Lyode smiled. "Your uncle's retinue is a handsome sight."
Kamoj didn't answer. Normally she liked watching Maxard's honor guard, all the more so because she was fond of the riders, most of whom she had known all her life, just as she was fond of her uncle. Maxard's good-natured spirit made everyone love him, which was why a wealthy merchant woman from the North Sky Islands was courting him despite his small corporation. However, today Maxard wasn't with his honor guard. He had sent them to Ironbridge a few days ago, and now they returned with an esteemed guest, someone Kamoj had no desire to see.
The leading stagmen were riding past her hiding place now, the bi-hooves of their mounts whipping up scale dust from the road. She recognized the rider in front. Gallium Sunsmith. A big man with a friendly face, Gallium worked with his brother Opter in a sunshop, engineering gadgets that ran on light, like the mirror-driven peppermill Opter had invented. Gallium also made a good showing for himself each year in the swordplay exhibition at festival. So when Maxard needed an honor guard, Gallium became a stagman.
Down the road, more of the party came into view. These new riders wore black mail, with purple shirts and breeches, and black boots fringed by silver feathers. Jax Ironbridge, the governor of Ironbridge Province, rode in their center. Long-legged and muscular, taller than the other stagmen, he had a handsome face with strong lines, chiseled like granite. Silver streaked his black hair. He sat astride Mistrider, a huge greenglass with a rack of cloud-tipped antlers and scales the color of the opal-mists that drifted in the high northern forests.
Still hidden, Kamoj turned away from the road and leaned against the tree with her arms crossed, staring into the forest while she waited for the riders to pass.
A horn sounded behind her, its call winging through the air. Startled, she spun around. Apparently she wasn't as well concealed as she had thought; Jax had stopped on the road and was watching her, the curved handle of a flight-horn in his hand.
Kamoj flushed, knowing she had given offense by hiding from him. Her merger with Jax had been planned for most of her life. He had the largest corporation in the northern provinces, which consisted of Argali, the North Sky Islands, and Ironbridge. Argument existed about the translation of the Iotaca word corporation: for lack of a better interpretation, most scholars assumed it meant a man's dowry, the property and wealth he brought into marriage. A corporation as big as Jax's became a political tool, invoking the same law of "Better the offer or yield" as had Lionstar's rent.
Ironbridge, however, had given Argali a choice. Jax made an offer Kamoj could have bettered. It would have meant borrowing every last bit of wealth owned by even the most impoverished Argali farmers, but besting the amount by one stalk of bi-wheat was all it took. Then she could have turned down the offer and repaid the loans. She had been tempted to try. But Argali was her responsibility, and her province desperately needed this merger with flourishing Ironbridge. So she had agreed.
Jax was watching her with an impassive gaze. He offered his hand. "It will be my pleasure to escort you back to Argali house."
"I thank you for you kind offer, Governor Ironbridge," she said. "But you needn't trouble yourself."
He gave her a cold smile. "I am pleased to see you as well, my love."
Hai! She hadn't meant to further the insult. Limping forward, she took his hand. He lifted her onto the stag with one arm, a feat of strength few other riders could have managed even with a child, let alone another adult. As he pulled her up, he turned her so she ended up sitting sideways on the greenglass, her hips fitted into the space in front of the first boneridge that curved over its back. Jax sat behind her, astride the stag, between its first and second boneridges.
The smell of his disk mail wafted over her, rich with oil and sweat. As he bent his head to hers, she drew back in reflex, before she could think. Although Jax showed no outward anger, a muscle in his cheek twitched. Taking her chin in his hand, he pulled her head forward and kissed her, pressing in on her jaw until he forced her mouth open for his tongue. When she tensed, he clenched his fist around her upper arm, holding her in place.
A rush of air thrummed past Kamoj, followed by the crack of a bowball hitting a tree and the shimmering sound of falling scales. Pulling away from her, Jax raised his head. Both the Argali and Ironbridge stagmen had drawn their bows and had their weapons trained on Lyode. Kamoj's bodyguard stood by the road, a second ball knocked in her bow, her weapon aimed at Jax.
