"Thank you." Kamoj sat on her bed. As Ixima knelt to take off her boot, Kamoj said, "Can you treat cuts?"

"I donnee know." Ixima slid off the boot and peeled away the sock. Kamoj winced as the cloth ripped away from her toes. Her foot must have bled during her walk and then dried her sock to her skin. Lifting her foot, she saw dirt ground into the gash.

"I should soak it in hot water," Kamoj said.

"I donnee see how a'rubbin' it would help," Ixima said. "You rest, hai, ma'am?

Tomorrow it be feeling better enough to scrub."

Kamoj knew she should treat the cut now. But she was tired and had much to consider. Besides, she always healed well. Tomorrow she would tend to it.

After Kamoj was settled in bed, the maize girl darkened the room and left, leaving one candle flickering on the window sill. Kamoj lay on her back, her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling. If she refused the Lionstar merger, it would placate Jax but break the law. If Argali and Ironbridge combined forces, they would have an army almost equal to that of Lionstar.

But if Lionstar attacked, Kamoj would have to send people she loved into a rite of battle, including Maxard and Gallium. A good chance existed they wouldn't come home.

She knew what she had to do. As she made her decision, she felt a sense of lightening. She had no way to guess what Lionstar intended, but no matter what happened, never again would Jax raise his hand or quirt to her. Never again would he use the lives and well-being of her people as a weapon against her.

It was a bitter victory, given what she had seen of Lionstar, but it was all she had.

II.

Lionstar

Second Scattering Channel

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 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 hada 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 greengla.s.s stags and driven by a stagman. Shaped and tinted like a rose, it sat in a cha.s.sis 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 ageand 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 greengla.s.s. As the rider of the first animal pulled back his mount, his elbow accidentally b.u.mped 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 pa.s.sed Gallium, she looked up and spoke softly. "My grat.i.tude, 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, b.u.mping 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 pa.s.sed 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 faceor he had no face.

Maxard took her arm. "We should go."

His touch startled her into motion. She descended from the coach, onto a flagstone that glinted with mica even in the purple shadows. Her heels clicked as she crossed the courtyard, stepping from stone to stone to avoid the mud.

The Spectral Temple, also called the Special Functions House, was a terraced pyramid with a staircase climbing its left side. Rays from the setting sun hit the stairs at just the right angle to make a snake of light curve down them to the statue of a starlizard's head at the bottom, creating a serpent of radiance and stone.

On the front face of the temple, a huge starlizard's head opened its mouth in a roar, forming an entrance. Its front four legs stretched out on the ground, its back legs were braced against the slanting wall, and its tail coiled around the base of the pyramid. As Kamoj watched, a sunray hit the lizard's crystal eyes and arcs of light appeared on either side of its head, an effect created by the temple's ancient architect to mimic the Perihelia spirits, sometimes called Sun Lizards or Jul Lizards, that guarded the temple.

True sun lizards appeared in the sky as partial halos of light on either side of the sun, like pale rainbows, with a long serpent's tail of white light extending out from them. Their favored time was near dusk, as the bright, tiny Jul descended to the horizon, scantily dressed in wispy clouds, while the sky overhead darkened to a deep, deep violet. During winter, when ice crystals filled the air, Perihelia and Halo spirits graced the heavens in arcs and rings, and even appeared around the head of a favored person's shadow when it lay across a dew-covered expanse of tubemoss at dawn.

Lionstar's group reached the Jul Lizard first. He stopped under the overhang of its fanged mouth and waited, his cowled head turned toward Kamoj. She came up with her retinue and they stopped. After they had all stood that way for several moments, she flushed, wondering what Lionstar wanted. Didn't he know he should go in first?

One of Lionstar's stagmen spoke to him in a low voice. He nodded, then turned and entered the temple with his retinue. Relieved, Kamoj followed with her own people. No one spoke. She wondered if Lionstar could even talk.

No one she knew had ever heard him do it.

Inside, sunset light trickled through slits high in the walls. Stone benches filled the interior, except for a dais at the far end, where a polished stone table stood. Decorating the table were carvings of Argali vine designs, those motifs known as Bessel integrals in ancient Iotaca. Genuine rose vines and ferns heaped the table, filling the air with fragrance, fresh and clean.

Around the walls, more garlands hung from statues of several Current spiritsthe Airy Rainbows, the Glories, and the Nimbi. In the wall slits above the statues, light slanted through faceted windows with water misted between the double panes, creating spectral arcs of color. Music graced the air, from breezes blowing through fluted chambers on the ceiling, hidden within bas relief depictions of the Spherical Harmonic wraiths. Today it all seemed unreal.

