Selida felt her people's eyes flicker between her and Kahldar as he moved Ispen between them and the fallen bandits. She ignored their righteous indignation. For twenty years, the treaty of Wyvernsvow had subjected the Tidelands to the Dawnland Dominion's rule of law in exchange for Aluna's continued sovereignty in matters of faith—at least in her traditional strongholds along the coast. Now, twenty years later, Selida could feel the Dawnlanders circling, trying to wedge their wretched Welded religion in through the gaps in the inked words. To protect this next generation of Aluna's children, she dared give them no excuse.

With some effort, Kahldar persuaded the group's most strident participant—the headswoman of a nearby village—back to her crying children. Selida dismounted beside her and offered her hands for a blessing. The woman, still red with outrage, accepted with a shudder. The temperature of the entire group eased into an acceptable simmer.

By the time the caravan was all sorted out, Selida had taken the headwoman's two girls onto Dulcis's back, and only one of the bandits was in danger of expiring from the beating he'd taken.

"Lady Selida, please grant this man the healing touch of your goddess," Kahldar said, as he remounted his horse.

Selida looked down at the broken man, and then at her muttering people. She had started with agreeableness; she should not contradict him now. Still she hesitated. "Are you sure? Aluna rations her blessings as carefully as any fishmother. If one of your men comes to ill tonight, you may wish I had saved this prayer for him instead."

Kahldar looked past her, towards the farmers and fishermen that tended Wyvernsvow's coast. "It is true that these men assaulted you, but before this day, they were your neighbors. Only Lord Magnus has discretion over their punishment, and in this season of troubles, he has judged it punishment enough to deny such miscreants the safety of our walls. Do not take any more of their blood upon your hands."

Selida saw her people look away, chastened. Justice and mercy, dispensed from on high, was not the Tidelander way, but it certainly made excellent theater.

With a sigh, she handed Dulcis's reins to the older of the headwoman's girls and went to crouch beside the fallen man. His left leg lay at an unnatural angle, and bruises bloomed through his skin from cracked ribs and ruptured organs. She closed her eyes, touched his forehead, and opened her other hand to accept Aluna's divinity. It surged down her palm and across her chest like a cool sea swell. At her next breath, it rushed out her fingertips with the hiss of foam on sand. She opened her eyes and watched the wave consume the body on the floor, flooding out the bruises and straightening the bone with a snap.

The man gasped as the pain receded.

"The Serpent of the Sea has closed your wounds and knit your bones," she intoned — once in Elven, and once in the common tongue for those watching. "By the Tidemother's Law of Salvage, your life now belongs to Aluna. Live the rest of your days in her name."

She wiped her hands on a towel she kept at her belt, and accepted the reins back from the wide-eyed children. The fallen man's eyes followed her, flicked to Kahldar, and then lowered, downcast. The caravan began to shuffle towards Wyvernsvow's lopsided bulk. The remaining bandits leaned on each other and limped off into the fog.

***

Selida saw Kahldar's posture relax. As she counted heads and watched farmers corral their animals, he allowed his giant black horse to fall into step beside her.

He opened the faceplate of his helmet. "I must ask: what brings you here? The harvest festival isn't for another three weeks."

No word of thanks? No courtly flirtation? Ah, Ser Kahldar. No wonder she'd spent the summer imagining new ways to make him blush.

Selida glanced back over her shoulder. Dulcis's passengers giggled to themselves as they pretended to be fine ladies. She lowered her voice anyway. "The Grand Cleric fears the roads will not be passable in three weeks." Selida tossed her stole over her shoulder and smiled up at him. "So here I am."

He frowned. "How closely does your Grand Cleric still honor her oath to King Harald? Some believe the Fox received arms from a coalition of pious coastal lords."

Selida sighed. A Dawnlander might have been offended, but Aluna taught that the sea absorbed all blows. "Rumors." Before them, the caravan paused over some issue with a recalcitrant pig. "I ran to the church to avoid this drama. How was I to know it would not all be singing and dancing in the surf?"

