High Fete!*****
In your Dreams
After Moonrise
Tea on Request,
Crumpets by Demand
Anxiously, you await the cresting of the moon. If one or more of you sneaks off to the captain's larder for some "liquid courage," you couldn't be blamed. When the ice-blue crescent nestles in the crook of the sky, the tower door swings wide and you behold a ballroom bedecked in rapturous shades of red -- as are the three ladies. You consign yourselves (or launch yourselves into) a night of civilized debauchery: courtly dances, rich red wines, and clandestine scheming for a moment's private canoodling.
At the height of the night, the revelers howl for a triple minor dance. And by revelers, I mean the jester and several overly drippy redswordsmen. The three champions and their three partners caper and whirl in the center of the room until, by feat of feet, the three ladies form the corners of the triangle and the three champions, its center.
Signe, her bounteous bosom still reverberating with kinetic majesty, reveals that she and the other two omitted one "
teensy, tiny" detail.
There can only be one champion.
"
Defend my honor," they beseech as one. The orchestra falls silent for the first time and only the buzzing of flies can be heard.