Kamoj squinted at the mirror while the threadwoman fussed over her. She heartily disliked formal clothes. Leggings and a farm tunic were more comfortable. But today was her wedding and at one’s wedding one wore a wedding dress.

This dress had the weight of tradition behind it, not to mention the weight of impractical amounts of cloth. Her mother and grandmother had also worn it. Dyed the blush color of an Argali rose, it fit snug around her torso and fell to the floor in drapes of rose-scale satin. Hand-made lace bordered the neckline and sleeves, and her hair fell in glossy black curls to her waist. The Argali Jewels glittered at her throat, wrists, and ankles, gold circlets designed like vines and inset with ruby roses. She hadn’t expected ever to wear them. She had been on the verge of selling them, in fact, to buy grain threshers.

With tugs and taps, the aged threadwoman tightened the dress at the waist and tried to make it stretch to fit Kamoj’s breasts. She cackled at her reluctant model, her eyes almost lost in their nest of lines. “You’ve no boy’s shape, Gov’ner. You be making Lionstar a happy man, I reckon.”

Kamoj glowered at her, but the seamstress was saved from her retort by a knock on the door. Kamoj limped across the room in her unfamiliar shoes, heeled slippers sheathed in rose scale-leather. She opened the door to see Lyode.

Her bodyguard beamed. “Hai, Kamoj! You look lovely.”

“It’s for my wedding,” Kamoj said.

Lyode’s smile faded. “Maxard told me.”

Kamoj dismissed the seamstress, then drew Lyode over to sit with her on the couch. The older woman started to lean against the back of the sofa, but jerked when her shoulders touched the cushions and sat forward again.

Watching her, Kamoj said, “You’ve huge bags under your eyes.”

“I had—a little trouble sleeping last night.”

Kamoj wasn’t fooled. But Maxard must have mollified Jax to some extent; otherwise Lyode wouldn’t have been able to move at all.

“How is Gallium?” she asked.

Gently Lyode said, “He’s all right, Kami. We both are.”

Kamoj crumpled her skirt in her fists. “I hate all this.”

“Hate is a strong word. Give Lionstar a chance.”

“Lyode—”

“Yes?”

“About tonight…” Although in theory Kamoj knew what happened on a wedding night, it was only as vague concepts. But she felt awkward asking advice on such matters even from Lyode.

“Don’t look so dour.” Lyode’s face relaxed into the affectionate grin she took on at the mention of her own husband, Opter. “Weddings are good things.”

Kamoj snorted. “You look like a besotted fruitwing.” When her bodyguard laughed, Kamoj couldn’t help but smile. “How will I know what to do?”

“Trust your instincts.”

“My instincts tell me to run the other way.”

Lyode touched her arm. “Don’t judge Lionstar yet. Wait and see.”

At sunset the Argali coach rolled into the courtyard, pulled by four greenglass stags and driven by a stagman. Shaped and tinted like a rose, it sat in a chassis of emerald-green leaves. Unlike Argali House, which had only legends attesting to its construction, the coach was inarguably one surface with no seams, glimmering like pearl. Its making was so long in the past, no one remembered how it had been done.

Watching from her bedroom window, Kamoj heard the door behind her open. She turned to see Lyode framed in the archway, the bodyguard dressed in her finest shirt and trousers, with her bow on her back.

“It’s time to go,” Lyode said.

Kamoj crossed the room without a limp. She felt nothing in her foot now: it had gone numb. She had soaked and cleaned the wound this morning, but it remained swollen. Normally she would have paid more attention, but she had too much else to think of now.

Maxard was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. She smiled to see him. Today no lack of splendor would shame Argali. Her uncle’s mail vest gleamed, a gold contrast to his black hair and eyes. He wore a suncorn shirt, wine-red suede breeches, and a belt made from green, gold, and red quetzal feathers. Green feathers lined the tops of his gold knee-boots, and a ceremonial sword hung at his side, its scabbard tooled with Argali designs.

As Kamoj descended the stairs, her uncle watched with a smile that showed both pride and sorrow. When she reached him, he said, “You look like a dream.” His voice caught. “Just yesterday you were a child. When did all this happen?”

“Hai, Maxard.” She hugged him. “I don’t know.” It was true. She had been a child; now she was an adult. Nothing separated the two. It gave her an inexplicable sense of loss. Why? Why should she want more time as a child?

She knew the stories, of course, of the rare child who took longer to reach adulthood. Rumor claimed Jax Ironbridge’s youth had stretched out far longer than normal. At her age he had still been an adolescent, tall and gangly, with only the first signs of his beard. He continued to grow long past the age when most youths reached maturity. He came into full adulthood well after most men his age—and by that time he was taller, stronger, and smarter than everyone else.

With Maxard and Lyode on either side, Kamoj left the house. A group of her friends had gathered in the courtyard, young women with rose vines braided into their black hair. They waved and smiled, and Kamoj waved back, trying to appear in good spirits.

Gathered around the coach, ten stagmen sat astride their mounts, including Gallium Sunsmith. A smudgebug flittered into the face of one stag and the animal pranced to the side, crowding Gallium’s greenglass. As the rider of the first animal pulled back his mount, his elbow accidentally bumped Gallium’s back. Kamoj saw the grimace of pain Gallium tried to hide, just as Lyode had done when she sat back on the couch.

Kamoj’s smile faded, lost to dismal thoughts of Jax. As she passed Gallium, she looked up and spoke softly. “My gratitude, Goodman Sunsmith. For everything.”

He nodded, his face gentling. Lyode opened the coach door, and Maxard entered first, followed by Kamoj. Lyode came last and closed the door, shutting them into the heart of a rose. The driver blew on his flight horn, and its call rang through the evening air. Then they started off, bumping down the road.

The three of them sat in silence, at a loss for words. The coach rolled slowly, so the people walking could keep up with it. Even so, it seemed to Kamoj almost no time passed at all before it came to a stop.

The door swung open, framing Gallium in its opening. Beyond him in the gathering dusk, the golden face of the Spectral Temple basked in rays of the setting sun. Kamoj’s retinue of stagmen and friends, and now many other villagers too, stood waiting in the muddy plaza before it.

Lyode left the coach first. Kamoj gathered up her skirts and followed, but in the doorway she froze. Across the mud and cobblestones, a larger coach was rolling into view. Made from bronze and black metal, it had the shape of a roaring skylion’s head with wind whipping back its feathered mane. Every burnished detail gleamed. The eyes were emeralds as large as fists. Kamoj wondered where Lionstar found such big gems. Argali’s jewel-master had checked and double-checked the ones in his dowry. They were real. Flawless and real.

As soon as the coach stopped, its door opened. Two stagmen came out, decked out in copper and dark blue, with cobalt diskmail that glittered in the sun’s slanting rays. Sapphires lined the tops of their boots.

Then a cowled man stepped down into the plaza.

Kamoj shuddered. Lionstar towered over everyone else, easily the largest man in the courtyard. As always, he wore a blue cloak with a cowl pulled up over his head. Only black showed inside that shadowed hood; either he had a cloth over his face—or he had no face.