Lamentably, he did not color. Surely he had not forgotten. She would never have accosted him in the stable, had she not felt the heat of his gaze all through the Autumn Shoredance. Instead he said: "Even rumors are no laughing matter. The King was willing to send a pair of his own Welded clerics down from the Dawnlands to winter in Wyvernsvow. His advisors judged it safer than relying upon your aid. Ser Aegison wanted to accept."

She smirked to hide her grimace. "You know I can't take seriously any religion that requires its clerics to marry ere they preach. Besides, any agent of the Welded Church who preaches in the Tidelands violates the treaty."

The Welded W on the rondel protecting the joint between his pauldron and breastplate winked at her, even in the diffuse light. "Lady Magnus agrees. She persuaded him to reject them."

"Thank Aluna for Emmeline."

He looked at her directly for the first time this afternoon. His golden eyes were sharp in a face more stern than its years. "So why are you here, Lady Cleric? Do you truly expect the people of Wyvernsvow to trust a woman whose church is rumored to have armed our soon-to-be-besiegers?"

It felt good, to let her impatience show. Just a little. Just enough. Selida pointed to the caravan as a farmer's child got the sow moving again. "All these people belong to Aluna. They do not deserve to be caught between two eels, squabbling over a trout. I am here to ensure they survive the winter."

"And what of your feelings towards the Fox?"

She measured her words. "All the coast would be well served by a solution that spilled no blood, on either side."

"They've come for treasure that rightfully belongs to the King."

"Then give them some of it."

His hand cut through the air. "Impossible. Order, as well as common sense, forbids it."

"Then it is lucky it is not you I must convince, but Emmeline."

"Lady Magnus knows the importance of Dawnland law and custom, even if you do not."

She sweetened her tone. "Then you have nothing to worry about from me."

He searched her expression, as though it were a mask he could dissolve with a glower.

She raised her brows. It is me, Kahldar.

He set his shoulders. "Then make your petition. And when it is done, keep to your sacraments. I am pledged entirely on the keep's defense this winter. And even if I were not, my vows leave no time for your... flirtations."

Ah. Genuine delight crept into her smile. "Appallingly direct. And here I hoped you might be ready to apologize for where we left off last spring."

His tone flattened. "Why must you Tidelanders make every interaction fraught with blandishment?"

Her smile spread. "This conversation counts as blandishment?"

"Yes. You—caress your words with your mouth as you speak them."

Delight infused her. "Do women not practice flirtation in the Dawnlands?"

"No."

"Then how are they supposed to express interest?"

"They braid a wreath of winter wheat."

"What if it's not winter?"

"Then they wait."

She laughed. "What if he becomes otherwise engaged before then?"

His stare was yellow, and sharp. "Lady Cleric. I am a knight of no land and no prospects. No liege waits to pay a bride tithe on my behalf. Without such an exchange of goods to balance the deficit left in a woman's family when a man takes her to wife, Exoeras dictates that neither party has any business consorting."

Tidemother drown the Welded Church of the Heavens. She sighed. Pointedly.

Years ago, Selida had read the holy Welded texts acquired in secret by the Church of Aluna. Nothing in them struck her as particularly inspired. A Cleric of Era, Goddess of the Moon and Chaos, had started a covert affair with a Cleric of Exos, God of the Sun and Order. As if compelled by the lurid logic of a bard tale, their warring followers had murdered them, and dumped their bodies into the same shallow grave. Some holy miracle had then fused their dead flesh into the risen champion Exoeras. Selida may have forgiven how this gruesome spontaneity masqueraded as sentimentality, except that the Welded now preached that all other gods, Aluna included, were mere aspects of their god's divine parents, and to be subsumed accordingly.

She opened her mouth, considered, and closed it. The only thing more irksome than listening to Welder scripture was hearing a Welded explain her own religion back to her.

