Above them, the door slammed open. Maxard stood framed in the archway, a burly man in old farm clothes. His garb startled Kamoj more than his sudden appearance. By now her uncle should have been decked out in ceremonial dress and mail, ready to greet the Ironbridge party. Yet he looked as if he hadn’t even washed up since coming in from the fields.

He spoke in a low voice. “You better get in here.”

She hurried up the steps. “What happened?” Had Jax been more offended than she realized?

Maxard didn’t answer, just moved aside to let her into the entrance foyer, a small room paved with tiles glazed white and accented by Argali designs.

Boots clattered in the hall beyond. Then Jax swept into the foyer with five of his stagmen. He paused in mid-stride when he saw Kamoj. Then he went past her, over to Maxard, towering over the younger man.

“We aren’t through with this, Argali,” Jax said.

“My decision is made,” Maxard answered.

“Then you are a fool.” Jax glanced at Kamoj, his face stiff with an emotion she couldn’t identify. Shock? He strode out the door with his stagmen, ignoring Lyode.

Kamoj turned to her uncle. “What’s going on?”

He shook his head, his face impossible to read. Lyode came up the stairs, but when she tried to enter the house, Maxard stretched out his arm, putting his hand against the door frame to block her way. He spoke with uncharacteristic anger. “What blew into your brain, Lyode? Why did you have to shoot at him? Of all days I didn’t need Jax Ironbridge angry, this was it.”

“He was mistreating Kamoj,” Lyode replied.

“So Gallium Sunsmith says.” Maxard frowned at Kamoj. “What were you doing, running around the woods like a wild animal?”

Kamoj stared at him. She always walked in the woods after she finished working in the stables. Maxard often came with her, the two of them discussing various projects for Argali or just enjoying each other’s company.

Quietly she said, “Uncle, what is it? What’s wrong?”

He blew out a gust of air. “Wait for me in the library.”

She studied his face, trying to fathom what troubled him. No hints showed. So she nodded, to him and to Lyode. Then she limped into her house.

The centuries had warped the library door arch beyond simple repair. Kamoj leaned her weight into the door to shove it closed. Inside the library, shelves filled with codices and books covered the walls. The lamp by Maxard’s favorite armchair shed light over a table there. A codex lay on the table, a parchment scroll made from the inner bark of a sunglass tree and painted with gesso, a smooth plaster. Glyphs covered it, delicate symbols inked in Argali colors. Kamoj could decipher none of the writing. But as she took responsibility for Argali, Maxard had more time for his scholarship. He was learning to read.

Behind her the door scraped open, and she turned to see her uncle. With no preamble, he said, “I’ve something to show you.”

Puzzled, Kamoj accompanied him to an arched door in the far wall. The storeroom beyond had once held carpentry tools, but those were long gone, sold by her grandparents to purchase grain. Maxard fished a skeleton key out of his pocket and opened the tanglebirch door. Unexpectedly, oil lamps lit the room beyond. Kamoj stared past him—and gasped.

Urns, boxes, chests, gigantic pots, finely wrought buckets: they all crammed the storeroom full to overflowing. Gems filled baskets, heaped like fruits, spilling onto the floor, diamonds that split the light into rainbows, emeralds as brilliant as the eyes of a greenglass, rose-rubies the size of fists, sapphires, topazes, amethysts, cats-eyes, jade, turquoise. She walked forward, and her foot kicked an opal the size of a polestork egg. It rolled across the floor and hit a bar of metal.

Metal. Metal. Bars lay in tumbled piles: gold, silver, copper, bronze. Sheets of rolled platinum sat on cornucopias filled with fruits, flowers, and grains. Glazed pots brimmed with vegetables, and spice racks hung from the wall. Bracelets, anklets, and necklaces were everywhere, wrought from gold and studded with jewels. A chain of diamonds lay on a silver bowl heaped with eider plums. Just as valuable, dried foodstuffs filled cloth bags and woven baskets. Nor had she ever seen so many bolts of rich cloth in one place: glimsilks, brocades, rose-petal satins, gauzy scarves shot through with metallic threads, scale-velvets, plush and sparkling.

And light strings! At first Kamoj thought she mistook the clump thrown on a pile of crystal goblets. But it was real. She went over and picked up the bundle of threads. They sparkled in the lamplight, perfect, no damage at all. This one bundle was enough to repair broken Current threads throughout the village, and it was only one of several in the room.

Turning to Maxard, she spread out her arms, the threads clutched in one fist. “This is-it’s-is this ours?”

He spoke in a cold voice. “Yes. It’s ours.”

“But Maxard, why do you look so dour!” A smile broke loose on her face. “This could support Argali for years! How did it happen?”

“You tell me.” He came over to her. “Just what did he give you out there today?”

He? She blinked. “Who?”

“Havyrl Lionstar.”

Hai! So Maxard had heard. “I didn’t know he was watching.”

“Watching what?”

“Me swimming.”

“Then what?”

Baffled, she said, “Then nothing.”

“Nothing?” Incredulity crackled in his voice. “What did you promise him, Kamoj? What sweet words did you whisper to compromise his honor?”

Kamoj couldn’t imagine any woman having the temerity to try compromising the huge, brooding Lionstar. “What are you talking about?”

“You promised to marry him if he gave you what you wanted, didn’t you?”

“What?”

Anger snapped in his voice. “Isn’t that why he sent this dowry?”

Kamoj stared at him. “That’s crazy.”

“He must have liked whatever the two of you did.”

“We did nothing. You know I would never jeopardize our alliance with Ironbridge.”

Her uncle exhaled, his anger easing into puzzlement. “Then why did he send this dowry? Why does he insist on a merger with you tomorrow?”

Kamoj felt as if she had just stepped into a bizarre skit played out for revelers during a harvest festival. “He what?”

Maxard motioned at the storeroom. “His stagmen brought it today while I was tying up stalks in the tri-grain field. They spoke as if the arrangement were already made.”

It suddenly became clear to Kamoj. All too clear. Lionstar didn’t want the ruins of an old palace, or the trees in their forest.

He wanted Argali. All of it.

Strange though his methods were, they made a grim sort of sense. He had already demonstrated superiority in forces: many stagmen served him, over one hundred, far more than Maxard had, more even than Ironbridge. With his damnable “rent” he had taken the first step in establishing his wealth. He even laid symbolic claim to her province by living in the Quartz Palace, the ancestral Argali home. Any way they looked at it, he had set himself up as an authority to reckon with. Today he added the final, albeit unexpected, ingredient—a merger bid so far beyond the pale that the combined resources of all the Northern Lands could never best it.

“Gods,” Kamoj said. “No wonder Jax is angry.” She set down the light threads. “There must be some way I can refuse this.”

“I’ve already asked the temple scholar,” Maxard said. “And I’ve looked through the old codices myself. We’ve found nothing. You know the law. Better the offer or yield.”

She frowned. “I’m not going to marry that insane person.”

“Then he will be fully within his rights to take Argali by force. That was how it was done, Kamoj, in the time of the sky ships. Do you want a war with Lionstar?” Dryly he added, “I’m not sure my stagmen even know how to fight a war.”