Selida extended her palms as the young couple stepped over the bowl of beaten silver. The youth, a fisherman by his callouses, and the girl, round with child, blushed so hard at each other that they did not notice. Selida deftly caught their free hands in hers.

"The serpents of the sky bind you," Selida sang, first in Elven than in common. "For as long as you love and protect each other, Aluna will bless you with the abundance of the sea."

"Blessings return to you tenfold, Lady Cleric," the girl said. She released Selida's hand to fumble in her pockets. "Our tithe—"

"Aluna will take your tithe in prayers this season, sister."

As the happy couple returned to their family, Selida peered down the thronged hallway. Tidelanders—standing, sitting, and holding shells—extended all the way to the staircase.

Selida pursed her lips. At first, she had wondered what subtle strategy Emmeline might employ to keep her seditious cleric in check. Now it was obvious. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, she imagined her charge murmuring to herself. And so while Selida hauled her saddlebags from the stable into the chapel, Emmeline had rushed Dame Pottage into starting dinner half an hour early. Every single refugee had watched her take her place at Lydris's right.

By the time Selida had entertained Lydris through his dessert of dried fruit, dozens of Tidelanders had found their way to the new chapel's door, eager for sacraments interrupted by their unseasonal relocation to Wyvernsvow.

Many faces were familiar to her, so it was with a sense of inevitability that Selida opened the door after dinner and heard five confessions, dispensed penance—why yes, Aluna demands you apologize to your brother—and performed Aluna's name day ceremony over two babies. Then this wedding. Tidemother keep you all.

Before she could admit a mother and her young daughter into the chapel, she heard a sharp voice crackle down the hallway from the stairs. "Off with you now. Lady Selida still has work to do this evening. There'll be time enough tomorrow to confess all your woes."

It was Old Meg, Lydris's nurse. Her gray head appeared at the end of the passage as she began shuffling people back down the way they'd come. In her left hand she held a lantern.

Selida waited until the hallway was clear. "What work, now?"

Old Meg grinned and a sachet of tea. "Milady's orders to walk the wall, of course. You can find the kettle downstairs, in the kitchen."

"She wants me to start tonight?"

"Aye." The nurse lifted the lantern, and manipulated the door. "Methinks you'll need this as well. Won't due to keep our kin waiting in the dark."

Selida stilled. Meg had been Emmeline's nurse too, decades ago. When she and Laurence had trailed Lord Coralglass to the Tidelander royal palace, Meg had braided shells into their hair and kept watch as they ottered around in the surf. She picked her words carefully. "Do you mean for me to pass them some message?"

"Ach, lass, these bones are too old to know what the lads want to hear these days." She patted Selida on the cheek, fingers like withered roses. "I'm only here to help you do what your faith tells you must be done."

Selida stiffened. "I'm afraid, mistress, that Aluna teaches us wisdom by holding her own counsel."

Meg shook her head and left the lantern on the floor by the door. "Do as you like, as long as you do something. Is that not what your father used to say?"

Selida glowered at the lantern as the nurse disappeared down the hallway. Then she looked down at her fingers, clenched around the tea sachet. There were multiple ways to end a siege. She returned to her trunk for a warm cloak. Time to find Ser Kahldar.

***

The stairs to the parapet narrowed as they rose. The fog had receded, exposing an endless roof of stars. As Selida stepped into the knife-sharp cold, the black ocean spread around her, reflecting the Tidelands' thousand constellations like a glittering cape. Landwards, a few campfires burned in the scrub at the top of the rise. She kept the open door of Meg's lantern pointed away from them as she carried the kettle along the parapet to the first of the guardsmen on the wall.

He was, of course, the squire with the broken nose.

"Tea?" Selida lowered the lantern and proffered the mug attached to her girdle.

He looked at her and then took one step backwards. His hands rose, palms out.

"Very well. Perhaps tomorrow."

The next guardsman huddled under a torch twenty feet away. Beyond him stood another. From here, she could see so many men on the wall that the whole of it seemed bathed in light.

It was going to be a long night.

***

The Coiled Viper arced directly overhead by the time Selida located Kahldar. He stood at the prow of Wyvernsvow's easternmost tower, wearing only a light cloak over his plate. He frowned silently out at the embers on the rise.