Instead she offered: "So if I were a good Welded girl, you would expect me to hold my blandishments until your liege purchased me for you? Like a new suit of armor?" She glanced thoughtfully down at her torso, loose robes belted securely at the waist, and her booted feet, emerging from under split skirts. "Perhaps a horse?"

At last, the beginnings of a blush.

"Must you always make light? Exoeras's Law of Balance makes far more sense than ceremonies like your Tidelander moon festival. Even in poetry it always ends in much wailing and rending of hair."

"How astute of you. And yet, that's part of its purpose. Without some wailing and wasting away, how is a young woman supposed to become wise enough to make her own decisions?"

"She would not need to curb her tendency to chaos, if older and wiser people made those decisions for her."

Selida tilted her torso up to regard him with droll amusement. "I am older than you. By at least a few years, if I am not mistaken. Are you ready to submit to my wisdom?"

His warhorse jinked in her direction. "You are not older than me."

Selida put her hand on Ispen's warm flank, inches from Kahldar's knee. "You can ask Lady Magnus, if you like. I carried the shells at her wedding."

She savored his baffled silence as the road turned, and the castle towered over them, gnashing turrets and black crenelations materializing through the fog. From this angle, she could not see the half of it that projected nonsensically far over the water, as if the castle's architect had thought his task was to build the coast's most intimidating garderobe.

Almost there, but not yet. She inhaled the cool, wet air. A few last moments of cool mist and white light, before a long winter of tiny, dark rooms. She pushed even darker thoughts away. Not yet.

Kahldar leaned away, and Ispen stepped out of her reach. His voice was clipped. "I cannot, and do not aspire to the sort of position that would allow me to offer you a dower arrangement. Without one to guarantee our material happiness, as well as peace between our families, your flirtations court disaster." He took a breath. "I find them unwelcome."

She made her voice indulgent. "The assumptions that underlie your logic are lamentably flawed."

"You would think so."

She ignored him. "First, Tidelander families may not war on each other, lest the serpents of the sky rebel. The church excommunicates those who do, rendering conflict between our families irrelevant. Second, we have our own dower arrangement: a gift from the bride's family to the bride herself." She slid him a glance. "When a Cleric of Aluna deigns to marry, the church holds monies from her holy works in trust for her children. Which would neatly assuage your concern about material happiness."

He opened his mouth but before he could speak, the lead plow horse stopped at the edge of the ravine separating the road from the tip of the peninsula.

With an impatient glare, Kahldar snapped his attention away from her and raised his mailed gauntlet. The men in the ramparts over the gatehouse sent a returning salute before disappearing to work the drawbridge.

Up close, Wyvernsvow looked even more impenetrable than it had on the hill. She counted: at least three dozen men, on this shift alone. Ser Aegison's writ of conscription had hit the coast like a bad case of fish, hollowing out the coastal towns before the harvest. Seeing this side of it, resplendent and faceless, made her stomach knot.

Kahldar spoke, relieving her for one more moment, of the need to worry about tomorrow. "Do not bait me, Lady Cleric. Any fool would judge a permanent union between us preposterously unwise."

At this she did laugh. "Oh! I agree." Her gaze softened. "But for other reasons than those you state."

His voice grew sterner, as if he and it borrowed the immovability of the castle before him. "Then this conversation is over. May I rely upon you to never raise it again?"

He looked as if he expected her to pledge her oath, right then. She widened her eyes at him. "Ser Kahldar, not all flirtations must end in marriage."

His face set. "The Fox is coming. I cannot afford to be distracted this season." He kicked Ispen forward. "No good could possibly come of it."

Selida watched him go.

The smile faded off her face. He made her heart wistful in ways that were useless to examine. Instead, she coaxed the girls off Dulcis and returned them to their mother. Behind her, the tired line of people and wagons drained into the castle. Selida remounted and composed her expression. Let the people of Wyvernsvow see nothing but Your will, Tidemother, as gentle and as inexorable as moonrise.