As the retinues and villagers sat on the benches, Kamoj walked to the far end of the temple with Maxard at her side and Lionstar preceding them. The priestess, Airysphere Prism, waited by the flower-bedecked table. Taller than average, Airys had dark eyes and glossy black hair that fell to her waist.

When Lionstar reached Airys, he turned to watch Kamoj. At least she a.s.sumed he was watching. His cowl hid his face. Even when she reached him, she saw only darkness within that hood, perhaps a glint of metal.

Maxard bowed to him. "Argali welcomes you, Governor Lionstar."

Lionstar nodded. After an awkward silence, Maxard flushed, though whether from anger or shame at the implied insult in that silence, Kamoj didn't know.

Finally her uncle took her hands. "May the Current always flow for you, Kami."

She squeezed his fingers. "And you, dear Uncle."

Maxard swallowed. Then he let her go and left the dais, going to sit on the front bench with Lyode.

"It is done?" Lionstar asked.

Kamoj almost jumped. His voice was deep and resonant, with a heavy accent.

On the word "is," it vibrated like a stringed instrument.

Airys blinked, the vertical slits of her pupils opening wide in the shadowed temple. With her large eyes and delicate features she looked almost ethereal herself. "Do you refer to the ceremony?" she asked.

"Yes," Lionstar said.

"It hasn't begun." She took a scroll from the table and unrolled it. Glyphs covered the parchment in starlight blue ink and Argali colors. She offered it to Lionstar, and he took it with black-gloved hands.

"Governor Argali," Airys said. "Give me your hand."

After Kamoj extended her arm, Airys took it and said, "In the name of Spectra Luminous I give this man to you." She turned. "Havyrl Lionstar, give me your hand." When he complied, Airys took a vine from the altar and tied his and Kamoj's wrists together, bedecking them in roses and scale-leaves. Looking up at Lionstar, she said, "You may read the contract now."

Kamoj waited for him to decline. No one ever actually read the contract. Only scholars knew how to read, after all, and only the most gifted knew ancient Iotaca. Most people considered the scroll a fertility prayer. Kamoj had her doubts; Airys had managed to translate a few parts of it for her, and to Kamoj it sounded more like a legal doc.u.ment than a poem. She supposed lovers preferred to see matters in terms of moons and fertility, though.

In any case, the groom always returned the scroll. Then the wedding couple spoke a blessing they had composed themselves. Kamoj hadn't written anything and she doubted Lionstar had either, so they would simply go on with the ceremony.

Except they didn't. Lionstar read the scroll.

As his voice rumbled, indrawn breaths came from their audience. Kamoj doubted anyone in Argali had ever heard the blessing spoken at a merger, let alone with such power. Lionstar had a deep voice, with an unfamiliar accent and the burr of a vibrato. It also sounded slurred.

When he finished, the only sounds in the temple were the faint calls of evening birds outside.

Finally he said, "This ceremony, is it done?"

Airys managed to recover. "The vows are finished, if that is what you mean."

He gave her the scroll. Then he untied the vine joining his and Kamoj's wrists and draped it around Kamoj's neck so the roses spilled over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She stiffened, jarred by the break with tradition; they weren't supposed to undo the vine until they consummated the marriage. Before she had a chance to speak, he took her elbow, turned her around, and headed for the entrance, bringing her with him.

Murmurs came from the watchers, a rustle of clothes, the clink of diskmail.

Belatedly Kamoj realized he had misunderstood: he thought the ceremony was over when it had hardly begun. But the rest was only ritual. The vows were said. Argali and Lionstar had their corporate merger.

They came out into a purple evening. It happened so fast Kamoj barely had time to catch her breath before they reached Lionstar's coach. Lionstar stopped, looking at something over her head, and she turned to see Maxard coming up to them, flanked by Lyode and Gallium.

Lionstar spoke to her uncle. "Good night, sir."

Kamoj wondered what he meant. Was "good night" a greeting or a farewell?

Maxard bowed to him. Lionstar nodded, then motioned to his men. As he raised his arm, his cloak parted and revealed his diskmail, a sapphire flash of blue. What metal he did use, to create such a dramatic color? One of his stagmen opened the coach door, and Lionstar put his hand on Kamoj's arm, with the obvious intent of pa.s.sing her into the coach.