"You walked a thorough path through the parapet." Below them, on a lower wall, the men of one shift exchanged places with the men of another.

His profile cheered her beyond good reason. "Why Ser Kahldar, were you waiting for me?"

"I prefer my hot beverages hot."

Selida poured the last of the tea from the kettle and proffered him the mug. His open posture made her think he found the air balmy, after the killing ice of the Dawnlands. She wondered what he'd say if she asked him to thaw her numb fingers by rolling them in his palms. His mouth flattened as if he read her thoughts on her face. Instead of taking the mug from her, he pointed at a flat spot on the wall between them.

She rolled her eyes and obliged. Then she pulled her arms under her cloak and crossed them over her breasts. "Will your Welded chastity unravel if we brush fingertips? Should I be flattered?"

"Have I not told you to stop your distractions?" He nodded out at the darkness. "Those campfires belong to the Fox. His men grow in number every day. They will make their intentions clear soon. Perhaps today."

"Excellent." Selida slid him a glance. "Then we can parlay. Maybe the farmers might get back to their fields in time to salvage what's left of the harvest."

She felt his eyes brush her features, like a blind man reading her expression. "Is that what you asked of Lady Magnus?"

"We spoke of other things."

"Ah." He took a sip of tea. "She rejected your petition."

Selida resisted the urge to grind her teeth. "A setback." She forced some humility into her voice; forced her eyes to meet his. "So I came to ask you a question. Under what terms do you think Wyvernsvow might reach parlay with the Fox?"

His lips parted. His expression softened. And then, with sympathy: "None."

She blinked. "Nonsense. All we require are two people who can agree to not kill each other."

He stared into his mug. "By His Majesty's order, ancient treasures, especially those of magical nature, belong to the Dominion. The Royal Bailiff then distributes them to all corners based on need. And the Dominion does not negotiate with bandits."

Heat prickled in her chest and she took a step closer to him. "The Dominion may not associate with bandits, but if the castle eats the entire harvest before winter begins, everyone in the keep will be dead by spring. Surely that is worth some creative parsing of your king's mandates."

She saw him try and discard words. "You would do better to focus your energy on matters within your gift, Lady Cleric. "Many of our refugees are anxious for reassurance. Perhaps tomorrow, you might extend special prayers for the young men conscripted this summer."

Selida felt her lips tighten even as she struggled to pitch her voice low. She pointed to a youth, down still soft on his face, standing at attention by the postern gate. "Do not expect Aluna to endorse your madness. That child would have better spent his summer fishing or farming."

"If the treasure had not provoked rumors of insurrection, we would have left him to do exactly that."

Her other hand found his bracer. It was ice under her fingertips, but the wrist beneath jumped at her touch, before steadying into unyielding granite "If your people had not hidden it away, disgruntled Tidelanders would not feel it worth their lives to reclaim it." She stared up at him, half glower, half plea. "Consider what a treasure, found in the ruins of one of our temples, might mean to us."

"Us?"

Her face started to burn. "Yes, us. Our ancestors practiced great magic. Artifacts in that trove may show us visions of what has been. Others may deepen our connection to Aluna herself." Selida turned away from him, so she could stare at the sea. "When Ser Aegison announced he would turn the lot, unseen and uncatalogued, over to the Dominion, years of resignation solidified into panic. And what will King Harald do with it anyway? Melt it into yet more of his face coins?"

"Common coinage facilitates trade."

She glared at him. "Do you hear yourself?"

He let her breathe. Then, his free hand came over hers. Gently: "Must you still harbor resignation? When I was a child, we people of the mountain passes only dreamed of having as much to eat as your coastal communities do today."

Bile rose in her throat. "When I was a child, our fishermen slept under blankets of cerulean wool and wore pearls to market. Now I must beg our young people to forswear banditry, or else end their days strung up for the crows. Resignation does not begin to describe what I feel."

"Ah." He stared another moment at where she touched his bracer, and then returned her hand to her. His tone stiffened into pedantic abstraction. "Based on the howls of your neighbors, you Tidelanders won most of your wealth through piracy. Now the Dominion demands you exchange pillage for lawful trade." He looked out over the peninsula. "Wealth could return to the Tidelands, if you apply yourselves."

