Fremur kneeled at his father’s feet. “May the Sky Piercer watch over you. And may he bring you joy on your daughter’s wedding day.”

His father rolled his eyes in Fremur’s direction, but otherwise gave no sign of having heard. He had not spoken for seven summers, but he had always been a strong man, and even though he could not speak or feed himself and could not walk without two men supporting him, he lived on. Fremur wondered what the Sky Piercer, the clan’s guardian, meant by the terrible exercise of letting Hurvalt go on breathing long after he had lost his manhood.

We are Crane Clan, he reminded himself. We do not question the Sky Piercer.

The expanse of grass, with Odrig’s herd of horses fenced at one end, was surrounded by wagons of all sizes. Every member of Clan Kragni was there—no, Fremur corrected himself, almost every member—as well as important folk from neighboring clans like the Dragonfly, Adder, and White Spot Deer, with whom the Cranes often intermarried. Fremur’s family, at least the women and his many nieces and nephews, had already taken their places near Thane Odrig’s wagon. As usual, the younger boys were playing at men’s work, straddling the wooden paddock fence as though it were a horse’s saddle, smacking at each other with long sticks, and of course ignoring all warnings from their female relatives. Several of Fremur’s aunts and cousins whistled to him as he walked past. He nodded, but did not stop, even when some of the boys begged him to.

Most of the rest of the clanfolk had gathered in the center of the paddock, where a tent had been erected for the bride to wait, and where food and drink were laid out on colorful blankets and covered with fairy-nets to keep the flies away. Although Odrig had not stinted, buying several barrels of stone-dweller beer to swell the happiness of the feast, those barrels had not been breached. That did not mean that the day’s drinking had not begun: many of the clansmen had brought their own yerut, the fermented mare’s milk that the Thrithings-folk had drunk since time before time. The number of snoring, bearded men scattered across the grass, along with the sour smell of vomit, told Fremur all that he needed to know.

Odrig stood near the tent with Drojan and several others, passing a skin of yerut and playing a knife-throwing game directed at the paddock’s nearest fencepost a few dozen paces away. Fremur knew he should stop and speak the Blessing of the Sky Piercer to his brother the thane, but at that moment he did not want to talk to Odrig, still less Drojan, whose charms were not improved by the crimson flush of drunkenness or the gap-toothed bray of his laughter. Fremur made a wider circuit out into the paddock so he could reach the tent from the other side without having to talk to the thane and his closest supporters. He was not particularly successful.

“Hoy, there, little brother!” Odrig shouted. “Where are you going? Not to the bride’s tent to sit with the women, I hope!”

“He wants you to choose him a husband, Thane!” bellowed Drojan.

Odrig enjoyed this jest, and grabbed Drojan’s scarred face and squeezed it as if it was a child’s. “Mark your new brother, Mouse!” he said. “Come and drink his health, or must I start looking, as Drojan says, for a strong man to take care of you? I do not think I could get many horses for you, though, scrawny thing that you are.”

“That’s what a veil is for,” suggested another of his brother’s friends, and they all laughed.

It was no use trying to avoid them completely; ignoring Odrig only made him more determined. And, in truth, Fremur himself was not entirely certain what it was that filled him with such unease and disgust today. Drojan was a pig, but as Odrig’s friend he would prosper and their sister would be well-kept, with thick blankets and a fine wagon. Kulva might not like him, but that was often the case among Thrithings brides, and more often than not the wife learned in time to care about her husband as well as care for him.

“I will join you in a moment,” he told Odrig. “I wish to give our sister a blessing.”

“I will give her something more than that tonight!” crowed Drojan. “Like the rabbit who married a bear, she will be limping tomorrow morning!”

Odrig seemed to find this even funnier than the others did. Again he gripped Drojan’s face with drunken fondness, wiggling his friend’s head from side to side like a father with a beloved child. “Unless the bear drinks too much,” Odrig said, “and can only offer his bride a limp willow branch as his wedding gift!”

More hilarity. Fremur waved, doing his best to smile, and continued on his way.

The wedding tent was a precious thing made of true Khandian silk, or so his mother had once told him. She had awaited her own marriage in it, as had her mother and grandmother before her. The outside walls were stitched in an ornamental pattern of blue rivers and lakes and green grass, a sort of map of their family’s history in the land the stone-dwellers called the Lake Thrithings. A red pennant festooned with crane feathers and daubed with the symbol of the Sky Piercer waved at the top of the conical tent, and ribbons fluttered from every corner and all around the doorway.

Two men called Bride Guards, clothed in leather armor and holding long spears, waited outside the tent on either side of the doorway. One of them tried to stop Fremur as he approached, but the other said, “He can go in. He is the bride’s brother, and the shaman is already there.” Fremur had guessed as much. Because the shaman was male, the women’s sanctuary of the tent had been pierced and legitimate male visitors were now allowed. Still, he stopped before the doorway and wiped the sweat from his face, then murmured his apologies to the Mother of the Green for entering her territory before lifting the flap to step inside.

It was dark within the tent, and hotter inside than out. In the moments it took his eyes to make peace with the darkness, he thought he saw a hunched, two-headed figure wearing a face out of nightmare. His heart sped for a moment before he realized it was only the shapes of his sister and old Burtan the shaman as he bent over her to perform the ritual purification with ash and salt. It was strange that Burtan, whom Fremur had known his whole life, should become such a fearsome figure with only the donning of a headdress and leather mask, but so it was. When he saw the priest look up at him, Fremur felt a moment of superstitious terror, though he knew that the old shaman only stared because he was nearly blind.

“The blessings of the skies upon you, Grandfather,” he said, as was expected, and pulled a small silver coin from his pocket he had brought for just this moment. “I would speak with the bride. I am her brother.”

“I know you, Fremur,” said Burtan, his voice reedy but his annoyance plain. “Do not think me so old, so foolish . . .” Only at that moment, as it came close to his face, did he notice the coin in Fremur’s fingers. “Ah, so. Of course. But do not take long. The horns will sound at sun-high, and that is not long now.”

How the old man knew that after sitting in a darkened tent all morning, Fremur was not sure. “You are wise, Grandfather,” was all he said. Even an old shaman with milky eyes should never be mocked or angered. In fact, as his sister had once pointed out, the older ones were closer to death and thus closer to the gods, and so should be humored whenever possible. Both gods and shamans could easily bring down bad luck on those who displeased them.

The shaman whispered something to Fremur’s aunt, who laughed quietly. She sat beside Kulva in place of their mother, who had died in the Year of the Autumn Floods, two winters before Odrig first became leader of the Crane Clan. Five other female relatives were also crowded into the small tent, which smelled of sweat and the scented oils burning in small clay lamps. The lamps were not meant to provide light—the top of the wedding tent where the poles came together was open to the bright sky—but to entice the spirit of the Sky Piercer to swoop low to smell their sweet odor and bless the coming marriage.