All the stagmen looked uncomfortable, poised to return Lyode's fire, yet holding back. No one wanted to shoot Kamoj's bodyguard. The Argali stagmen had grown up with her and Gallium was her brother-in-law. The Ironbridge stagmen knew her as guardian of their governor's betrothed.
However, neither could they ignore that she had just sent a bowball hurtling within a few hand spans of the two governors.
In a cold voice only Kamoj could hear, Jax said, "Your hospitality today continues to amaze me."
Shifting his attention to Gallium Sunsmith, he spoke in a louder voice. "You. Escort Lyode back to Argali House."
Gallium answered carefully. "It is my honor to serve you, sir. But perhaps Governor Argali would also like to do her best by Ironbridge, by accompanying her bodyguard back."
Kamoj almost swore. She knew Lyode and Gallium meant well, and she valued their loyalty, but she wished they hadn't interfered. It would only earn them Jax's anger. She and Jax had to work this out. Although their merger was weighted in favor of Ironbridge, it gave control to neither party.
They would share authority, she focused on Argali and he on Ironbridge. It benefited neither province if their governors couldn't get along.
She spoke to Jax in a gentle voice. "Please accept my apologies, Governor Ironbridge. I will discuss Lyode's behavior with her on the walk back. We'll straighten this out."
He reached down for her injured foot, bending her leg at the knee so he could inspect her wound.
"Can you walk on this?"
"Yes." The position he was holding her leg in was more uncomfortable than the gouge itself.
"Very well." When he let go, his fingers inadvertently scraped the gash, and she stiffened as pain shot through her foot. She held her silence and slid off the stag, taking care to land on her other foot.
As she limped over to Lyode, bi-hooves scuffed behind her. Turning, she watched the riders thunder up the road to Argali.
* * *
Kamoj smiled. The old scrolls were full of absurdities. Jax had shown her one in his library that claimed Balumil, the world, went around Jul in an "elliptical orbit" and rotated around a tilted axis. This tilt, and their living here in the north, was purported to explain why nights were short in summer and long in winter, fifty-five hours of darkness on the longest night of the winter, leaving only five hours of sunlight.
One year consisted of four seasons, of course: spring, summer, fall, winter. More formally, they called it the Long Year. A person could be born, reach maturity, wed, and have a family all within one Long Year. For some reason the scroll described this as a long time: hence the name. For an even more inexplicable reason, Kamoj's ancestors had partitioned the Long Year into twenty equal time periods they called short-years. So each season was five short-years in length. People rarely bothered to say "short-year," though. Instead, they used the word year to refer to the short-year and always used Long Year when they meant the time it took for all four seasons to pass.
Although Kamoj followed the convention, it made no sense to her. Why call it a "short-year." It wasn't an actual year, after all. The scroll claimed this odd designation came about because a short-year on Balimul was close in length to a "standard" year.
Standard for what?
Still, it was more credible than too-little-to-see machines. Whatever the history of Argali House, it was wood and stone now, both the main building and the newer wings that rambled over the cleared land around it. Huge stacks of firewood stood along one side, stores for the winter. Bird-shaped lamps hung from the eaves, rocking in the breezes, their glass tinted in Argali colors, rose, gold, and green. Their radiance created a dam against the purple shadows that pooled under the trees. Here in the road, a fluted post stood like a sentinel, with a scalloped hook at its top. A lantern, molded and tinted like a rose, hung from the hook, its warm glow beckoning them home.
They walked along the low wall that enclosed the house and entered the courtyard by a gate engraved with vines. Five stone steps ran the length of the house, leading up to a terrace, and five doors were set at even intervals along the front. The center door was larger than the others, stuccoed white and bordered by hieroglyphs painted in luminous blue, as well as the usual Argali colors.
As they neared the house, Kamoj heard voices. By the time they reached the steps, it had resolved into two men arguing.
"That sounds like Ironbridge," Lyode said.
"Maxard too." Kamoj hesitated, her foot on the first step.
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.
* * *
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.