Selida resisted the urge to grab his shoulders and shake. Why, why, why had she thought this a reasonable gambit? Every time they fell into true conversation, one that touched on anything that actually mattered, she remembered: it was far more enjoyable to tease him until his beautiful features flushed, if not in passion, then at least in annoyance.

Fire that only blood can quench. She tried one more time. "Fine. You dismiss our concerns and consider our ways criminal. Even so, surely you see that the treasure gives you the upper hand in any parlay with the Fox. Why not pursue it?"

His gaze remained on the horizon. "It is hard for me to imagine a dialog that does not feed your insurrectionist nationalism."

She took three deep breaths. "Fine. What if we offered Dominion currency in exchange for the historical artifacts found under the keep? Your King would retain the magical items for his distribution as well as the overall value of Lord Magnus's discovery."

"Assuming our treasury could sustain it, would your people be satisfied with that?"

"Our Church would encourage Tidelands to see the treasure as a sign that the future grows atop of the legacy of the past, instead inside its annihilation."

He tilted his head. "And this keeps Aluna central to your people, deflecting the incursions of the Welded?"

She lifted her chin.

Kahldar considered. "Having sworn to do my utmost to see this keep safe through the siege, your argument makes sense to me."

Her lips parted. "You astonish me. I thought you said it was impossible."

He returned his gaze to her. "It may yet be. You would have to persuade the King's representatives that releasing Tidelander treasure into the coast would not reignite civil war."

"Tidemother, was I not clear this afternoon, on the road? My people cannot make war on their relatives, on pain of excommunication."

"That does not protect those outside your family sphere. Had your noble families upheld their initial alliances with the Dominion, half a century ago, his Majesty would not have invaded."

She wondered what would happen if she punched his breastplate. Her hand would hurt, probably, and he would feel nothing. "Oh, so you did it for the people, and not for a rich port and its taxes?"

"Access to the port, we requested through diplomacy. When you forced us instead to conquest, we needed the taxes to provide security for the people. Half your villages didn't even have roads."

She could not help herself. "The ocean is our road. The Serpent of the Sea eases at Aluna's command."

He shrugged. "Once the paved thoroughfares are finished, you won't need to bother your Goddess in order to travel. In a generation, I expect your mothers to feel relief that their children no longer need to fear the dangers of open water."

Her voice dropped; venomously sweet. "Why, Ser Kahldar, have you still not learned to swim?"

A clank of footsteps on the parapet made them both straighten. Kahldar took a step away from her. Selida opened her clenched hands and dried them against her side.

Ser Aegison frowned at them both. "Lady Cleric. You were given permission to bring tea to the men, not distribute blandishments."

"I often accomplish two things at once. Is that difficult for you?

Kahldar dropped the wooden mug and took half a step between Selida and his commander.

Ser Aegison purpled. He opened his mouth to bellow, except at that moment, they all saw it: a flurry of movement at the ridge. A small cavalcade of riders thundered down the road towards the keep.

Selida strained her eyes, but she'd spent all of Aluna's gifts earlier in the evening. Now, she could see only black-painted shields, and lance banners bereft of crests and colors. Dispossessed Tideland knights, she judged, riding with the fluid ease of her people.

Ser Aegison's shout stopped a stampede to the walls. Archers scrambled for quivers.

The knot of riders stopped well out of shortbow range. All three pulled curved horns out of their packs. Then—a long trill of notes. The effortless warble began as a liquid chorus of golondrinas, and ended as a pugnacious bugle of defiance.

The sound closed around her heart like a mailed fist. Her eyes closed too, and she was suddenly a little girl again, standing beside her father, listening to the last glories of their doomed kingdom.

"What does it mean," Ser Aegison huffed. "What are they saying?"

"It is a declaration of war," Kahldar said. When Selida opened her eyes in surprise, she did not need to know how he knew; he had been watching her face, and had read it there.

Then he was ducking back from the parapet; in a fluid gesture, he shoved her behind himself and away from the wall. "They're firing arrows.".

Ser Aegison turned on his heel and began to bark orders..

"Lady Cleric," Kahldar said, pushing Selida towards the stairs. "Get inside. It begins."